The Party Central Committee explains that application of methods of physical pressure in NKVD practice is permissible from 1937 on, in accordance with permission of the Party Central Committee…. It is known that all bourgeois intelligence services use methods of physical influence against the representatives of the socialist proletariat and that they use them in their most scandalous forms. The question arises as to why the socialist intelligence service should be more humanitarian against the mad agents of the bourgeoisie, against the deadly enemies of the working class and of the collective farm workers. The Party Central Committee considers that physical pressure should still be used obligatorily, as an exception applicable to known and obstinate enemies of the people, as a method both justifiable and appropriate.57
This instruction has all the signs of being written by Stalin himself. He was, in fact, a great believer in “physical methods.” Khrushchev tells of his orders to “beat, beat and beat again” the accused in the 1952 Doctors’ Plot. A recent Soviet article quotes from the archives a written note of his to Yezhov, when the old Bolshevik Beloborodov was giving unsatisfactory testimony: “Can’t this gentleman be made to tell of his dirty deeds? Where is he—in a prison or a hotel?”58
A Soviet general describes his fate under this system:
I accidentally found out that my fiend of an interrogator’s name was Stolbunsky. I don’t know where he is now. If he is still alive I hope he will read these lines and feel my contempt for him, not only now but when I was in his hands. But I think he knew this well enough. Apart from him, two brawny torturers took part in the interrogation. Even now my ears ring with the sound of Stolbunsky’s evil voice hissing “You’ll sign, you’ll sign!” as I was carried out, weak and covered in blood. I withstood the torture during the second bout of interrogation, but when the third started, how I longed to be able to die!59
He adds that every one of his cell mates had confessed to imaginary crimes: “Some had done this after physical coercion and others after having been terrified by accounts of the tortures used.” Another report, by an Old Bolshevik, says that only 4 of the 400-odd cell mates he met in prison had failed to confess; and the critic Ivanov-Razumnik similarly writes that in his years in jail in Moscow and Leningrad only 12 of his 1,000-odd cell mates had held out.60 In most cases, the threat of further torture was enough to prevent retraction.
Various forms of humiliation were often especially effective on men weakened by torture. An army officer who withstood beating finally broke when the interrogator pushed his head into a spittoon brimful of spittle. Another gave way when an interrogator urinated on his head—an interrogation practice which according to reports became traditional.61
Moreover, when it came to those tried in open court, “the defendants were warned that the tortures would be continued after the trial if they did not give the necessary testimony.”62 The presence of their interrogators, who sat in front of them in court, would reinforce this.63
And, of course, confessions obtained by torture were useful in bringing pressure to bear on other victims. When Bukharin’s first wife, Nadezhda Lukina, was interrogated, her brother Mikhail was among the members of the family who were tortured to give evidence against the others and her. A recent Soviet article gives a horrifying account of his withdrawing his evidence, and then, after further interrogation, confirming it again. The article quotes another former prisoner, a woman who, asking “How could a brother give evidence against a sister?” answered that a Comintern worker in her cell came back from interrogation one day, complaining bitterly that a close comrade had incriminated her; the examiners had shown her the testimony in his own handwriting. Soon afterward, she returned from a further session. This time she cried, “How could I? How could I? Today I had a confrontation with him and I saw not a man, but live raw meat.”64
Yet in spite of Khrushchev’s comment, torture is not a complete explanation when it comes to the public confessions of the oppositionists. We should record its extent, and its overwhelmingly powerful effects throughout the period. But critics were right in saying that torture alone could probably not have produced the public self-humiliation of a whole series of Stalin’s enemies, when returned to health and given a platform.
We shall see, in fact, that some accused withdrew in closed court confessions obtained by torture. Others “insisted even in the preliminary investigation or in court that their statements charging violations of socialist legality be entered in the examination record.”65
THE “CONVEYOR”
