The Big Terror of the USSR

Those who know about the years of the Big Terror in the USSR (1937-1939) shudder at the thought of what was happening to people on a mass scale, but not many understand why it was happening. Was it Stalin’s madness? Or a carefully constructed plan? Or was it the system itself that was at fault, bound to lead to enslavement of its people’s spirits, while keeping up the illusion of the fairest, most prosperous and generous country in the world? Perhaps, it is all of the above, or none at all, for we will never know the full truth, but we can try and delve into it and try and make our own conclusions.

THE BEGINNING

It all began in the 19th Century (or, perhaps, earlier, but it is impossible to trace the origins of it all). Russia, ruled by Tsars, was going through a rather tumultuous hundred years, its rulers alternating between opening the borders to Europe, bringing the Western literature and schools of thought in, asking the progressive questions (like the Female Question, beginnings of feminism), and cramming down on it all, restricting access to any culture outside the country, promoting Russian nationalism and attempting to return to traditions of the past. Such a switch happened in the 19th century at least three times. Somewhere along the way the ideas of socialism entered the minds of the intelligentsia, grew, became popular.

Closer to the end of the 1800s the followers of these ideas split: some believed it was important to let the country evolve in its own time, the monarchy at the time being open to progressive changes in the country. Others, however, thought the country was moving far too slowly on its way to socialism, and it needed to be led to it by force, through a revolution. These people orchestrated the assassination of the progressive Tsar, and brought about the repressive times of Nicholas I. People were frustrated. Soon, the Great War came, and Russia, lead by the monarchs, joined the Allies, sending its people to fight.

On the wave of frustration with the soul crushing war, Bolsheviks (word Bolshoi means “big” in Russian, Bolsheviks being the more radical communist underground party, ex Social-Democratic party of Russia, as opposed to Mensheviks, from the Russian word menshe “small/less”, who were the moderate wing of the Social-Democratic party of Russia) rode to inflame the disdain of the people for the monarchy, and eventually orchestrated the October Revolution (1917). The communist party took over the government and fulfilled its key promise: take Russia out of the war. People were happy, but there were some, who still believed in the righteousness of the monarchy, as well as some monarchy still living, and so the Russian Civil War began.

Early in the war, in mid-July of 1918, the last Tsar of Russia and the last Romanoff, and his family and entourage are captured by the Bolsheviks, and under house arrest in Yekaterinburg. In the middle of the night they are ordered to go downstairs into the basement due to unrest in the town. The van for moving corpses is already parked outside the house.

The Civil War lasted another four years and ended in 1922.

IDEOLOGY OF USSR

The ideology of the USSR is well-known.

-          Abolishing of the bourgeoisie

-          Abolishing wealth inequality

-          Government controlled and owned all establishments and businesses.

-          Government assigned you a living space. (at the time you could not pick and choose, buy or rent, you were dependent on what the government thought you deserve)

-          Everyone got education

-          Everyone participated in extra-curriculum political activities, called Komsomol

-          Dictatorship of the proletariat

THE REPRESSIONS

Although the “cleansing” of the nation didn’t become obvious till the late 30s, when Stalin was well into his rule and preparing for World War II, it was one of the Party’s missions throughout the regime from its very beginning. It was first the opposition: anyone who dared to fight against the Bolsheviks in the Civil war. Then, of course, the Mensheviks and anarchists – yesterday’s allies. Followed by the bourgeoisie and anyone suspected of “hoarding millions”.

Already at that point, the very beginning, it was possible to tattle on someone more successful than you, pretending to be a victim of their unfair superiority of competence, and they would be removed, only banished to Siberia with their whole family, if they were lucky. The burden of proof not necessary during the immediate after-war times, and conveniently forgotten as time passed.

But political rivals and un PC-social classes of the era weren’t the only ones that suffered. Engineers of the old were targeted for criticising the structure of a newly built railway and arguing the heavy trains would derail. Of course, a few years later the engineers that built the faulty railway would be executed as well for disrupting the communist development, when the trains did derail. Anyone voicing displeasure of the Party, or anyone in it. One old gentleman liked to practice his calligraphy at lunch break in the factory. He didn’t have blank paper, and of course, like many things at the time, paper was in deficit around the country. So, he’d use newspapers. He was imprisoned for signing his name over the printed face of the magnificent Chieftain.

And then, there were those, that despite their best efforts to always loudly and passionately proclaim their loyalty to the Party, to the communist idea, those, that wrote books, scientific papers, announced their opinions on radio and TV on the subject of the communist superiority over capitalism and any other system, despite honestly believing the wonderful fairness and equality Bolsheviks were bringing, were still arrested, still taken to that dreadful place on Lubyanka Street, interrogated and tortured, convicted as enemies of the nation, taken to Gulags and, after years of tough awful work, most probably shot. But even if you were the lucky sap that got to return, got out from the terrifying mouth of Hell, they would enjoy their freedom but for a small time, for those once arrested, would inevitably be arrested again, and then, like in Orwell’s “1984”, disappear forever.

It would happen like this: somewhere on the street as you were walking amongst everyone else in the broad daylight, a vaguely familiar face would call out to you, tell you how good it is to see you after all these years, and you’d recognise them, perhaps, believe it is as they’re saying, a classmate from the school years or a partner in Uni, and they’d offer to go some place quieter to catch up, turn a corner, where a car would be waiting. Or you’d be offered a vacation by your boss (it was common to get a work-sponsored vacation to some healthy area of the Soviet Union, like Crimea), you’d pack your suitcase, get on the train, and somewhere on the road, get arrested. In the years before the Big Terror, the NKVD (analogy to KGB) agents learnt to get creative, as if the act of capturing your prey unaware while arresting them, sadistically making them let their guard down before taking them to the place few ever come back from, was the ultimate art.

But most of all, they preferred to arrest people at night, catch them unaware, half asleep, too confused to even raise their voice. People would be in their underwear, adding to their confusion and embarrassment, they’d hastily pull their pants up while the agents of destiny already searched their house, went through each book, each document, turned the living space upside down. In that state most people would go willingly, would naively believe a mistake was made, and they’d be released, after it’s all cleared up.

The reality of it all, however, was that no mistake was made, because the objective wasn’t to find those guilty. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his book “The Gulag Archipelago”, documented that often, if at the time of the arrest you fled and moved to the next region of Russia and continued to live under the same name, you’d most likely not be sought out there. At one time, he writes, a woman went to the office of the NKVD to enquire what to do with the new born baby of a woman arrested the day before, her neighbour, and was arrested then and there herself, because, according to Solzhenitsyn, it was the end of the month, and that city’s office was a few people short on the arresting quota.

ARTICLE 58

By the time Joseph Stalin became the Chieftain of the country in mid-1920s (after Lenin’s will mysteriously disappeared for a few months, and then reappeared featuring Stalin as the “heir to the throne” rather than the more expected and trusted Trotsky), millions had already been executed or banished to Siberia. There was a fateful article in the Criminal Code of USSR: Article 58, criminal responsibility for anti-revolutionary activity. Despite many sub-clauses, this article was vague, and was used by the agents of NKVD quite widely. A man could be arrested for telling his friends about what he saw in the capitalist Europe during his time on the front, as it was considered propaganda of capitalism, and therefore anti-communist speech. During the Second World War Nazis took people and brought them to Germany to serve in the house as slaves, and when these Russian citizens were freed and brought home, they were immediately arrested and taken to Gulags. They have seen the West. They could no longer be trusted.

Inside the country throughout the whole of the regime, people didn’t notice. At least not consciously. Nobody talked about anything that wasn’t praise for the Soviet Union, nobody dared to criticise the communist regime. Theatres produced new writing about the benefits of new, utopian, socialist life, of new communist men and women. And people would disappear. Mikhail Bulgakov described the sense of secret dread that people daren’t voice amongst their exaltations of joy for the Party beautifully in a chapter of his novel “Master and Margarita”:

“Two years ago odd things began happening in that apartment-- people started to vanish from it without trace. One Monday afternoon a policeman called, invited the second lodger (the one whose name is no longer known) into the hall and asked him to come along to the police station for a minute or two to sign a document. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna's devoted servant of many years, to say that if anybody rang him up he would be back in ten minutes. He then went out accompanied by the courteous policeman in white gloves. But he not only failed to come back in ten minutes; he never came back at all. Odder still, the policeman appeared to have vanished with him.

Anfisa, a devout and frankly rather a superstitious woman, informed the distraught Anna Frantsevna that it was witchcraft, that she knew perfectly well who had enticed away the lodger and the policeman, only she dared not pronounce the name at night-time.

Witchcraft once started, as we all know, is virtually unstoppable. The anonymous lodger disappeared, you will remember, on a Monday ; the following Wednesday Belomut, too, vanished from the face of the earth, although admittedly in different circumstances. He was fetched as usual in the morning by the car which took him to work, but it never brought him back and never called again.”

In the years preceding the Second World War, NKVD grew bold, no time for creative arrests, the prisoner vans roamed the streets every night, Stalin’s need to cleanse the nation into complete submission in preparation to the War obvious. That is what is now known the Big Terror.

And the arrested – always confessed. A whole chapter of “Gulag Archipelago” is dedicated to the methods of interrogation. Solzhenitsyn compares them to the Great Inquisition, and declares that back then they still had respect for human life. In the 30s of the 20th century there was no longer time or even space for giant wheels of torture – those only impacted a handful of prisoners, and some could take the pain. No, there were means much more economical, and yet more effective at NKVD. This author shall not list them all, if the reader wishes to learn, I direct you to Solzhenitsyn, but I will simply quote the letter of one of Russia’s most famous theatre directors of the 20th century, his name, although relatively unknown in the West, is uttered always next to Stanislavsky in the Russian speaking world: Meyerhold. He created his own methodology, a technique of biomechanics used for acting. The radically opposite system to that of Stanislavsky.

He was a visionary and respected by the theatre community.

But he was too radical for the Party. They began using a dirty word to smear his direction in theatre and acting: formalism. That movement was considered un-communist, for it created objective thought on reality, encouraged critical thinking, and of course, could not be accepted. The Party didn’t necessarily desire people not to think, but they wanted the nation to think in a specific direction.

So eventually, in June 1939 a 66 year old Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested in accordance with Article 58. His wife had protested, even sent a complaint against the methods of one of the agents of NKVD during arrest, and a few days later murdered in an alleyway, her killer never found.

Meyerhold was tortured and eventually confessed, but his final words are known to us from this letter to a friend in the theatre world:

“… When the investigators started using physical force and added “psychological attacks” against me, the suspect, both had created a monstrous fear in me, baring to me my deepest nature…

…Lying on the floor face down, I would discover in myself the ability to coil like a snake, squeal like a dog that’s being whipped by its master. One time the guard, leading me back from such an interrogation asked me “Do you have malaria?” for my body was wrecking with neurotic shivering.

… Here is my confession, short, as is customary, when death is a second away. I was never a spy. I was never a member of any Trotsky organisation (I, along with the Party, cursed judas Trotsky). I was never involved in any anti-revolutionary activity…

… I was beaten here. A sixty-six year old man. They’d put me face down on the floor, used a rubber cord to hit me over my back and my heels; then they’d seat me on the chair and hit me along the front of the legs and over my thighs with great force. And in the following days, when these parts were covered in red-yellow-blue bruises, they’d hit these exact same spots, and the pain was so great, it seemed that they were pouring boiling water on my legs (I was screaming and wailing)…”

Three weeks after this letter, Vsevolod Meyerhold was executed in a basement of Lubyanka, main office of NKVD in Moscow.

Yet, the nation was silent. In 1937, the beginning of the Big Terror, Russia was celebrating the 100 year anniversary of Pushkin’s death. Playwrights and poets wrote texts on the greatness of the Party. Films and theatre pieces were made. Marriages took place. A country as large as Russia, filled with millions and millions of people, was effectively trapped in an illusion that soon, soon, the hard times will pass. Of course, they said when doubt crept in, of course there’s mistakes by the police made right now, and the system isn’t perfect yet, but that’s only because it is young. The communist man hasn’t been properly born yet, as we’re all from the past generation. We just need to wait this bit over, wait out all the hardships, (the arrests, the executions) and then, for sure, the communist utopia will come.