Sokolov and Nelidov were both teachers at the Gorky City Pedagogical Institute, and Oliberg mentions them in his confession. Their interrogation was carried out by Kedrov. Kedrov was an employee of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He joined the interrogation team headed by Boris Berman, the deputy director of the Bureau. The Krov we are talking about here is Krov Jr. He was about thirty-two years old and was born into the family of an old revolutionary whose father, a physicist, lived with Lenin in Switzerland. After the October Revolution, Kedrov Sr. served on the All-Russian Committee for the Purge, and was known for his extremely brutal repression of former Russian officers in Arkhangelsk. That crackdown took place just after the Red Army conquered the city. Two years later, the old Kadyrov was diagnosed with a disease. Kadyrov Sr. was diagnosed as mentally ill and was sent for treatment. He gradually returned to normal, but doctors decided that he could no longer assume leadership, so the central government retired him. A special pension was allocated for him.
Old Kadyrov’s appearance was particularly striking. He was tall, always straight, handsome, with a dark complexion and big black eyes that burned like fireballs. I felt that this was a man with an aggressive nature and a rebellious spirit. His black hair, which looked like a raven’s wing, was always loose and unkempt. His eyes were particularly vivid, as if they were always on fire. Perhaps it was the fire of madness.
Little Kedrov is like his father. But he did not inherit his father’s strikingly eccentric appearance. He was cautious and introverted, always absorbed in his own work. Lacking the ability to think critically, he took everything the Party and his superiors said as a golden rule that could not be disobeyed.
Sokolov was soon overpowered by Kedrov. He agreed to testify to Oliberg’s confession of a plot to assassinate Stalin by sending a delegation of students during the May Day parade on Red Square.
Kedrov took advantage of Sokolov’s attachment to his family, his fear of implicating his relatives, and his belief in party discipline. As a history teacher who had to teach his students to hate opposition leaders on a daily basis, Sokolov had no objection in principle to signing false confessions against Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, not to mention the needs of the Party Central Committee. In fact, Sokolov’s only concern was how he could be saved more easily, by signing the “confessions” he was forced to sign or by refusing to slander himself.
If Sokolov had believed that the court would hear the charges against him impartially and save him from being framed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he would have acted strongly. But he had no faith in the court. As a seasoned Party propagandist, he knew very well that since the accusations against Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Stalin’s other political opponents were developing so rapidly, the only role the court could play was as an auxiliary instrument at the behest of the center. In this case, both the Tribunal and the Ministry of the Interior had to act on orders from the same source. Sokolov apparently had no choice but to give in to the pressure of the interrogators and surrender unconditionally to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Kedrov also pried open the mouths of five other prisoners. No one could figure out what was the real secret of his ability to reform his interrogators. Anyway, Molchanov was very pleased with his work, and especially praised him at a regular meeting, saying that he was a competent interrogator.
One evening I was passing through a corridor of the Ministry of Internal Affairs building on my way with Boris Berman to see the head of the Foreign Affairs Directorate, Slutsky, when suddenly there was a heart-breaking howl coming from Kedrov’s office. He was the grandson of the former Russian ambassador to France, and Nelidov’s face was contorted with fear. As soon as he saw his superior, Berman, Kedrov quickly explained that Nelidov had just confessed to trying to kill Stalin, but then suddenly retracted his confession. “Look, look,” Kedrov shouted hysterically, “look, look, he has written: ‘I confess that I took part in ……’. Suddenly I stopped writing again, unwilling to write any more. I can’t let him get away with this …… I’m going to strangle him with my own hands!”
I was amazed that Kedrov was so indiscreet in front of his boss. I looked at him in amazement. Suddenly, I noticed a phosphorescent and flickering sparkle in his eyes, identical to the one in his crazy father’s. “Look!
“Look! He wrote this himself ……,” Kedrov continued to yell.
Kedrov looked like that. It was as if he had lost the most precious thing in his life because of Nelidov’s crime, as if he was Nelidov’s victim, and not the other way around. I looked again at Neridov, a young man of about thirty, with the quiet face of a typical Russian intellectual. It was obvious that Kedrov had terrified him. With a guilty smile, he muttered to Kedrov, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me …… the pen I’m holding doesn’t work.”
Berman ordered Kedrov to stop the interrogation and send the subject back to his cell.
When we entered Slutsky’s office, we told him about it. It was there that I learned that such scenes had become commonplace. Belman told me and Slutsky that a few days ago he and several cadres had heard frantic screaming in Krov’s office and had immediately rushed in. They found Kedrov irrational and murderous, accusing the interrogated man of attempting to swallow the ink bottle on his desk. The man on trial was Friedland, a professor at the Leningrad Marxist-Leninist Institute. “I was stunned”, Berman said, “and could see the ink bottle, diamond-shaped, big and heavy, equal to two fists of a man …… ‘Comrade Kedrov, you You can’t do that! You can’t say that! Friedland muttered in a low voice, obviously frightened by the interrogators. That’s when I suddenly realized that Kedrov had gone crazy,” Berman continued, “and if you would have listened to how he interrogated the prisoner, you would have made up your mind to kick him out of the interrogation team. When it comes to disintegrating certain prisoners, it is indeed faster than the best interrogators. It’s true that he is faster than the best interrogators. It’s strange, it’s like he has a magic power over some people ……”
Berman also said that he approached Molchanov after the ink bottle incident and asked him not to give Kedrov any more interrogation work, but Molchanov disagreed and said that Kedrov would not resign as long as he could get a statement out of the prisoner. But Molchanov disagreed, and said that he would not fire Kedrov as long as he could squeeze a confession out of the prisoner.
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