Many foreign critics of the Moscow trial have speculated that the defendant confessed to the crime because he was under the influence of hypnosis or special torture. But I never heard the interrogators talk about such things. At least not at the first trial. Even if it had been used. I knew nothing about it. I am convinced that Kedrov had some strange ability to put people to sleep. Although he may not have been aware of it himself. Nelidov’s behavior at the time showed that he had this ability.
In the end, Kedrov did not conquer Nelidov. He was born into an aristocratic family that had been overthrown by the revolution, had never been a member of the party, and therefore had no sense of “party duty”. No amount of sophistry could convince him that he was obligated to kneel before the Party, falsely accuse himself, and admit that he was trying to undermine its “unity.
The organizers of the trial had intended to create a myth that the Trotskyists and the descendants of the Tsarist ambassador were working together to achieve a common “terrorist agenda,” but this failed due to Nelidov’s “stubbornness.
One night when I was coming home from work, I heard a loud footstep behind me. I turned around and saw that it was Kedrov, who was in a hurry to catch up with me. He had called me twice during the day, asking me to meet him, but I was too busy to talk to him. Now, after catching up with me, Kedrov told me that he wanted to discuss a very difficult personal matter with me, and that he thought he could only discuss it with me, and no one else.
The thing was that his parents had a friend, an Illing, who was an irreproachable Communist. Long before the revolution, the old Kadyrov and his wife had been friends with Ilyin in exile in Siberia. In the past, Ilyin and his wife often came to the Kadyrov home for tea and conversation. “The day before yesterday, Saturday, they came to my house,” Kedrov said nervously. “But yesterday they were all arrested ……”, he said, looking at me, panicked, like a hysterical patient waiting for a doctor’s diagnosis.
He then asked: “What do you think, should my father write a written report to the central government? My father said that it was his duty to tell the party that the Illinges, as old friends from his exile in Siberia, were still coming to our house and talking with us today.”
I was not surprised by this question. A rule had developed in those days: “Every Party member who learns of the arrest of someone he knows well must, without waiting for a summons from his superiors, voluntarily go to the Party’s Supervisory Committee and explain his relationship with the arrested person. This is the only way to prove that the arrested person’s friends have nothing to hide from the Party and that they are loyal to it.”
This voluntary confession was similar to the “charitable service” prescribed by the medieval Inquisition. On a day of charity, every member of the faith could voluntarily go to the Inquisition to confess his heresy and his association with heretics without being punished. Obviously, the judges in Stalin’s new Inquisition, like their medieval ancestors, could benefit from this ritual as often as they could, collecting black material from those already persecuted and discovering emerging sources of heresy.
Kedrov waited apprehensively for my answer.
“Your father probably did not have any anti-Party conversations with the Illinges, did he?” I asked guardedly.
“No, never!” Kedorff said confidently.
“Then I don’t think he has to write any report,” I said, “because Mr. and Mrs. Illing have not been expelled from the Party, which means that the Party still trusts them. Why shouldn’t your parents be trusted? That’s what this is about, right?”
“I am very glad that you have such a high opinion,” exclaimed Kadyrov, with exultation. “Really, they had tea not only with us, but also with Lenin’s brother, Dmitri Ilyich. When Lenin was alive, they dined with him too!
Chapter 5: Is Our Life Worthless?
The interrogation of the case progressed far more slowly than Stalin had anticipated. The heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs knew that even when torture was used to extract confessions, there was no guarantee that it would work right away. It often took time to break a prisoner’s morale, and often only after they were physically and mentally exhausted.
Stalin, however, was tired of waiting. In order to speed up the interrogation. Yerev and Yagoda began to make nightly rounds of the interrogation rooms. They often appeared suddenly between 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. They were in every interrogation room. They stayed in each room for about fifteen minutes, observing the “work” of the interrogators without making a sound. These nocturnal patrols kept the interrogators restless and their nerves in a constant state of tension and excitement, forcing them to redouble their efforts overnight to “process” the prisoner day and night.
Recent Comments