What History Teaches Us

We are doomed to repeat past mistakes if we do not learn what history teaches us....

From "The Gulag Archipeligo" - by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

Chapter 9                                            The Law Becomes a Man

Our review has already grown. Yet we have in fact hardly begun. All the big and famous trials are still ahead of us. But their basic lines have already been indicated. So let us stick with our Law while it is still in its boy scout stage. Let us recall one long-forgotten case which was not even political.

F. The Case of Glavtop—May, 1921

 This case was important because it involved engineers - or, as they had been christened in the terminology of the times, "specialists," or spetsy. (Glavtop was the Main Fuels Committee.) Nineteen twenty-one was the most difficult of all the four winters of the Civil War; nothing was left for fuel, and trains simply couldn't get to the next station; and there were cold and famine in the capitals, and a wave of strikes in the factories- strikes which, incidentally, have been completely wiped out of our history books by now. Who was to blame? That was a famous question: Who is to blame?

Well, obviously, not the Over-all Leadership. And not even the local leadership. That was important. If the "comrades who were often brought in from outside"—i.e., the Communist leaders —did not have a correct grasp of the business at hand, then it was the engineers, or spetsy, who were supposed to "outline for them the correct approach to the problem." And this meant that "it was not the leaders who were to blame. . . . Those who had worked out the calculations were to blame, those who had re-figured the calculations, those who had calculated the plan"— which consisted of how to produce food and heat with zeros. Those to blame weren't the ones who compelled but the ones who calculated!

If the planning turned out to be inflated, the spetsy were the ones to blame. Because the figures did not jibe, "this was the fault of the spetsy, not of the Council of Labor and Defense" and "not even of the responsible men in charge of Glavtop—the Main Fuels Committee. “If there was no coal, firewood, or petroleum, it was because the spetsy had "brought about a mixed-up, chaotic situation." And it was their own fault that they hadn't resisted the urgent telephonograms from Rykov and the government—and had issued and allotted fuels outside the scope of the plan. The spetsy were to blame for everything. But the proletarian court was not merciless with them. Their sentences were lenient. Of course, an inner hostility to those cursed spetsy remains in proletarian hearts—but one can't get along without them; every- thing goes track and ruin. And the tribunal doesn't persecute them, and Krylenko even says that from1920 on "there is no question of any sabotage." The spetsy are to blame, but not out of malice on their part; it's simply because they are inept; they aren't able to do any better; under capitalism, they hadn't learned to work, or else they were simply egotists and bribe-takers.

And so, at the beginning of the reconstruction period, a surprising tendency toward leniency could be observed in regard to the engineers. The year 1922, the first year of peace, was rich in public trials, so rich that almost this entire chapter will be devoted to that year alone. (People are surprised: the war has ended, and yet there is an increase in court activity? But in 1945, too, and in 1948, the Dragon became very, very energetic. Is there not, perhaps, a simple sort of law in this?). Although in December, 1921, the Ninth Congress of the Soviets decreed that the authority of the Cheka be narrowed and, in consequence, its authority was indeed narrowed and it was renamed the GPU, as early as October, 1922, the powers of the GPU were broadened again, and in December Dzerzhinsky told a Pravda correspondent: "Now we need to keep watch with particular vigilance over anti-Soviet currents and groupings. The GPU has reduced its apparatus but strengthened it in terms of quality. “And, at the beginning of 1922, we must not bypass:

G. The Case of the Suicide of Engineer Oldenborger

(Tried before the Verkhtrib— the Supreme Tribunal —in February, 1922)

 This case is forgotten, insignificant, and totally atypical. It was atypical because its entire scale was that of a single life that had already ended. And if that life hadn't ended, it would have been that very engineer, yes, and ten more with him, forming a Center, who would have sat before the Verkhtrib; in that event the case would have been altogether typical. But as it was, an outstanding Party comrade, Sedelnikov, sat on the defendants' bench and, with him, two members of the RKI—the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection - and two trade-union officials.

 But, like Chekhov's far-off broken harp-string, there was something plaintive in this trial; it was, in its own way, an early predecessor of the Shakhty and Prom party trials'. V. Oldenborger had worked for thirty years in the Moscow water-supply system and had evidently become its chief engineer back at the beginning of the century. Even though the Silver Age of art, four State Dumas, three wars, and three revolutions had come and gone, all Moscow drank Oldenborger's water. The Acmeists and the Futurists, the reactionaries and the revolutionaries, the military cadets and the Red Guards, the Council of People's Commissars, the Cheka, and the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection— all had drunk Oldenborger's pure cold water. He had never married and he had no children. His whole life had consisted of that one water-supply system. In 1905 he refused to permit the soldiers of the guard near the water-supply conduits —"because the soldiers, out of clumsiness, might break the pipes or machinery." On the second day of the February Revolution he said to his workers that that was enough, the revolution was over, and they should all go back to their jobs; the water must flow. And during the October fighting in Moscow, he had only one concern: to safeguard the water-supply system. His colleagues went on strike in answer to the Bolshevik coup d'etat and invited him to take part in the strike with them. His reply was: "On the operational side, please forgive me, I am not on strike. ... In everything else, I—well, yes, I am on strike." He accepted money for the strikers from the strike committee, and gave them a receipt; bathe himself, dashed off to get a sleeve to repair a broken pipe. But despite this, he was an enemy!

Here's what he had said to one of the workers: "The Soviet regime won't last two weeks." (There was a new political situation preceding the announcement of the New Economic Policy, and in this context Krylenko could allow himself some frank talk before the Verkhtrib : "It was not only the spetsy who thought that way at the time. That is what we ourselves thought more than once.") But despite this, Oldenborger was an enemy! Just as Comrade Lenin had told us: to keep watch over the bourgeois specialists we need a watchdog—the RKI—the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection. They began by assigning two such watchdogs to Oldenborger on a full-time basis. (One of them, Makarov-Zemlyansky, a swindler and a former clerk in the water system, had been fired "for improper conduct" and had entered the service of the RKI "because they paid better." He got promoted to the Central People's Commissariat because "the pay there was even better"- and, from that height, he had returned to check up on his former chief and take hearty vengeance on the man who had wronged him.) Then, of course, the local Party committee—that match- less defender of the workers' interests—wasn't dozing either. And Communists were put in charge of the water system. "Only workers are to hold the top positions; there are to be only Communists at leadership level; and the wisdom of this view was confirmed by the given trial."

The Moscow Party organization also kept its eyes on the water- supply system. (And behind it stood the Cheka.) "In our own time we built our army on the basis of a healthy feeling of class enmity; in its name, we do not entrust even one responsible position to people who do not belong to our camp, without assigning them ... a commissar." And so, they all immediately began to order the chief engineer about, to supervise him, to give him instructions, and to shift the engineering personnel around with- out his knowledge. ("They broke up the whole nest of businessmen.") But they did not, even so, safeguard the water-supply system. Things didn't go better within, but worse! So slyly had that gang of engineers contrived to carry out an evil scheme. Even more: overcoming his intellectual's interim nature, as a result of which he had never in his life expressed himself sharply, Oldenborger made so bold as to describe as stupid stubbornness the actions of the new chief of the water-supply system, Zenyuk (to Krylenko, "a profoundly likable person on the basis of his internal structure"). It was at this point that it became clear that "engineer Oldenborger was consciously betraying the interests of the workers and that he was a direct and open enemy of the dictatorship of the working class." They started bringing inspection commissions into theater-supply system, but the commissions found that everything was in good order and that water was being supplied on a normal basis. The RKI men, the "rabkrinovtsy," refused to be satisfied with this. They kept pouring report after report into the RKI.

Oldenborger simply wanted to "ruin, spoil, break down the water-supply system for political purposes," but he was unable to. Well, they put what obstacles in his way that they could; they prevented wasteful boiler repairs and replacing the wooden tanks with concrete ones. At meetings of the water-supply-system workers, the leaders began saying openly that their chief engineer was the "soul of organized technical sabotage" and that he should not be believed that he should be resisted at every point. Despite all this, the operation of the water-supply system not only didn't improve, but deteriorated. What was particularly offensive to the "hereditary proletarian psychology" of the officials of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection and of the trade unions was that the majority of the workers at the pumping stations "had been infected with petty-bourgeois psychology "and, unable to recognize Oldenborger's sabotage, had come to his defense. At this point, elections to the Moscow Soviet were being held and the workers nominated Oldenborger as the candidate of the water-supply system, against whom, of course, the Party cell backed its own Party candidate. However, this turned out to be futile because of the chief engineer's fraudulent authority with the workers. Nonetheless, the Party cell brought up the question with the District Party Committee, on all levels, and announced at a general meeting that "Oldenborger is the center and soul of sabotage, and will be our political enemy in the Moscow Soviet!" The workers responded with uproar and shouts of "Untrue! Lies!" And at that point the secretary of the Party Committee, Comrade Sedelnikov, flung right in the faces of the thousand-headed proletariat there: "I am not even going to talk to such Black Hundred, reactionary pogrom-makers." That is to say: We'll talk to you somewhere else.

Party measures were also taken: they expelled the chief engineer from—no less—the collegium for administration of the water system, and kept him under constant investigation; continually summoned him before a multitude of commissions and sub commissions; kept interrogating him and giving him assignments that were to be urgently carried out. Every time he failed to appear, it was entered in the record "in case of a future trial." And through the Council of Labor and Defense (Chair- man—Comrade Lenin) they got an "Extraordinary Troika" appointed to the water system. (It consisted of representatives of the RKI, the Council of Trade Unions, and Comrade Kuibyshev.)And for the fourth year the water kept right on flowing through the pipes. And Moscovites kept on drinking it and didn't notice anything wrong. Then Comrade Sedelnikov wrote an article for the newspaper Ekonotnicheskaya Zhizn:

"In view of the rumors disturbing the public in regard to the catastrophic state of theater mains . . ." and he reported many new and alarming rumors—even that the water system was pumping water underground and was intentionally washing away the foundations of all Moscow." (Set there by Ivan Kalita in the fourteenth century.)

They summoned a Commission of the Moscow Soviet. The Commission found that the "state of the water system was satisfactory and that its technical direction was efficient. “Oldenborger denied all the accusations. And then Sedelnikov placidly declared: "I had set myself the task of stirring up a fuss about this matter in order to get the question of the spetsy taken up. “What remained for the leaders of the workers to do at this point? What was the final, infallible method? A denunciation to the Cheka! Sedelnikov resorted to just that! He "painted a picture of the conscious wrecking of the water system by Oldenborger." He did not have the slightest doubt that "a counterrevolutionary organization" existed "in theater system, in the heart of Red Moscow." And, furthermore, a catastrophic situation at the Rublevo water tower! At this point, Oldenborger was guilty of a tactless act of rudeness, the outburst of a spineless, interim intellectual. They had refused to authorize his order for new boilers from abroad— and at the time, in Russia, it was quite impossible to fix the old ones. Oldenborger committed suicide. (It had been just too much for one man—after all, he hadn't undergone the conditioning for that sort of thing.)The cause was not lost, however. They could find a counter- revolutionary organization without him. RKI men would now undertake to expose the whole thing. Some concealed manoeuvring went on for two months. But such was the spirit at the beginning of the NEP that "a lesson had to be taught both one side and the other." So there was a trial in the Supreme Tribunal. Krylenko was moderately severe. Krylenko was moderately merciless. He was understanding: "The Russian worker, of course, was right to see in every person not of his own class someone more likely to be an enemy than a friend."

Nevertheless: "Given the further change in our practical and general policy, perhaps we must be prepared for still greater concessions, for retreating and manoeuvring. Perhaps the Party will be forced to adopt a tactical program of action which the primitive logic of honest, dedicated warriors is going to protest. "Well, it's a fact, the workers who testified against Comrade Sedelnikov and the RKI men were "easily brushed off" by the tribunal. And the defendant Sedelnikov replied brazenly to the threats of the accuser. "Comrade Krylenko! I know all those articles. But after all, no one is judging class enemies here

, and those articles relate to class enemies. “However, Krylenko laid it on good and thick. Deliberately false denunciations to state institutions ... in circumstances aggravating guilt, such as a personal grudge and the settling of personal accounts ... the abuse of an official position . . . political irresponsibility . . . abuse of power and of the authority of government officials and members of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) . . . disorganization of the work of the water- supply system . . . injury done the Moscow Soviet and Soviet Russia, because there were few such specialists, and it was impossible to find replacements for them. "And we won't even begin to speak of the individual, personal loss. ...

In our time, when struggle is the chief content of our lives, we have somehow grown used to not counting these irrevocable losses." The Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal must utter its weighty word: "Punishment must be assessed with all due severity! . . . We didn't come here just to crack jokes."

Good Lord, now what are they going to get? Could it really be? My reader has gotten used to prompting: all of them to be sh------! And that is absolutely correct. All of them were to be publicly shamed—bearing in mind their sincere repentance! All of them to be sentenced to — ostracism and ridicule. Two truths . . . And Sedelnikov, allegedly, got one year in jail. You will just have to forgive me if I don't believe it. Oh, you bards of the twenties, painting your pictures of their bright and bubbling happiness! Even those who touched only their farthest edge, who touched them only in childhood, will never forget them. And those plug-uglies, those fat faces, busy persecuting engineers—in the twenties, too, they ate their bellies full. And now we see also that they had been busy from 1918 on. In the two trials following we will take leave of our favorite supreme accuser for a while: he is occupied with his preparations for the major trial of the SR's. [The provincial trials of the SR's took place even earlier, such as the one in Saratov in1919.]This spectacular trial aroused a great deal of emotion in Europe beforehand, and the People's Commissariat of Justice was suddenly taken aback: after all, we had been trying people for four years without any code, neither a new one nor an old one. And in all probability Krylenko him- self was concerned about the code too. Everything had to be neatly tied up ahead of time. The coming church trials were internal. They didn't interest progressive Europe. And they could be conducted without a code. We have already had an opportunity to observe that the separation of church and state was so construed by the state that the churches themselves and everything that hung in them, was installed in them and painted in them, belonged to the state, and the only church remaining was that church which, in accordance with the Scriptures, lay within the heart. And in 1918, when political victory seemed to have been attained faster and more easily than had been expected, they had pressed right on to confiscate church property.

However, this leap had aroused too fierce a wave of popular indignation. In the heat of the Civil War, it was not very intelligent to create, in addition, an internal front against the believers. And it proved necessary to postpone for the time being the dialogue between the Communists and the Christians. At the end of the Civil War, and as its natural consequence, an unprecedented famine developed in the Volga area. They give it only two lines in the official histories because it doesn't add a very ornamental touch to the wreaths of the victors in that war. But the famine existed nonetheless—to the point of cannibalism, to the point at which parents ate their own children—such a famine as even Russia had never known, even in the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century. (Because at that time, as the historians testify, unthreshed ricks of grain survived intact beneath the snow and ice for several years.) Justone film about famine might throw a new light on everything we saw and everything we know about the Revolution and the Civil War. But there are no films and no novels and no statistical re- search—the effort is to forget it. It does not embellish. Besides, we have come to blame the kulaks as the cause of every famine— and just who were the kulaks in the midst of such collective death? V. G. Korolenko, in his

Letters to Lunacharsky (which, despite Lunacharsky's promise, were never officially published in the Soviet Union), explains to us Russia's total, epidemic descent into famine and destitution. [Published in Paris in 1922 and in the Soviet Union in samizdat in 1967.] It was the result of productivity having been reduced to zero (the working hands were all carrying guns) and the result, also, of the peasants' utter lack of trust and hope that even the smallest part of the harvest might be left for them. Yes, and someday someone will also count up those many carloads of food supplies rolling on and on for many, many months to Imperial Germany, under the terms of the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk—from Russia which had been deprived of a protesting voice, from the very provinces where famine would strike—so that Germany could fight to the end in the West.

There was a direct, immediate chain of cause and effect. The Volga peasants had to eat their children because we were so impatient about putting up with the Constituent Assembly. But political genius lies in extracting success even from the people's ruin. A brilliant idea was born: after all, three billiard balls can be pocketed with one shot.

So now let the priests feed the Volga region! They are Christians. They are generous! 1. If they refuse, we will blame the whole famine on them and destroy the church.2. If they agree, we will clean out the churches.3. In either case, we will replenish our stocks of foreign ex- change and precious metals. Yes and the idea was probably inspired by the actions of the church itself. As Patriarch Tikhon himself had testified, back in August, 1921, at the beginning of the famine, the church had created diocesan and all-Russian committees for aid to the starving and had begun to collect funds. But to have permitted any direct help to go straight from the church into the mouths of those who were starving would have undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat. The committees were banned, and the funds they had collected were confiscated and turned over to the state treasury. The Patriarch had also appealed to the Pope in Rome and to the Archbishop of Canterbury for assistance—bathe was rebuked for this, too, on the grounds that only the Soviet authorities had the right to enter into discussions with foreigners. Yes, indeed. And what was there to be alarmed about?

The newspapers wrote that the government itself had all the necessary means to cope with the famine. Meanwhile, in the Volga region they were eating grass, the soles of shoes, and gnawing at door jambs. And, finally, in December, 1921, Pomgol—the State Commission for Famine Relief —proposed that the churches help the starving by donating church valuables—not all, but those not required for liturgical rites. The Patriarch agreed. Pomgol issued a directive: all gifts must be strictly voluntary! On February 19, 1922, the Patriarch issued a pastoral letter permitting the parish councils to make gifts of objects that did not have liturgical and ritual significance. And in this way matters could again have simply degenerated into a compromise that would have frustrated the will of the proletariat, just as it once had been by the Constituent Assembly, and still was in all the chatterbox European parliaments. The thought came in a stroke of lightning! The thought came— and a decree followed! A decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on February 26: all valuables were to be requisitioned from the churches—for the starving! The Patriarch wrote to Kalinin, who did not reply. Then on February 28 the Patriarch issued a new, fateful pastoral letter: from the church's point of view such a measure is sacrilege, and we cannot approve the requisition.

From the distance of a half-century, it is easy to reproach the Patriarch. Of course, the leaders of the Christian church ought not to have been distracted by wondering whether other resources might not be available to the Soviet government, and who it was who had driven the Volga to famine. They ought not to have clung to those treasures, since the possibility of a new fortress of faith arising—if it existed at all—did not depend on them. But one has also to picture the situation of that unfortunate Patriarch, not elected to his post until after the October Revolution, who had for a few short years led a church that was always persecuted, restricted, under fire, and whose preservation had been entrusted to him. But right then and there a sure-fire campaign of persecution began in the papers, directed against the Patriarch and high church authorities who were strangling the Volga region with the bony hand of famine. And the more firmly the Patriarch clung to his position, the weaker it became. In March a movement to relinquish the valuables, to come to an agreement with the government, began even among the clergy. Their still undispelled qualms were expressed to Kalinin by Bishop Antonin Granovsky, a member of the Central Committee of Pomgol: "The believers fear that the church valuables may be used for other purposes, more limited and alien to their hearts." (Knowing the general principles of our Progressive Doctrine, the experienced reader will agree that this was indeed very probable. After all, the Com intern's needs and those of the East in the course of being liberated were no less acute than those of the Volga.)

The Petrograd Metropolitan, Veniamin, was similarly impelled by a mood of trust: "This belongs to God and we will give all of it by ourselves." But forced requisitions were wrong. Let the sacrifice be of our own free will. He, too, wanted verification by the clergy and the believers: to watch over the church valuables up to the very moment when they were transformed into bread for the starving. And in all this he was tormented lest he violate the censuring will of the Patriarch. In Petrograd things seemed to be working out peacefully. The atmosphere at the session of the Petrograd Pomgol on March 5, 1922, was even joyful, according to the testimony of an eye- witness. Veniamin announced: "The Orthodox Church is pre- pared to give everything to help the starving." It saw sacrilege only in forced requisition. But in that case requisition was un- necessary! Kanatchikov, Chairman of the Petrograd Pomgol, gave his assurances that this would produce a favorable attitude toward the church on the part of the Soviet government. (Not very likely, that!) In a burst of good feeling, everyone stood up. The Metropolitan said: "The heaviest burden is division and enmity. But the time will come when the Russian people will unite. I myself, at the head of the worshipers, will remove the cover [of precious metals and precious stones] from the ikon of the Holy Virgin of Kazan. I will shed sweet tears on it and give it away." He gave his blessing to the Bolshevik members of Pomgol and they saw him to the door with bared heads. The newspaper Petrogradskaya Pravda, in its issues of March 8, 9, and 10, confirmed the peaceful, successful outcome of the talks, and spoke favorably of the Metropolitan. [See the articles entitled "Tserkov i Golod" ("The Church and the Famine") and "Kakbudut izyaty tserkovnye tsennosti" ("How the Church Valuables Will Be Requisitioned").]

"In Smolny they agreed that the church vessels and ikon coverings would be melted down into ingots in the presence of the believers. “Again things were getting fouled up with some kind of com- promise! The noxious fumes of Christianity were poisoning the revolutionary will. That kind of unity and that way of handing over the valuables were not what the starving people of the Volga needed! The spineless membership of the Petrograd Pomgol was changed. The newspapers began to howl about the "evil pastors" and "princes of the church," and the representatives of the church were told: "We don't need your donations! And there won't be any negotiations with you!

 Everything belongs to the government —and the government will take whatever it considers necessary. “And so forcible requisitions, accompanied by strife, began in Petrograd, as they did everywhere else. And this provided the legal basis for initiating trials of the clergy. [I have taken this material from Ocherki po Istorii Tserkovnoi Smuty (Essays on the History of the Troubles of the Church), by Anatoly Levitin, Part I, samizdat, 1962, and from the stenographic notes on the questioning of Patriarch Tikhon, Trial Record, Vol.V. ]

H. The Moscow Church Trial—April 26-May 7, 1922

 This took place in the Polytechnic Museum. The court was the Moscow Revtribunal, under Presiding Judge Bek; the prosecutors were Lunin and Longinov. There were seventeen defendants, including archpriests and laymen, accused of disseminating the Patriarch's proclamation. This charge was more important than the question of surrendering, or not surrendering, church valuables. Archpriest A. N. Zaozersky had  surrendered all the valuables in his own church, but he defended in principle the Patriarch's appeal regarding forced requisition as sacrilege, and he became the central personage in the trial—and would shortly be  shot.  (All of which went to prove that what was important was not to feed the starving but to make use of a convenient opportunity to break the back of the church.)

On May 5 Patriarch Tikhon was summoned to the tribunal as a witness. Even though the public was represented only by a carefully selected audience (1922, in this respect, differing little from 1937 and 1968), nonetheless the stamp of Old Russia was still so deep, and the Soviet stamp was still so superficial, that on the Patriarch's entrance more than half of those present rose to receive his blessing. Tikhon took on himself the entire blame for writing and disseminating his appeal. The presiding judge of the tribunal tried to elicit a different line of testimony from him: "But it isn't possible! Did you really write it in your own hand? All the lines? You probably just signed it. And who actually wrote it? And who were your advisers? and then: "Why did you mention in the appeal the persecution to which the newspapers are subjecting you? "[After all, they are persecuting you and why should we hear about it?] What did you want to express? “The Patriarch: "That is something you will have to ask the people who started the persecution: What objectives were they pursuing? “The Presiding Judge: "But that after all has nothing to do with religion! “The Patriarch: "It has historical significance. “The Presiding Judge: "Referring to the fact that the decree was published while you wherein the midst of talks with Pomgol, you used the expression, behind your back? “The Patriarch: "Yes. “Presiding Judge: "You therefore consider that the Soviet government acted incorrectly? “A crushing argument! It will be repeated a million times more in the night time offices of interrogators! And we will never answer as simply and straightforwardly as:

The Patriarch: "Yes. “The Presiding Judge: "Do you consider the state's laws obligatory or not? “The Patriarch: "Yes, I recognize them, to the extent that they do not contradict the rules of piety."(Oh, if only everyone had answered just that way! Our whole history would have been different.)A debate about church law followed. The Patriarch explained that if the church itself surrendered its valuables, it was not sacrilege. But if they were taken away against the church's will, it was. His appeal had not prohibited giving the valuables at all, but had only declared that seizing them against the will of the church was to be condemned. (But that's what we wanted—expropriation against the will of the church!)Comrade Bek, the presiding judge, was astounded: "Which in the last analysis is more important to you—the laws of the church or the point of view of the Soviet government?"(The expected reply: "The Soviet government.")"Very well; so it was sacrilege according to the laws of the church," exclaimed the accuser, "but what was it from the point of view of mercy?" (For the first and last time—for another fifty years—that banal word mercy was spoken before a tribunal.)

Then there was a philological analysis of the word "svyatotatstvo," meaning "sacrilege, "derived from "svyato," meaning "holy," and "tat," meaning "thief."The Accuser: "So that means that we, the representatives of the Soviet government, are thieves of holy things?"(A prolonged uproar in the hall. A recess. The bailiffs at work.)The Accuser: "So you call the representatives of the Soviet government, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, thieves?"The Patriarch: "I am citing only church law."Then there is a discussion of the term "blasphemy." While they were requisitioning the valuables from the church of St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, the ikon cover would not fit into a box, and at that point they trampled it with their feet. But the Patriarch himself had not been present.

The Accuser: "How do you know that? Give us the name of the priest who told you that.[And we will arrest him immediately!]"The Patriarch does not give the name. That means it was a lie! The Accuser presses on triumphantly: "No, who spread that repulsive slander?"The Presiding Judge: "Give us the names of those who trampled the ikon cover! [One can assume that after doing it they left their visiting cards!] Otherwise the tribunal cannot believe you!"The Patriarch cannot name them. The Presiding Judge: "That means you have made an unsubstantiated assertion."It still remained to be proved that the Patriarch wanted to overthrow the Soviet government. And here is how it was proved:"Propaganda is an attempt to prepare a mood preliminary to preparing a revolt in the future."The tribunal ordered criminal charges to be brought against the Patriarch.

On May 7 sentence was pronounced: of the seventeen defendants, eleven were to be shot. (They actually shot five.)As Krylenko said: "We didn't come here just to crack jokes."One week later the Patriarch was removed from office and arrested. (But this was not the very end. For the time being he was taken to the Donskoi Monastery and kept there in strict incarceration, so that the believers would grow accustomed to his absence. Remember how just a short while before Krylenko had been astonished: what danger could possibly threaten the Patriarch? Truly, when the danger really does come, there's no help for it, either in alarm bells or in telephone calls.)Two weeks after that, the Metropolitan Veniamin was arrested in Petrograd. He had not been a high official of the church before the Revolution. Nor had he even been appointed, like almost all Metropolitans. In the spring of 1917, for the first time since the days of ancient Novgorod the Great, they had elected a Metropolitan in Moscow and in Petrograd. A gentle, simple, easily accessible man, a frequent visitor in factories and mills, popular with the people and with the lower clergy, Veniamin had been elected by their votes. Not understanding the times, he had seen as his task the liberation of the church from politics "because it had suffered much from politics in the past." This was the Metropolitan who was tried in:

I. The Petrograd Church Trial—June 9-July 5, 1922

 The defendants, charged with resisting the requisition of church valuables, numbered several dozen in all, including a professor of theology and church law, archimandrites, priests, and laymen. Semyonov, the presiding judge of the tribunal, was twenty-five years old and, according to rumor, had formerly been a baker. The chief accuser was a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat of Justice, P. A. Krasikov — a man of Lenin's age and a friend of Lenin when he was in exile in the Krasnoyarsk region and, later on, in emigration as well. Vladimir Ilyich used to enjoy hearing him play the violin. Out on Nevsky Prospekt, and at the Nevsky turn-off, a dense crowd waited every day of the trial, and when the Metropolitan was driven past, many of them knelt down and sang:"Save, O Lord, thy people!" (It goes without saying that they arrested overzealous believers right on the street and in the court building also.) Most of the spectators in the court were Red Army men, but even they rose every time the Metropolitan entered in his white ecclesiastical hood. Yet the accuser and the tribunal called him an enemy of the people. Let us note that this term already existed. From trial to trial, things closed in on the defense lawyers, and their humiliating predicament was already very apparent.

Krylenko tells us nothing about this, but the gap is closed by an eye- witness. The tribunal roared out a threat to arrest Bobrishchev – Pushkin himself  —the principal defense lawyer—and this was already so in accord with the spirit of the times, and the threat was so real that Bobrishchev-Pushkin made haste to hand over his gold watch and his billfold to lawyer Gurovich. And right then and there the tribunal actually ordered the imprisonment of a witness, Professor Yegorov, because of his testimony on behalf of the Metropolitan. As it turned out, Yegorov was quite pre- pared for this. He had a thick briefcase with him in which he had packed food, underwear, and even a small blanket. The reader can observe that the court was gradually assuming forms familiar to us. Metropolitan Veniamin was accused of entering, with evil intent, into an agreement with .. . the Soviet government, no less, and thereby obtaining a relaxation of the decree on the requisition of valuables. It was charged that his appeal to Pomgol had been maliciously disseminated among the people. (Samizdat! —self-publication!) And he had also acted in concert with the world bourgeoisie. Priest Krasnitsky, one of the principal "Living Church" schismatics, and GPU collaborator, testified that the priests had conspired to provoke a revolt against the Soviet government on the grounds of famine. The only witnesses heard were those of the prosecution. Defense witnesses were not permitted to testify. (Oh, how familiar it all is! More and more!)

Accuser Smirnov demanded "sixteen heads." Accuser Krasikov cried out: "The whole Orthodox Church is a subversive organization. Properly speaking, the entire church ought to be put in prison."(This was a very realistic program. Soon it was almost realized. And it was a good basis for a dialogue.) Let us make use of a rather rare opportunity to cite several sentences that have been preserved from the speech of S. Y. Gurovich, who was the Metropolitan's defense attorney."There are no proofs of guilt. There are no facts. There is not even an indictment. . . .What will history say? [Oh, he certainly had discovered how to frighten them! History will forget and say nothing!] The requisition of church valuables in Petrograd took place in a complete calm, but here the Petrograd clergy is on the defendants' bench, and somebody's hands keep pushing them toward death. The basic principle which you stress is the good of the Soviet government. But do not forget that the church will be nourished by the blood of martyrs. [Not in the Soviet Union, though!] There is nothing more to be said, but it is hard to stop talking. While the debate lasts, the defendants are alive. When the debate comes to an end, life will end too."The tribunal condemned ten of them to death. They waited more than a month for their execution, until the trial of the SR's had ended. (It was as though they had processed them in order to shoot them at the same time as the SR's.) And after that, VTsIK, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, pardoned six of them. And four of them—the Metropolitan Veniamin; the Archimandrite Sergius, a former member of the State Duma; Professor of Law Y. P. Novitsky; and the barrister Kovsharov— were shot on the night of August 12-13.

We insistently urge our readers not to forget the principle of provincial multiplicity. Where two church trials were held in Moscow and Petrograd, there were twenty-two in the provinces. They were in a big hurry to produce a Criminal Code in time for the trial of the SR's—the Socialist Revolutionaries. The time had come to set in place the granite foundation stones of the Law. On May 12, as had been agreed, the session of VTsIK convened, but the projected Code had not yet been completed. It had only just been delivered for analysis to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at his Gorki estate outside Moscow. Six articles of the Code provided for execution by shooting as the maximum punishment. This was unsatisfactory. On May 15, on the margins of the draft Code, Lenin added six more articles requiring execution by shooting (including—under Article 69—propaganda and agitation, particularly in the form of an appeal for passive resistance to the government and mass rejection of the obligations of military service or tax payments). [In other words, like the Vyborg appeal, for which the Tsar's government had imposed sentences of three months' imprisonment.]

And one other crime that called for execution by shooting: unauthorized return from abroad (my, how the socialists all used to bob back and forth incessantly!). And there was one punishment that was the equivalent of execution by shooting: exile abroad. Vladimir Ilyich foresaw a time not far distant when there would be a constant rush of people to the Soviet Union from Europe, and it would be impossible to get anyone voluntarily to leave the Soviet Union for the West. Lenin went on to express his principal conclusion to the People's Commissar of Justice: “Comrade Kursky! In my opinion we ought to extend the use of execution by shooting (allowing the substitution of exile abroad) to all activities of the Mensheviks, SR's, etc. We ought to find a formulation that would connect these activities with the international bourgeoisie." (Lenin's italics.)

To extend the use of execution by shooting! Nothing left to the imagination there! (And did they exile very many?) Terror is a method of persuasion. This, too, could hardly be misunderstood. But Kursky, nonetheless, still didn't get the whole idea. In all probability, what he couldn't quite work out was a way of formulating that formulation, a way of working in that very matter of connection. The next day, he called on the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Lenin, for clarification. We have no way of knowing what took place during their conversation. But following it up, on May 17, Lenin sent a second letter from Gorki:

COMRADE KURSKY!

As a sequel to our conversation, I am sending you an outline of a supplementary paragraph for the Criminal Code. . . . The basic concept, I hope, is clear, notwithstanding all the shortcomings of the rough draft: openly to set forth a statute which is both principled and politically truthful (and not just juridicially narrow) to supply the motivation for the essence and the justification of terror, its necessity, its limits. The court must not exclude terror. It would be self-deception or deceit to promise this, and in order to provide it with a foundation and to legalize it in a principled way, clearly and without hypocrisy and without embellishment, it is necessary to formulate it as broadly as possible, for only revolutionary righteousness and revolutionary conscience will provide the conditions for applying it more or less broadly in practice. With Communist greetings, LENIN

 We will not undertake to comment on this important document. What it calls for is silence and reflection.

The document is especially important because it was one of Lenin's last directives on this earth—he had not yet fallen ill— and an important part of his political testament. Ten days after this letter, he suffered his first stroke, from which he recovered only incompletely and temporarily in the autumn months of 1922. Perhaps both letters to Kursky were written in that light and airy white marble boudoir-study at the corner of the second floor, where the future deathbed of the leader already stood waiting. Attached to this letter is the rough draft mentioned in it, containing two versions of the supplementary paragraph, out of which would grow in a few years' time both Article 58-4and all of our dear little old mother, Article 58. You read it and you are carried away with admiration: that's what it really means to formulate it as broadly as possible!

That's what is meant by extending its use. You read and you recollect how broad was the embrace of that dear little old mother.". . . propaganda or agitation, or participation in an organization, or assistance (objectively assisting or being capable of assisting) . . . organizations or persons whose activity has the character . . ."Hand me St. Augustine, and in a trice I can find room in that article for him too. Everything was inserted as required; it was retyped; execution by shooting was extended —and the session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the new Criminal Code shortly after May 20 and decreed it to be in effect from June 1, 1922, on. And so began, on the most legal basis, the two-month-long

J. Trial of the SR's—June 8-August 7, 1922

 The court was the Supreme Tribunal, the Verkhtrib. The usual presiding judge, Comrade Karklin (a good name for a judge derived from the word meaning to "croak" or "caw"), was replaced for this important trial, which was being watched closely by the entire socialist world, by the resourceful Georgi Pyatakov. (Provident fate enjoys its little jokes —but it also leaves us time to think things over! It left Pyatakov fifteen years.) There were no defense lawyers. The defendants, all leading SR's, undertook their own defense. Pyatakov bore himself harshly, and interfered with the defendants' having their say. If my readers and I were not already sufficiently informed to know that what was important in every trial was not the charges brought nor guilt, so called, but expediency, we would perhaps not be prepared to accept this trial wholeheartedly. But expediency works without fail: the SR's, as opposed to the Mensheviks, were considered still dangerous, not yet dispersed and broken up, not yet finished off. And on behalf of the fortress of the newly created dictatorship (the proletariat), it was expedient to finish them off. Someone unfamiliar with this principle might mistakenly view the entire trial as an act of Party vengeance.

Involuntarily one ponders the charges set forth in this trial, placing them in the perspective of the long-drawn-out and still unfolding history of nations. With the exception of a very limited number of parliamentary democracies, during a very limited number of decades, the history of nations is entirely a history of revolutions and seizures of power. And whoever succeeds in making a more successful and more enduring revolution is from that moment on graced with the bright robes of Justice, and his every past and future step is legalized and memorialized in odes, whereas every past and future step of his unsuccessful enemies is criminal and subject to arraignment and a legal penalty.

The Criminal Code had been adopted only one week earlier, but five whole years of  post revolutionary experience had been compressed into it. Twenty, ten, and five years earlier, the SR's had been the party next door in the effort to overthrow Tsarism, the party which had chiefly taken upon itself, thanks to the particular character of its terrorist tactics, the burden of hard- labor imprisonment, which had scarcely touched the Bolsheviks. Now the first charge against them was that the SR's had initiated the Civil War! Yes, they began it, they had begun it. They were accused of armed resistance to the October seizure of power. When the Provisional Government, which they supported and which was in part made up of their members, was lawfully swept out of office by the machine-gun fire of the sailors, the SR's tried altogether illegally to defend it, and even returned shot for shot, and even called into battle the military cadets of that deposed government.[The fact that their efforts in defending it were very feeble, that they were beset by hesitations, and that they renounced it right away is another matter. For all that, their guilt was no less.]

Defeated in battle, they did not repent politically. They did not get down on their knees to the Council of People's Commissars, which had declared itself to be the government. They continued to insist stubbornly that the only legal government was the one which had been overthrown. They refused to admit right away that what had been their political line for twenty years was a failure, [And it had indeed been a failure, although this did not become clear immediately.] and they did not ask to be pardoned, nor to have their party dissolved and cease to be considered a party.[In the same way, all the local Russian governments, and those in outlying areas, were illegal—those in Archangel, Samara, Ufa or Omsk, the Ukraine, the Don, the Kuban, the Urals or Transcaucasia—inasmuch as they all declared themselves to be governments after the Council of People's Commissars had declared itself to be the government.]The second charge against them was that they had deepened the abyss of the Civil War  by taking part in demonstrations—by this token, rebellions—on January 5 and 6, 1918,against the lawful authority of the workers' and peasants' government. They were supporting their illegal Constituent Assembly (elected by universal, free, equal, secret, and direct voting) against the sailors and the Red Guards, who legally dispersed both the Assembly and the demonstrators. (And what good could have come of peaceable sessions of the Constituent Assembly? Only the conflagration of a three-year-long Civil War. And that is why the Civil War began, because not all the people submitted simultaneously and obediently to the lawful decrees of the Council of People's Commissars.)The third charge was that they had not recognized the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, that lawful, lifesaving peace of Brest - Litovsk, which had cut off not Russia's head but only parts of its torso. By this token, declared the official indictment, there were present "all the signs of high treason and criminal activity directed to drawing the country into war."High treason! That is another club with two ends. It all depends on which end you have hold of. From this followed the serious fourth charge: in the summer and fall of 1918, those final months and weeks when the Kaiser's Germany was scarcely managing to hold its own against the Allies, and the Soviet government, faithful to the Brest treaty, was supporting Germany in its difficult struggle with trainloads of foodstuffs and a monthly tribute in gold, the SR's traitorously prepared (well, they didn't actually prepare anything but, as was their custom, did more talking about it than anything—but what if they really had!)to blow up the railroad tracks in front of one such train, thus keeping the gold in the Motherland. In other words, they "prepared criminal destruction of our public wealth, the railroads."(At that time the Communists were not yet ashamed of and did not conceal the fact that, yes, indeed, Russian gold had been shipped off to Hitler's future empire, and it didn't seem to dawn on Krylenko despite his study in two academic departments— history and law—nor did any of his assistants whisper the notion to him, that if steel rails are public wealth, then maybe gold ingots are too?)From this fourth charge a fifth followed inexorably: the SR's had intended to procure the technical equipment for such an explosion with money received from Allied representatives. (They had wanted to take money from the Entente in order not to give gold away to Kaiser Wilhelm.) And this was the extreme of treason! (Just in case, Krylenko did mutter something about the SR's also having connections with Ludendorff's General Staff, but this stone had indeed landed in the wrong vegetable garden, and he quickly dropped the whole thing.)From this it was only a very short step to the sixth charge: that the SR's had been Entente spies in 1918. Yesterday they had been revolutionaries, and today they were spies. At the time, this accusation probably sounded explosive. But since then, and after many, many trials, the whole thing makes one want to vomit. Well, then, the seventh and tenth points concerned collaboration with Savinkov, or Filonenko, or the Cadets, or the "Union of Rebirth" (had it really ever existed?), and even with aristocratic, reactionary, dilettante—so-called "white-lining"—students, or even the White Guards.

This series of linked charges was well expounded by the prosecutor. [The title of "prosecutor" had by now been restored to him.]As a result of either hard thinking in his office, or a sudden stroke of genius on the rostrum, he managed in this trial to come up with that tone of heartfelt sympathy and friendly criticism which he would make use of in subsequent trials with increasing self-assurance and in ever heavier doses, and which, in 1937, would result in dazzling success. This tone created a common ground—against the rest of the world—between those doing the judging and those who were being judged, and it played on the defendant's particular soft spot.

From the prosecutor's rostrum, they said to the SR's:"After all, you and we are revolutionaries! [We! You and we—that adds up to us!] And how could you have fallen so low as to join with the Cadets? [Yes, no doubt your heart is breaking!] Or with the officers? Or to teach the aristocratic, reactionary, dilettante students your brilliantly worked-out scheme of conspiratorial operation?" None of the defendants' replies is available to us. Did any of them point out that the particular characteristic of the October coup had been to declare war immediately on all the other parties and forbid them to join forces? ("They're not hauling you in, so don't you dare peep!") But for some reason one gets the feeling that some of the defendants sat there with downcast eyes and that some of them truly had divided hearts: just how could they have fallen so low? After all, for the prisoner who'd been brought in from a dark cell, the friendly, sympathetic attitude of the prosecutor in the big bright hall struck home very effectively.

And Krylenko discovered another very, very logical little path which was to prove very useful to Vyshinsky when he applied it against Kamenev and Bukharin: On entering into an alliance with the bourgeoisie, you accepted money from them. At first you took it for the cause, only for the cause, and in no wise for Party purposes.  But where is the boundary line? Who can draw that dividing line? After all, isn't the

cause a Party cause also? And so you sank to the level—-you, the Socialist Revolutionary Party—of being supported by the bourgeoisie! Where was your revolutionary pride? A full quota of charges—and then some—had been piled up. And the tribunal could have gone out to confer and thereupon nailed each of the prisoners with his well-merited execution—but, alas, there was a big mix-up: a. everything the Socialist Revolutionary Party had been accused of related to 1918. b. Since then, on February 27, 1919, an amnesty had been declared for SR's exclusively, which pardoned all their past belligerency against the Bolsheviks on the sole stipulation that they would not continue the struggle into the future. c. And they had not continued the struggle since that time. d. And it was now 1922!

How could Krylenko get around that one? Some thought had been given to this point. When the Socialist International asked the Soviet government to drop charges and not put its socialist brothers on trial, some thought had been given to it. In fact, at the beginning of 1919, in the face of threats from Kolchak and Denikin, the SR's had renounced their task of revolt against the Bolsheviks and had abandoned all armed struggle against them. (And to aid their Communist brethren, the Samara SR's had even opened up a section of the Kolchak front. . . which was, in fact, why the amnesty had been granted.) And right at the trial the defendant Gendelman, a member of the Central Committee, said: "Give us the chance to make use of the whole gamut of so-called civil liberties, and we will not break the law." (Give it to them! The "whole gamut," to boot! What loud-mouths!)And it wasn't just that they weren't engaged in any opposition: they had recognized the Soviet government! In other words, they had renounced their former Provisional Government, yes, and the Constituent Assembly as well. And all they asked was a new election for the Soviets, with freedom for all parties to engage in electoral campaigning. Now did you hear that? Did you hear that? That's where the hostile bourgeois beast poked his snout through. How could we? After all, this is a time of crisis! After all, we are encircled by the enemy. (And in twenty years' time, and fifty years' time, and a hundred years' time, for that matter, it will be exactly the same.) And you want freedom for the parties to engage in electoral campaigning, you bastards?

Politically sober people, said Krylenko, could only laugh in reply and shrug their shoulders. It had been a just decision "immediately and by all measures of state suppression to prevent these groups from conducting propaganda against the government." And specifically: in reply to the renunciation by the SR's of armed opposition and to their peaceful proposals, they had put the entire Central Committee of the Socialist  Revolutionary Party in prison!

(As many of them as they could catch.)That's how we do it! But to keep them in prison—and hadn't it already been three years?—wasn't it necessary to try them? And what should they be charged with? "This period had not been sufficiently investigated in the pretrial examination," our prosecutor complained. But in the meanwhile one charge was correct. In that same February, 1919, the SR's had passed a resolution which they had not put into effect, though in terms of the new Criminal Code that didn't matter at all: to carry on secret agitation in the ranks of the Red Army in order to induce the soldiers to refuse to participate in reprisals against the peasants.

And that was a low-down, foul betrayal of the Revolution—to try to persuade men not to take part in reprisals. And they could also be charged with everything that the so- called "Foreign Delegation of the Central Committee" of the SR's —those prominent SR's who had fled to Europe— had said, writ- ten, and done (mostly words).But all that wasn't enough. So here's what they thought up: "Many defendants sitting here would not deserve to be indicted in the given case, were it not for the charge of having planned terrorist acts

." Allegedly, when the amnesty of 1919 had been published, "none of the leaders of Soviet Justice had imagined" that the SR's had also planned to use terrorism against the leaders of the Soviet state! (Well, indeed, who could possibly have imagined that? The SR's! And terrorism, all of a sudden? And if it had come to mind, it would have been necessary to include it in the amnesty too! Or else not accept the gap in the Kolchak front. It was really very, very fortunate indeed that no one had thought of it. Not until it was needed—then someone thought of it.) So this charge had not been amnestied (for, after all, struggle

was the only offense that had been amnestied). And so Krylenko could now make the charge! And, in all likelihood, they had discovered so very much! So very much! In the first place, they had discovered what the SR leaders had said back in the first days after the October seizure of power. [And what hadn't those chatterboxes said in the course of a lifetime?]

Chernov, at the Fourth Congress of the SR's, had said that the Party would "counterpose all its forces against any attack on the rights of the people, as it had" under Tsarism. (And everyone remembered how it had done that.) Gots had said. "If the autocrats at Smolny also infringe on the Constituent Assembly ... the Socialist Revolutionary Party will remember its old tried and true tactics."Perhaps it did remember 

, but it didn't make up its mind to act. Yet apparently it could be tried for it anyway."In this area of our investigation," Krylenko complained, be- cause of conspiracy "there will be little testimony from witnesses." And he continued: "This has made my task extremely difficult. . . . In this area [i.e., terrorism] it is necessary, at certain moments, to wander about in the shadows."24What made Krylenko's task difficult was the fact that the use of terrorism against the Soviet government was discussed at the meeting of the SR Central Committee in 1918 and rejected. And now, years later, it was necessary to prove that the SR's had been engaged in self-deception.

The SR's had said at the time that they would not resort to terrorism until and unless the Bolsheviks began to execute socialists. Or, in 1920, they had said that if the Bolsheviks were to threaten the lives of SR hostages, then the party would take up arms. [It was evidently all right to shoot the other hostages.]So the question then was: Why did they qualify their renunciation of terrorism? Why wasn't it absolute? And how had they even dared to think about taking up arms! "Why were there no statements equivalent to absolute renunciation?" (But, Comrade Krylenko, maybe terrorism was their "second nature"?)The SR Party carried out no terrorist acts whatever, and this was clear even from Krylenko's summing up of the charges. But the prosecution kept stretching such facts as these: One of the defendants had in mind a plan for blowing up the locomotive of a train carrying the Council of People's Commissars to Moscow. That meant the Central Committee of the SR's was guilty of terrorism. And the terrorist Ivanova had spent one night near the railroad station with one charge of explosives—which meant there had been an attempt to blow up Trotsky's train—and therefore the SR Central Committee was guilty of terrorism. And further: Donskoi, a member of the Central Committee, warned Fanya Kaplan that she would be expelled from the Party if she fired at Lenin. But that wasn't enough! Why hadn't she been categorically forbidden to? (Or perhaps: why hadn't she been denounced to the Cheka?)It was feathers of this sort that Krylenko kept plucking from the dead rooster—that the SR's had not taken measures to stop individual terrorist acts by their unemployed and languishing gunmen. That was the whole of their terrorism. (Yes, and those gunmen of theirs didn't do anything either. In 1922, two of them, Konopleva and Semyonov, with suspicious eagerness, enriched the GPU and the tribunal with their voluntary evidence, but their evidence couldn't be pinned on the SR Central Committee—and suddenly and inexplicably these inveterate terrorists were re- leased scot-free.)All the evidence was such that it had to be bolstered up with props. Krylenko explained things this way in regard to one of the witnesses: "If this person had really wanted to make things up, it is unlikely he would have done so in such a way as to hit the target merely by accident." (Strongly put, indeed! This could be said about any piece of fabricated testimony whatever.) Or else, about Donskoi: Could one really "suspect him of possessing the special insight to testify to what the prosecution wanted"? It was just the other way around with Konopleva: the reliability of her testimony was evidenced by the fact that she had not testified to everything the prosecution needed. (But enough for the defendants to be shot.) "If we ask whether Konopleva concocted all this, then it is ...clear: if one is going to concoct, one must really concoct [He should know!], and if one is going to expose someone, one should really expose him." But she, you see, did not carry it through to the end. Then things are put still another way: "After all, it is unlikely that Yefimov needed to put Konopleva in danger of execution without cause." Once more correct, once more strongly put! Or, even more strongly: "Could this encounter have taken place? Such a possibility is not ex- eluded."

 Not excluded? That means it did take place. Off to the races! Then, too, the "subversive group." They talked about this for a long time, and then suddenly: "Dissolved for lack of activity." So what was all the fuss about? There had been several expropriations of money from Soviet institutions (the SR's had nothing with which to work, to rent apartments, to move from city to city). But previously these had been the lovely, noble "exes"— as all the revolutionists called them. And now, in soviet court? They were "robbery and concealment of stolen goods."Through the material adduced by the prosecution in this trial, the dull, unblinking, yellow streetlamps of the Law throw light on the whole uncertain, wavering, deluded history of this pathetically garrulous, essentially lost, helpless, and even inactive party which never was worthily led. And it’s every decision or lack of decision, its every casting about, upsurge, or retreat, was trans- formed into and regarded as total guilt. . . guilt and more guilt. And if in September, 1921, ten months before the trial, the SR Central Committee, already sitting in the Butyrki, had written to the newly elected Central Committee that it did not agree to the overthrow of the Bolshevik dictatorship by any available means, but only through rallying the working masses and the dissemination of propaganda—all of which meant that, even as they languished in prison, they did not agree to being liberated through either terrorism or conspiracy—then that, too, was converted into their primary guilt: Aha! so that means that you did agree to its overthrow.

And what if they were, nevertheless, not guilty of overthrowing the government, and not guilty of terrorism, and if there had been hardly any "expropriations" at all, and if they had long since been forgiven for all the rest? Our favorite prosecutor pulled out his canonical weapon of last resort: "Ultimately, failure

to denounce is a category of crime applying to all the defendants without exception, and it must be considered as having been proved."The Socialist Revolutionary Party was guilty of not having squealed on itself!

Now there's something that couldn't miss! This represented a discovery that juridical thought had made in the new Code. It was a paved highway along which they would keep driving and driving grateful descendants into Siberia! And Krylenko burst out in a temper: "Hardened eternal enemies"—that's who the defendants are! In that case it's quite clear even without any trial what has to be done with them. The Code was still so new that Krylenko could not even re- member the main counterrevolutionary articles by their numbers —but how he slashed about with those numbers! How profoundly he cited and interpreted them! Just as if the blade of the guillotine had for decades hinged and dropped only on those articles. And especially new and important was the fact that we did not draw the distinction between methods and means the old Tsarist Code had drawn. Such distinctions had no influence either on the classification of the charges or on the penalties imposed! For us, intent and action were identical!

A resolution had been passed—we would try them for that. And whether it "was carried out or not had no essential significance." Whether a man whispered to his wife in bed that it would be a good thing to overthrow the Soviet government or whether he engaged in propaganda during elections or threw a bomb, it was all one and the same!

 And the punishment was identical!!!  And just as a foresighted painter proceeds from his first few brusquely drawn, angular strokes to create the whole desired portrait, so, for us, the entire panorama of 1937, 1945,and 1949 becomes ever clearer and more visible in the sketches of 1922.But no, one thing is missing! What's missing is the conduct of the defendants. They have-not yet become trained sheep. They are still people! We have been told little, very little, but from that little we can understand a great deal. Sometimes through carelessness, Krylenko cites what they said right at the trial. For example, the defendant Berg "accused the Bolsheviks of responsibility for the deaths of January 5"—shooting down those who were demonstrating on behalf of the Constituent Assembly. And what Liberov said was even more direct: "I admit I was guilty of failing to work hard enough at overthrowing the Bolshevik government in 1918. Yevgeniya Ratner adhered to the same line, and Bergalso declared: "I consider myself guilty before the workers' Russia for having been unable to fight with all my strength against the so-called workers' and peasants' government, but hope that my time has not yet gone."32 (It has gone, darling, all gone!)Of course, there is in all this an element of the ancient passion for the resounding phrase, but there is firmness too. The prosecutor argued: the accused are dangerous to Soviet Russia because they consider everything they did to have been a good thing. "Perhaps certain of the defendants find their own consolation in the hope that some future chronicler will praise them or their conduct at the trial. “And a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued after the trial declared: "At the trial itself they reserved to themselves the right to continue" their former activity. The defendant Gendelman-Grabovsky (a lawyer himself) was conspicuous during the trial for his arguments with Krylenko on tampering with the testimony of witnesses and on "special methods of treating witnesses before the trial"—in other words, the obvious working over they had gotten from the GPU. (It is all there! All the elements are there! There was only a little way to go before attaining the ideal.) Apparently the preliminary interrogation had been conducted under the supervision of the prosecutor—that same Krylenko. And during that process individual instances of a lack of consistency in testimony had been ironed out. Yet some testimony was presented for the first time only at the trial itself. Well, so what! So there were some rough spots. So it wasn't perfect. But in the last analysis, "We have to declare altogether clearly and coldly that... we are not concerned with the question of how the court of history is going to view our present deed. “And as far as the rough spots are concerned, we will take them under advisement and correct them. But as it was, Krylenko, squirming, had to bring up—probably for the first and last time in Soviet jurisprudence—the matter of the inquiry, the initial inquiry required before investigation. And here's how cleverly he handled this point: The proceeding which took place in the absence of the prosecutor and which you considered the investigation was actually the inquiry. And the proceeding in the presence of the prosecutor which you regarded as the reinvestigation, when all the loose ends were gathered up and all the bolts tightened, was really the investigation. The disorganized "materials provided by the Organs for inquiry and unverified by the investigation have much less value as proof than the materials provided by the skillfully directed investigation."Clever, wasn't it? Just try grinding that up in your mortar! To be practical about it, Krylenko no doubt resented having to spend half a year getting ready for this trial, then another two months barking at the defendants, and then having to drag out his summation for fifteen hours, when all these defendants "had more than once been in the hands of the extraordinary Organs at times when these Organs had extraordinary powers; but, thanks to some circumstances or other, they had succeeded in surviving." So now Krylenko had to slave away to try and get them executed legally.

There was, of course, "only one possible verdict—execution for every last one of them"! But Krylenko qualifies this generously. Because this case is being watched by the whole world, the prosecutor's demand "does not constitute a directive to the court" which the latter would "be obliged to accept immediately for consideration or decision."What a fine court, too, that requires such an explanation! And, indeed, the tribunal did demonstrate its daring in the sentences it imposed: it did not hand down the death penalty for "every last one of them," but for fourteen only. Most of the rest got prison and camp sentences, while sentences in the form of productive labor were imposed on another hundred. And just remember, reader, remember: "All the other courts of the Republic watch what the Supreme Tribunal does. It provides them with guidelines. "The sentences of the Verkhtrib are used "as directives for their guidance." As to how many more would now be railroaded in the provinces, you can figure that out for yourself.

And, probably, on appeal the decision of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was worth the whole trial: the death sentences were to remain in effect, but not to be carried out for the time being. The further fate of those condemned would depend, then, on the conduct of those SR's who had not yet been arrested, apparently including those abroad as well. In other words: If you move

against 

us, we'll squash them. In the fields of Russia they were reaping the second peacetime harvest. There was no shooting except in the courtyards of the Cheka. (Perkhurov in Yaroslavl, Metropolitan Veniamin in Petrograd. And always, always, always.) Beneath the azure sky our first diplomats and journalists sailed abroad across the blue waters. And the Central Executive Committee of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies thrust into its pockets eternal hostages. The members of the ruling Party read all sixty issues of Pravda devoted to the trial—for they all read the papers—and all of them said: "Yes, yes, yes." No one mumbled: "No!"  What, then, were they surprised at in 1937? What was there to complain about? Hadn't all the foundations of lawlessness been laid—first by the extrajudicial reprisals of the Cheka, and then by these early trials and this young Code? Wasn't 1937 also expedient (expedient for Stalin's purposes and, perhaps, History's, too, for that matter)? Prophetically, Krylenko let it slip that they were judging not the past but the future. Only the first swath cut by the scythe is difficult.

On or about August 20, 1924, Boris Viktorovich Savinkov crossed the Soviet border. He was immediately arrested and taken to the Lubyanka. [Many hypotheses were advanced about his return. Only a little while ago, a certain Ardamatsky, a person obviously connected with the archives and personnel of the Committee for State Security, published a story which, despite being adorned with pretentiously inflated literary gewgaws, is evidently close to the truth. (The magazine Neva, No. 11, 1967.) Having induced certain of Savinkov's agents to betray him and having deceived others, the GPU used them to set a foolproof trap, convincing Savinkov that inside Russia a large underground organization was languishing for lack of a worthy leader! It would have been impossible to devise a more effective trap! And it would have been impossible for Savinkov, after such a confused and sensational life, merely to spin it out quietly to the end in Nice. He couldn't bear not trying to pull off one more feat and not returning to Russia and his death.]In all, the interrogation lasted for just one session, which consisted solely of voluntary testimony and an evaluation of his activity. The official indictment was ready by August23. The speed was totally unbelievable, but it had impact. (Someone had estimated the situation quite accurately: to have forced false and pitiful testimony out of Savinkov by torture would only have wrecked the authenticity of the picture.)

In the official indictment, couched in already-well-developed terminology that turned everything upside down, Savinkov was charged with just about everything imaginable: with being a "consistent enemy of the poorest peasantry"; with "assisting the Russian bourgeoisie in carrying out its imperialist ambitions" (in other words, he was in favor of continuing the war with Germany); with "maintaining relations with representatives of the Allied command" (this would have been when he was in charge of the Ministry of War!); with "becoming a member of soldiers' committees for purposes of provocation"(i.e., he was elected by the soldiers' committees); and, last but not least, some- thing to make even the chickens cackle with laughter—with having had "monarchist sympathies."But all that was old hat. There were some new items too— the standard charges for all future trials: money from the imperialists; espionage for Poland (they left out Japan, believe it or not); yes, and he had also wanted to poison the Red Army with potassium cyanide (but for some reason he did not poison even one Red Army soldier).On August 26 the trial began. The presiding judge was Ulrikh —this being our earliest encounter with him. And there was no prosecutor at all, nor any defense lawyer. Savinkov was lackadaisical in defending himself, and he raised hardly any objection at all to the evidence. He conceived of this trial in a lyrical sense. It was his last encounter with Russia and his last opportunity to explain himself in public. And to repent. (Not of these imputed sins, but of others.)(And that theme song fitted well here, and greatly confused the defendant:”

 After all, we are all Russians together.

You and we adds up to us. You love Russia beyond a doubt, and we respect your love—and do we not love Russia too? In fact, are we not at present the fortress and the glory of Russia? And you wanted to fight against us? Repent!")But it was the sentence that was most wonderful: "Imposition of the death penalty is not required in the interests of preserving revolutionary law and order, and, on the grounds that motives of vengeance should not influence the sense of justice of the proletarian masses"—the death penalty was commuted to ten years' imprisonment. Now that was a sensation! And it confused many minds too. Did it mean a relaxation? A transformation? Ulrikh even published in Pravda an apologetic explanation of why Savinkov had not been executed. You see how strong the Soviet government has become in only seven years! Why should it be afraid of some Savinkov or other! (On the twentieth anniversary of the Revolution, it is going to get weaker, and don't be too hard on us because we are going to execute thousands.)And so, on the heels of the first riddle of his return, there would have been the second riddle of his being spared capital punishment had it not been overshadowed in May, 1925, by a third riddle: in a state of depression, Savinkov jumped from an unbarred window into the interior courtyard of the Lubyanka, and the gay payooshniki, his guardian angels, simply couldn't manage to stop him and hold on to his big, heavy body. However, just in case—so that there wouldn't be any scandal in the service —Savinkov left them a suicide letter in which he explained logically and coherently why he was killing himself  —and this letter was so authentically phrased, so clearly written in Savinkov's style and vocabulary, that even Lev Borisovich, the son of the deceased, was fully convinced of its genuineness and explained to everyone in Paris that no one except his father could have written it and that he had ended his life because he realized his political bankruptcy.[And we, silly prisoners of a later Lubyanka, confidently parroted to one another that the steel nets hanging ine Lubyanka stairwells had been installed after Savinkov had committed suicide there. Thus do we succumb to fancy legends to the extent of forgetting that the experience of jailers is, after all, international in character. Such nets existed in American prisons as long ago as the beginning of the century—and how could Soviet technology have been allowed to lag behind? In 1937, when he was dying in a camp in the Kolyma, the former Chekist Artur Pryubeltold one of his fellow prisoners that he had been one of the four who threw Savinkov from a fifth-floor window into the Lubyanka court- yard! (And there is no conflict between that statement and Ardamatsky's recent account: There was a low sill; it was more like a door to the balcony than a window—they had picked the right room! Only, according to Ardamatsky, the guards were careless; according to Pryubel, they rushed him all together.)Thus the second riddle, the unusually lenient sentence, was unraveled by the crude third "riddle."The story ascribed to Pryubel could not be checked, but I had heard it, and in 1967 I told it to M. P. Yakubovich. He, with his still youthful enthusiasm and shining eyes, exclaimed: "I believe it. Things fit! And I didn't believe Blyumkin; I thought he was just bragging." What he had learned was this: At the end of the twenties, Blyumkin had told Yakubovich, after swearing him to secrecy, that he was the one who had written Savinkov's so-called suicide note, on orders from the GPU. Apparently Blyumkin was allowed to see Savinkov in his cell constantly while he was in prison. He kept him amused in the evenings. (Did Savinkov sense that death was creeping up on him . . . sly, friendly death, which gives you no chance to guess the form your end will take?) And this had helped Blyumkin acquire Savinkov's manner of speech and thought, had enabled him to enter into the framework of his last ideas. And they ask: Why throw him out the window? Wouldn't it have been easier simply to poison him? Perhaps they showed someone the remains or thought they might need to. And where, if not here, is the right place to report the fate of Blyumkin, who for all his Chekist omnipotence was fearlessly brought up short by Mandelstam. Ehrenburg began to tell Blyumkin's story, and suddenly became ashamed and dropped the subject. And there is a story to tell, too. After the 1918 rout of the Left SR's, Blyumkin, the assassin of the German Ambassador Mirbach, not only went unpunished, was not only spared the fate of all the other Left SR's, but was protected by Dzerzhinsky, just as Dzerzhinsky had wanted to protect Kosyrev. Superficially he converted to Bolshevism, and was kept on, one gathers, for particularly important assassinations. At one point, close to the thirties, he was secretly sent to Paris to kill Bazhenov, a member of the staff of Stalin's secretariat who had defected, and one night he succeeded in throwing him off a train. However, his gambler's blood, or perhaps his admiration of Trotsky, led Blyumkin to the Princes 'Islands in Turkey, where Trotsky was living. He asked Trotsky whether there were any assignments he could carry out for him in the Soviet Union, and Trotsky gave him a package for Radek. Blyumkin delivered it, and his visit to Trotsky would have remained a secret had not the brilliant Radek already been a stool pigeon. Radek brought down

Blyumkin, who was thereupon devoured by the maw of the monster his own hands had suckled with its first bloody milk.] And all the major and most famous trials are still ahead of us. In the official indictment, couched in already-well-developed terminology that turned everything upside down....