What Stalin Knew (49 page)

missars and the Central Committee VKP(b) called attention to the many

excesses and shortcomings in the work of the NKVD and the prosecutors.

It stipulated that arrests could not be carried out by the NKVD without the

sanction of the prosecutors, who were instructed not to permit arrests

without justification. They were also made responsible for ensuring the

proper conduct of preliminary investigations by the NKVD.27

Although the decree nowhere mentioned physical force and torture in

investigations, the fact that NKVD interrogators made frequent use of

them was well known to the party officials who, along with prosecutors

and NKVD officials, constituted the infamous ‘‘troikas,’’ extrajudicial ar-

rangements frequently used during the purges to speed up the process.

Party secretaries at all levels now insisted that NKVD officials follow the

letter of the new decree in conducting investigations, and they sought the

dismissal and trial of many senior NKVD officials in their jurisdictions for

having participated in abusive and illegal behavior. The scapegoating of

the NKVD went on right down to the regional level.28 Stalin, however,

while not unhappy to see NKVD witnesses of the purge years disappear,

was unwilling to deprive his investigators of the tools they needed to pro-

duce results. On January 10, 1939, he sent a coded telegram to party and

NKVD officials in union and autonomous republics and in regions. ‘‘The

Central Committee VKP(b) explains that physical coercion has been used

in the practice of the NKVD since 1937 with the permission of the Central

Committee,’’ the telegram said, noting that all ‘‘bourgeois’’ intelligence ser-

vices used physical coercion. ‘‘The Central Committee considers physical

coercion a completely correct and useful method, and it must absolutely

continue to be used in the future, as an expedient against obvious and

armed enemies of the people.’’ This telegram, sent in the name of the

Central Committee and signed by Stalin, demonstrates that the beatings

and torture that were used at the height of the purges could be employed

again, all in his name.29 The Boss would not tolerate dissent or show pity

for those who opposed him in any way. During the Great Purges he would

personally approve the execution of thousands as on December 12, 1938.

According to Dmitri A. Volkogonov, a monstrous ‘‘record’’ was established

228

A SUMMER OF TORTURE

on that date as Stalin and Molotov sanctioned the arrest of 3,167 persons.30

Stalin’s behavior in dealing with those he considered his enemies did not

change in the early months of the war.

That he was aware of the use of torture on those arrested in the latest

wave of arrests cannot be doubted. Two of those he released, Vannikov and

Meretskov, were both physically abused. In Vannikov’s case, testimony

given by investigators A. A. Zozulov and Ivan I. Matevosov described how

Boris V. Rodos threw him on the floor, then jumped on him, shouting ‘ Tell,

tell all.’’ According to Matevosov, the order was given to obtain testimony

from Vannikov implicating others. The protocol signed by the barely con-

scious Vannikov was actually prepared by Rodos.

On December 22, 1938, about a month after Beria became People’s

Commissar for Internal Affairs, a new investigative unit was created in the

NKVD headed by Bogdan Z. Kobulov. Some idea of how the new unit

functioned can be seen in its handling of the investigation of Foreign Af-

fairs Commissariat officials following the dismissal in early May 1939 of

Foreign Affairs Commissar Maksim M. Litvinov. (Litvinov was dismissed

because he was Jewish and favored cooperation with the West against the

Nazi menace.) One such official was Yevgeny A. Gnedin, a relatively young

man who had risen to the position of head of the Foreign Affairs Com-

missariat’s press department and was one of its most respected members.

He was arrested on the night of May 10–11 and brought to his first inter-

rogation by Kobulov at 3:00 a.m. Gnedin rejected the accusation that he

was a spy as laughable and seemed confident of an early release. At 10:00

a.m. he was again summoned for interrogation but this time taken directly

to Beria’s office. Kobulov was also there, and he and Beria conferred briefly

in Georgian. As Gnedin sat next to Beria’s desk, Beria told him in a loud

voice that according to Kobulov he was a foreign spy. When Gnedin again

denied the charge, saying ‘‘I’m not a spy,’’ Kobulov struck him a sharp blow

and several NKVD toughs burst into the office and joined in pummeling

him. At this point, Beria shouted, ‘‘Lie down.’’ Gnedin lay down on his

back. Beria ordered him to turn over, and when Gnedin hesitated, the

NKVD officers roughly turned him over and began to beat him with rubber

truncheons. Above the din could be heard the voice of Beria shouting

‘‘Don’t leave any marks!’’31

By February 1941 the investigative unit established in 1938 had been

expanded and become the Investigative Unit for Especially Important

Cases. Lev Vlodzimirsky, a Siberian native and former sailor who had been

a member of the secret police since 1928, became the head.32 The inter-

A SUMMER OF TORTURE

229

rogators in his unit were nearly all veterans of the purges. Among his

senior interrogators and deputies were Rodos and Lev L. Shvartsman,

both well known for their brutality. Rodos was tried in 1956 for cruelty

toward prisoners under interrogation. Among those who testified against

him was Marshal Meretskov who described the beatings he received. Ap-

parently Rodos delivered a blow hard enough to break one of Meretskov’s

ribs and send him to the floor crying in pain.33

Although Shvartsman’s reputation as a ferocious interrogator was

every bit as horrific as Vlodzimirsky’s and Rodos’s, according to one pris-

oner he did not look the part: ‘‘He was stout, his face pale from lack of

sleep, and if one had passed him on the street he might have seemed an

overworked engineer from a large factory.’’34 Nevertheless, Shvartsman

could be a nasty customer. The story is told that when Grigory M. Shtern

was arrested, his initial interrogation, given his previous rank, was han-

dled by Beria’s first deputy, Merkulov, in Merkulov’s office. Shvartsman

was also present. Merkulov asked Shtern to tell about his crimes and

Shtern replied that he had committed no crimes against his country. At

this Shvartsman rose from his chair and hit Shtern in the face with an

electric cable, severing his right eyeball from its socket. Shtern fell to the

floor. Merkulov looked reproachfully at Shvartsman and at the blood on

the expensive carpet. Shvartsman apologized to Merkulov, explaining that

he had intended to hit Shtern in the neck but missed. With that he called

the guards, who bandaged Shtern’s eyes and drove him off to the Sukha-

novka, probably the worst of all the NKVD prisons in the Moscow area.35

No longer able to withstand the pain, Shtern declared at a June 27 in-

terrogation session that yes, he was ‘‘a member of a military-conspiratorial

organization and a German agent.’’ At the end of the protocol of interroga-

tion, however, Shtern wrote this declaration in his own hand: ‘‘I made the

foregoing statements during the interrogation, but none of it corresponds

to reality and it was made up by me, that is, I was actually never an enemy,

an agent, or a conspirator.’’36

Routine interrogations were held at irregular intervals so prisoners

could not anticipate them. Beatings with fists or rubber truncheons, ac-

companied by kicks to the body if a prisoner fell down, were standard.

Senior NKVD and NKGB officials also participated in these beatings.

When the Meretskov interrogations began, for example, Beria, Merkulov,

and Vlodzimirsky all took part, after which Shvartsman and investigators

Zimenskov and Sorokin joined in.

Prisoners were also made to stand for hours without moving until

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A SUMMER OF TORTURE

their bodies were wracked with pain. Rodos once said to a prisoner, ‘‘They

say of us that we use Asiatic methods of conducting investigations; we’ll

show you that this true!’’37 Perhaps the most brutal aspect of these inter-

rogations was the infamous ‘‘confrontation’’ (
ochnaya stavka
), in which

two prisoners were brought face to face so that one of them could hear the

other’s accusations against him or her. With appropriate safeguards, such

confrontations are not uncommon in other jurisdictions. It is instructive,

however, to learn how Vlodzimirsky went about arranging for a confronta-

tion in early July 1941 between Rychagov and Smushkevich, both Spanish

War veterans and service colleagues. He sent interrogators to Rychagov’s

cell to ‘‘prepare’’ him by brutally beating him. One result of this treatment

was to puncture Rychagov’s eardrum and lead him to exclaim that he could

not longer be considered a pilot. When Smushkevich was brought in, it

was apparent that he, too, had been severely beaten many times.38

Many of the air force officers and Spanish civil war veterans arrested

in May–June 1941 appear in the so-called Stalin lists (
Stalinskie Spiski
)

compiled by Memorial, a Russian association dedicated to preserving the

history of human rights abuses in the USSR and honoring the victims. The

entries provide biographic detail, the accused’s position and rank at the

time of arrest, the date of arrest, testimony of accusers, and admissions, if

any, by the accused. It is these records that provide the basis for the de-

scriptions of arrests and interrogations in chapter 19. In nearly all these

interrogations, the main target was Colonel General Yakov V. Smushke-

vich. Some of the accused named him as their recruiter into an anti-Soviet

conspiracy. Smushkevich himself testified to some officials’ membership

in that conspiracy. Considering the pain he suffered and the likelihood of

threats against his daughter, Rosa, it is no wonder he confessed.39

Other persons with records in Memorial’s Stalin lists were shown to

have been recruited by Aleksandr D. Loktionov, the former head of Red

Army air forces and commanding general of the Baltic Military District.

On June 16, 1941, Loktionov wrote to the prosecutor: ‘‘I am subjected to

enormous physical and moral torture. The prospect of the interrogations I

have described makes my blood run cold. To die, knowing that I was not an

enemy, drives me to despair. . . . I am writing my last words—a cry from my

soul: let me die an honest man working for my motherland, the Soviet

Union. I beg my government—save my life. I am not guilty of treason.’’ This

letter evidently did not help Loktionov. On July 15 he was brought to

a confrontation with Meretskov, who tried to persuade him to confess.

When Loktionov refused, he was beaten again in Meretskov’s presence.

A SUMMER OF TORTURE

231

Although beatings continued, as of August 10 he still refused to admit

guilt. It is evident that what he said under duress, including that he had

recruited others, was untrue.40

Strangely, another name missing from Stalin’s lists and from the inter-

rogation summaries printed in them is that of Lieutenant General Pros-

kurov. The reason is not clear; we know, however, that Proskurov endured

his summer of torture, because we have his indictment: ‘‘On the basis of

the material in his file, Proskurov is accused of membership in a military

conspiratorial organization, the tasks of which were to conduct work

aimed at defeating republican Spain, lowering the combat readiness of the

air forces of the Red Army, and increasing accidents in the air forces.’’ The

indictment, signed by the senior investigator of the Investigative Unit for

Especially Important Cases and by Deputy Chief Shvartsman, was re-

leased by the unit chief, Vlodzimirsky. A note in the protocol of Proskurov’s

interrogation read: ‘‘Proskurov refused to admit his guilt.’’ To the very end,

Proskurov would not dishonor himself by giving his tormentors what they

wanted.41

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C H A P T E R

The Final Reckoning

Hindsight enables us to savor the final irony of the

German invasion of the USSR in June 1941. It was a colossal blunder by

Adolf Hitler that denied the Wehrmacht the capture of Moscow and pre-

served Stalin’s power. The Austrian corporal, whose ability to outfox Stalin

resulted in the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens, demonstrated that he,

like Stalin, suffered from delusions that condemned him to make wrong

choices in the summer of 1941.

By the end of July 1941, the city of Smolensk had been captured

against very strong Soviet resistance. By mid-August, Army Group Center’s

two panzer groups, under Colonels General Heinz Guderian and Hermann