1997-2007

Anna Kryuchkova (A.K. in the text below) :  Besides archive files of repressed people, where does your information about details of tortures and names of those who carried out them come from?

Leonid Moryakov (L.M. in the text below) : I have never been given permission to study archive files of the repressed. Never. Except for, naturally, my own uncle's and grandfather's "criminal" files, which they couldn't deny me my right to get access to. To get in any proximity to any other was out of question. What helped me out, was perestroika, -  a time in the end of 1980th - beginning of 1990th. The "chekisty" (a common term for KGB people) were forced, with their hearts aching as they might have been, to give in and let a few researchers to look into a number of personal dossiers of literary people and other public figures. Some of those researchers shared their resulting recordings with me. Besides that, I was given a number of facts and examples by those former prisoners who managed miraculously to survive the horror of "Amerikanka" (the infamous prison in Minsk of Stalin times). You know, there exist such incredible people who could survive even through deadly, monstrous, inhumane tortures. This happens sometimes... One case per about fifty thousands...

A.K. : In your book, you have introduced a term, "the bloody tunnel of death", describing the events, when 100 thousands of people have been repressed within a year. How do you explain such remarkably high activity of NKVD (official abbreviation for the "People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs") during that period?

L.M. : I think that happened not the least due to the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the Bolsheviks' upheaval. Bloody feast during the plague - witnessing the recent mass hunger in Ukraine, plundering and extermination of robust farmers and the intellectual elite of the nation.

Another possible explanation is based on the fact that, not long before 1937, the Supreme Maniac has received incontrovertible data from his intelligence proving that Hitler is making preparations for a war with USSR. And, by exterminating the country's intellectual elite, he had a point, in his own way. Later during the war, the German's mostly avoided inflicting harm on the intelligentsia of the occupied territories...

A.K. : Is it true that the chekisty used to receive orders targeting specific number of confessions, like, to biff out confessions from 4 people per day? And that there was even a plan regarding the number of enemy names that must be extorted from the defendants (those under [NKVD's] investigation) ?

L.M. : The regional chekist bosses used to submit "recommendations" to their henchmen to "uncover" up to 2, 3 or 4 "heads" per regular NKVD interrogator. Among the latter, there were "wunderkinds" that managed to biff out "open-hearted confessions" from 5 or 6 innocent people they brought under arrest.

I don't think there were specific order targets regarding the number of names which defendants would [uncover and] give a testimony against. Instead, the method was that of a harsh, cruel bullying. Punch, and then punch harder and more, force the person to sign [the confession], while he or she is still capable of holding a pen.

Interrogators, who managed to uncover the highest number of "enemies of the nation" within a "calendar period", were awarded with a huge sum of "robust soviet rubles".

Those, on the other hand, who would uncover in one month just a handful of "naz-dems" (a term for suspected nationalists or oppositionist), could be arrested themselves and ... yes, "investigated" by their colleagues-beasts with better performance records.

A.K. : How did the NKVD agents succeed in reaching of their order targets? I can't imagine just beating [of the suspects] would be sufficient for them...

L.M. : Confessions were truly "beaten out", or more precisely, were secured by beating and torturing to death. They couldn't really come up with anything more sophisticated. It wasn't a big secret that a vast majority of chekisty (including their bosses) had only a basic school education. Do you realise now what the Supreme Maniac had engineered? Illiterate people were killing literate ones! An organised regress of the whole nation!

A.K. : Where did the tortures take place?

L.M. :  Naturally, in the interrogators' workplace - their offices. There were exceptions though. A plenty of those who were already sentenced to execution, still were held and tortured, - and demonstratively so, as a matter of "fright-show" in the prison cells of "novice" suspects. It went as if to say to a [not yet confessed] prisoner: "Look what we're doing to him, - how we treat him with a cleaning rod, how we kick him with our feet, how we pull his hair, how we twist his arms out... Do you want the same medicine? Better sign and confess right here and right now, you get only 10 years; if you work hard and with patriotism, you will shorten your term and come back soon enough to your family. Or else... look what's happening to that crappy intellectual (as comrade Lenin would have called such person), - he's out of breath already, wheezing in agony..."

A.K. : Judging on the tortures, there worked only sadists in prisons, if not total maniacs. You studied their biographies. Can you tell us where their unspeakable cruelty came from?

L.M. :  The source of their cruelty and inhumanity must have been (as I mentioned it before) exactly in their illiteracy and poor education. The Supreme Maniac understood - the lower the intellect (if such term could be used here at all) of an interrogator, the closer he is to an animal. Such animals did gnaw people to death... At times, the interrogators were worse than an animal...

A.K. : Why chairmans of NKVD and regular interrogators were convinced that they won't be held responsible for their atrocities?

L.M. :  I believe, interrogators, especially those animal-like, beasts really, never thought of any responsibility, - if they had capacity to think at all, that is. Berman and Nasedkin are another matter altogether, - they were leaders of NKVD in Soviet Byelorussia. Those - as it was certainly known - felt their fast-approaching death. They understood that the Supreme Maniac soon would need their bodies to shield off his own with...

A.K. : What did happen to them afterwards?

L.M. :  Many of those who tortured and carried out executions in 1937 had been executed in 1938. The Supreme Maniac had been covering up traces of his bloody crimes. But not all were executed. Some were spared - to "breed". Life went on, you know, but for the "too intelligent" ones, it would end still much earlier than the Almighty would normally allow for them.

A.K. : Featured in your book are documents - appeals of defendants complaining about illegal and inhuman methods of the NKVD's work to Ponomarenko (the party leader of the time in Belarus). Did they reach him? Did the party bosses know how NKVD actually carried out its work? Was there any reaction from the Central Committee?

L.M. :  A number of appeals from those few who miraculously survived through tortures had regularly reached the destination. However, it happened later on, in 1939-1940, when nobody cared anymore about those people. And soon enough, streams of blood doubled in volume, - like that of a waterfall. There was a reaction, - if you can call it as such. The matter was registered as follows: the interrogators had gone slightly overboard, a tad too far, perhaps violating somewhat the (so-called) socialistic lawfulness. But did it really exist?

A.K. : In your book, you give examples of tortures that had been carried out even on people who were already convicted to a death sentence. Why did that happen?

L.M. :  I have answered to this already earlier [in this conversation].

A.K. : Why, in your opinion, did the prisoners never rise in a rebellion against such atrocities?

L.M. :  In the beginning of 1920s such cases still had been happening... Understand, it has been already 20 years of slavery, penal servitude and "labour therapy" that obliterated any remaining free will of the nation. People were afraid even to breathe, let alone to resist the rampaging terror. They lived solely to survive, by any means. However disabled, blind, deaf, or with your both arms lost you end up, but you'll still have a chance to see your relatives, family, escape from the prison cell, washed with the inmates' blood. People tried to understand and couldn't believe it: there are 40 of us in this cell, see, it doesn't make sense to beat us all to death or execute, - somebody has to feed those animals with shoulder straps...

A.K. : Methods of the NKVD’s work were of course horrid. But what did strike you the most in the behaviour of the defendants? It's known that besides those who died in a hospital or lost his mind, there still were some who managed to endure all that...

L.M. : It's astonishing to see courage of those few (while - obviously - not everybody is born to be courageous), who, even after horrible, unthinkable tortures, all covered in blood, with his arms and legs twisted out, with his inner organs beaten to a pulp, face maimed beyond recognition, still could shout out to the sadists with shoulder straps: "No! Never! You won't get me!" And, before leaving this world, whispered: "Damned you will be! You will burn in hell! Long lives Belarus!" And those damnations did not vanish in the sands of time... I heard them resonating, as ever, - but it happened in 1997, sixty years later... But still...

A.K. : You suggested an idea that repressions in Belarus had uncommon character: here, the goal was to exterminate especially intellectuals, supporters of the notion of national independence. When working on your book, have you found documented evidence of the planned elimination of specifically intelligent people, the national elite, as engineered by Berman in Belarus?

L.M. : The factual evidence I have found in Russia, actually, - not in Belarus. A former chief of the National Security committee within the Ministry of Internal Affairs Nasedkin happened to be sharing in the "Amerikanka" prison the same cell with a Soviet spy Bystroletov (known as the one who recruited once famous Filby), and, knowing already that he will be sentenced to execution and being not interested in telling lies (why would he?), he confessed to his cell mate (who managed to survive 20 years of a penal servitude and rejected his KGB pension afterwards) that the orders from Moscow were exactly these: to exterminate people who can think... Those without brain - leave alone...

A.K. : Many executioners have brought children to this world, and then grandchildren as well. The latter will have found their relatives in your "black lists". What can you tell them?

L.M. : Let's first try to deal with another situation or the issue. If the executioner had known that, if not himself, then his children or his grandchildren will be held responsible for his deeds, would he proceed carrying out all those killings and torturing so eagerly? Who knows what the descendants would do to the grave or luxury monument, had they found out who actually their daddy was. Quite possibly, they would demolish such monument to "the hero", fighter for the so-called "socialistic lawfulness", to bits. And the remnants of the "hero" would be brought to a fire, not to leave resting in peace... And the ashes would get trampled under feet, not preserved in an urn...

The rule "children aren't responsible for their parents" we learn in our childhood. But note, however, that this rule is only to the executioner's advantage. If your father lived out his life honourably, didn't ruin anyone else's life, then the children don't have to be responsible for anything. On contrary, they will be only proud of such ancestor... But I have nothing to say to the children of executioners. Perhaps only feel sorry for them. I am not an animal, after all, - unlike their poor daddies, who'd come back home after their "hard work" only in an early morning.