Chulpenyev answered and forgot about them. And Lozovsky wrote a denunciation. Chulpenyev was summoned before the Political Branch of the division and expelled from the Komsomoclass="underline" for a defeatist attitude, for praising German equipment, for belittling the strategy of our High Command. The loudest voice raised against him belonged to the Komsomol organizer Kalyagin, who had behaved like a coward at the battle of Khalkhin-Gol, in Chulpenyev’s presence, and therefore found it convenient to get rid of the witness once and for all.
Chulpenyev’s arrest followed. He had one confrontation with Lozovsky. Their previous conversation was not even brought up by the interrogator. One question was asked: “Do you know this man?” “Yes.” “Witness, you may leave.” (The interrogator was afraid the charge might fall through.)[153]
Depressed by his month’s incarceration in the sort of hole in the ground we have already described, Chulpenyev appeared before a military tribunal of the 36th Motorized Division. Present were Lebedev, the Divisional Political Commissar, and Slesarev, the Chief of the Political Branch. The witness Lozovsky was not even summoned to testify. However, after the trial, to document the false testimony, they got Lozovsky’s signature and that of Political Commissar Seryegin. The questions the tribunal asked were: Did you have a conversation with Lozovsky? What did he ask you about? What were your answers? Naively, Chulpenyev told them. He still couldn’t understand what he was guilty of. “After all, many people talk like that!” he innocently exclaimed. The tribunal was interested: “Who? Give us their names.” But Chulpenyev was not of their breed! He had the last word. “I beg the court to give me an assignment that will mean my death so as to assure itself once more of my patriotism”—and, like a simplehearted warrior of old—“Me and the person who slandered me—both of us together.”
Oh, no! Our job is to kill off all those chivalrous sentiments in the people. Lozovsky’s duty was to hand out pills and Seryegin’s duty was to indoctrinate the soldiers.[154] Whether or not you died wasn’t important. What was important was that we were on guard. The members of the military tribunal went out, had a smoke and returned: ten years plus three years’ disenfranchisement.
There were certainly more than ten such cases in every division during the war. (Otherwise, the military tribunals would not have justified the cost of maintaining them.) And how many divisions were there in all? Let the reader count them up himself.
The sessions of the military tribunals were depressingly like one another. The judges were depressingly faceless and emotionless—rubber stamps. The sentences all came off the same assembly line.
Everyone maintained a serious mien, but everyone understood it was a farce, above all the boys of the convoy, who were the simplest sort of fellows. At the Novosibirsk Transit Prison in 1945 they greeted the prisoners with a roll call based on cases. “So and so! Article 58-1a, twenty-five years.” The chief of the convoy guard was curious: “What did you get it for?” “For nothing at all.” “You’re lying. The sentence for nothing at all is ten years.”
When the military tribunals were under pressure, their “sessions” lasted one minute—the time it took them to go out and come in again. When their working day went on for sixteen consecutive hours, one could see, through the door of the conference room, bowls of fruit on a table set with a white tablecloth. If they weren’t in a hurry, they enjoyed delivering their sentence “with a psychological twist”: “…sentenced to the supreme measure of punishment!” And then a pause. The judges would look the condemned man in the eye. It was interesting to see how he took it. What was he feeling at that moment? Only then would the verdict continue: “…but taking into consideration the sincere repentance…”
On the walls of the waiting room messages had been scratched with nails and scrawled in penciclass="underline" “I got execution,” “I got twenty-five,” “I got a ‘tenner!’” They didn’t clean off these graffiti; they served an educational purpose. Be scared; bow down; don’t think that you can change anything by your behavior. Even if you were to speak in your own defense with the eloquence of Demosthenes, in a hall empty except for a handful of interrogators—like Olga Sliozberg in 1936, at the Supreme Court—it would not help you in the slightest. All you could do would be to increase your sentence from ten years to execution. For instance, if you were to shout: “You are fascists! I am ashamed to have been a member of your Party for several years!” (Nikolai Semyonovich Daskal did it in 1937, at the Special Collegium of the Azov-Black Sea Province at Maikop, presided over by Kholik.) In that situation what they did was fabricate a new case and do you in once and for all.
Chavdarov has described an incident in which the accused suddenly repudiated at their trial all the false testimony they had given during the interrogation. And what happened? If there was any hesitation while glances were exchanged, it lasted no more than a few seconds. The prosecutor asked for a recess, without explaining why. The interrogators and their tough-boy helpers dashed in from the interrogation prison. All the prisoners, distributed among separate boxes, were given a good beating all over again and promised another after the next recess. The recess came to an end. Once again the judges questioned all of them—and this time they all confessed.
Aleksandr Grigoryevich Karetnikov, the Director of the Textile Research Institute, provided an example of outstanding astuteness. Just before the session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court was to begin, he sent word through the guard that he wanted to give supplementary testimony. This, of course, provoked curiosity. He was received by the prosecutor. Karetnikov displayed his infected collarbone, broken by the interrogator who had struck him with a stool, and declared: “I signed everything under torture.” By this time the prosecutor was cursing himself for having been so greedy to get “supplementary” testimony, but it was too late. Each of them is fearless only as long as he is an anonymous cog in the whole machine. But just as soon as the responsibility has become personalized, individualized, concentrated on him, just as soon as the searchlight is on him, he grows pale and realizes that he is nothing and can slip on any chance banana peel. So Karetnikov caught the prosecutor, and the latter was unwilling to suppress the whole business. The session of the Military Collegium began and Karetnikov repeated his statement in front of them. Now there was a case in which the Military Collegium went out and really conferred! But the only verdict they could have brought in was acquittal, which would have meant releasing Karetnikov on the spot. Therefore they brought in no verdict at all!
As if nothing at all had happened, they took Karetnikov back to prison, treated his collarbone, and kept him another three months. A very polite new interrogator entered the case, who wrote out a new warrant for Karetnikov’s arrest. (If the Collegium had not twisted things, he might at least have spent those three months as a free man.) The interrogator asked the same questions as the first interrogator. Karetnikov, sensing freedom in the offing, conducted himself staunchly and refused to admit any guilt whatever. And what happened next? He got eight years from an OSO.
This example shows well enough the possibilities available to the prisoner and the possibilities available to the OSO. It was the poet Derzhavin who wrote:
153
10. Today Lozovsky holds the degree of candidate in medical sciences and lives in Moscow. Everything is going well with him. Chulpenyev drives a trolley bus.
154
11. Viktor Andreyevich Seryegin lives in Moscow today and works in a Consumer Service Combine attached to the Moscow Soviet. He lives well.