Then, too, the “subversive group.” They talked about this for a long time, and then suddenly: “Dissolved for lack of activity.” So what was all the fuss about? There had been several expropriations of money from Soviet institutions (the SR’s had nothing with which to work, to rent apartments, to move from city to city). But previously these had been the lovely, noble “exes”—as all the revolutionists called them. And now, in a Soviet court? They were “robbery and concealment of stolen goods.”
Through the material adduced by the prosecution in this trial, the dull, unblinking, yellow streetlamps of the Law throw light on the whole uncertain, wavering, deluded history of this pathetically garrulous, essentially lost, helpless, and even inactive party which never was worthily led. And its every decision or lack of decision, its every casting about, upsurge, or retreat, was transformed into and regarded as total guilt… guilt and more guilt.
And if in September, 1921, ten months before the trial, the SR Central Committee, already sitting in the Butyrki, had written to the newly elected Central Committee that it did not agree to the overthrow of the Bolshevik dictatorship by any available means, but only through rallying the working masses and the dissemination of propaganda—all of which meant that, even as they languished in prison, they did not agree to being liberated through either terrorism or conspiracy—then that, too, was converted into their primary guilt: Aha! so that means that you did agree to its overthrow.
And what if they were, nevertheless, not guilty of overthrowing the government, and not guilty of terrorism, and if there had been hardly any “expropriations” at all, and if they had long since been forgiven for all the rest? Our favorite prosecutor pulled out his canonical weapon of last resort: “Ultimately, failure to denounce is a category of crime applying to all the defendants without exception, and it must be considered as having been proved.”29
The Socialist Revolutionary Party was guilty of not having squealed on itself! Now there’s something that couldn’t miss! This represented a discovery that juridical thought had made in the new Code. It was a paved highway along which they would keep driving and driving grateful descendants into Siberia!
And Krylenko burst out in a temper: “Hardened eternal enemies”—that’s who the defendants are! In that case it’s quite clear even without any trial what has to be done with them.
The Code was still so new that Krylenko could not even remember the main counterrevolutionary articles by their numbers—but how he slashed about with those numbers! How profoundly he cited and interpreted them! Just as if the blade of the guillotine had for decades hinged and dropped only on those articles. And especially new and important was the fact that we did not draw the distinction between methods and means the old Tsarist Code had drawn. Such distinctions had no influence either on the classification of the charges or on the penalties imposed! For us, intent and action were identical! A resolution had been passed—we would try them for that. And whether it “was carried out or not had no essential significance.”[223] Whether a man whispered to his wife in bed that it would be a good thing to overthrow the Soviet government or whether he engaged in propaganda during elections or threw a bomb, it was all one and the same! And the punishment was identical!!!
And just as a foresighted painter proceeds from his first few brusquely drawn, angular strokes to create the whole desired portrait, so, for us, the entire panorama of 1937, 1945, and 1949 becomes ever clearer and more visible in the sketches of 1922.
But no, one thing is missing! What’s missing is the conduct of the defendants. They have not yet become trained sheep. They are still people! We have been told little, very little, but from that little we can understand a great deal. Sometimes through carelessness, Krylenko cites what they said right at the trial. For example, the defendant Berg “accused the Bolsheviks of responsibility for the deaths of January 5”—shooting down those who were demonstrating on behalf of the Constituent Assembly. And what Liberov said was even more direct: “I admit I was guilty of failing to work hard enough at overthrowing the Bolshevik government in 1918.31 Yevgeniya Ratner adhered to the same line, and Berg also declared: “I consider myself guilty before the workers’ Russia for having been unable to fight with all my strength against the so-called workers’ and peasants’ government, but I hope that my time has not yet gone.”[224] (It has gone, darling, all gone!)
Of course, there is in all this an element of the ancient passion for the resounding phrase, but there is firmness too.
The prosecutor argued: the accused are dangerous to Soviet Russia because they consider everything they did to have been a good thing. “Perhaps certain of the defendants find their own consolation in the hope that some future chronicler will praise them or their conduct at the trial”.[225]
And a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued after the trial declared: “At the trial itself they reserved to themselves the right to continue” their former activity.
The defendant Gendelman-Grabovsky (a lawyer himself) was conspicuous during the trial for his arguments with Krylenko on tampering with the testimony of witnesses and on “special methods of treating witnesses before the trial”—in other words, the obvious working-over they had gotten from the GPU. (It is all there! All the elements are there! There was only a little way to go before attaining the ideal.) Apparently the preliminary interrogation had been conducted under the supervision of the prosecutor—that same Krylenko. And during that process individual instances of a lack of consistency in testimony had been ironed out. Yet some testimony was presented for the first time only at the trial itself.
Well, so what! So there were some rough spots. So it wasn’t perfect. But in the last analysis, “We have to declare altogether clearly and coldly that… we are not concerned with the question of how the court of history is going to view our present deed”.34
And as far as the rough spots are concerned, we will take them under advisement and correct them.
But as it was, Krylenko, squirming, had to bring up—probably for the first and last time in Soviet jurisprudence—the matter of the inquiry, the initial inquiry required before investigation. And here’s how cleverly he handled this point: The proceeding which took place in the absence of the prosecutor and which you considered the investigation was actually the inquiry. And the proceeding in the presence of the prosecutor which you regarded as the reinvestigation, when all the loose ends were gathered up and all the bolts tightened, was really the investigation. The disorganized “materials provided by the Organs for inquiry and unverified by the investigation have much less value as proof than the materials provided by the skillfully directed investigation.”[226]