Chapter XII Blackmail
The preparation of the proceedings against Zinoviev and Kamenev was supervised by Yezhov. Apparently, he knew when he accepted this mission that in a few months he would be appointed by Stalin to the post of People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs. For this reason, he showed an extraordinary interest in the operational activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and in the “purely technical” problems of interrogating prisoners. Every day, at midnight, he was always among a group of people such as Molchanov or Agranov, and he also liked to run into the interrogation room and observe the methods used by the interrogators to force the interrogated person to confess. Whenever he heard that someone who had been strong in the past had now succumbed, he made sure to learn the details and greedily questioned the interrogators to find out what forces had destroyed the defendant’s resistance.
Sometimes Yerev personally intervened in the interrogation of prisoners. I was told the details of how he “convinced” an old Bolshevik for several nights. This old Bolshevik was known throughout the country for his service to the revolution, and his wife was also a well-known old party member and was also “processed” by Yerev. I do not intend to give the couple’s real names for fear of spilling the beans on their children, although, according to the information I have, their children later suffered not only from the loss of their parents, but also from Stalin’s persecution. For the sake of narration, I will call the old Bolshevik Pavel Ivanov and his wife Yelena Ivanova.
From the outside, Pavel Ivanov looks like an ascetic. Under the Tsarist regime he was arrested more than once and served ten years of hard labor. During the civil war. He was a military commander and a highly decorated war veteran. His wife also did a lot of work for the revolution and was well known among the old party members. Both husband and wife later joined the Trotskyist opposition. After the defeat of the opposition, they were both exiled to Siberia. In 1936, they were both returned to Moscow and thrown into the internal prison of the NKVD.
The Ivanovs had two sons. The second was fifteen years old and lived in his grandmother’s house in Moscow.
The interrogators “worked” on Ivanov and Ivanova for four months, but found nothing. In the face of threats and temptations, Ivanov did not waver and was as hard as a diamond. Yekina Ivanova, on the other hand, was a woman with exposed feelings, facing the interrogators’ coercion. She always cursed in anger. However, there was a weakness in her character, and it was this fatal weakness that caused her to make irreparable mistakes. I don’t know whether it was because she was too orthodox or too simple-minded, or because the interrogators had made the “play” too realistic, but Yelena Ivanova had the illusion that the Ministry of Internal Affairs must have mistakenly believed the rumors that the old Bolsheviks were deliberately trying to kill Stalin: so she thought that her first task was to convince the Ministry of Internal Affairs to let the interrogators kill Stalin. She thought that her first task was to convince the NKVD that neither she nor her husband nor any other comrade in Siberian exile had ever heard anything about an anti-Stalinist plot, and that some unsuspecting spy had deceived the NKVD with false information. At the same time, like some people who lacked common sense in law, she made a mistake that they often make: they thought that the burden of proof of her guilt was not on the prosecutor, but on her, and that it was up to her to prove that she had not committed the crime imposed on her.
One night Yerev, accompanied by Molchanov, came to the office where Yelena Ivanova was being interrogated. When she heard that it was Yerev who came in, Yelena was so excited that she immediately presented to him the reasons that she had used to convince the interrogator, but which had not worked. She only begged him to explain what she should do to prove her innocence and that of her husband. She was sure she would be able to prove everything. To this Yerev replied that the NKVD did not believe in tears, and that to save herself and her children she could do only one thing: sincerely repent and help the party. Yerov then stimulated her by saying.
“You have conspired to assassinate Comrade Stalin, but you deny it, and this is entirely because you are afraid to take responsibility!”
“There is no such thing!” Yelena Ivanova retorted. “I do not admit these charges, definitely not out of cowardice but because I am not guilty. But how can I convince you?”
Probably, just at that moment, a desperate thought came to her.
“I will prove it to you.” She cried hysterically: “I am not a coward, and if you wish, I will write a statement in your presence that I tried to kill Stalin, although it is not true! I am doing this merely to prove to you that my rejection of your charges is in no way due to cowardice, but because I am not guilty!”
“Please don’t be deliberately provocative!” Yezhov said, lowering his voice.
“This is not a provocation!” Yelena Ivanova shouted loudly, “Bring it here …… I’ll sign it!”
“Well wow, let’s find out,” Yerov muttered again.
Yerov gestured to the interrogators, telling them to quickly take advantage of the morbid psychology of the interrogated man’s eyes. But the interrogators did not respond at all, and only after Yerov repeated his order did the interrogator hastily write in the name of Yekina Ivanova that she felt capable of assassinating Stalin because of her inner hatred of the party leadership. The interrogator handed the page of the “confession” to Yelena Ivanova and slipped her a pen.
After a moment’s hesitation, she turned to Yezhov and said.
“You know very well that it is full of lies, but I’ll sign it anyway. I think that conscience will not allow you to use this paper of lies to trap me.”
After saying that, she resolutely signed this piece of paper. She had no idea that this was actually equivalent to signing her own death sentence.
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