Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith

Author:Douglas Smith [Smith, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: History, Non-Fiction, Biography
ISBN: 9780374157616
Goodreads: 13538689
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2012-10-02T07:00:00+00:00

16

THE FOX-TROT AFFAIR

With the end of the civil war and the advent of NEP, a certain normalcy returned to Russia. Life seemed easier, unremarkable, although only in contrast with the barbarism that had preceded it and, though no one knew it at the time, the barbarism to follow. NEP was a contradictory period. There was relative openness in cultural and artistic life, considerable debate within the Communist Party itself, concessions to private property, and a market economy. Yet at the same time the Cheka remained vigilant, ideological control over society increased, and centralized state planning of industry and the economy expanded. What is more, no truce was ever declared with the revolution’s enemies, real or imagined. The struggle went on against former people, but to quote one historian, the 1920s constituted not a frontal assault like the civil war but “low-intensity warfare.”1 The new stage of the war was fought on several fronts. Restrictive legislation was enacted. New laws aimed at so-called socially dangerous elements (SDE) were passed throughout the early 1920s. The criminal code of the RSFSR for 1922 fixed the notion of SDE in its Article 7, which established punishment for those whose activity showed them to be dangerous or harmful to society. The Central Executive Committee of the USSR further solidified the class principle in law in 1924 by stipulating greater legal protection for persons from formerly exploited groups and less for those from formerly exploiting groups. Former people and other SDE received harsher treatment by the courts, in both conviction rates and sentencing.2

The political police continued to hound and arrest supposed enemies, and they also resorted to more elaborate schemes to entrap their prey. Kirill Golitsyn fell into just such a trap in 1923. The bizarre episode happened in this way. In 1922, Kirill and his family, then living in Petrograd, were introduced to Mikhail Burkhanovsky, purportedly the adopted son of a former tsarist general, and his recently deceased wife. Over the course of the year, Burkhanovsky visited the family often and slowly won their trust. After many months and then only with great hesitance, he let them in on his secret life. He told the Golitsyns that he was part of a large and powerful underground monarchist organization with connections to people in high places. They were putting together a major operation against the Soviet Union and at any minute were preparing to set it in motion. Burkhanovsky confessed he was in danger of being uncovered by the OGPU. One day he arrived at the Golitsyns with a stack of monarchist proclamations and asked Kirill to hold on to them until he returned.

But Burkhanovsky never did return, and the Golitsyns never saw him again, for he was not a monarchist spy, but an agent provocateur of the OGPU. Burkhanovsky was not even his real name; the real Mikhail Burkhanovsky had been captured and killed by the Cheka before this impostor even appeared on the Golitsyns’ doorstep. Burkhanovsky figured in a large deception operation code-named Operation

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