The Gulag Archipelago

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Presiding Judge (laughing): "We'll enter it, we'll enter it!" Laughter in the hall. The court exits in order to confer. The sounds of a noisy argument come from the conference room.

  They return with the sentence: to be shot.

  Loud indignation in the hall.

  Accuser: "I protest against the sentence and will complain to the Commissariat of Justice!"

  Defense Lawyer: "I join my voice to that of the accuser."

  Presiding Judge: "Clear the hall!"

  The convoy came and led Ye------v to jail, saying to him: "If everyone was like you, brother, how good it would be! There would be no war, and no Whites and no Reds!" They went back to their barracks and called a Red Army meeting. It condemned the sentence and sent a protest to Moscow.

  In daily expectation of death, Ye------v waited for thirty-seven days, while, from the prison window, he watched executions taking place. They commuted his sentence to fifteen years of strict detention.

  This is an instructive example. Although "revolutionary legal- ity" won a partial victory, how enormous an effort it required on the part of the presiding judge! How much disorganization, lack of discipline, lack of political consciousness there still was! The prosecution stood firmly with the defense. The convoy guards stuck their noses into something that wasn't their business in order to send off a protest. Whew, the dictatorship of the prole- tariat and the new kind of court were not having things easy by any means! Of course, not all the sessions were anything like so turbulent, but this wasn't the only one of its kind. How many years it would take to reveal, direct, and confirm the necessary line, until the defense would stand as one with the prosecution and the court, and the accused would be in agreement with them too, and all the resolutions of the workers as well!

  To pursue this enterprise of many years' duration is the re- warding task of the historian. As for us—how are we to make our way through that rosy mist? Whom are we to ask about it? Those who were shot aren't talking, and neither are those who have been scattered to the four winds. Even if the defendants, and the lawyers, and the guards, and the spectators have survived, no one will allow us to seek them out.

  Evidently, the only help we will get is from the prosecution.

  In this connection, I was given by well-wishers an intact copy of a collection of speeches for the prosecution delivered by that fierce revolutionary, the first People's Commissar of Military Affairs in the Workers' and Peasants' Government, the Com- mander in Chief, and later the organizer of the Department of Exceptional Courts of the People's Commissariat of Justice— where the personal rank of tribune was being readied for him, until Lenin vetoed the title—the glorious accuser in the greatest trials, subsequently exposed as the ferocious enemy of the people, N. V. Krylenko.

  [Krylenko, Za Pyat Let (1918-1922). Edition 7,000 copies. Prose- cution speeches in the most important trials held before the Moscow and the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunals.]

  And if, despite everything, we want to at- tempt a brief review of the public trials, if we are determined to try to get a feeling for the judicial atmosphere of the first post- revolutionary years, then we have to learn to read this Krylenko text. We have no other. And using it as a basis, we must try to picture to ourselves everything that is missing from it and every- thing that happened in the provinces too.

  Of course, we would prefer to see the stenographic record of those trials, to listen to the dramatic voices from beyond the grave of those first defendants and those first lawyers, speaking at a time when no one could have foreseen in what implacable sequence all of it would be swallowed up—together with those Revtribunal members as well.

  However, as Krylenko has explained, for a whole series of technical reasons "it was inconvenient to publish the stenographic records" It was convenient only to publish his speeches for the prosecution and the sentences handed down by the tribunals, which by that time had already come to jibe completely with the demands of the accuser-prosecutor.

  Krylenko claims that the archives of the Moscow Revtribunal and the Supreme Revtribunal turned out (by 1922) to be "far from orderly. ... In a whole series of cases the stenographic records . . . were so incomprehensible that it was necessary either to cross out entire pages or else to try to restore the text from memory"! And a "series of the biggest trials"—including the trial which followed the revolt of the Left SR's, and the case of Ad- mirai Shchastny—"were conducted entirely without stenographic records."

  This is strange. The condemnation of the Left SR's was not a trivial matter. It was, after the February and October revolutions, the third turning point in our history, signaling the transition to a one-party system in the state. Not a few of them were shot. And no stenographic record was made.

  And the "Military Plot" of 1919 was "liquidated by the Cheka in an extrajudicial reprisal," which "was further proof of its existence." (In this case more than one thousand people were arrested altogether, and, really, how could trials have been set up for them all?)

  So just try to produce a neat, orderly report on the trials of those years!

  Nevertheless we can learn the important principles involved in them. For example, the supreme accuser—in other words, the Prosecutor General—informs us that the All-Russian Central Ex- ecutive Committee had the right to intervene in any judicial pro- ceeding. "VTsIK pardons and punishes, at its own discretion without any limitation whatever." For example, a six-month sentence was changed to ten years. (And, as the reader under- stands, it was not necessary for the entire All-Russian Central Executive Committee to assemble at a plenary meeting to this end, since its Chairman, Sverdlov, for example, could correct a sentence without leaving his office.) All of this, Krylenko ex- plains, "shows the superiority of our system over the false theory of the separation of powers," that is, the theory of the independ- ence of the judiciary. (True, Sverdlov also said: "It is very good that the legislative and executive power are not divided by a thick wall as they are in the West. All problems can be decided quickly." Especially on the phone.)

  Krylenko formulated even more frankly and precisely the general tasks of the Soviet Courts in his speeches before those tribunals, when the court was "at one and the same time both

  the creator of the law [Krylenko's italics] . . . and a political weapon." (My italics.)

  Creator of the law because, for four years, there were no codes. They had thrown out the Tsarist codes, and they had not com- posed their own. "Don't tell me our criminal courts ought to act exclusively on the basis of existing written norms. We live in the process of Revolution." "A tribunal is not the kind of court in which fine points of jurisprudence and clever stratagems are to be restored. . . . We are creating a new law and new ethical norms." And also: "No matter how much is said here about the eternal law of truth, justice, etc., we know . . . how dearly these have cost us."

  (But if your prison terms are compared with ours, maybe it didn't cost you so dearly after all? Maybe eternal justice was somewhat more comfortable?)

  The reason that fine points of jurisprudence are unnecessary is that there is no need to clarify whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty: the concept of guilt is an old bourgeois concept which has now been uprooted.

  And so we heard from Comrade Krylenko that a tribunal was not that kind of court! On another occasion we would hear from him that a tribunal was not a court at all: "A tribunal is an organ of the class struggle of the workers directed against their enemies" and must act "from the point of view of the interests of the revolu- tion . . . having in mind the most desirable results for the masses of workers and peasants." People are not people, but "carriers of specific ideas." "No matter what the individual qualities [of the defendant], only one method of evaluating him is to be applied: evaluation from the point of view of class expediency."

  In other words, you can exist only if it's expedient for the working class. And if "this expediency should require that the avenging sword should fall on the head of the defendants, then no ... verbal arguments can help." (Such a
s arguments by lawyers, etc.) "In our revolutionary court we are guided not by articles of the law and not by the degree of extenuating circum- stances; in the tribunal we must proceed on the basis of con- siderations of expediency."

  That was the way it was in those years: people lived and breathed and then suddenly found out that their existence was inexpedient.

  And it must also be kept in mind that it was not what he had done that constituted the defendant's burden, but what he might do if he were not shot now. "We protect ourselves not only against the past but also against the future."

  Comrade Krylenko's pronouncements are clear and all-inclu- sive. They bring alive for us that whole period of the law in sharp relief. The clarity of autumn suddenly pierces the mists of spring and reaches us. And is it perhaps unnecessary to go further? Perhaps we aren't required to page through trial after trial. These pronouncements will be henceforth inexorably applied.

  Close your eyes tight for a minute and picture a tiny court- room—not yet gilded. Earnest members of the tribunal in simple field jackets, lean, not yet fat-faced. The accusing power—as Krylenko loved to style himself—wears an unbuttoned civilian jacket, with a glimpse of a sailor's striped undershirt just visible at the open throat.

  The supreme accuser expresses himself in this sort of language: "The question of fact is interesting to me!"; "Define concretely the aspect of the tendency!"; "We are operating on the plane of analysis of objective truth." Sometimes, as you read, a quotation from the Latin shines out. (It is true that the same quotation turns up in case after case, but, after several years, a different one does appear. ) And no wonder—he did, after all, complete the course in two faculties despite all his revolutionary running around. What attracts one to him are his frank opinions about the de- fendants: "Professional scoundrels!" And he isn't hypocritical in the least. If he didn't like the defendant's smile, he didn't hes- itate to blurt out a threat, even before any sentence was imposed.

  "And as for you and your smile, Citizeness Ivanova, we'll make you pay for it, and we'll find a way to fix it so that you never laugh again!"

  So, shall we begin?

  A. The Case of "Russkiye Vedomosti"

  In this case, one of the earliest, free speech was on trial. On March 24, 1918, this famous "professorial" newspaper published an article by Savinkov entitled "En Route." They would have much preferred to arrest Savinkov himself, but he really was en route, damn it, and where was he to be found? So instead they closed down the paper and brought the elderly editor, P. V. Yegorov, to court as a defendant, insisting that he explain how he had dared to publish the article. After all, the New Era was four months old, and it was time to get used to it!

  Yegorov naively defended himself by saying that the article had been written by a "leading political figure whose opinion was of general interest whether or not the editors shared it." Further- more, he saw nothing slanderous in Savinkov's having said: "Let us not forget that Lenin, Natanson, and Co. arrived in Russia via Berlin; i.e., that the German authorities helped them return to the homeland"—because that in actual fact was what had hap- pened; Kaiser Wilhelm's embattled Germany had helped Com- rade Lenin to return.

  Krylenko retorted that he would not conduct a prosecution for slander (why not?), and that the newspaper was on trial for attempting to influence people's minds! (And how could any newspaper dare have such a purpose!?)

  The formal charge did not include Savinkov's phrase: "One has to be criminally insane to affirm seriously that the interna- tional proletariat will come to our aid"—because it still would come to our aid.

  For attempting to influence people's minds, the newspaper, which had been published since 1864 and had survived the most fiercely reactionary periods—those of Loris-Melikov, Pobedo- nostsev, Stolypin, Kasso, and all the rest—was ordered closed down forever! And Yegorov, the editor—and this is a shameful thing to have to say—was given only three months of solitary— just as though we were in Greece or some such place. (It is not so shamefully lenient, however, if one stops to think that it was only 1918! And if the old man managed to survive, he would be imprisoned again, and many more times too! )

  It may seem strange to us now, but it is a fact that in those thunderous years bribes were given and taken just as tenderly as they had been from time immemorial in Old Russia and as they will be in the Soviet Union from here to eternity. Bribery was particularly rife in the judicial organs. And, though we blush to say it, in the Cheka. The official histories in their red, gold- stamped bindings are silent about this, but the old folks and eye- witnesses remember that the fate of political prisoners in the first years of the Revolution, as distinct from Stalinist times, often depended on bribes: they were accepted uninhibitedly, and pris- oners were honestly released as a result. Although Krylenko picked out only a dozen cases for the five-year period his book covers, he reports two cases of bribery. Alas, even the Moscow Tribunal and the Supreme Tribunal squeezed their way through to perfection along a crooked path, muddied themselves in im- proprieties.

  B. The Case of the Three Interrogators of the Moscow Revtribunal— April, 1918

  In March, 1918, a speculator in gold bars named Beridze was arrested. His wife tried to find a way to ransom her husband, which was the accepted thing to do. Through a series of connec- tions she succeeded in getting to one of the interrogators, who brought two others in with him. Meeting secretly, they demanded a bribe of 250,000 rubles, but, after some bargaining, they re- duced it to 60,000, half in advance. The deal was to be made through the lawyer Grin. Everything would have gone off without a fuss, as hundreds of similar deals had, and the case would have gotten into neither Krylenko's chronicle nor ours, nor even be- come a matter of concern to the Council of People's Commissars, had it not been that Beridze's wife began to get miserly, and brought Grin only 15,000 as an advance payment, instead of 30,000. But the main thing was that, in consequence of female fickleness, she changed her mind overnight, decided her lawyer wasn't good enough for her, and went off the next morning to find another, the attorney Yakulov. It is not stated anywhere, but it was evidently Yakulov who decided to turn in the interrogators.

  It is of interest that all the witnesses in this trial, beginning with the unfortunate wife, tried to give testimony helpful to the accused and to befuddle the prosecution. (Which would have been impossible in a political trial!) Krylenko explained their conduct as the result of a narrow-minded, philistine attitude, be- cause they felt like outsiders as far as the Revtribunal was con- cerned. (And might we ourselves be so audacious as to advance the philistine hypothesis that in the course of a year and a half the witnesses had already learned to be afraid of the dictatorship of the proletariat? After all, it took a lot of nerve to turn in the interrogators of the Revtribunal. What would happen to you after that?)

  The accuser's line of argument is also of interest. After all, just a month earlier the defendants had been his associates, his comrades in arms, his assistants. They were people who had been inalienably dedicated to the interests of the Revolution, and one of them, Leist, was even "a stern accuser, capable of hurling thunder and lightning at anyone who attacked the foundations." What was he to say about them now? Where was he to look for the causes of their fall? (A bribe was not enough in itself.) And, of course, it is clear where he looked: in their pasts, in their biog- graphies!

  Declared Krylenko: "If we look closely" at this Leist, "we will find highly interesting information." This is intriguing. Was he an inveterate adventurer? No, but he was the son of a professor at Moscow University! And not an ordinary professor, but one who had survived twenty years of reaction by his indifference to political activity! (And who, notwithstanding that reaction, had been accepted by Krylenko as a consultant.) Was it surprising, then, that the son turned out to be a double-dealer?

  As for Podgaisky, he was the son of an official in the law courts . . . beyond doubt one of the reactionary, pogrom-organizing Black Hundreds; otherwise how could he have served the Tsar for t
wenty years? And the son, too, had prepared for a career in the law courts, but then the Revolution had come—and he had wormed his way into the Revtribunal. Just yesterday all this had been depicted in a very favorable light, but it had suddenly be- come repulsive!

  More repulsive than them both was, of course, Gugel. He had been a publisher. And what intellectual food had he been offer- ing the workers and peasants? He was "nourishing the broad masses with low-quality literature," not Marx but, instead, books by bourgeois professors with world-famous names. (And we shall soon encounter these professors as defendants too.)

  Krylenko is enraged and marvels at the kind of people who have sneaked into the tribunal. (Neither do we understand: What kind of people are the workers' and peasants' tribunals composed of? Why had the proletariat entrusted the task of striking down their enemies to people of this particular kind?)

  And as for Grin, the lawyer, a man with an "in" on the in- vestigating commission, who was quite able to get anybody off scot-free, he was a typical representative of that subspecies of the human race which Marx called "leeches on the capitalist structure"—a category including, in addition, all lawyers, gen- darmes, priests, and also . . . notaries.

  It appears that Krylenko spared no effort in demanding merci- lessly severe sentences, without reference to "the individual shad- ings of guilt." But some kind of lethargy, some sort of torpor, overcame the eternally vigorous tribunal, and it just barely man- aged to mumble six months in jail for the interrogators, and a fine for the lawyer. And only by availing himself of the authority of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee "to punish without limitation," did Krylenko, there in the Metropole, con- tinue to hang ten-year sentences on the interrogators and five on the lawyer, plus full confiscation of his property. Krylenko thundered on about vigilance, and he almost managed, but not quite, to get the title of Tribune he so coveted.

  We recognize that among the revolutionary masses at the time, as among our readers today, this unfortunate trial could not but undermine faith in the sanctity of the tribunal. And we there- fore proceed with even greater timidity to the next case, which concerned an even loftier institution.