The Great Terror

All accounts of experiences in the great prisons mention that when escorting prisoners along corridors to interrogation or for other purposes, the warders continually made a clicking sound with their tongues or with their belt buckles, so that others on similar errands would know in advance. The purpose of this, evidently a definite regulation, was to stop anyone from recognizing prisoners from other cells. If two prisoners were about to meet in a corridor, one had his face to the wall while the other went by. In the Butyrka yard, which sometimes had to be crossed, were little sentry-box-style sheds, into which one or the other of two passing prisoners could be shunted.

Eventually, down the stairs ringed with antisuicide nets, the prisoner would arrive at the office of the interrogator, where he might, for the moment, be fairly politely received. The routine questions started: “Do you know where you are? … You are in the heart of Soviet Intelligence … Why do you think you are here? …” A confession was now required. In the case of the ordinary prisoner, preparation for public trial did not arise, and the confession was merely a horrible formality required under NKVD custom to justify a sentence which was usually ready for issue. That is, as far as the accused himself was concerned. For interrogation had one further purpose—the implication of hitherto unnamed accomplices.

The interrogation technique almost invariably started, not with an accusation, but with the question “Will you tell me what hypothesis you have formed of the reason for your arrest?” This is said to have been based on a questionnaire used by the Holy Inquisition.¹⁷⁶

The “Yezhov method,” as NKVD officers called it, threw the task of building the case against him on the arrested man. If the accused simply gave an innocent account of everything he had done, tougher methods were used, but it still remained up to the victim to find the right line of confession. Prisoners, with the more or less obvious connivance of the authorities, became expert in helping the newly arrested to devise suitable and satisfactory confessions, thus saving everybody trouble, on both sides.¹⁷⁷

There were various tricks of interrogation. The interrogator might be polite and speak rather in sorrow, and then change to abuse. The obscene cursing of the interrogated was routine. In some cases, it had its effect. In others, not: Weissberg recounts that he found it quite interesting.¹⁷⁸

Many NKVD interrogators were often aware of the complete falsehood of the charges, and some of them would even admit it. Most, however, even though not crediting the full details, “professed to believe that they contained a grain of truth, and this sufficed to justify their actions in their own eyes.”¹⁷⁹ This applied particularly to the earlier generation of NKVD men. After they themselves were liquidated, the newer intake were much simpler Stalinists, who often seem to have believed to a great extent in the accused’s guilt.

For the police machine, too, was ruthlessly purged. We are told that “the staff of the Lefortovo Prison was wiped out entirely four times.”¹⁸⁰ In all, as we have seen, 20,000 NKVD men perished.

¹⁸¹

The turnover of interrogators, as the NKVD itself was purged, was good for the morale of resisting prisoners. Two mention that “each of the present writers outlasted more than ten of his examining magistrates; one of them outlasted more than a dozen. In both instances this included the magistrate who ordered the arrest.”¹⁸² In Chelyabinsk, one prisoner was saved from execution when the Head of the Provincial NKVD angrily exclaimed, “The investigation was conducted by enemies of the people. Now we’ve got to start all over again.”¹⁸³

NKVD officers under arrest were usually interrogated more severely than others. They were more pessimistic about the outcome, and “were extremely stubborn and reluctant to confess for they knew what lay ahead of them.”¹⁸⁴ They n are reported as highly nervous, expecting to be taken out and executed at any moment.

We have already dealt with the basic techniques of interrogation. In run-of-the-mill cases, the “conveyor” remained at first the main system, punctuated by physical assault. A typical case is that of the young secretary of a factory director arrested as one of a Trotskyite sabotage ring. She was kept standing for two days with short interruptions and then half-throttled by the examiner until she signed a confession which enabled the NKVD to arrest her chief and the thirty-odd other members of the factory’s sabotage group.¹⁸⁵