The Accused by Alexander Weissberg

Author:Alexander Weissberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8—The “Confession”

WE ALL ENTERED THE OFFICE OF THE DEPARTMENTAL CHIEF. CAPTAIN Tornuyev was sitting at his desk and he greeted me benevolently. On the left to the front of his desk sat Ryeznikov glancing through some papers. Tomuyev invited me to sit down in the comfortable leather armchair on the other side of the desk. Behind me was a table with wine and other drinks, and during the negotiations Shalit pressed me to drink. His attitude was that of a zealous waiter expecting a good tip. For a few minutes during the preliminaries I concentrated my attention entirely on resting my sore and weary limbs and tried not to think of what was to come. Gradually the pain subsided and I recovered my composure.

From time to time Ryeznikov took a document from the dossier and handed it to the captain, who read it and occasionally made a penciled note. Finally they were ready and then he turned to me.

“Alexander Semyonovitch, as I told you, everything will be all right. Now let’s get matters down on paper, beginning with your organization. You must describe its nature, tell us what you actually did in your struggle against the Soviet power. Tell us, for example, whether your motives were personal, or whether you were influenced by friends. Take your time and think carefully before we protocol it. We want everything to be quite clear and in order.”

Having already made my decision, I didn’t have to invent too much on the spur of the moment. I was to be a follower of Bukharin and to admit terrorism and counterrevolutionary organization.

On the other hand, I would strenuously deny espionage and diversionary activity. One awkward point was still unsettled, and that was the problem of who had recruited me and whom I had recruited. Any confession to the G.P.U. always began with these two questions. The answer to the first one was easy enough. I could mention plenty of likely people who were safely outside the Soviet Union. In fact, the examiners had often declared that I had come to the Soviet Union as a foreign agent of Bukharinism or Trotskyism on the one hand and of the Gestapo on the other. In that case my recruitment must have taken place abroad.

On the other hand, Ryeznikov had always appeared very anxious to have me linked up with Bukharin. How he imagined that could have come about I didn’t know. But perhaps he wanted a confession that the German right-wing opposition had sent me to Bukharin and that he had then given me instructions for counterrevolutionary work in the Ukraine. The G.P.U. had never let me into the secret of how all these supposed counterrevolutionary organizations worked in practice. They had never let fall more than vague hints, and so I wasn’t really sure what it was they wanted me to confess. Conversely, I don’t think they were too sure either. The reason for our joint ignorance was that there were no counterrevolutionary organizations in the Soviet Union, and so it was a real problem to know how they might be supposed to operate.

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