Milonov reported to Yagoda that the trial of Kamenev’s case was at a standstill and proposed that a member of the Central Committee go to Kamenev in the name of the Politburo. Yagoda opposed this, saying that it was not the right time. He claimed. “First of all, he should be given a good beating and thwarted.”
“I’ll send Chertok to assist you,” said Yagoda. “He will kill his prowess …….”
Chertok was a young man, about thirty years old, a typical product of Stalin’s education, rude, arrogant and without shame. He began to serve in the “apparatus” at a time when the Stalinists had won a series of victories against the old party members and when blind admiration for the dictator became the main characteristic of the party membership. Thanks to his close ties with the Yagoda family, he soon got the post of deputy head of the Operations Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was in charge of guarding the Kremlin. I have never seen a man with eyes as brazen as Chertok’s. His eyes were so contemptuous towards his subordinates that it was intolerable. Chertok was known as a sadist among the investigators. It is said that he never missed an opportunity to abuse a prisoner. The names of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Bukharin and Trotsky, had no power to inspire respect for Chertok. He considered Kamenev an important person simply because Stalin was interested in this man’s case. Beyond that. Kamenev was in Chertok’s eyes a mediocre, defenseless prisoner, a subject of his violence and cruelty as usual.
Chertok indeed tortured Kamenev enough.
“I shuddered at the sound of voices coming from Chertok’s interrogation room next to me,” Mironov told me. “He shouted insults at Kamenev. ‘You are no Bolshevik, you are a coward, Lenin said the same thing! You were a worker-thief during the October Revolution! After the revolution, you joined this opposition today, and tomorrow you joined that one. What good have you done for the Party? Not a single thing! While the real Bolsheviks were fighting underground, you were chatting in foreign cafes. You are nothing else but a scoundrel who eats the Party’s food for nothing!'”
One day, towards nightfall, I stopped by Mironov’s to get some news. When I entered his darkly lit office, Mironov gave me a gesture to keep quiet and pointed to the open door of the interrogation room next door. Chertok’s voice came out of there just in time.
“You should thank me for keeping you in jail!” Chertok yelled. “If we had released you, then the first Komsomol you encountered would have knocked you to the ground. After Kirov’s murder, people at the Komsomol congresses often asked: Why haven’t you shot Zinoviev and Kamenev by now? You are still stuck in the past, thinking that you are still our idol. But ask any pioneer what Zinoviev and Kamenev are. He will surely answer: the enemy of the people, the murderer of Kirov!”
This is what Yagoda called “fixing” Kamenev, “killing his style”. Although Chertok was a subordinate of Mironov, the latter did not dare to stop the arrogance of his subordinate. It was too dangerous to do so. Chertok was a veteran slanderer and a conspirator. As the deputy head of the Kremlin guard, he often escorted Stalin. Suppose he blew a line to Stalin that Mironov defended Kamenev. Then his play of Mironov was finished.
Chertok’s slanderous rhetoric naturally did not lead to the slightest progress in the interrogation.
Even the heads of the NKVD, who knew Stalin’s treachery and ruthlessness, were shocked by the beastly hatred he showed against the Bolsheviks, especially against Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Smirnov. He was furious when he heard that a prisoner had “toughened up” and refused to sign the required confession. At such times, Stalin would always turn blue and rant, and his hoarse voice would suddenly burst into a particularly harsh Georgian brogue: “Tell them (Zinoviev and Kamenev) that no matter what they do, they cannot stop the course of history. The only thing they can do is to die or to save their own skins. Give me a hard time until they crawl to you and confess!”
At a Kremlin meeting, Mironov reported to Stalin, in the presence of Yagoda, Gay and Slutsky, on the progress of the interrogation of Reinhold, Pickle and Kamenev. Mironov reported that Kamenev’s attitude was recalcitrant. There was little hope of convincing him.
“You don’t think Kamenev will confess to Ro?” Stalin said with a sly squint between his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Mironov replied. “He won’t listen to advice.”
“No?” Stalin asked, looking particularly surprised. Deadpan stared at Mironov. “Then how much is our country, and all its factories, machinery, armies, all its armed forces and ships in all? Do you know this?”
Mironov and all those present looked at Stalin in astonishment, not understanding the meaning of his words.
“Think about it before you answer me,” Stalin said, without giving way.
Mironov smiled a little, thinking that Stalin was going to make a joke of some kind. But Stalin did not seem to be joking. He stared at Mironov with an extraordinarily serious look.
“I ask you, how powerful is all this,” he pursued.
Mironov was flustered. He was still waiting, still hoping that Stalin would immediately dismiss it all as a joke. But Stalin watched him and waited for his answer. Mironov shrugged both shoulders, like a high school student in an exam room, and said without confidence, “No one knows, Joseph Visarionovich. It’s a huge astronomical figure.”
“So, will there be someone who can resist the pressure of astronomical figures?” Stalin asked sternly.
“No,” Mironov replied.
“That’s all, stop talking about Kamenev or some prisoner who could withstand this pressure. You don’t come to me without a confession from Kamenev in your briefcase!” Stalin concluded.
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