tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11328442080940790222024-02-08T02:22:18.433-08:00Russian HistoryGrigory Grigorov MemoirsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-17471861804569577832020-10-22T03:23:00.012-07:002020-10-22T03:32:19.565-07:00The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online XVI (2010), no. 23 <p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">Grigorij Grigorov: Povoroty sud'by i proizvol.
Vospominanija. 1905-1927 gody,</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moskva, OGI, 2005. 536 p. (Častnyj archiv). ISBN
5-94282-281-6; Grigorij <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Grigorov: Povoroty sud’by i proizvol.
Vospominanija. 1928-1972, s.p., [2008]. 682 p. No ISBN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Not many members of the Left Opposition in the Soviet
Union survived Stalin's terror regime. Those who wrote about their experiences
of struggle and repression constitute even a lesser quantity.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">In 2005, the OGI</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">publishing</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">house</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">released</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">such</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">a</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">rare</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">document</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">–</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">first</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">volume</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">of</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">memoirs</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">of</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Grigorii</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Isaevich</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Grigorov</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">(1900-1994),</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">revolutionary,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">scientist,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">dissident</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">and</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Gulag</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">inmate.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Born into</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">a</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Jewish</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">craftsman</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">family,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Grigorov</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">joins</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the revolutionary movement as a teenager, takes part in the revolutions
of February and October 1917, fights on the side of the Reds in the Civil War,
becomes imprisoned by Denikin and is freed</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">again</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">by</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Nestor</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Makhno.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">After</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">war,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Grigorov</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">succeeds</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">in</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">obtaining</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">a</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">proper</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">education through rabfak
institutions, specializes himself in philosophy and becomes a "red professor",</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">obtaining</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">a</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">doctoral</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">degree</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">with</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">a</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">monograph</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">on</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Spinoza</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">and</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">being</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">close</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">to</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Abram</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Deborin,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Evgenii</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Preobrazhenskii</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">and</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">David</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Riazanov.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Having an</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">independent</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">mindset</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">and</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">not</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">being</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">content</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">with</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">bureaucratization</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">of</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">party,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Grigorov</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">associates himself</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">with</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Opposition</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">from</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">1923</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">on,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">and</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">is</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">forced</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">to</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">move</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">to</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Siberia,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">where</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">he</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">can</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">work</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">relatively</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">freely</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">due</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">to</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">his</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">friendship</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">with</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Vladimir</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Kosior.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">From 1926</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">on,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">when</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">the</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">struggle between the United
(Communist) Opposition and Stalin's circle reaches a new level, Grigorov takes
part in the work of clandestine circles, crossing paths with Lev </span><span style="font-size: 16.6667px;">Trotsky</span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">, Karl
Radek,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Victor</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Serge</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">and</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">other</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">prominent</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">oppositionists.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">The first volume ends
with the author's expulsion from the party in 1927.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A planned 2nd volume did not see the light in Russia
for unknown reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, Grigorov's
son, who lives in Israel, has put out an extremely limited print run of the 2nd
volume in 2008.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dealing with the period between
1928 and 1972, it proves to be a fascinating and highly valuable source on the Stalin
era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>1928,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>after<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“capitulation”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radek,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Preobrazhenskii and Smilga, Grigorov is more than ever active for the
Opposition - yet in a way<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fails to please<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>him: Carrying<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>out<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>controversial<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>tactical<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>decision of the Left Opposition’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>leadership<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>disband on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>oppositionist groups in order to be able to
operate within the party, he goes on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>liquidator<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mission into the Soviet province, including the
Caucasus, and is confronted with frustration of rank-and-file oppositionists
who are not at all willing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>give up the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>organized struggle. In the same year, Grigorov faces arrest and deportation
to a village in the Ural, where he spends the next two years together with Desist
leader Vladimir Smirnov, first-hand experiencing the brutal peasant collectivization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a brief period of freedom back in Leningrad,
Grigorov and his wife (an old Bolshevik revolutionary herself) get arrested
straight after the Kirov murder in 1934. What follows is an odyssey through several
Gulag camps, where the couple manages to stay together for most of the time. Grigorov<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>experiences<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trotskyist <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>prisoners'<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>famous hunger strike in Vorkuta (in which he does not take part) and the
massacre that followed thereafter – and it is striking that the information on
these events, which he brought to paper in the 1970s-1980s </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12.5pt;">without access to any sources, corresponds with
the findings of recent research.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After being released in 1939, again his freedom
does not last long: he is mobilized into the army for the war against Finland,
captured by enemy troops and spends the following (comparably easy) years as a POW
in Finland. In 1944, after the Soviet Union made peace with Finland, Grigorov
is arrested again by the infamous SMERSh counter-intelligence, and another period
of Gulag imprisonment begins, ending only in March 1955. During the times of Khrushchev
and Brezhnev, Grigorov works as a schoolteacher and succeeds to get back into science,
shifting to geology (using the experience he gained participating as forced laborer
in geological expeditions during his imprisonment). His monograph on the entanglements
of philosophy and geography gets published in Kiev in 1983, while his memoirs, which
he has been secretly writing from the mid-1960s until 1983, of course remain unpublished
during Soviet times. During late perestroika, in 1988, Grigorov writes a letter
to Soviet historian Vladimir Billik where he shares his memories on the
encounters with Trotsky.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Shortly after, in 1989, he </span><span style="font-size: 16.6667px;">immigrated</span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;"> to Israel
together with his son's family, where </span></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12.5pt;">he dies in 1994.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12.5pt;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">The memoirs of Grigorii Grigorov, contemporary of
the 20th century in a literal sense, have an immense historical value for
scholars of the Left Opposition, but also they are fruitful as a source for
several aspects of the Russian Revolution, the early Soviet Union and the times
of Stalinism. And, above all, they are a highly fascinating read.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Gleb J. Albert, Bielefeld</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.5pt;">Source: https://incs.ub.rub.de/index.php/INCS/article/view/361/319</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-28736790450287604742020-06-17T00:52:00.000-07:002020-06-17T01:03:04.049-07:00Finnish Archives information found<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Thanks a lot to Liisa Vuonokari-Bomström from <span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: "calibri" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">University of Turku , </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "calibri" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">faculty of Finnish history for some information she found in Finnish archives about my Grandfather Grigory Grigorov.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "calibri" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "calibri" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Read below her email</span></span><br />
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The little I know about doctor Gregory Grigorov is that she was taken as a POW during the WWII in the by finns occupied Carelia. After having been in different camps for POW:s and civil prisoners he was taken to work in so called war booty archives 7.9.1942. In that occasion he was liberated from the concentration camp 3, and could live in the city of Petrozavodsk quite freely.</div>
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The war booty archives was a organisation that intended to collect all archival material and books that was left to the occupied region by soviet institutions but also private persons. The aim was to create provicial archives of Äänislinna (as the Finns called Petrozavodsk) as the idea was to annex East Karelia to Finland. That plan failed and Finns left Petrozavods june 1944.</div>
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As your grandfather had said to the Finns to be a doctor of geology his task in the war booty archives was to sort books concerning geology, physics, chemistry and so on. He was some period also a foreman for the local workers of archives.</div>
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Sadly, the archives I have used include very little information about the local workers and prisoners used in the War booty Archives. They were referred as "prisoners" or "russians" not as individuals. The little I know about him bases on two interrogation protocols. The first one was made after that the University building that housed archives was partly burned-out. All the personnel and prisoners used in the work were interrogated in that occasion.</div>
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That's why I was so happy to find out that your grandfather have wrote his memoirs. It gives me the possibility to give a voice to at least one soviet worker of the archives though your grand <wbr></wbr>father seems to have been far from a "typical" example of the workforce used.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second protocol was made by soviet officials after the Red army had arrived in the Petrozavodsk. Soviet officials interrogated individuals who had worked to the Finns partly to collect information about possible war crimes of Finns, partly to punish "collaborators". I think the history of your grandfather as a former prisoner of Gulag gave him a little chance to avoid the new imprisonment that followed.</span></div>
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I have to say I was really glad to find out that he survived the Gulag and lived such a long life. I hope he had some really good years after all the atrocities he had gone through. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-90229438492738655812017-10-30T02:05:00.001-07:002017-10-30T02:15:25.974-07:00BOOK 2, P A R T 7, CHAPTER 1
On the next day after meeting with Trotsky I was in Leningrad with my family. It was the eve of the year 1928-th. We celebrated it at home, everybody was present, which was then rare. When my son and daughters were sleeping, Dina and I discussed the situation. We decided that I had to leave Leningrad, as mass arrests were expected. On the next day we invited A.L. Bronstain and I told her of my meeting with her late husband at A. Beloborodov’s flat. I told sincerely, that I considered Trotsky’s position strange, I did not understand his wish to convince his supporters not to leave the Party, to dismiss themselves. Alexandra Lvovna considered, that Trotsky understood the situation, but did not want to acknowledge it and did not want to act. She thought that Trotsky’s and hid numerous supporters’ arrest was inevitable. I agreed with her and we could not explain Trotsky’s position. After Alexandra Lvovna left Dina said that I would better stop to be interested in political problems and to speak in public. She wanted me to pay more attention to family. I explained that now it was late to speak of it, as “a case” was started on me in the Central Committee, I was excluded from the Party and lost work. Now arrest is to be expected, it is inevitable, but can be postponed. I really cannot be indifferent, when the dreams of freedom, that people of our generation cherished, are destroyed, and the most progressive people, who struggled for many years for social ideals, are now repressed. My wife understood me very well.
<br /><br />
Before leaving Leningrad I called upon Misha Ivanov. I met there his friends, workers of Lenin works, where he lately was Party secretary. The workers estimated the situation very critically: they thought, that it was necessary to finish with the dream of socialism, another revolution was to be done, but it was beyond their powers. When they left, Misha told me the last Leningrad news. The journalists of “Bukharin school” wrote in “Leningrad Pravda” of a big victory over the opposition, cited extracts from Stalin’s, Molotov’s, Shkiryatov’s reports at the XY-th Party congress. Misha noted, that in some articles critical remarks on N.I. Bukharin appeared, that Bukharin did not totally approve organizational conclusions related to opposition at the XV-th congress. All the works by Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Preobrazhensky and even the first “Leniniana”, edited by Kamenev, are excluded from libraries. Teachers cite less Lenin’s and Bukharin’s works an anted to recommend it to the journal “Under the Banner of Marxism”. In this case I would help my family with money. But then Deborin was suddenly abused to be a “Menshevist idealist”. Idealism as philosophic trend was Plato’s and Aristotle’s science. There were many trends: objective and subjective idealism, rational and empirical and so on. But there was no “Menshevist idealism”. New philosophers-politicians invented this term to compromise A.M. Deborin, one of Plekhanov’s disciples. He was charged in denying Lenin’s period in Marxist philosophy, did not acknowledge Marxist- Leninist dialectics. Just then a quick rise of such “philosophers”- falsifiers as Mitin, Yudin, Raltsevich, Rozental, who did not hesitate to acknowledge Stalin a great philosopher, historian, biologist and so on. Under a vigilant supervision of the Central Committee ideologists a huge army of ignorant scientists and teachers of natural and humanitarian d prefer “theoretical pearls” by gensec. Some especially prompt “historians” try to present Stalin as a theorist of socialism, organizer of October revolution and a great military strategist. Misha said, that he was dismissed from work, he was a locksmith. He compared it with tsarist power: if you were dismissed from one place, you could go to another one, but now there are directions not to take oppositions to work. Now we have to leave Leningrad and not to spend night at home. Yet I went home, said good-bye to my wife and children and early in the morning left Leningrad. I did not think, that I was parting with family for rather long time.
<br /><br />
In Moscow D. Ryazanov sheltered me for the first time in Socialist Academy, I was sleeping on a sofa in one of the rooms. Ryazanov gave me work for translations from German. A.M. Deborin, editor in chief of “Under the Banner of Marxism” journal often called to the Academy, I knew him from the time of studying at the Institute of Red Professorship. Ryazanov and Deborin were acquainted with my monography on B. Spinoza. In this monography I mentioned that Spinoza influenced Marx and Engels. Ryazanov did not consider Spinoza a materialist, he considered him a rationalist and Pantheist,according L.I. Axelrod opinion. Deborin considered Spinoza a materialist. I also then considered Spinoza’s philosophy as a materialistic one. Ryazanov and Deborin adviced me to supplement my monograph, they wanted to recommend it to the journal “Under the Banner of Marxism”. In this case I could help my family with money. But suddenly situation changed. A.M. Deborin was absurdly called “a Menshevist idealist”. There were many trends of idealism: objective, subjective, rational and so on. There was no “Menshevist idealism”, this is not philosophy. New “philosophers”-poiticians invented this term to compromise Deborin, one of Plekhanov’s apprenticies. He was charged with denial of Lenin’s stage in Marxist philosophy. In those years in philosophy an epoch of total absurd began, the science was substituted with politics, a special pseudo-scientific terminology was invented. “Menshevist idealists” were charged with many “sins”: support of “Trotskism,” support of the second International ideas and so on. The journal “Under the Banner of Marxism” was called a mouthpiece of counter-revolution. All this influenced badly on A.M. Deborin, he tried to drown himself in Moskva-river. He was taken out and put to psychiatric clinic. The scandal acquired an international character, after that Deborin was elected an academician (!) The real reason of Deborin’s and his apprentices persecution was that they did not over-oriented themselves, did not say that a new “philosopher” Stalin “rose Marxist-Leninist philosophy to unprecedented height”. Just at this time a quick growth of “philosophers-falsifiers”, as Mitin, Udin, Raltsevich, Rosental began. They promptly acknowleged Stalin a great philosopher, historian, biologist. Under diligent supervision of the Central Committee ideologists a huge army of ignorant scientists and teachers of natural and humanitarian sciences was created.
<br /><br />
In such conditions I could not abuse Ryazanov’s hospitality, and looked for a new place. My old friend Nikolay Vikhirev offered me to live in his summer-cottage near Moscow, where it was possible to live in winter. I felt easy there, sleuths did not call there. Vikhirev gave me materials on the XY-th Party congress and I began to study them.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-13556830757574638862014-07-01T06:38:00.003-07:002014-11-17T06:43:00.283-08:00Brief overview of memoirs by Grigory GrigorovAuthor - <a href="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit1.php">Shulamit Shalit - Grigorov's Monologues</a>
<br /><br />
"When destiny in our steps was walking,<br />
Like a madman with a razor in his hand".<br />
Arseniy Tarkovsky, First Rendezvous
<br /><br />
It's no accident that he put these words as an epigraph to one of the chapters in his memoirs. He could have put them as an epigraph to his whole life. The unknown writer, the unknown philosopher, well-educated and spiritually strong. He took part in many events that sent shockwaves through Russia in the 20th century. However, his name has just started gaining wider recognition.
<img src="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit1.jpg"><br />
Grigory Grigorov in the 1980s
<br /><br />
When writing his memoirs, Grigory Grigorov pointed out the following milestones of his life:
From 1923 until 1927 he lived in exile without being arrested. For five years his every step was carefully monitored by the State Political Directorate, also known under its Russian acronym GPU.
<br /><br />
In the period starting from 1928 and ending in 1952 he received serval prison sentences with the total prison term equal to 29 years. He was accused of counter-revolutionary activities and Trotskyism (i.e. support for Lev Trotsky who was regarded as an opponent to Joseph Stalin).
<br /><br />
Grigory got his last prison term in 1952, when serving the previously given ten-year term in a labor camp. All in all he spent 20 years and a half in prisons and labor camps.
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Grigory was released from prison ahead of schedule twice (for the first time in 1930 from the Siberian exile six months before his term would be over, and for the second time in 1955 from the concentration camp eight years ahead of schedule). From the end of 1941 until the middle of 1944 (i.e. for two years and a half) he stayed in Finland as a prisoner of war.
<br /><br />
In 1940-1941 and in 1955-1956 he lived under close scrutiny of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Committee for State Security (also known under its Russian acronym KGB) and was deprived of the right to live in many Russian cities and to be engaged in activities which had anything to do with ideological issues.
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Having pointing out these milestones, Grigory drew the following conclusion: "It is widely recognized that the most productive age lasts from 16 years old until 75 years old. Five years of my life were devoted to pre-revolutionary underground activities and military service in the Red Army during the Civil War. Taking into account all the years I spent in jail and labor camps, it means I could live productively, doing the work I love, for only 17 years and a half, including ten years starting from the age of 65 until the age of 75. That's a huge tragedy for any person, particularly for a creative one".
<br /><br />
Grigory was an exceptionally gifted man. He knew Latin and was fluent in German. He remembered miscellaneous quotations from the Roman and Greek classical literature and Heinrich Heine. He was fond of reading and listening to music and had impressive vocal skills. After the Civil War Grigory studied in the Institute of Red Professors and was appointed professor of philosophy when he was 25 years old. In the meantime, very soon, with the advent of Joseph Stalin and totalitarian state, all his aspirations were ruined. When persecutions started, Grigory realized that he would not be able to publish his literary and philosophical works.
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<img src="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit2.jpg">
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Grigory Grigorov, young professor of philosophy <br /><br />
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Grigory left a detailed description of his life as intertwined with violent and unimaginable events that rocked Russia and the Soviet Union for many years. His memoirs cover the period starting from 1905 and ending in 1983.
<br /><br />
Grigory Grigorov was born in 1900. Very few people of his generation managed to simply live through the entire 20th century until our days. He survived, wrote memoirs and made honest life conclusions. He came to Israel in 1989 and spent there the last five years of his life. The sad irony of the situation is that he could have come to Palestine 70 years ago, had his life taken a different turn.
<br /><br />
He was 16 years old when he came to the city of Ekaterinoslav, presently known as Dnepropetrovk, from a little backward town. He was so amazed with what he saw that used to take long walks around the city. Once he got into a poor district. Presumably it was a wage day. He saw a beautiful young woman some 20 meters away from him. She was tugging at the sleeve of a tall dark-haired lad, persuading him to go home. In response to her endearing words he smashed her in the face. "I felt blood rushing through my head", Grigory said. "I lost self-control, rushed to this guy and pushed his belly with my head". All of a sudden Grigory felt piercing pain, with someone's sharp teeth sinking into his cheek. He saw blood dripping onto his shirt, turned around and saw that same woman he was trying to defend. A crowd started gathering around them. Two young passers-by saved Grigory from the brewing trouble. One of them was Moulya, i.e.Abraham Shlonsky, who would later become a well-known poet and translator in Israel. They became friends. Soon Moulya started helping Grigory remove gaps in education, taught him foreign languages, history and literature. They had heated debates. Moulya was trying to persuade Grigory that Jews should take their own path: "We need to stop serving other nations and enrich their economy, culture and science. It's high time that we have our own writers, scientists and artists". However Grigory remained steadfast and regarded Zionists as idealists with rose-colored glasses. Their life paths diverged. When leaving for Palestine in 1921, Moulya asked Grigory to come with him but Grigory stayed in Russia. He continued to cherish revolutionary illusions, believing that eventually revolution would lead to freedom, equality and brotherhood.
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He would be arrested for the first time in two years, but he would recollect Moulya's words only in 31 years, in 1952, in Norilsk labor camp, when he would be accused of Zionism and sentenced to ten more years in prison. By that time he already knew that the state of Israel had been founded and that it went through its first war for independence. "Only at that moment, lying on a plank bed in a concentration camp, I realized that social revolutions could never keep Jews free from humiliation and would never bring them equality and human dignity".
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Who knows what would have happened, had he left with Abraham Shlonsky in 1921. He could have become a well-known Jewish philosopher, with his name being added to Israeli encyclopedias. But his life took a very dramatic turn.
<br /><br />
Grigory managed to withstand all the ordeals that befell him and remained faithful to his principles. He reconsidered all the events he had witnessed and gave them a very detailed description. In 1989 his family left for Israel, where he lived for the last five years and died peacefully in 1994, bidding a light-hearted farewell to this world, on the very eve of the 21st century. "Millions of people slaved away in GULAG labor camps, worked hard and died. Was it pure luck that I survived or something helped me?"
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<img src="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit3.jpg"><br />
Grigory Grigorov in Israel. More than 90 years old
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While growing old, making life observations, reading and contemplating, he wanted to understand whether it is possible that numerous victims and sacrifices taught Russian people nothing. His memoirs contain three thousand pages and they are unique, as is spiritual life of this remarkable man.
<br /><br />
Until he was 20, his name was Gershele Monastirsky. He was born in the little town of Starodub located in the Chernigov region to a hard-working family that had many children. He had vague memories of his great-grandfather on his mother's side who died at the age of 102. Right before his death he lit the candles, lay down and passed away peacefully. His grandfather on his father's side lived in the village next to the monastery, and that was the origin of his family name. Gershele morphed in Grigory Grigorov in 1919, when he fought in the rear of the White (i.e. pro-tsar) Army, executing tasks given by the underground organization headquartered in Ekaterinoslav. In order to understand what helped Grigory survive physically and spiritually, retain the ability to analyze both global events and his own mistakes, it is necessary to look through the list of quotations he collected over his life and wrote down in columns one after another. These wise thoughts helped him fight despair and remain hopeful.
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<img src="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit4.jpg"><br /><br />
Grigory Grigorov (on the right) with his friend. Tomsk city, 1924
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The first quotation refers to words his mother Rachel used to say: "There is no way to escape your destiny". These words are followed by quotations from the classical literature: "On what slender threads do life and fortune hang" from Alexander Duma, "Courage lost, all is lost - better you never born" from Johann Goethe, an extended quote from Prometheus, a poem written by George Gordon Byron: "But baffled as thou wert from high, / Still in thy patient energy, / In the endurance and repulse / Of thine impenetrable spirit, / Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, / A mighty lesson we inherit..." For whom did he write down these quotations? Only for himself? Or probably for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Or may be for his future readers as well?
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These quotations reflect complex contradictions of human life. What's the best way to survive? Is it better to surrender to one's fate and circumstances that frequently develop without our direct involvement? Is it wiser to humbly accept the way things unfold and resign oneself to other people's intentions? Or a man should step against unfavorable circumstances, bearing in mind that his consciousness, will and energy are overwhelming. It might seem idealistic and even naive now, but when Grigory was young, he chose Prometheus as his role model, the hero of the Greek mythology that brought fire to the mankind in defiance of orders given by the gods from Mount Olympus. For Grigory, this character was an example of free spirit, strong will and ability to withstand one's fate.
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<img src="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit5.jpg"><br />
Grigory Grigirov in Norilsk labor camp, 1951
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Here are several examples of Grigory's life stories:<br />
"When I was young, I quite often had to make fast decisions whether to hope for the best and do nothing or to take quick actions to save my life. I am not talking about war, when death is always lurking behind, but somehow you never think that a stray bullet can put an end to your life. I am referring to situations when you can die because of your own mistakes or weakness, when you can rely only on your own strength, self-control and stamina. I will now tell you about a couple of very tight situations I went through when I was young. The first one happened in 1919. I received an assignment from underground authorities to go to Sevastopol by train to set up links with soldiers of the Black Sea fleet and local workers. Officers entered the railway car in Alexandrovsk town and began checking passports. They were looking for Jews and for commissars. I was both a Jew and a commissar. I was very nervous but did my best to remain unflappable and pretended I was reading a book. The underground authorities had given me good ID papers, but the officer began scrutinizing me and finally asked to say the Russian word "kukurusa" (corn), expecting to hear a throatal r sound typical of the Jewish dialect. I pronounced this word clearly with distinct roaring r. The officer let me go. But what would have happened had I pronounced this word incorrectly? Another situation happened when I was taking gold, silver and other valuables to Kharkov with a group of soldiers from the Red Army. These precious metals reserves were packed in bags and loaded into sealed railway cars. At Samoylovka railway station we were surrounded by the horse detachment headed by the gang leader whose name was Farther Knysh. There were three hundred people in this detachment armed with sables and rifles. Farther Knysh cried: "What is your cargo?" The myriad of thoughts sped through my head: what should I answer? Then I replied: "We are taking killed soldiers to their relatives". Farther Knysh ordered his horsemen to pull off their hats as a sign of respect for the dead and crossed himself. All soldiers began crossing themselves, too. "Good luck, boys", he said. And his detachment rode away towards Pavlograd town. But what would have happened, had Knysh told us to open the railway cars? What saved us? Keeping self-control, thinking fast and knowing psychology of peasants who gathered in different gangs in those tremulous times.
<br /><br />
There was another tricky situation in my life when I thought there was no way out and was already trying to imagine how my poor parents would take the news I had been killed. I was going to Sevastopol for the second time and at Sinelnikovo railway station I had to change trains. That's where I was betrayed by a medical attendant who had known me before as a head of the political department at a hospital in Ekaterinoslav. Soldiers from the punitive division put me suspended in air with my arms tied, hit me with ramrods and whips, insisted on my saying who my friends are. They went on torturing me for several days. When I was losing consciousness, they dragged me into my cell and poured cold water onto me. The next day torturing resumed. I either denied everything the traitor had told them or kept silence. I thought there was no way out. All of a sudden the investigation stopped. The army headed by Farther Makhno took hold of the city in a swift assault. Makhno's followers destroyed the prison doors and set us free. What saved me this time? I believe both luck and self-control, the ability to handle physical pain and tortures".
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<img src="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit6.jpg"><br />
Dina, Grigory's wife
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Grigory got acquainted with his future wife Dina in 1921. She was eight years his senior. She was divorced and had two daughters, Vera (nine years old) and Polya (seven years old).
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<img src="http://berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Starina/Nomer4/Shalit7.jpg"><br />
Dina's daughters Vera and Polya
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He was 14 and 12 years older than his step-daughters, but he would become a devoted farther for them for the rest of their life. He was enraptured with Dina: "A strikingly beautiful woman was standing in front of me with that air of feminine beauty described in the Bible. There was inner glow in her smiling brown eyes. Her face was absolutely pure, with no traces of makeup. The way she behaved and talked was simple and free of coquetry. At the same time there was something eye-catching about her. You could feel inner strength".
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They would be arrested together in 1934 and would be declared "the enemies of the people". By that time besides from Vera and Polya they would have their common seven-year-old child, son Vissarion. They would be called "children of the enemies of the people". At first Dina and Grigory would be allowed to stay together in a labor camp but later they would be separated.
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Dina passed away in 1972 aged 81. "My wife was one of those rare people who managed to keep human dignity and high moral values under the beastly Bolshevik regime. I take off my hat to my wife, a remarkable woman, my dear and faithful friend. She is the one I address the lines written by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov: "Under the same star, I am sure, / We both crossed the worldly rims; / We stepped along same road poor, / And were deceived by same false dreams."
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He survived through all the ordeals, Lubyanka, Butyrka, prisons, exiles, solitary confinement, hysterical screams behind the prison wall, punishment cells, beating, hunger strikes and cellmates' death. In 1934 he was accused of organizing the anti-Soviet movement and of inspiring false ideas among students whom he taught philosophy. Authorities said he had corrupted young people ideologically and encouraged them to act against the leading political party. Grigory told the investigator: "You wrote this mean opus, so you should sign it, not me". He was nearly killed. He repeatedly lost consciousness because of beating and expected they would execute him through shooting but instead he was sentenced to five years in labor camps. He survived again. "Metaphorically, this arrest and interrogations proved a certain gate that took me to the sinister world commonly known as Gulag Archipelago. Above this imaginary gate I would put a line from the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: "From thy heart banish fear: of all offense I hitherto absolve thee".
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Grigory realized very soon that his previous prison experience was of little help. A lot had changed in the way the punitive system worked since he came back from his exile in Siberia four years ago. To summarize his survival in soviet prisons and concentration camps, Grigory described the rings of the hell created by Joseph Stalin and his proponents. According to Grigory's estimates, Stalin's hell could be roughly divided into ten rings.
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<img src="http://photo-type.com/images/ded-lager3.jpg"><br>
Grigory Grigorov – doctor's assistant in the Norilsk concentration camp in 1951
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Future generations should be patient and attentive to what this man wrote about not to repeat past mistakes. He wanted to be heard so much. He wanted his descendants not to lose faith, to resists fear and hardships and to remember that life is the ultimate value.
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First ring: prisons, investigation, excruciating interrogations at nights, false witnesses, beating, punishment cell.
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Second ring: transporting of prisoners, walking in chain gangs 25-30 kilometers a day, escorting soldiers, frequently drunk and violent, crying: "One step right, one step left, we will shoot without warning". It is impossible to get used to it. You remain tense all the time.
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Transporting of prisoners in vessels along rivers, usually locked inside orlop decks below the waterline. These ships reminded a floating condemned cell. One foul-smelling bucket for several hundreds of prisoners to be used as a toilet. Hundreds of detainees died because of diseases. The walking dead crawled from orlop decks at the end of such journeys.
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Third ring: transfer centers. This is where a lot of transportation routes crossed. And this is where particularly brutal and large-scale fights happened between criminal and political prisoners.
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Fourth ring: concentration camps. Common works until prisoners are completely exhausted. Some of them died while working.
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Fifth ring: heavy security barrack.
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Sixth ring: internal prison and punishment cells at a concentration camp. Penal colony.
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Seventh ring: diseases and hunger. A lot depended here on a prisoner's genotype, i.e. heredity, stamina, spiritual strength, ability to endure diseases and hunger and not to despair.
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Eighth ring: criminals. It was possible to stand against them with relative success if gathering into groups. Grigory was locked into a cell with criminals several times intentionally, in order to break his will. Some prisoners found this ordeal particularly harsh.
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Ninth ring: haunting threat that detention would last forever, the sense of hopelessness for many years, that caused serious psychic disorders and death in the long run.
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Tenth ring: everyday examination of one's will, need to defend one's human dignity, to withstand moral corruption and emotional debilitation. Without these efforts death approached unnoticed. A lot of people died because they could not stand the general debilitating atmosphere of a concentration camp. They just got morally broken, collapsed spiritually and died.
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Having described these circles of Stalin's hell, Grigory added a line from Dante's Divine Comedy that summarizes what he had lived through and described above: "What fortune or what fate / Before the last day leadeth thee down here?" Sometimes it was better to die rather than to remain hostage to this hopeless never-ending slavery. "I believe that Jews that perished in fire when defending the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from Roman troops, or rebels led by Spartacus, or Masada defenders who committed mass suicide after killing their children and wives, they all wanted to be free. They opted for death to avoid slavery. These heroes made their mark on the world's history, but millions of slaves who ended up in Gulag, worked hard and died without being mourned. I doubt that anyone could now tell how many people disappeared in the icy wilderness of tundra and taiga, in dark waters of Siberian rivers".
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As a historian and philosopher, he was trying to understand the ultimate reason that would explain why so many Russian people ended up in Gulag. Having carefully read researches on the Russian history by Vasily Klyuchevsky and Vladimir Solovyev, he made the conclusion that this reason is deeply rooted in Russia's past, national psyche and mentality. When completing his memoirs, he realized that even the detailed description of the everyday life in concentration camps would fail to explain what prisoners felt being suspended in limbo, between life and death, ready to die any moment. this is why Grigory was searching for a metaphor that would make it clear to people unfamiliar with Stalin's hell what it was like: "For many years, I stayed pressed down by a huge rock, as if it were a gravestone. I could breath, think and even move a little bit, but at the same time my soul became as hard as stone. Fear was obviously a bad advisor in those circumstances. I understood that any awkward move could make this gravestone collapse and bury me. I managed to survive, I was set free. I kept interested in life, science, art, poetry and literature. I am even writing memoirs. And all these years I've been trying to figure out what helped me stay alive. I was endowed with good health, stamina, ability to withstand extreme pain, exceptional memory and analytical mindset. All these qualities were key to my survival. Which of them developed thanks to my parents, whom I loved and respected a lot? Quite many, i.e. will, priority of spiritual values over physical property, diligence, willingness to do any work, including hard and dirty one, frugality, modest habits, desire to learn, respect for knowledge and science and self-respect, which is probably the most important one. I was seriously engaged in philosophical studies before I was arrested in 1934 and was very much interested in philosophy. I believe this helped me a lot when I was confronted with horrors in prisons and concentration camps. When locked in solitary confinement, I began contemplating about philosophical systems developed by Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel. That helped me get distracted, become oblivious to harsh reality and depressing thoughts. This is when I fully realized the deep meaning hidden in the widely-known expression of the French mathematician and philosopher Rene's Descartes "Cogito Ergo Sum" (I think, therefore I am). That's true, a man can be taken prisoner, shackled and isolated, but if he keeps on thinking constructively, it means he keeps on living. And here is another biographical detail, which may seem insignificant at first glance. I was fond of reading since I was a small boy. I read poems, novels and plays. I knew a lot of literary pieces by heart. I remember reading this line in one of Goethe's literary works and it became my guiding star: "Courage lost, all is lost - better you never born". I understood its deep meaning when staying in prisons and labor camps. Sometimes I saw that my cellmates were growing desperate and irritable and it was hard for them not to kick up a row. At such moments I began retelling either a novel or a play, and as a rule it had a strikingly pacifying effect on everyone, particularly on prisoners sentenced on criminal charges. They were very fond of the novel Les Miserables written by Victor Hugo".
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Dante Alighieri's fellow countrymen used to say about him, referring to Inferno: "He was there, he saw everything and came back". Grigory believed that those people who went through all the horrors of Stalin's and Hitler's hell, survived and came back should write about their experience. That' what he did. He hoped that writing would therapeutically help him get rid of haunting memories. Did it really help? Who knows...
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"When the Second World War started I was taken prisoner by the Finnish Army and spent two years and a half in Finnish labor camps. This captivity was very unusual as I was allowed sometimes to leave the camp, to stay in Helsinki and to see how Finnish people live. They were free people of a democratic state. This world was arcane to me, a man born in the tsarist Russia and a citizen of the Soviet Union. The values underlying their life were strikingly different. Personal freedom, human dignity, equal rights and the rule of law were of paramount importance. Since then I have had an opportunity to compare a Soviet citizen with people from a democratic state. Joseph Stalin died years ago, but the system he created is still in place, though slightly improved. Serious changes are not within sight. The country lacks political will to make radical changes. The brightest people, those who were spiritually strong and brave enough to oppose suppression, were killed in droves. And what does the Soviet society look like today? Millions of devastated families and crippled lives. Millions of those who were eventually released from concentration camps but remained crushed, both physically and spiritually. Millions of former investigators, false witnesses and state officials. There is little hope that this sort of society would be able to soon take in ideas of human rights, supremacy of law, moral values and democracy. And what about the state system? It proved low-efficient, and even more so, nonviable and self-destructive. There are no forces that would encourage high productivity, especially as far as agriculture is concerned. Before the revolution which happened in February 1917, Russia used to supply grain to Europe. In the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union was a net-exporter of grain. Corruption, nepotism, protectionism and abuse of alcohol are rampant. Rich natural resources fall prey to predatory extraction tools. If this situation persists, the country will face economic collapse and complete chaos, which will unfold along with the frantic search for solutions. This might result in greater troubles. A quotation from the Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko suggests itself here: "There are gaping abysses in social movements, like in every ocean... Who knows them? Who managed to uncover the mystery that defines the movement of the human ocean? Who could tell with certainty that there is no threat of a new tsunami that would rise anew as unexpectedly as before and with a vengeance?" There is little to add to these prophetic words. Few events might seem more grisly than those that happened to Russia in the 20th century. I would recommend my children take these words very seriously".
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At the end of his memoirs, Grigory Grigorov put a quotation from George Gordon Byron's poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" which he liked a lot:
My task is done - my song hath ceased - my theme<br />
Has died into an echo; it is fit<br />
The spell should break of this protracted dream,<br />
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit<br />
My midnight lamp - and what is writ, is writ, -<br />
Would it were worthier! but I am not now<br />
That which I have been - and my vision flit<br />
Less palpably before me - and the glow<br />
Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.
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The first volume of Grigory Grigorov's memoirs "The Twist of Fate and Tyranny" covering the period from 1905 until 1927 was published in OGI publishing house in Moscow in 2005.
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The second and the third volumes were published in Israel in 2008 and 2010 respectively (with the subtitles "Memoirs, 1928-1972" and "The Russian History, the 20th century: Highlights and Analysis").
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P.S. Big thanks to Katya Levchenko for translation.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-10570398761787968462014-06-17T06:29:00.003-07:002014-06-17T06:39:18.680-07:00Part of the memoirs - Leningrad 1934, after Kirov's killing My wife and I were offered to put on clothes and follow the guards. Our daughters cried, the boy seemed to be asleep. May be, sometimes talented dramatists and producers will be able to show in the theatre all the tragedy of the life in the USSR beginning from the thirtieth years: hundreds of thousands people who gave many years to struggle for their ideals, who were in tsarist jails, underground and the Civil War, now are sent to Soviet jails. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-32318960560848445712014-06-14T09:45:00.001-07:002014-07-01T06:39:20.903-07:00Finnish Captivity (part 2)<b>Chapter 3</b>
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The first days of Finnish captivity. Suoyarvy camp. Camp in Svyat-Navolok .Liberalism and kindness of Finnes. A rouge and provocative agent from Odessa Yeremeev. A military doctor, son of Russian emigrants believes in the future of Russia. Doctor Karl Mary and his fiancée Erna.
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From the first war with Finland, provoked by Hitler, Soviet newspapers were full of the savage treatment facts of Russian captives by Finns. For instance they wrote that Finns cut ears and took out eyes of captives. I did not believe the Soviet press for a long time, but still some suspicion remained me a nation called itself Suomy – as the nation of marshes. I knew very well that Finland had given shelter to many escaped from Russia revolutionaries. Lenin came back from emigration through Finland. During the time of struggle with Russian autocracy a strong social-democratic Working party was formed and acted in Finland.
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As I wrote in the previous chapter, a group of captives walked along the road. A small escort led us to the North of Segozero. Knyazev and I decided to run, to hide in the wood then try to reach Maselsky or Medvezhyegorsk.
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We began to gradually lag behind the column of people; the escort did not notice it. We lay on the earth and began to crawl quickly to the woods. We walked about two kilometers through the woods and suddenly met Finnish soldiers. They surrounded us and we thought that was the end of our lives. But two soldiers just led us to the road, overtook the column of captives and passed us to the escort. The escort only cried: pargele , satana, but they didn't hurt us, but placed us in the first row.
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One of the escorts took out photos from his pocket and showing it explained in broken Russian with a smile: ”This is my mother, this is my bride.” This scene could be taken as illustration of soldiers fraternization between hostile armies.
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We came to the village that was left by its inhabitants. We were quartered in houses by 5 persons in each one. The escorts ordered us strictly not to touch anything in the houses. Everything was in order in our house: pillows are on the beds, a wooden cupboard with plates, cups and saucepans is on the wall, an icon of Christ is in the corner with a still burning oil wick. There was warm and clean in the house, it seemed, the masters of the house went out somewhere. We lay on the floor on home-made carpets . <br />
Though I was tired, I could not sleep, I thought about escaping. My thoughts were interrupted by a noise; a new party of captives came.
As soon as four Finnish officers entered all of us stood up. One of the them told us in Russian that we had to leave the house as the inhabitants came back to the village; they were saved by Finnish soldiers after the shooting.
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We were accommodated in a big barn where there were a few people already. There was a young girl in the middle of the barn. She covered with bandages and was moaning. Also we met there this boy who was saved by us; he rushed to me and said with tears on his face that his mother and sister drowned in Segozero.
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In the evening we received a tank of boiled water and two lumps of sugar for each of us. Knyazev and I did not sleep; my young friend asked me what the Finns can do to us. (He remembered what Soviet news-papers wrote about). They treated us quite decently yet. In the morning five Finnish officers entered into the barn. One of them addressed to us in broken Russian: Be prepared, now we cut your ears and noses and take out your eyes.” We prepared for something awful. Suddenly all them began to laugh soundly. The same officer continued: “Your papers slander us. We won’t do you any harm, you will be treated as captives, you just work and after the war will be over you get back to your country.”
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Everybody breathed freely and began to smile. We got porridge, tea and two lumps of sugar for a breakfast.
Soon ambulance took the burned girl, two sick men and the boy. The boy ran up to me to say good-bye. I stroked his blond hair and turned away. It is always difficult to see suffering children.
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I was confused in the captivity because I saw that the conditions in Finnish captivity cannot be compared with Soviet concentration camps where I had been. In Finland the captives were not flouted or humiliated, but in the native land a political prisoner was always treated as a slave with whom the authorities can do everything they want.
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But one circumstance worried me: the Jewish problem. No other nation on the Earth suffered such persecution as Jews. Probably, because they gave to the Christians a God-man and did not want to knee down before him, when he was transformed into an idol? Never the Jewish question was as keen as after the fascists came to power in Germany. I was anxious: whether democratic Finland treats Jews in the same way as fascist Germany?
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My thoughts were interrupted. All the captives from our barn were placed in lorries, two Finnish soldiers convoyed us. We started to drive down along the wide asphalted road.
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A lot of lorries with soldiers moved in the opposite direction. The driver of one of them threw out two boxes with biscuits right on the road and shouted something in Finnish. Our driver stopped and told us to take the boxes to divide the biscuits between us.
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In the evening we arrived at a big camp Suoyarvy for military and civil captives. In the administration of this camp was a small group of fascists. In the morning, the captives were formed two persons in a row in order to take breakfast. The group of fascists watched after the order: they shouted, demanded of us to keep the file. <br />
One of the captives left the line for some reason. A fascist officer shot and killed him. We became strained. But suddenly something happened unexpectedly. Apparently, in Finland some citizens refused to take part in war because of moral or religious principles. So, they were called “non-participants” and punished in a curious way: If they were soldiers, their belts and shoulder-straps were taken off and they were sent to a separate tent in the territory of a concentration camp.
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There was the same tent in Suoyarvy camp, ten strong men were there. Once they saw the fascist officer killed the captive, they ran to him and began to beat him, took his gun and threw it out behind the camp's fence. The camp commandant, an elderly sergeant major, came up to the beaten fascist, lifted him up, led him to the camp gate and pushed him strongly with his leg out of the camp, saying: Poish, pargele, satana” (get out, devil).The commandant came up to our line and said in a broken Russian: “Such people as this fascist disgrace our people, we won’t let anybody taunt you, you are not responsible for your government.”
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I was deeply impressed with the “non-participants’” and commandant’s behavior. I understood that Finland is a country where keeping the law is obligatory for everybody. There was no roots for wide spread of fascist or anti-Semitic ideology. I also understood that in Soviet news-papers published an impudent lie of Finland.
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Two days after the captives were led to a nearby village for a bath. After that we did not return to the same barrack, but we were accommodated in a big another one. It had doubled number of plank-beds but it wasn't so dense as the previous one was. I received an upper plank-bed placed between beds of Gennady Knyazev and Vasily Ivanovich Polyakov. Polyakov was taken as a prisoner near Sortavala. He told us that Finnish Army took Petrozavodsk but did not go ahead, though the Germans demanded to move its units up to Leningrad, surrounded with German troops.
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Later I learned that deputies of the Social-democratic party of Finnish Seim demanded from Government to be ruled by considerations of strategic interests of Finland and not German interests. It appeared that the Commander–in-chief of the Finnish Army Mannerheim and President of Finland Rutty were members of the ”Progressists” party, founded when Finland was a part of Russian Empire.
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What surprised and rejoiced me very much was the position of the Finnish Government on the Jewish question. In spite of great pressure of fascist Germany, Finland did not admit to persecution or discrimination of Jews on its territory. More than that, Jews served in the Finnish Army. This position of Finland , being an ally of Germany in war, demanded great courage from its Government.
There was a lack of food in Suoyarvy camp. We were given 3-4 crackers a day, two portions of soup from rotten potatoes and a small portion of porridge. Sometimes we were given horse-flesh. All those who did not take part in battles were transferred into Svyat-Navolok camp.
Knyazev and I were transferred as well. Svyat-Navolok was a big village located in the forest at the lake bank. There was no fence, but a commandant’s office headed by a sergeant-major was there.
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Once he told us in a broken Russian: “Mannerheim is more yours than ours, he was loyal to the Russian tzar, he is not Finn, and he is Swede.” It should be noticed that Finnish soldiers and officers very critically treated supreme military command. The captives were quartered in peasants’ houses; we were warned not to take peasants’ things. The majority of Karel peasants did not want to be evacuated, but hid in the forest. There was a big Russian stove in the house we lived in. There were a big wooden table in the middle of the one room and two beds in another room. There was no dining-room or kitchen in the camp, we got a ration for a month, we cooked soup and porridge by ourselves.
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There was a lot of fish in the nearby lake, then captives fished under the control of Finnish soldiers. There were some rogues between the captives, one of them, Eremeyev from Odessa. He pretended to be a hereditary noble man, son of prince Volkonsky. He invented a story that his parents went abroad from Odessa by a ship after the revolution. While people boarded to the ship, Eremeyev, being a boy of ten, ran away. The police caught him and sent to an orphanage, where he had lived several years as Eremeyev. He told Finns that his parents live in Paris and asked to send him there. All the captives understood that it was a feeble legend but simple-hearted Finns believed him. Eremeyev was trusted to give us the ration.
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Besides that in case there was no flour in the camp he was given a horse and a cart to go free to villages to fetch flour. One of the girls in the camp fell in love with Eremeyev, this romance was last for a long. Eremeyev stood at anti-Soviet position and wrote articles to the newspaper for captives depicting the suffering of Soviet people under the Bolsheviks oppression.
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Once he came to my place and said: “I know you are professor of philosophy, imprisoned in Soviet jails and concentration camps as an opposition member.” I was surprised, I had never told anybody about my past. Finally I discovered where he got this information from. Being in Suoyarvy I searched the Finns who took my wallet with the certificate given to me when I had been leaving Vorkuto-Pechersk concentration camp. There was written there about my work and arrests. Obviously, Finns believed Eremeyev to the extent that they showed him the certificate and so he decided to speak to me. He asked me to describe my life in the USSR in a news-paper for captives. I refused him flatly, but Eremeyev did not let me alone. He asked: “Do you consider Finland a democratic country?” I answered: “Yes, Finland is a democratic country because there are several political parties in it, including a working and a peasants’ parties. They have their newspapers in which they can reflect their position.”
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Later, when I was questioned about my Finnish captivity by a Soviet interrogator, Eremeyev was a “witness” and he reminded this conversation.
The captives were taken out to work, we sawed logs, prepared firewood, cleaned roads. The Finns tried to keep roads very diligently, demanding us to take away even small pebbles.
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My young friend Gennady preferred to work in the Commandant’s Office. I did not advice him to do that. But it turned out to have an unexpected effect. A young beautiful Finnish woman worked in the Commandant’s Office. She paid attention on the handsome Knyasev and fell in love with him. This girl was a member of a youth fascist organization. A small part of Finnish youth was influenced of fascist professors and writers. They dreamed to conquest all the North up to the Urals. They put forward primitive motives: Russian North is inhabited with Finnish tribes: Karels, Komi and others. The Finnish girl influenced unsteady Knyazev with this idea. She also spoke with him of sexology, saying that a true Finn as a true Aryan denied monogamy, and the decisive factor is physical love directed to the sanitation of the race. Knyazev told me about that sincerely. I explained to him that racism is a philosophy of brutal fuhrers who oriented on the mean instincts of masses. I was speaking of fascist Germany when Eremeyev came into the house. He asked me: “Don’t you think, Grigoruy Isayevich, that Germany is now so strong that it is able not only to make to kneel down the Soviet Union, but England as well?” I understood that he wanted to provoke me into a dangerous conversation. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-51156387831594283612014-06-04T02:13:00.000-07:002014-06-04T04:02:40.325-07:00Grigory Grigorov's book as base for movieAfter the first memoirs book by G. Grigorov “Turns of Destiny and Tyranny” appeared for sale, his family, who published the book, obtained enough readers references all over the world. No doubt, the fate of thoughtful yet active person of the cataclysms 20th century background interested various groups of readers.
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One of the references made us to look at the grandfather’s fate in a completely new way. Some readers specify the memoirs were appear as a finished screen play for a Hollywood movie. Once we read the reference, we understood the reader was right for a number of reasons. First of all it's a historical com-ponent of the story: Grigorov was participating in the most significant USSR events at all country’s his-tory periods.
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He was familiar with representatives of all classes of the Soviet society. Such as workers, peasants, writers, poets, professors, military men, Communist Party political figures.
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He met such brilliant persons as Esenin and Mayakovsky, Shostakovich, Bukharin and Trotsky. In his memoirs he speaks about such striking event as his liberation from a jail where he was sentenced to the death (http://www.lib.ru/MEMUARY/MAHNO/eliaev.txt). He describes the situation in Leningrad before and after Kirov’s death, he substantiates mass executions in Vorkuta in 1938, tells about Finnish captivity during the 2-nd World War, and many other facts.
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Besides unique G. Grigorov's personality, despite the death sentence, the inhuman jail conditions and concentration camps, he returned to his family being full of life and energy. He started to write his large volume of memoirs in 1965. The book was finished in 1980.
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We are life witnesses of G. Grigorov's extraordinary yet charming personality. A brilliant and impres-sive character might be created in the movie.
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Several parts of the memoirs have been translated into English by Stella Grigorov, Grigorov’s daughter in law.
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We would be very grateful if you could give us any advice for finding a film agent or recommend peo-ple who can really work with that. Please let us know your thoughts on the chance to turn memoirs book “Turns of Destiny and Tyranny”into a movie and how much would that cost.
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Where to start? We'd be delighted to hear any idea from you.
Please contact us by email fluffy2001@gmail.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-74495789492170935672014-04-08T09:09:00.003-07:002014-04-08T09:12:03.022-07:00Captivity in Finland (part 1 )B O O K 2 <br />
P A R T 1 2 <br />
C H A P T E R 2
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The above-cited paradox noted by Rabelais deeply reveals the real and often hidden causes of defeats and victories in military battles. Sometimes it is not bravery, patriotism or military skill that decides the fate of countries and governments, but despair, the psychological state of soldiers and officers. Sometimes I was a witness of absolutely senseless but very brave behavior of young people who wanted to avoid suffering.
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At the end of 1940 I was called to the military commission of Bor town and was enquired about my military past, participation in the Civil War, my military duties and ranks. After that they asked why I was repressed. In a week they called me again and informed me that I would be registered as a soldier. I was not worried. After the Civil War Political Management of the Russian Republic tried to send me to Military Academy but I refused, I did not want a military carrier, I wanted to study. When the Second World War began I supposed that former prisoners would be sent to concentration camps. But the fate made the next unexpected turn. I went to Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) to the Pedagogical Institute. Mobilized people marched along the streets accompanied with women, old men and children. There were many tears and crying but the orchestra played bravura marches. The orchestra stopped playing and a young man on the right side sang:<br />
Listen worker,<br />
The war has begun…
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More than 20 years ago I sang this song when going to the war against Denikin, Vrangel, ataman Grigoriev. But then I did not think of the sense of this song’s words. Why “All of us will die”? This is obviously senseless. The revolution is made for life. A column of young recruits was walking, young men 17-18 years old. They sang with enthusiasm a well-known song “Kahovka”. I thought of what would happen to these cheerfully walking young men who can’t possibly imagine the horrors of war. I entered the Institute. There was silence in the corridors, the groups of lively students disappeared. Many students and teachers already received call-up papers. A familiar teacher came up to me and said in low voice: “Here we have: “We don’t want somebody else’s land, and won’t give a meter of ours”. The Georgian prophet should better dance a Georgian dance than make forecasts”.
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The teacher of history at our school, the head mistress’s husband, was also mobilized; he became a commissar of a battalion though he had never been in the army. At school meetings he spoke only of the last decisions of the Central Committee. On the 10th of July he was mobilized, and on the 2nd of August his family received a notice of his heroic death. His wife changed awfully, her face became yellow, the eyes became sunken, and her face was covered with wrinkles. Everybody felt pity towards her. On the fourth of September my wife and I visited the Yuzovs family. We spoke of school affairs. Our daughters came from Gorky, they told us that the students of senior courses were offered to go to Army as volunteers, nobody dared to refuse. In the evening the pouring rain broke out, spurts knocked on the windows, the wind buzzed. We were sitting till 12 o’clock when somebody knocked violently on the door.
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My wife grew pale and began to bite on her nails as she was doing when agitated. We decided that NKVD workers came to arrest me. But it was only a call-up paper from the military commission. I had to come to the Bor military commission on the 5th of September at 7 o’clock in the morning. I felt relieved: it was not jail, but army. This night we did not sleep, but collected things in a sack. At 6 o’clock in the morning we went to the town of Bor, the Yuzovs and several pupils saw me off. In the huge yard near the military commission a lot of people gathered, women wept noisily. Maria Adamovna Shlykov came running with a daughter. A tall man came out of the military commission building and read a list of mobilized people; we were ordered to return our passports. We were ordered to form a column and move to the Volga bank where we were loading to a barge. My wife moved further together with me. We came to the Gorky military commission. I got a permission to call upon my son who was in a hospital. A week ago he fell seriously ill and was hospitalized in Gorky. When we saw our son, we were upset: he was very pale and weak. Again I was leaving my family as in 1934 after Kirov’s murder and did not know when I would come back or whether I would. We had to return to the military commission. The huge building was crowded with mobilized people and their relatives. My wife and I sat on the floor in the corner and spoke all night. I was grieved very much that I could not say good-bye to my daughters. Early in the morning again the list of those mobilized was read out and we moved to Gorky railway-station. There a train of goods vans for us was already standing. I said good-bye to my wife; I parted with my family for 14 years. We were given vans used earlier for cattle; the dust was not removed; only two-store plank-beds were built.
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When the train moved, women and children began howling dismally. My wife waved with her handkerchief, tears shedding from her eyes. Somebody threw a sack with black dried crust and peas into the van. I received an upper plank-bed, a young man, Gennady Knyazev, a student of Gorky Pedagogical Institute, was accommodated beside me. An actor of Gorky Dramatic Theatre was near us and a teacher of the Pedagogical Institute was near the window. Rocking under the rumble of wheels I tried to assess the situation. I was sure that in the prolonged and hard war with Germany the USSR would win. There would be enormous sacrifices: for the tyrant sitting in the Kremlin, human life was nothing. German fascism would be destroyed but there would be no forces to get rid of Stalinists-fascists. Knyazev was a talkative young man. He told that only he was mobilized from the third course of the Institute because his father had been repressed. Soon we got to know that many mobilized people had ether their father or brother imprisoned on “political grounds”. In the morning of September 7th we arrived at Vologda. We were led to the railway station by groups of 100, where we received pasta. The railway station was packed with soldiers, some of them wounded. People lied on the dirty floor. It was similar to the situation during the Civil War. 20 years passed since then, and it was the same disorder, the same clumsiness of the Russian colossus. Our train moved to the north. German airplanes flew and threw bombs in a rather chaotic way. Every time after a strong explosion a huge man with a black beard went down on his knees and crossed himself. He was religious and he said that he would not take weapons in his hands. Our train stopped in the open field near Segezha. We were brought here to evacuate a paper-mill, but it turned out that the paper-mill had already been evacuated. We had nothing to do, except wandering in the empty town; the inhabitants had been evacuated with the paper-mill. We saw a lot of bomb-holes. Old men and women wandered about the town, they cried and implored us to take them into our train. Their children left them without means for living. In this way the Eskimos used to behave, when they went to a new place, they left their weak parents in the frost and they gradually were frozen to death. Here is the “progressive” mankind and humanity of our epoch. I spoke with a very old man, his hands shivered, it was a tremor on his face. He said his son was the chief engineer of the paper-mill, he did not want to take his father with him, he said that it would be difficult. We wanted to take several old men to our car, but the commissar of the train objected, he called us “rotten liberals”.
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On the other side of the railway there was a big Karelian-Russian village where also old men and women stayed,they refused to leave their native place. They said: “we want to die here, where our grandfathers and grand grandfathers died’. Cows, hens and ducks wandered along the streets, a hen could be bought for a small price. We bought several hens, plucked and fried them on the bonfire. Several days the train stayed in this place, nobody needed us. The commissar of the train tried to find our chief. At last we were submitted to the 20th field construction of the Karelian front. It was situated on the bank of Segozero. We were unloaded from the train and led to the 20th field construction. On the way I admired the charms of the north. Segozero was almost square, surrounded with mighty woods of conifers and Karel birches. We saw partridges and heard wood- grouses. Segozero is to the north-west from Onega Lake and to the West from Vygozero. This lake system became the basis of the Belomor-Baltic canal. We slept in the open. Everybody was dressed in summer clothes; I only had a light cloak. A strong wind blew from the lake, I was freezing. Knyazev also was chilled to the bone. We found some planks and lied. Somebody slept in fishermen’s boats. In the middle of the night we were woken up and ordered to embark on the fishermen’s boats. We crossed Segozero and reached a big fishermen’s village. Here also only old men and women stayed. Though most of the houses were free the chiefs decided to accommodate us in a big barn with wet fishermen’s nets on the floor. We were so tired that lied on this wet but soft bedding. Soon everybody began to cough, and the chiefs offered us to go to the vacant houses. Gennady, I and two actors went to a house where a chimney smoked. A kind little old woman met us, she was very amiable. She immediately put a big kettle with potatoes into a Russian stove. The old woman asked us about the war, we could not say anything comforting. When we took off our wet clothes, sat in the warm house and began to eat hot potatoes it seemed to us that we found ourselves in a heavenly place. Then a big Samovar was put on the table; we felt happy. Earlier, a partisan detachment of about 200 soldiers went through the village. In the evening the detachment came back, the soldiers were sent to the same houses where our men had been. In our house the commander of the partisans stayed, a stumpy young man in a Caussac hat.
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A young Karel came with him with an order of Red Star on his breast, he was a local hunter, he knew all the paths, and he was the guide of the partisan detachment. The detachment was going to the rear of the Finnish military units. The young partisans looked very tired, dressed in light clothes; many of them had high shoes with puttees instead of boots. After several days we learned that almost all the regiment was annihilated. Who will be responsible for the death of these people, who were sent to death? We were directed to Maselsky .The road was difficult, many broken bricks and big boulders in our way, the remnants of glaciers. We were very tired when we came to Maselsky. This small town is to the South from Segezha and to the South-East from Segozero. By this time the Finnish units already captured Sortavala in the North of Ladoga lake and Suoyarvy in the North-East and were moving in the direction of Maselsky. They were moving in the North of Petrozavodsk. Probably, because of that the 20-th field construction decided to strengthen this strategically significant area using our detachment. It was the next folly of our “strategists”: ill-assorted mass of Gorky citizens, untrained, was not a military unit.
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All that showed the utmost confusion not only of the 20-th field construction but of the whole Finnish front in the autumn of 1941. We were to dig trenches, there were not spades enough, we dug in turn. When the construction works were finished a gun was brought and we received rifles. I was appointed a commander of section. A field kitchen came, we were given hot cabbage soup with meat; it appeared that in Maselsky railway station there was left a store-house with a lot of food when the executive personnel ran away. Red Army units went through Maselsky - mostly untrained young soldiers. They were dressed in old greatcoats and torn boots. Many of them had sore feet and moved slowly. Such military units were thrown against the Finnish Army.
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The North autumn came. The sky was covered with grey clouds, it rained continuously. We stood in trenches with water up to our knees. Only in the evening we got warm near an iron stove. We were accommodated in houses near Maselsky station. The walls were covered with bugs; cockroaches were running on the floor. The whole night we struggled with the insects. There was no bath-house, the linen was not changed and lice appeared. But newspapers came regularly. We read about the brilliant leadership of our beloved leader.
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I fell ill with pneumonia and was sent to medical unit to Segozersk. There were only two beds in this unit. The doctor, a young woman, paid little attention to me, she was always running somewhere. In two days Gennady Knyazev arrived with appendicitis fit. Unexpectedly Karel scout appeared; he said that Finns were at 10 kilometres from Segozero. Panic arose, the doctor did not come, though Knyazev had second appendicitis fit, I had high temperature 39 degrees C. Early in the morning we heard noise, footfall of running people, hysterical shouts of women and children. In spite of our hard condition Knyazev and I went out. We saw a large group of people including our doctor climbing on Lorries with children and baggage. Two Lorries moved and there remained one. We asked to take us but they answered that they took people only according to the list. We moved to Segozero, but were also late: a tug with a barge already left, loaded with children, women and a group of soldiers. We felt like outcasts. But we had to do something. We walked to Maselsky station along the bank. Wherefrom we had the strength? With difficulty we went 5 kilometres and suddenly saw a group of soldiers in grey greatcoats and boots. We took them for our Karelian units and soon understood that we were mistaken. They were Finns. We ran to the wood and lied in a hole half full of water. They did not notice us; they were busy with the tug on Segozero. Finnish officers watched the tug and barge through field-glasses, one of them shouted: “Embark to the bank, nothing will be done to you, you will stay in your houses.’ But the tug continued to move forward. The Finnish officer cried: “If you won’t stop, we will shoot.” The tug went on. Then the Finns began to shoot at the tug from a small gun, and immediately hit the target. We heard hart-breaking yells of women and children. Many people plunged into the water. The Finns stopped shooting, the officer speaking Russian said: “It is your fault.” Knyazev and I continued to lie in the hole, we even forgot our diseases. Looking out of the hole I noticed that somebody was swimming to the bank but was strangely waving his hands, he was drowning. I whispered to Knyazev that we had to save the drowning man. Knyazev tried to stop me, he said that the Finns would find us, but still I crawled to the bank and pulled out a quite weakened boy about 12-13 years old. Both of us crawled to the hole. Knyazev was right, the Finns noticed us. Several men came to the hole and began to shout laughing: “hu ve paive (hellow).” We rose, water flew down from our clothes, our faces and hands were covered with mud. We were led to a wide asphalt road. I saw for the first time a regular unit of Finnish army.
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At the head of a column several officers went dressed in rather light clothes. After them motorcyclists followed and further a column of cars and Lorries with officers and soldiers. About 100 captives were collected. We were witnesses of a rather funny scene. Between captives a Carel coachman with a horse and a carriage was. The carriage was loaded with boxes of butter. The coachman addressed the Finns in the language known to them and asked to take butter and to let him go home. One of the officers ordered to give butter to the captives. The captives, between them officers, rushed to the carriage, captured the boxes, hastily threw off the covers and began greedily eat the butter and fill their pockets with it. Finns looking at this scene were laughing. Gennady and I did not come to the carriage. I felt sick to see it. A Finnish officer came up to us and said: ”Take the butter, please.” I shook my head. Then one of the captives ran to us and tried to shove butter into our pockets. I sharply pushed aside the hand of this complaisant man. After that Finns began to watch me with interest.
<br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-9913786383537762672014-03-18T10:38:00.003-07:002014-03-18T10:38:46.058-07:00Suerskoye village (part 2)See part one <a href="http://russian---history.blogspot.co.il/2014/03/suerskoye-village-part-1.html">here</a>
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Quite unexpected help in providing us with literature was given to us by the chief of the post-office in the village. He had connections with Tumens’ town library. He supplied us with books by Darvin, Timiryasev, Lamark, Reklu. We were very grateful to him. He was a son of a man, convicted for taking part in operations of socialist-revolutionaries. His father was set free after February revolution and after the process against SR in 1922 he was exiled to Siberia. His son finished the course of communication service and was sent to Suerskoye. Here he married a widow, built a small house; he had a garden and a kitchen-garden. He worried that he would be considered a “kulak”, as he had a cow and a horse, which he used to bring post from Yalutorovsk. I liked to speak with him about the books I was reading, and he used to write down some of my thoughts. The chief of post-office reminded me my former Russian populists. Villagers respected him and asked his help for writing applications. It was nice to meet a decent man. Once when I came to take my post he asked me (we were alone): “Tell me, you are a scientist, you lived in Moscow and Leningrad, contacted with high-rank party members, can you explain why lately they scolded Trotsky and Zinoviev, now took it out on Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky… Trotsky and Bukharin are charged of the same thing, they are said not to believe in the possibility of building of socialism in our country?” I looked at the clever eyes of this man, my intuition said that he could not be a MGB agent. I decided to answer him. “I think the Central Committee of today does not believe itself possible in building of socialism and because of it sticks a label to others, opponents of Central Committee.” The postman laughed and I continued: “Now, if we don’t consider economically weak states there are two types of state capitalism in the world, one of them develops on the basis of wide democracy, the other on the basis of dictatorship. These conditions were developed in connection with history of these states. One of the special features of our century is that both democracy and dictatorship cannot go without some social principles. All the regimes speak of welfare of the people.” I wanted to say more but a woman came to take newspapers and our conversation was interrupted. The postman shook my hand and said:”I understood something, but there are a lot of things that are not clear.”
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I want to speak of the conversations with Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov. I was a little acquainted with him before exile but in Tobolsk and especially in Suerskoye we became friends. Smirnov was a man of education. He knew several foreign languages, he was familiar with political economy and philosophy, and he was considered one of the best specialists in economy. During the first years of Soviet power he was the chief economic consultant of Higher Soviet of National Economy. From his young years he was a social-democrat, spent many years in France. He highly estimated the leaders of European social-democracy Karl Kautsky and Edward Bernshtein.
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I knew that Smirnov was a close friend and shared the ideas of L.D. Trotsky whom he considered a social-democrat of West type but not a Bolshevik. Smirnov emphasized that for many years Trotsky and Lenin had different views on the revolution movement, but they became close before October 1917 and collaborated up to Lenin’s death because Trotsky as well as many social-democrats estimated political situation in Russia and in Europe as very favorable for the victory of democratic movement.
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Smirnov was present at the meeting of a small group of military men with Trotsky in Beloborodov’s flat at the beginning of 1926. There were close friends of Trotsky: N.I Muralov, the chief of Moscow garrison, S.Mrachkovsky, a well-known hero of the Civil War, Kh. Rakovsky, the former chairman of the Ukraine Soviet of National Commissars, A.G. Beloborodov, National Commissar of Interior, one of the most popular journalists of that time L. Sosnovsky and V.M. Smirnov. The essence of the matter was set forth by Muralov, he spoke of Stalin’s and his associates activity, who started an open discredit of many old Bolsheviks, Civil War participants, of removal them from their posts and substituting them with their supporters. Muralov also mentioned false and openly provocative attacks against Trotsky. He offered that with the help of military units of Moscow garrison, which were under Muralov’s command, to arrest Stalin and all his supporters in the Central Committee and GPU (The Chief Political Management). Smirnov also set forth his point of view, supported Muralov and though he believed in democracy, in this situation it was necessary to use the most severe measures to stop decidedly Stalin’s clique’s activity. Everybody asked Trotsky to support Muralov’s offer. Trotsky’s reaction was unexpected. He not only refused to support violence against Central Committee but spent a lot of time trying to convince them to refuse any organized statements of opposing groups. Trotsky made a comparison with the French Revolution, noted the bad effect of differences between revolutionaries, who came to power, he thought that measures against Central Committee would not be approved by less significant party members. He also said that he would be accused of Bonapartism. At this point I added: ‘Lev Davydovich - making an analogy with French revolution, probably, forgot that national tribunes, calling to revolution, Mirabo and Lafayet very soon deviated from it, Danton, Robespyer and Marat came forward and soon were burned in the flames of revolution, but the traitor and secret plotter Fushey outlived all of them. Trotsky had to make a conclusion from these facts”.
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Smirnov agreed with me and continued his story. Despite that he personally had great respect for Trotsky he considered it necessary to criticize Trotsky’s position. He said: “ Lev Davydovich, your arguments are not conclusive, your passive position will result in activation of Stalin’s clique. What do you count on refusing from decisive struggle? Almost all party staff and GPU are already in Stalin’s hands. The army is ready to come out now; there won’t be another chance in a year”. According to Smirnov’s opinion in 1926 the great popularity of Trotsky in the party and army would give him a real chance to restrain Stalin’s clique and mass arrests of oppositionists would not follow, Smirnov and I would not have found ourselves in Siberian exile. I think Smirnov was right to some extent. The course of historical events probably would not change notably but elimination of Stalin’s gang would allow preventing the deaths of great many people.
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V.M. Smirnov was acquainted with Trotsky for many years from the emigration time and knew him as a very willful, decisive and energetic person who believed in democratic ideals and had a great ability of convincing people. But at the meeting in 1926 in Beloborodov’s flat he saw absolutely another person: indecisive, broken, who did not wish to struggle and evidently reticent. I told Smirnov of my two meetings with Trotsky in 1927: in Glavconcesscom and in Beloborodov’s flat at the end of the year. I noted that his answers to my questions were very contradictory. He spoke of a new stage of revolution and at the same time he acknowledged the complete failure of the attempts to gain democracy in the ruling party and the state, he saw a possible turn to fascism but at the same time hoped for opposing groups unification against Stalin, he understood that the power was in the hands of those controlling party stuff and GPU and at the same time continued to count on the support of workers from the West.
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Such conversations with Smirnov on winter evenings helped us to understand what was going on. We often spoke of Trotsky, made various assumptions of his strange behavior in the period from 1924 till his deportation to Alma-Ata at the beginning of 1928. We were convinced that he understood what was waiting for him. It was well known that during Civil War Trotsky offered to examine Stalin’s actions two times, in Revtribunal in1918 for disorganization of the army, in Tsaritsin, in 1920 for failure of Polish campaign. Only Lenin’s incomprehensible intercession saved him from the tribunal. Trotsky knew better than anyone how dangerous was Stalin, temporary holding a grudge. Since the Civil War the wicked Eastern satrap only waited for a suitable moment to revenge on his deadly enemy. In 1928 Stalin was not determined yet to carry out his malicious plan. In spite of this, Trotsky practically did nothing. Smirnov supposed that he already enjoyed the sweetness of bigger power, and he, as many others, could not be reconciled with its loss. Possibly Smirnov was right to some degree, but after many years I realized that there were deeper reasons both of subjective and objective character of the passive behavior and contradictory statements by Trotsky at the last years of his life in the USSR.
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I enjoyed my discussions with Smirnov, he was the most interesting person of high education. His moral standards were very high; he was a noble man, a true aristocrat of spirit. He called Lenin a dictator and Stalin an usurper and counterrevolutionary. Already in 1921 Smirnov was an active opposition member, he was considered a main ideologist of democratic tsentralists – “detsists”. The most ardent and long discussion we had were about the possible struggle with Stalin’s clique. Smirnov said that the fourth revolution was possible, which would sweep away Stalin’s clique and lead to the victory of democracy. He defended this position ardently but did not take into consideration the real arrangement of forces in the country, did not imagine by which layers of the society this revolution could be supported, considering that the most high-principled, selfless and brave people perished in the previous revolutions. Discussions with Smirnov stimulated me to active search of arguments, when I did not agree with him. Then I still did not understand clearly the connection between tendencies to dictatorship witch appeared immediately after October upheaval in 1917 and history of Russia. Only after many years I realized that Stalin’s violence all over the country was a natural phenomenon here. I came to this conclusion after many years in jails and concentration camps and after studying a lot of books on history. Jails and camps helped me in extreme conditions to understand what the main mass of prisoners and warders were, the latter were as many, as the former. Both groups were essentially slaves. Books on history, especially by V.O. Kluchevsky and S.M. Solovyev convinced me that the slavish psychology of the majority of people in Russia in the XX-th century was the result of special conditions of Russia’s origin and the process of its historical development as a state. Revolution in such a country is a catastrophe. In Suerskoye I could not bring up these arguments to Smirnov, but still spoke on this theme. I mentioned “Philosophical letters” by Peter Chaadayev and paid attention on his arguments. Russian state developed during several centuries on two connected bases: Orthodoxy and autocracy. P. Chaadayev saw an extremely reactionary character of religious, national and social structures in Russia and considered that in the near future civil life on democratic basis was impossible. Chaadayev did not believe in the future free Russia. I asked Smirnov: “Does Russia of today differ a lot from Russia of Chaadayev?
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Russia entered the XX-th century as a very backward and sluggish, mainly peasant country with a primitive mode of life and a backward farming. And all that on the background of narrow-minded and reactionary national-religious self-conceit.” I mentioned an extract of a conversation between a French socialist Prudon and A.I. Hertsen: “Russian autocracy has a concealed basis, secret roots in the heart of Russian people itself…” I put another question: “If all this is taken in consideration, are Russian people to-day bent for democracy or dictatorship?” Smirnov was not ready to answer these questions. It is interesting to note that in the discussion Smirnov’s wife Varvara Alexandrovna was on my side. This fact irritated Smirnov, he did not speak with me 2 - 3 days, and afterwards we continued to speak. I substantiated my position, said that we have not to think of a new revolution but of a very gradual evolution, that now propagation of democratic ideas in masses was impossible because the opposition could not have its own newspaper. Plekhanov and Lenin were free to popularize their ideas; they published a newspaper “Iskra”, published books in conditions of freedom in Europe. In tsarist Russia there were underground printing-houses. In Stalin’s Russia this was impossible, hundreds of thousands of GPU agents and informers watched every step of the oppositionists. Smirnov denied all that. He with his knightly spirit, a tall lean figure and unwillingness to accept reality reminded me of Don Quixote. Stalin and his clique threw out the mask cover from the revolution and we could see the hidden earlier essence of so-called dictatorship of proletariat.
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From spring 1928 Smirnov and I exchanged letters with many exiled and imprisoned people from Siberia and the Ural. We managed to be in correspondence with imprisoned in Tobolsk jail Misha Ivanov, Nikolay Karpov, Misha Okujava, Lado Dumbadze. We had correspondence with Khristian Rakovsky and well-known journalist L. Sosnovsky and his wife Olga, my wife’s friend, they were exiled to Barnaul. Smirnov wrote to “detsists”, his letters reminded political treatises. It was surprising that we were permitted to be in correspondence. The secret turned out simple: GPU wanted to know what went through exiles minds. Once I received a strange postal money order from Kh. Rakovsky, one of the founders of the social-democratic party in Balkan, a friend of Blagoyev, Rakovsky was a former chief of Ukrain government. On the back side of the postal order Rakovsky set forth his opinion on the First Five-year plan, he considered it the mere result of bureaucratic activity which could only lead to hunger. Unfortunately, this forecast proved to be right. At the same time in “Pravda” declarations of opposition of denial from fraction activity were published. Some of the oppositionists sharply blamed Trotsky, others tried to veil their position, and the third group declared organizational breaking-off with opposition but demanded to have a right to uphold their views at the next party congress. “Pravda” published two “platforms” of oppositionists capitulation. One, signed by Radek and Boguslavsky, came to a complete ideological and organizational capitulation. The other, signed by Kh. Rakovsky and L. Sosnovsky, agreed to refuse from fraction activity but considered it necessary to retain the right to speak out their views at party congress. Smirnov considered all the “platforms” and declarations of this kind disgraceful, he said: “The declarations do not contain principles but a mere self-seeking.” It really was. The former revolutionaries who had enjoyed the sweetness of power could not afford to refuse from privileges which they had occupying high positions.
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In May 1929 I received a letter from Klava Ryazantsev. She wrote that after my leaving she felt very lonely, she saw in me a friend and adviser. I immediately answered, advised her to read and walk more, as books and nature help to fight against melancholy. At this point our correspondence stopped, Klava was moved from Tobolsk to another place. The image of fine, suffering Klava “a spy”, was kept in my memory.
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In July 1929 dear guests came to our exile: my wife, elder daughter Vera and son Vissa who was two and a half year old. To Smirnov his sister Ossinskaya came with his six year old son Roma, who lived with Ossinsky’s family after his parents’ arrest. The guests instilled in us hope for the near discharge from exile. Ekaterina Osinskaya, a clever and educated woman, described with humor the behavior of “rights” headed by Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky who lately had struggled against “lefts” and now tried to unite with them to fight with Stalin’s group. Ossinskaya said that the “rights” were being excluded from the party and “trotskists” were now being released with the aim to use them against the “rights”. In this connection Smirnov said ironically: “The “Leninists” of today waited for Lenin’s death to do with all the differently minded using his name as a cover.” At these words his wife looked around anxiously and shut the door and windows. This old Bolshevik was desperately afraid for her husband and not without grounds. Smirnov did not accept any compromises, he was sure that all the Stalinists were counter- revolutionaries. Varvara Alexandrovna was in trepidation to think that her husband would have the most tragic fate. Her foreboding of evil was true: Later Smirnov, Marat of the Russian revolution, was shot.
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The arrival of my family was a great occasion for me, I was happy to see my wife, daughter Vera and son Vissa. Polya, who was14 years old, did not come, she began to work in a printing house as a type-setter. She wanted to be self-supporting and to help her family. Polya struck us from her childhood with her soul and selflessness. I almost did not know my son. I threw him to the ceiling and he cried: “More, more!” Vera and Vissa enjoyed milk, which was of a special taste because of very good field grasses. I looked at the children drinking milk and thought that in Leningrad they had no such possibility 12 years after the revolution. We walked a lot, were boating on the Tobol, My Dina remembering her young years, rowing very well with oars. We were singing and I sang my beloved opera airs. How wonderful life could be if political adventurers, liars and rogues did not rule the country. We often went to meadows together with Smirnov family and Ossiinsky, there we found many flowers: chamomiles, buttercups and bells. Vissa lagged behind, sat down on the earth, asked to lift him in my hands, sulked and swore: “damned nail”. Sometimes I took him on my shoulders and ran, he was delighted and urged me like a horse. Vera liked flowers from her childhood and knew their names; I saw how attentively she looked at every flower. Afterwards, she drew the flowers rather well. Dina, E.M. Ossinskaya and Smirnov’s wife sometimes were sitting on the grass surrounded by colorful field flowers. A fantastic sight. Human happiness is made up of separate moments, how little we appreciate these wonderful moments. Peasants met my family very affably and always brought some refreshments. They paid a special attention to my son. The children of the village who drove horses very well, took him sometimes on the horse with them and trotted in a circle about our place. Dina was anxious; she feared that Vissa could fall down. Dina and E.M. Ossinskaya spoke often with women, who told of misfortunes that fell upon the village after the authorities demanded to organize a collective farm. The women asked for an explanation of why the collective farming was necessary, what was the meaning of dispossessing of “Kulaks” and a “complete collectivization.” Naturally, neither Dina, nor E.M. Ossinskaya, neither anybody else could explain why they had to go to a collective farm. Then Dina and Ossinskaya spoke with me and Smirnov of their impressions from conversations with peasants. To them, residents of big cities for the first time making acquaintance with the life of Soviet village, everything appeared in a very gloomy light. They were surprised and depressed with what they saw and heard from the peasants. I think, any person, who visited the village then and was capable to estimate reasonably what was going on, understood that the village was nearing general catastrophe.
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The meeting with my family soon was over. At the end of July I saw off my family to Yalutorovsk, carried my son into the car, Dina and Vera cried. When the train began to move, I jumped down. A cart was waiting for me. I broke the rules; I was not permitted to drive so far from the place of exile. Coming to my house I fell on the bed without undressing, face in the pillow, and slept all night. Everything was empty. Anguish and loneliness-again. I renewed literary reading in Podkovyrkin house. The chief of post-office got “Anna Karenina” for me and even “Madam Bovary” by Flober. I decided to read both books to my attentive listeners. For two weeks I was reading for two hours by evenings. When I finished, I tried to analyze the behavior of two women and their troubles, one in Russia, another in France. Young country women estimated their storm of senses in their own way: “They were mad from fat”. I felt that my desire to justify their behavior did not attain success. After that I decided to read “Voskresenie” (Resurrection) by Tolstoy. Young people were delighted with the image of Katusha Maslova.
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In my education courses I taught two young men and two young girls till 9-th form of high school program. My teaching activity stopped unexpectedly with stormy events in the village.
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The Procurator of Tumen came to the village accompanied by other court officials to fulfill the slogan of Central committee of “Complete Collectivization.” They knew that Suerskoe villagers did not want to go to a Collective farm. “He himself” came as the peasants said; it was known in Tumen that Suerskoye was a rebellious village. The administration did not forget the bell that appealed to rebel against “communia” in 1921. They did not forget Agrafena Podkovyrkina, “the snake”, as she was called by enthusiasts of complete collectivization.
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All the peasants were driven to club. Smirnov with his wife and I also came, we were curious. The club was full. The peasants made room for us. Nobody elected the presidium, but officials from Tumen were sitting at the table. The procurator, a stout, red-faced man was sitting near the chief of village Soviet, a thin man of about forty. The chief of village Soviet stroked his hair, smeared with some oil and obsequiously smiled to the procurator. He stood up and with a husky voice let to “a member of Tumen Party committee” to have the floor. The procurator tightened the belt on his field shirt of khaki colour, with his right hand he lifted his hair that fell on his narrow forehead. Then he began his speech and immediately put a question “point-blank.” I remember his speech very well; it resembled hundreds and thousands of such speeches. “The Party is finishing the period of New Economic Politics… In the village, class stratification occurred; we have poor persons, Kulaks and middle class… We have to liquidate Kulaks as a class and pass on to complete collectivization on the basis of unit of the poor with the middle class peasants. Many middle class peasants fell under the influence of Kulaks… All the working peasantry has to unite into collective farm to give the last battle to capitalism and pass on to the building of socialism.”
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The speeches of Stalin, Molotov, Kuibyshev, Kaganovich, Mikoyan in their “theoretical” level differed little from the speech of Tumen procurator. Everything was going, so to say, normal, as a bad song with music. But suddenly the provincial Tsitseron animated with his speech, blurted out a phrase: “Who won’t go to kolkhoz, will be worked out into polish.” An unexpected response followed: people began to make noise, to swing arms, to shout. Afanasy Podkovyrkin rose and cried: “How are you going to work out people into polish, you think we are dogs? … People go to kolkhoz on their own accord, you want to throw rope on our neck and pull us into kolkhoz like sheep?” The peasants shouted: “Afanasy is right; we are men, not sheep!”
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When the agitation stopped a little, Vladimir Smirnov suddenly arose, his face pale, eyes flashed, long hair disheveled. He poked his long thin arm in the direction of the speaker and with a thunderous voice said: “Who gave you a right to speak in such a tone with people? Your language is a language of a gendarme but not of a representative of Soviet power… Afanasy Podkovyrkin is right when he says that kolkhoz is a voluntary organization and people do not go to kolkhoz under compulsion. You, procurator, break an elementary law and you have to bear responsibility for that. You think that fear is the main stimulus of social development... But you won’t intimidate people! They won’t allow you to work them out into polish according to your figure of speech.” The peasants shouted again, a young man cried: “We will work out to polish the procurator himself.” Those sitting in the presidium became agitated; the procurator bent over the chief of Soviet and said something in a low voice. Stroking his greasy hair the chief said in a squeaky voice: “Exiled Smirnov, you were condemned for anti-Soviet actions; nobody gave you a right to come to the meeting and speak counterrevolutionary speeches.” The statement of the chief of the village Soviet made me indignant, I could not be silent and said: “Nobody deprived us of the civil rights, at least nobody declared this to us, we have the same right to speak out as all the citizens of the Soviet Union, our words differ from yours by the fact that they are based on the constitution, proclaiming the right of the citizen and person… And you, pretending to be a representative of Soviet power violate the constitution… Your interpretation of complete collectivization has nothing in common with Leninism, for your speeches, addressing people; V.I. Lenin would offer to exclude you from the Party...” As all the people including presidium listened to me attentively, I added: “You being a procurator got accustomed in every free speech of a citizen, when he says truth, to see an enemy of revolution. We consider it impossible to stay longer at the meeting where elementary rights of a man and citizen are violated rudely.”
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The hall was silent. Nobody responded to my remark, even the procurator was silent. Smirnov, his wife and I rose and left the meeting ostentatiously. The peasants followed us, only about 20 persons, the members of village Soviet remained. About ten Komsomol members and three Party members left the meeting. We understood that it would not end easily. During the night, several peasants were arrested, including Afanasy Podkovyrkin. Between the arrested there were mostly middle peasants of whom the procurator said that they fell under the influence of “Kulaks”. The village was agitated. Women cried, the men began to kill cattle again. This was the answer to the procurator’s propaganda for complete collectivization. We learned that something like this was going on in many big and small villages. In Moscow the administration began to worry, a hypocritical article “Dizziness from success” by Stalin appeared, where he accused local authorities of violence over peasants connected with complete collectivization. But Stalin was a coward. Apparently, he was afraid that on the basis of mass protest of peasants against collectivization the “rights”, “lefts” and “vacillating” would unite. Also commanders of Red Army who took part in Civil War knew the repressed “opposition” people very well and highly estimated them. Exactly Stalin’s fear was the reason of the article. His head was really dizzy only for one reason: because of his success on the way to unlimited power. Could he ever suppose that so comparatively easily he would remove from the political scene such Party leaders as Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Preobrazhensky and many others figures experienced in political struggle and very popular in the Party. The success of Stalin, who was not known much at the first half of 20-th, in the struggle for power - is a problem demanding a big, thorough analysis. I wrote a little about that and will write more in the final part of my memoir.
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At the end of August V.M. Smirnov was arrested at night. Varya ran to my place pale and crying and shouted: “ Volodya is being taken.’ I dressed quickly and ran to their house. I applied to GPU man with a protest:” Smirnov is an old Bolshevik, he worked with Lenin. He is the author of Communist Party program, maintained at the Y111-th Party congress. GPU man got confused a little and answered: “We only fulfil the order that came from the authorities.” Vladimir Mikhailovich and I said good-bye. I only could tell him: “Stand firm!” Varya, crying, threw herself on her husband, he tried to soothe her. Smirnov was seated in a cart, two escorts sat with him. Several days Varya had fever, she was lying, did not eat, I was sitting near her bed, tried to distract her from gloomy thoughts. Varya said in a low tone: “Grisha, what will they do with my Volodya, I fear for him so much, he is so risky. He gave all his life from young years to the revolution movement, he was dreaming of democracy and freedom in Russia, of better life for people. And now it turned out in such a way…” When Varya calmed down a little I offered her to go to the Tobol River. We were walking on the bank, but Varya could not be distracted from gloomy thoughts of her husband’s fate. I considered Smirnov one of the most brilliant representatives of revolutionary romantics in Russia. These freedom-loving, selfless, courageous people were doomed to death after October; they were antipodes of the petty bourgeois mass that won.
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After the stress I suddenly had a strong tooth-ache. There was no dentist in the village, I had to go to Tumen; I needed permission from a GPU representative. After long negotiations I got the permission. When I came to Tumen, the tooth-ache stopped but still I went to see a dentist. I wanted to stay in the town, to meet the local exiled, to learn anything of Smirnov and the arrested peasants of Suerskoye. I telegraphed to my wife in Leningrad that I would stay in Tumen about two weeks and asked to let me know about my family’s health. Unexpectedly I received a telegram from Ada Lvovna Voitolivsky, our neighbor in “Astoria”. She said that my wife and children were well and she got a permission to see her husband in Tobolsk jail and would take a ship in Tumen. Soon Ada arrived to Tumen and we spoke the whole day before her journey. She talked about my family, of the situation in Leningrad and confirmed the Osinsky’s information that probably we would be soon set free from exile. Ada always estimated a situation reasonably but she did not expect that a relaxation of repressions would be transient. After about five years, our long-term jail and concentration camp period would begin and only few would survive. I already wrote of Ada. This brilliant, talented courageous woman very firmly endured all the hardships and could keep her human nobility in extraordinary conditions of concentration camps and exile. In Tumen I heard from exiled people a lot of news. The prisoners of Tobol jail had different opinions; most of them decided to hand applications of breaking off relations with opposition, among them my friend Mish Ivanov and Ada’s husband Nikolay Karpov. Smirnov was sent with an escort from Tumen. Later we learned that he was imprisoned in Suzdal jail in a former monastery. When I returned to Suerskoye women came to my place crying. They asked to help their arrested husbands. The wife of Afanasy Podkovyrkin said crying: “They want to shoot my husband, help him, for God’s sake.” I was confused; I could not find way to help the poor women. Suddenly it came to my mind to send a telegram to general procurator of Russian Federation Krylenko, telling him about the arbitrariness of local authorities to peasants who did not want to go to Kokhoz. I was acquainted with Krylenko from the beginning of 20-th, I met him and spoke with him in the 2-nd House of Soviets and in Moscow Party Committee. He was of low height, with a big cap on his head. My wife and I were present in the process against socialist-revolutionaries, Where Ktylenko was the prosecutor. He not only accused the former collaborators on the struggle against Tzaism but tried to understand, what stood behind their protest against the Soviet Power. I knew very well that in Party congresses Krylenko, being People Comissar of interior tried to defend law, he thought that it was not right to repress people on the basis of so-called “revolutionary expediency”, that the law and not the class principle had to be the base of civil and criminal law. In the telegram to Krylenko it was necessary to appeal not only to the law and reason but also to sense. The text of the telegram was: “Stop the local arbitrary rule of Tumen procurator and court. Condemned to death, without guilt, is the former participant of Lena events, participant of Civil War Afanasy Podkovyrkin, a citizen of Suerskoye village, Tumen district.” I signed: “Exiled on opposition affair Grigorov.” The chief of the post-office, my friend, did all to provide that the telegram would be delivered. I did not believe in success of this action, but I had to do it. After the post-office I came to Varya’s place, offered to go for a walk to the Tobol bank. When I told her of my telegram to Krylenko she smiled and said:” You, Grisha, also a romantic as my Voldyua, you still continue to believe in wonders.” In Suerskoye arrests continued, every day 2 or 3 men were driven with a convoy. Women moaned and children cried in the village. Varya and I remembered Nekrasov: “Show me a place where a Russian peasant does not moan.” Here we see the results of the decisions of Party congresses and plenary sessions… Here is the union of the working class and peasantry in practice! In 1918 Karl Kautsky , an official literary hereditor of Marx and Engels spoke of “Russian form of Bonapartism” but I don’t remember where it was written that Napoleon Buonapart taunted his people in such a way as Stalin’s clique does.
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In “German Ideology” Marx and Engels wrote that private owners unite into a class to defend their interests. Analyzing the situation in Suerskoye village I understood that the peasants-owners irrespective of their economy level united for struggle against violence that was carried on by the “People State” that drove all of them into collective farms. The situation reminded the period of “Military Communism”. Then all the peasantry rebelled with their own arms against the tyranny of the new power. In this situation, only politics, (not economy and class stratification of the village) plays the main role. Lenin understood it and in 1921 New Economy Politics (NEP) was proclaimed and the problem was solved. As soon as Stalin’s clique became stronger NEP was abolished and in the village “complete collectivization” began in spite of the peasants’ resistance. Millions of those who resisted were dealt with; three generations of the most active part of peasantry were destroyed. The state put the peasants on serf condition. I think that many years will pass till a new generation of farmers comes that will be able to feed the huge country. The same fate befell workers. F.Dostoyevsky in his work “Demons” showed that when a person or people are imposed with the urge of a political rogue they are deprived of freedom absolutely. The Soviet state made everybody equal in slavery.
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After Smirnov’s arrest I had more free time, there was nobody to discuss things with. I often saw Smirnov’s wife Varya and tried to distract her from gloomy thoughts. Sometimes it helped when we went for a walk; nature is the best doctor. At the end of October, winter suddenly began, a lot of snow fell. One morning when I was doing gymnastics I heard a bell ringing and the creak of a sledge. I heard voices and footfall at the porch. I thought GPU men came to take me away from Suerskoye. Somebody knocked at the door, I opened it and was surprised to see a group of peasants and between them Agrafena Podkovyrkina and her son Afanasy. I invited them into my room. Further on a scene that shook me within followed. I was standing in the centre of the room surrounded by peasants. Suddenly they fell on their knees and those nearest to me began to kiss my legs. What happened? Seeing Afanasy Podkovyrkin I understood that something extraordinary happened. Afanasy raised his hand and asked everybody to calm down; he wanted to tell of the circumstances of his and other peasants’ release from Tumen jail. Peasants of many villages of Tumen district were also released. It turned out that my telegram to the General Procurator Krylenko played a significant role and influenced the fate of many peasants of Tumen district. Krylenko sent an authorized commission to Tumen. This commission established the compulsion of Tumen procurator and local administration, released all the prisoners and declared in the jail yard that all those who exceeded their authority and drew the peasants into collective farms by violence would be punished. After this story I shook hands with everybody, kissed men and women and was happy as a child. The peasants brought many presents, the food would be enough for half year of my life in exile. Of course, I refused all presents and offered to celebrate this fabulous release. The entire village celebrated Christmas. Varya and I organized Fir-tree celebration for children, got toys and sweets. Many people came. Young and old women danced, drew Varya and me into round dance. Everybody drank vodka, ate fried pork, pies, jellied meat, sour cabbage and pickled cucumbers and drank wonderful bread kvass. Wherefrom all that appeared? Sledges covered with carpets rode in the streets, the peasants sang loudly accompanied by accordion. I tried to understand which new winds blew in the Central Committee of the Party. I wrote a letter to Emelyan Yaroslavsky, a member of Central committee, asked to revise my “personal case”, and reminded him that I was sent to exile without any official charge.
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At the end of March the weather became warm, brooks streamed. Rooks and larks came. At the beginning of April the peasants began to go to the fields. I went with them. When the tillage began I sometimes ploughed, watched the layers of soil pulled off and thought of frailty of human life. Girls sang while the sun warmed. I enjoyed manual labor. Once, when everybody had a rest, a woman came to me and said laughing: “Savich, you plough well, we will marry you, and you will start a house and live well”. Everybody laughed, so did I. Suddenly my life changed. Early in the morning the chief of the post-office came running to my place. His face beamed with joy, he held a post-card in his hand. He said: I, like a postmaster of Gogol, decided to read this card”. It said: “Comrade Grigorov, an order was given of your release from exile” Em. Yaroslavsky”. I was stunned, and then embraced the postman. I asked “Varvara Rozhdestvensky also received this news?” It was found out that she did not. My joy grew dim, what will come to Varya? With whom she will speak of her grief? Why they release only me? Probably, my letter to Yaroslavsky had an influence. Later I got to know that Sergey Mironovich Kirov solicited my release. In the village everybody already knew of my release. Afanasy Podkovyrkin came, then his mother. Later a lot of people came, old and young, everybody congratulated me. I was uneasy and thought of Varya. She also came, said with tears that she was very glad for me and hoped to meet me and Volodya soon at large. GPU chief informed me that soon he would drive me to Tumen, where I would get release documents. The entire village came to see me off, they put parcels with fried duck, pies, and pickled cucumbers into the cart. One woman brought a big home-made cheese. Afanasy Podkovyrkin tried to hand me 200 roubles “for small expenses” but I decidedly refused. Afanasy embraced me with his strong arms and cried. Men and women came crying. They kissed me, I felt tears welling up. Varya stood aside; she also dried her eyes with a handkerchief. I came up and embraced her. GPU chief sat beside me in the cart, the horse started, somebody cried:”Don’t forget us, dear friend!” My pupils saw me off up to the forest. I parted for ever with Suerskoye, with good simple people, with dear Varya. I was worried. GPU chief said: “The peasants loved you”. We stopped near Tumen GPU office. GPU chief handed me over with the accompanying package to the man on duty. Other released from exile already gathered here. The chief of Tumen GPU office came and said that we are free and have to come in the morning to receive certificates and railway tickets. I invited everybody to the land-lady I had stayed with when I had come to Tumen to the dentist. Here all my presents proved useful. The land-lady put a big samovar on the table. Everybody was agitated, planning their future. I was surprised with their optimism; there were few pessimists, and I was one of them. In the morning we were handed certificates and railway tickets. It was written in my certificate: “Comrade Grigorov Grigory Isayevich born in1900 is released from exile and directed to his dwelling place Leningrad.” I took the Novosibirsk-Moscow train.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-50695331679755156372014-03-04T09:30:00.001-08:002014-03-04T09:35:08.134-08:00Suerskoye village (part 1)Turns of destiny and tyranny<br />
Book 2 . Part 8. Chapter 3<br /><br />
Short description:<br />
The "complete collectivization". Discussions with V.M. Smirnov<br />
Meeting of a group of military men with Trotsky at the beginning of 1926 who offered to arrest Stalin and all his protégés in the Central Committee and GPU. Very strange Trotsky’s position. <br />
The prosecutor of Tumen carries on collectivization. V.M. Smirnov and I come forward in defense of peasants.<br />
I telegraph to the general prosecutor of RSFSR, the peasants are set free.
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I remember very well the period of life in Siberian village. That was the first time in my life when I lived so close to the land, among the hereditary agricultural workers, for whom the work on the land was the meaning of life and the sole source of living. There were some original and freedom-loving people between them. I could see how brutal “the complete collectivization” was conducted; which led the country into social and economical abyss. The process was catastrophic: the basis of the peasant economy was destroyed and the most active, hard-working and initiative part of the agricultural population of the country, that before revolution provided Russia and Europe with agricultural products, was being destroyed.
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The sledge drove us to a hut where a tall man in a greatcoat and with a revolver was waiting for us. My escort passed me and the packet to this man. He was the authorized representative of Suerskoye village. He told me that I would live in the village, I could find a flat, and I had no right to go more than 10 kilometers out of the village. I entered the hut and was happy to see Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov and his wife Varvara Alexandrovna, who would also live here. We shook hands, embraced and kissed each other. Even Siberian dog Chung pulled my sleeve, recognizing an old acquaintance from Tobolsk. We spoke till late at night. The landlady put hay on the floor, and we lied down. We slept soundly without dreams.
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We got up in the morning, washed ourselves and after tea went to find flats for rent. The peasants left their houses, looked at us with curiosity, even bowed low, they probably took us for some significant persons from town. We stopped, spoke with them, asked where we could find rooms. When they understood that we were exiled, old men and women shouted: “Such people as you are, everybody would gladly take to his house”. They showed us two wooden houses. We settled very close to each other: I was given a small room, Smirnovs a bigger one. I settled in the house of Stepanida Ivanovna Krylov, her house consisted of two rooms and she gave me the small one. The rent was 5 roubles a month. Stepanida {Stesha) was a widow: her husband was killed at war in 1915. She raised a son and a daughter; they already helped her in farming. She had a small yard divided by a wooden fence for a cow and a horse. Her piece of land was 10 kilometers far from the village.
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In my room there was a big bed with a feather mattress and two pillows, near the window looking on a big street, stood a small table. Over the bed a portrait of the late Stesha’s husband hung, he was an artillery man with a clever and energetic face. Stesha spoke of him wiping her tears. A girl of 16, Nastya, quickly washed the floor and wiped dust from the window-sill and table in my room. Stesha’s son came in, he was a boy of about 17, thin, pale with blond hair. He was the main worker in the family. Neighbors came to meet me; they looked at me with curiosity.
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The peasants, interrupting each other, told me the history of the village and its habits and called names of men and women, whom I did not know, but I learned a lot of interesting facts. During the Civil war when the food detachments emptied out all the “surplus food” from barns the peasants suffered from hunger, they had not enough food for children, many children died and there was a great loss of cattle. The peasants were driven to despair and decided to rise in rebellion. An old woman said: “What had we to do, my dear, to die in this case and in that case”. Suerskoye was the centre of rebellion of the whole Yalutorovsky region; many Siberian villages joined the rebellion. They constantly struck the bells and appealed not to submit authorities, attacked the food detachments and killed the “activists”. The rebellion was suppressed, the men were deported to the North, and some of them were shot. Therefore few men remained in the village, mostly women and teenagers.
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Stepanida told me of this severe time in details, wiping tears with her handkerchief. “In these years we were saved only thanks to fishing in Tobol, we ate fish without bread and salt. Since then my children are ill.” Stepanida baked in the big stove a loaf of bread, there was a fish baked inside the loaf. Mitya, her son, did the fishing. When the peasants learned that Smirnov and I were political exiles, they felt sympathy to us, they asked why communists put into prison and exile other communists. A woman of 60, Agraphpena Podkovyrkina asked especially many questions. I was interested in her and asked peasants about her. They said that at the beginning of 20-eth Agraphena was the head of rebellion in the village. She climbed the bell tower and struck the bells. When all the peasants met, she appealed to them to begin struggle with the food detachments. The peasants responded to the call, attacked the regiments and there were victims in both sides. The rebellion was suppressed, Agraphena and other instigators were put to prison, but in 1923 they were discharged.
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Once, Agraphena invited me to tea. I met her son Afanasy, strongly built, with big grey eyes, a big forehead and black hair. Being a young man he went with a group of peasants to the river Lena mines and there in1912 took part in a strike. Afterwards he was sent to his village under police surveillance. In the World War 1 he was rewarded with two Georgy crosses, in the Civil War fought against Kolchak. At that time his farm was destroyed, his son died from inflammation of the lungs and only a daughter remained. When he returned home, Afanasy built a new house, bought a horse and a cow. The period of NEP (new economical politics) was quiet. Afanasy was interested in politics, regularly read news-papers. He read some works by Lenin and Trotsky. He asked me many questions: “Why they are going to abolish NEP? Why was Trotsky expelled from the party? Wherefrom came the Georgian that took Lenin’s place? Why the communists are exiled to Siberia?” Then a friend of Afanasy came in, a tall bold man with a red beard. He listened to our conversation and said: “The Bolshevics deceived the peasants, they promised to give them land, but did not. Now they forbid every step, control everything, write down peasants’ farming, and write down how many cows, horses, sheep and even hens they have. For what reason?“ It was very difficult for me to answer all these questions, I tried to explain something in simple words, but I saw that the peasants did not understand.
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I organized some kind of counseling for school-children in the village club: helped them to solve arithmetic problems and use a map, read with them “Russian speech”. Sometimes we went out, where I explained the origin of clouds, snow and rain and spoke of landscapes. In the club I gave three popular lectures of the origin of the Universe. In the small village library I found “Don Quxote” by Servantes. I began to read it aloud in Podkovyrkin house; their neighbors also came to listen. I explained what I read, spoke of Spain. After this book we were reading Nekrasov’s poems, I read “Russian women” in the club. Many people came. I spoke of the December rebel in 1825, of execution of Pestel, Ryleyev, Kakhovsky, Muravjev-Apostol and Bestuzhev-Rumin. My listeners were surprised to learn that near their village in Yalutorovsk 7 Dekabrists were exiled, between them Pushkin’s friends Kukhelbeker and Puschin and princesses Trubetskaya and Volkonskaya rode via Tumen and Yalutorovsk when they followed their husbands sent to penal servitude. Tzar Nicolay the first threatened them by depriving of nobility. Their relatives spoke of severe conditions of life in Siberia. Nothing could stop these courageous women. I noticed that the Dekabrists were rich, were close to tsar court, but they rebelled for better life for the simple people. I read Pushkin’s verse dedicated to Dekabrists. Everybody was silent; they were impressed by Nekrasov’s and Pushkin’s verses.
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Among my pupils there was a younger sister of Afanasy Podkovyrkin Ksenia, a girl of 18. Being a child she was hurt with a cart wheel and limped. After 3 months of studies, Ksenia learned algebra, logarithms and geometry, learned by heart many verses by Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov. I realized that in favorable conditions a person’s abilities can unexpectedly be revealed. Later I invited Ksenia to Leningrad.
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There were rumors in the village of repressions against “Kulaks” and “complete collectivization.” The peasants were worried; groups gathered in houses, they said that this was the end of their free life. They came to Smirnov and me asking to explain the situation. During military communism the village was utterly destroyed. In the period of NEP the economy was restored and they lived as usual, only many men went to town in winter to search a living. There were no “kulaks” in Suerskoye. Smirnov and I collected interesting facts. The richest peasants had two cows and two horses. 95% of peasants had one horse and one cow. A small group of peasants had no horses and cows. They wanted to go to a collective farm. Smirnov and I established that these peasants were lazy workers, drank vodka and often made rows. By the way, in Russia before the revolution there were few “kulaks”, rich peasants like American farmers. The reason was a backward economy of Russian village. A question arises: wherefrom suddenly “kulaks’ came to the Soviet state? In reality it was a result of cowardly imagination of ignorant politicians in the ruling party, they were afraid of the growth of political strength in villages. Class struggle in Russian village was a myth. But slogans “Abolition of “kulaks” as a class” and “complete collectivization” gave an instrument of unlimited tyranny to local authorities. The “extremes” in the village were dictated by Moscow, they were part of criminal politics of Stalin’s Central Committee. The natural stages of development of agricultural economy were broken. Suerakoye was a cell of social body. What was going on in the cell was going on in the body. Collectivization and industrialization were two sides of one historical process of suppressing people’s power and establishing of serfdom relations both in the village and in town. The state was everything, the people was nothing! As a result millions perished. Smirnov and I asked the peasants: 90% did not want to go to a collective farm. When a commission arrived from Tumen to count the cattle and agricultural implements, the peasants were terrified. As soon as the commission left, they began to slaughter the cattle. I woke up by night from the roar of cows and horses, bleating of sheep and squeal of pigs. The meat of the slaughtered animals was salted in barrels, which were buried in yards and in the field. During one winter in1929 the village changed its look, the people who were active earlier now were mostly seating at home, hungry and pale children wandered about, and beggars appeared. The life in the village came to a standstill, everybody was waiting for something. Young men stopped to go to dances, old women were wandering like shadows. The peasants stopped to clean streets, rubbish heaps appeared, and there were snow-drifts beside the gates. When I asked from my hostess a spade to clean in the yard, she said: “There is no will to do anything, again no peace, we rested a little from commune, and now they are after us again… Oh God, when will they leave us alone.” I felt depressed but I only could say:”Everything passes, we have to hope for better time.” She was silent and wiped tears with her handkerchief. Smirnov and I tried to understand what was going on. We had books sent by D.B. Ryasanov from Moscow. Ryasanov was the most well-known specialist of Marx’s works. We had also “Economic Tables” by Keney in French. Smirnov translated this book. In these books the principle of free trade was considered, the authors spoke against feudalism and serfdom. We were convinced they were right considering what was going in Suerskye. After the appearance of the commission for calculations of the cattle and agricultural implements the village was on the verge of catastrophe. What the economists understood in the XV111-th century, the “wise men” of Stalin’s Central Committee absolutely did not understand. In the Siberian exile the books helped us realize the inevitability of catastrophic consequences of what was going on in the village at the end of 20-eth. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-79566057890572682442013-12-24T09:19:00.000-08:002013-12-24T09:22:05.613-08:00Abram Shlonsky and Matus Kanin, my friends and theachers (part 1)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It was a wonderful June morning when I went to the station with a bag on my shoulders. I sadly looked out of the carriage window and saw my mother, waving her handkerchief and wiping tears. So my adolescence ended. I came to the town of Yekaterinoslav, a big industrial and trade center of the Dnester region. <br />
In the fate of each man, a most significant role plays the meeting of outstanding, talented, strong-willed persons who have high moral principles.<br /><br />
During several years beginning with 1915, I was close with two friends: Abram Shlonsky and Matus Kanin. Probably, if I had not met them, my life would go in other ways, maybe less dramatic. But till the end of my days I will be thankful to them, because they imparted to me the love to systematic studies, literature, science and world culture in the broad sense.<br /><br />
Then there were troubled times, the society was agitated .The majority of people wanted changes to be made, but not many of them acted actively, the main mass of people was rather passive. Shlensky and Kanin participated in demonstrations, spent a lot of time in different circles – of workers, students and secondary school pupils, where they usually taught. They both were highly educated and progressive young men; they were convinced that the reactionary tsarist regime had to be abolished. They disagreed only in the ways of the solution of the eternal Jewish question.
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We met in a somewhat extraordinary situation .During my first days in Yekaterinoslav I wandered in the town a lot of time. I often came to the gates of Bryansk works, the biggest enterprise in the town. The works were situated on a large territory in Chechelovka. It was nice to see that after the hoot a strong and noisy stream of workers flowed from the gates and slowly moved about Chechelovka streets. Most of them went directly to the pubs. Wives and mothers waited for their husbands and sons at the days of payment in order to prevent them from going to pubs and to save them from fights that sometimes ended with murder. Once, I meddled in a family conflict. A young pretty woman asked her husband to go home. She used the most endearing words: my darling, my love, tasty borsch is waiting at home. But the lad with thick black hair slapped her on the cheek when she drew his jacket slap. The people around began to laugh and to yell cynical remarks. At that moment I felt my fists clench, the blood rushed to my cheeks, I did not control myself. I threw myself on the lad and hit his stomach with my head. Wherefrom had I such a violent strength! The lad fell and bumped his head against the earth. He tried to rise but I rushed on him again and slapped his cheek. I was in such fury that did not feel that tenacious hands gripped me on the back and sharp teeth bit me in the cheek. That was the young woman whom I stood up for, she violently defended her darling. I was puzzled, wiped the blood by hand. I don’t know how it would have ended if many idlers did not come to the place of incident. Between them there were two men in students’ jackets. One of them was rather short, dark, with big hazel eyes and chestnut-colored hair – he stood and mechanically shook his head. The other student was thin, with sunken chest and deep set eyes. Soon I knew that they were students of Polytechnic University of Ekaterinoslav. The dark and short one came and tried to wipe with his handkerchief blood from my cheek. I thought how the surrounding would estimate my action; especially I was interested in the opinion of these two students, to whom I felt unconscious liking. My instinct did not deceive me.
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One of my new acquaintances was Matus Kanin, the other, thin and with sunken chest said: “My name is Mulya Shlonsky.” I later learned that his name was Abram. They knew each other from childhood, and were sitting at the same desk in private secondary school of Kagan in Vilno. They both took a fancy to mathematics and physics, but they also knew very well Latin, Greek, spoke fluently in German and French, citated Tatsit, Iosef Flavy , Caesar, and read aloud speeches of Tsitseron in Latin. They knew very well West-European and Russian literature, were fond of paintings and music. Indeed, the fate brought me with people educated in the full sense of the word.
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A significant feature of them was that they were very attentive to people, especially to their friends and they idealized a little those coming from working environment. In Bryansk works where they held practical training, they had many friends among the workers. They organized circles for workers and taught free Russian and arithmetic, acquainted inquisitive young men with classics of Russian and foreign literature. I also was included in one of the circles and this was not only the beginning of my education, but beginning of my deliberate revolutionary activity. This circle was attended by qualified and conscious workers who were trying to comprehend what was going on in the country and understand deeply regular development of nature and science. For instance, they were interested in such questions as surplus value by Marx, crisis of the relations of production, tyranny and democracy, the essence of wars, including the First World War, political parties and the national question. The studies were very interesting. I listened to Shlonsky’s and Kanin’s words with surprise and admiration.
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They were not only teachers but they really enlightened us, they were highly intelligent and human, they considered enlightening people as one of the main goals of intelligent people. Everybody who attended their studies was thirsty for knowledge. For instance, I remember discussions on the Jewish question. I thought that this problem did not interest Russian workers, but on the contrary, all of them spoke very actively. Shlonsky and Kanin set forth two different, so to say opposite points of view. Shlonsky thought that any social problems had to be solved only on the basis of national traditions and cultures. Kanin considered social problems the most decisive and being a convinced Marxist, {BUND member), thought that only the coming revolution would solve them and then the national question would disappear. There were ardent debates; the majority, including me, supported Kanin. Here I want to make a deviation. The most advanced part of pre-revolution Russia workers as a rule high-qualified, was a very special part of the society. This is a very big and complex theme. Actually, they actively and consciously supported the October upheaval. But very soon many of them began to understand that the events were not going in the way they had supposed. As a result, they were the first who began to struggle with the dictatorship trends in the ruling party (the working opposition) and they were the first who fell under the guillotine knife. Stalin pathologically feared qualified, politically competent workers. As soon as it was possible, the prime of Russians working class was practically utterly liquidated.
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At this stormy pre-revolutionary time the workers often made strikes, laid down demands of political and economical character. Shlonsky and Kanin often were among the organizers of the strikes that sometimes ended with short imprisonments. I joined the strikes spontaneously, without understanding the deep causes of what was going on. I did not feel that a certain political consciousness was forming in me.
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I was happy. I already began working, the working day lasted ten hours, at night I slept six hours, and the rest of the time I studied. My teachers gave me a task, which I had to fulfill by the next time. Then they checked how I learned the material, and additionally explained what was necessary and gave the next task. In any case they demanded the exact formulation till they got it. We met in the room that the friends rented. Both of them paid little attention to their mode of life. They lived in a garret on the fifth floor. The furniture was more than modest: two iron beds, a small table without a map, which was heaped up in disorder with books, papers, pencils and ink-stands. There were also unclean cups, tea-spoons, photos of their families and girls. I was especially interested in their books. There were works by Pisarzhevsky {chemist), Darvin, “Reflexes of Brain” by Sechenov, “Metaphisics” by Aristotel and a lot of classical fiction books. On the window-sills “Capital” by Marx, “Marx and Ricardo” by Ziber, books on Russian and West history and “Faust” by Goethe were lying. Though I was not good at philosophy, looking through “Faust” I saw a phrase: “I am the spirit that negates”.<br /><br />
I remembered this phrase for all my life.
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My studies were very successful. To pass the examinations for the full course of high school, I had to study very many subjects. The program included: ancient and Russian history, literature, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, geometry, German and Latin. My teachers considered that I had a very good memory and capacity to grasp quickly the essence, so they gave me very big tasks. After two months of studies I already read and translated almost fluently “Notes on Gallic war” by Ceasar and translated with dictionary “Wilhelm Tell” by Shiller. Besides high school text-books Shlonsky and Kanin demanded for me to read many additional materials. At the same year they helped me to study works by psychologist and philosopher Chelpanov (“Logic”, “Psychology”, “Brain and Soul”), literature on Christianity{“Myth of Christ” by Drevs, “God and Jesus” by Renan), works by Homer (“Iliada”, “Odisea”) and the essential works by Shakespare. Under the influence of books, such as “Robbers” by Shiller, “Gadfly” by Voynich, being a boy of sixteen, an image of a revolutionary formed in my imagination as a true, brave man who was ready to give his life for freedom of people.
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-86756226789634007122013-12-11T09:39:00.000-08:002013-12-11T09:39:25.541-08:00Vorkuta Rebelion 1936 (part 2)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>
Once I was called to the head of the camp and offered to drive an important NKVD worker, his wife and a little child to Vorkuta. A hooded sledge was prepared with blankets and pillows. The important passengers were dressed in deer fur jackets and felt boots. The child was wrapped up in blankets. The wife of the passenger, a tall, rather pretty woman asked me whether I knew the way. I answered that it was the first time I had to drive by sledge, since earlier I passed this road by foot and under escort. The chief looked at me attentively, knitted his brows and said nothing. I was dressed in pea-jacket, belted with a rope, a warm cap, a whip in hand, like a regular coach-man. The family was seated in the hooded sledge, I sat on the coachman’s seat, took the reins, shouted something and my horse, hurrying to get warm, trotted. The weather seemed to be favorable, the winter sun broke through clouds, small snow-flakes fell on my face. I was even distracted from the tragic events in Vorkuta. Nature is always fine, even in the far North. We moved rather quickly along a rutted road. On this road mechanical materials and food products for concentration camps were usually transported, as well as numerous transports of prisoners. The polar weather is very capricious. Grey clouds appeared in the sky, they moved quickly from South-West to North-West and soon all the sky was covered with black-blue clouds. Wind blew and it began to snow. The horse was alarmed; I had to use the whip and to pull on the reins more strongly. Suddenly a sharp, gusty wind blew, snow-flakes began to stick to my face, I could not see the horse’s collar. I jumped down. The horse moved slower and then stopped in front of a big snow-drift. A hoarse voice from the hooded sledge asked: “What happened?” I shouted loudly: “A snow-storm is beginning; the horse is moving aside, I will go in front of it and pull it by the rope.” A real snow-storm broke, nothing could be seen ahead. The snow-storm grew stronger. The road was utterly lost, only white desert around. The horse stopped, my whip was of no use. Again the hoarse voice from the hooted sledge: “You strike it stronger with the whip”. I answered: “Now the horse is not afraid of the whip, it is not a human being”. My passenger got out and poking his gloved fist to my nose hissed:” Look here, if anything happens to us, I will let you rot in prison, and you will never see freedom.” These words offended me intensely and I, overwhelming the wailing of the wind, shouted loudly: “Don’t scare me, I was scared enough…better help me to get on the right road, forget for a time of your power and think of your child and wife.” Evidently my words had an effect on him; he went round the horse and took the rope. Thus we moved for about an hour and suddenly heard the bell ringing. This was salvation. A sledge with frozen cod followed us. The draymen came down, approached us and tied down the hooted sledge to their sledge. They knew the road very well, as they had passed it hundreds of times. They were criminals who served long terms, they moved without consort. In three hours we safely arrived to the concentration camp “Sivaya Maska”. In this camp consorts were collected for driving to Vorkuta. I unharnessed the horse, I had to feed and water it. I was also hungry after 14 hours of riding. I sat on the log near the house of civilians and took out my ration from the sack. The woman whom I had driven came up to me and said: “I heard very well your remark concerning my husband, for God’s sake forgive him. Since he began this work I don’t recognize him. Evidently the work strongly influences the person’s behavior.” Then she asked me where I was from and what I was before prison. I answered: “Before prison I lived in Leningrad with my family and was a philosophy professor at Universities.” After Kirov’s murder my wife and I were arrested and our children were sent out of Leningrad.” The woman exclaimed: My God, we and you are from Leningrad, how it turned out that you are here?” I explained in short how it happened and reminded that Dostoevsky and Chernyshevsky and even Lenin also were prisoners. The woman listened attentively and suddenly offered: “Will you come and have a snack with us… By the way, you’ll see that my husband is not the barbarian, as he seemed to you when we traveled”. I refused, because prisoners were forbidden to sit at the same table with civilians. My fellow-traveler insisted, and we went to the civilians house. The twelve months old baby was sleeping on the sofa. My passenger was sitting at the table, covered with oil-cloth. Sliced white bread, bacon and sausage and even black caviar were on the table. Larissa (the chief’s wife) invited me to sit and began to put on my plate the food that I could only dream of. She poured a big cup of strong tea from a huge tee-pot, which stood on a red-hot stove. I began to feel some family comfort. But the chief was sitting with downcast eyes, he put lumps of sugar in his cup and seemed displeased. Larissa sat to the table with a glass of tea and looking in turn at her husband and me said in her melodious voice: “Do you know Volodya, our coach-man is a professor from Leningrad, our fellow town-man.” Then the chief, taking a sip of tea, addressed me: “What were you blamed for?” I answered: For being in Zinoviev grouping.” When will your term finish?” I answered: “Formally at the 8-th of December 1939, if they will not add to the term.” I answered: “Those, who gave the term, can add to it”. “How can they add? – the chief asked. I answered: “Тhe Special Committee of NKVD gives terms in default of persons, without court. This body is not provided by the constitution”. My interlocutor bit his lower lip, swallowed a mouthful of cool tea and flung a remark that surprised me: “Yes, something strange happened to us after the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”. </p>
<p>Our talk was interrupted as head of the camp entered. The camp tradition by no means allows close terms between civilians and prisoners. Thus the head of the camp was astonished to find the prisoner sitting at the same table with the NKVD worker and his family. He looked at me with perplexity but did not dare to tell something because the chief came from Moscow and was of a higher rank. The head of the camp reported that the chief would be given another coach-man and another hooded sledge. I was glad that I would not drive the chief to Vorkuta. Dressing the pea-jacket and belting with a rope I left the house of civilians. When I was harnessing the horse, the wife of the chief approached me and put a small bag in my hands, in which in addition to food I later found two new handkerchiefs and warm socks. The pretty woman held my hand and said: “I hope you soon will be free and probably we will meet in Leningrad. I ask you not to think negatively of my husband, he being a communist had to submit the order“. We looked at each other and the woman ran quickly to the porch of the house. It is so good that in our life as convicts we can meet free people having a soul.</p>
<p>The weather changed to the best, cumulus clouds floated in the blue sky like huge lumps of cotton wool, snow-flakes sparkled. No wind. I saw patches of sunlight, light lines on the snow. I felt free, but in my mind I understood that I am a convict and will be a convict as long as tyranny reigns in Russia. In my heart I felt sad and at the same time good. I moved on the Ussa river as a free man without consort, admired fir-trees covered with snow. I thought about the chief’s wife, of her husband words. NKVD men are very sparing of words, they never dare to speak sincerely with a prisoner. They are afraid of their own words. The chief whom I transported was a young NKVD worker, the communist party recently mobilized him and sent him to concentration camps instructing him to be vigilant with enemies of the people. But this comparatively young man probably possesses an inner flair. Thus he gradually begins to understand what is going on. He was displeased that after receiving order he had to leave urgently the work he loved and travel together with his young wife and a little child to Vorkuta.</p>
<p>But when the day comes, the people of Russia will understand that both in the past and in the future, tyranny always kills everything that is alive and bright, that without freedom our life is gloomy.</p>
<p>My horse quickly rode on the Ussa, it hurried home where it was waited in the stable. I caught up with a big group of coachmen. All of them were prisoners, either convicts or criminals condemned to small terms for non- political crimes dreaming of speedy release. Moving along the snowy Ussa I felt well, but soon the image of another, also charming woman, Pasha Kunina came to my mind and all my joy disappeared. Again I felt unhappy, and in this state already in the dusk I came to Kochmes.I was awfully tired.
Again I was in the barrack Sasha Girshberg ran to me, he was interested with my fellow-travelers and congratulated me for my traveling without consort.
I hardly lied on my plank-bed as the chief of regime entered together with two warders and ordered everybody to get up and form. It turned out that they would again call the new list of executed in Vorkuta. The number of executed was now more 2,000. The bloody mincing machine continued to turn with great speed. This time I heard the name of American journalist whom I knew, he was a cook in the dining rooms for privileged concentration camp specialists. I thought: “Why he?” It was known that he did not take part in rebellion or hunger-strikes. He was more than 60 years old and still he was shot. Evidently, they wanted to get rid of a dangerous witness.</p>
<p>In the morning the team-leader told us that we would go to the forest to “squeeze tar.” We took saws and axes and moved with consort to birch wood. We sawed and chopped young birches, laid piles of logs, covered them with turf and set them on fire. Suddenly somebody cried: “The camp is on fire!” Several barracks were on fire, including Sasha’s” and my. We were sure that our scanty belongings were burnt. A.L.Voitolovskaya, M.A. Shlykova and “Menshevik” O.Ya. Sapozhnikova ran to us, their faces and clothes were black with soot but their eyes were shining. They had managed to save from fire our things. We began to embrace and kiss the brave women. It was said that some prisoner poured benzene on the barracks and set them on fire being in a fit of madness. </p>
<p>Usually on Saturdays administration members of the camp drank vodka and sang. Taking advantage of this, Sasha Girshberg and I went to the hothouse, where fresh vegetables for civilians were grown. There Maria Yoffe, the widow of former well-known diplomat and a close friend of L.D. Trotsky, was looking after all the works. Ada Voitolovskaya and Maraia Shlykova also came. The over-seer, whose duty was to watch Maria’s work, was fast asleep every Saturday and Sunday after getting drunk while we were talking on different topics. Maria Yoffe called our assembling “the Carbonari meetings”. Once she told us of the tragic demise of a woman in whom the deceased former camp chief was in love with. My wife and I met this woman earlier in Ust-Ussa. She was pretty. Already then she lived with a former prisoner, who remained as a civilian at a concentration camp after 10-years term. She told my wife that she was going to marry this man, and wouldn’t go back to live outside the camp because her first husband informed on her. This situation when the husband informs on his wife and vice-versa, was very common in Stalin’s time. </p>
When this woman finished her term, she was waiting for the navigation season so she could go back to her loved one in <p>Ust-Ussa. She took the first tugboat. On this boat the former chief saw this woman and tried to rape her. She ran out of her cabin and began to shout. Then, the chief shot her and afterwards shot himself. That was how one of the endless tragedies came to a close. </p>
<p>A big island was near Kochmes on the Ussa tributary. There, prisoners under guarding grew vegetables and made hay. When the river was free of ice, prisoners were rowed in boats to the island, where light barracks were built for men and women. The works began in early spring, the men were plowing, and the women were planting. The working day lasted from dawn till sunset. Team-leaders always hurried the workers, threatened to cut their bread ration. Watch-towers were on the borders, the guards constantly watched over the prisoners. And yet, a group of prisoners managed to run away. When ice-drift began, they rowed on a big fishing boat on the Ussa and Pechora up to Naryan-Mar where they managed to board a foreign ship and got aboard. There were 8 people in the group, including two women. That was an extraordinary event, NKVD workers got very excited. Between these prison-breakers were short-term prisoners, to whom the administration trusted. After the prison break the regime became far crueler, after the day’s work the prisoners had to be lying on the plank-beds, those who infringed the order were sent to BUR (barrack of special regime).Once a tragedy occurred. One of the prisoners had a stomachache at night. He was not able to run to lavatory and sat down near a fence. A guard on the tower shot him. Vigilance is above all, a person’s life is nothing!</p>
<p>On the place of burnt barracks the administration made us build new ones. We had to do earth works, both men and women. Girshberg, Voitolovskaya, Shlykova and I united into a team; we had to dig two pits. We worked hard. Sasha and I chopped off lumps of frozen earth, and the women threw them to the side with spades. We worked 13-14 hours a day, but rarely made the norm. But even in these conditions we managed to exchange opinions on different subjects. Back then we were worried that fascism grew strong in Europe. We knew that the “socialist” Mussoliny considered socialism and fascism equal already in 1919. He himself came from proletarian mass, one time he paved streets in Milan. When he came to power, he first of all did away with all the democratic traditions. Mussoliny understood that he could not remain in power leaning upon petty- bourgeoisie in the conditions of democracy and freedom. He already came to power in 1922. The same process proceeded in Germany, where as in Italy, middle sections of the population (“marsh”) played a significant role. Hitler and his gang did not lean on the large capital, but exactly on this “marsh”. From the moment fascism came to power, mass terror began to act against Jews and all the democratic powers. While working, I tried to characterize general features of fascism: a creation of strong punitive organs, liquidation of all kinds of the democratic freedom, the personal dictatorship of the leader, mass terror against differently minded people, conversion of the ruling party into voting and demonstrating dummies, creation of military-industrial complex, exploiting the national and patriotic feelings of petty – bourgeoisie, a big army and aggression against other countries. In different countries depending on historic progress and national features fascism shows itself in different forms. The essence of fascism is one and the same, only its forms are different.</p>
<p>After the October revolution in Russia the so called “dictatorship of proletariat” was established, indeed it was dictatorship of one party, which essentially became at first the dictatorship of a small group of party functionaries and afterwards - dictatorship of the leader.</p>
<p>The communist party in the USSR liquidated all the other political parties and groups; the opposition inside the party was defeated. The cult of personality and terror against differently minded – the characteristic features of fascism - became especially notable in communist party politics after Lenin’s death. Lenin also was a dictator, but he was well-educated, taught in the West in the period of 17 years of emigration. In Lenin’s period, old revolutionaries were members of Central Committee, they kept democratic traditions. A considerable part of the Central Committee was equal to Lenin in political experience, education and talent, many of them often did not agree with Lenin rather seriously. It was quite differently when the idea of dictatorship came to mind of ignorant, vindictive, cowardly and criminal satrap from Georgia. The same idea, coming to different people’s mind, leads to totally different results, sometimes, to directly opposite ones. Fascism in Germany and in USSR has a lot in common. It is not a coincidence that the dictatorship and mass terror came to their peak at the end of the 30’es. By this time Hitler and Stalin liquidated all the objectionable and suspicious persons. They created far-flung networks of concentration camps, in both countries the military-industrial complexes grew quickly. The former painter and the former seminarian thought in the same way, both of them cynically mocked at the idea of freedom, the society turned into a mob of slaves, all the layers of society were entangled with a network of informers and agents. It is often said that in Germany all Jews were killed, but in the USSR this did not happen. I think that if the Kremlin satrap lived one or two years longer, he would also make the final decision of the Jew question. Those were our talks when the supervisors were not watchful enough. Once, a question arose: whether in the USSR there were no forces, which would raise people against Stalin tyranny. In tsarist Russia rebellions, strikes, demonstrations constantly agitated the country. What could be said in this respect? That was a vast theme demanding studies in different fields of knowledge: political, historic, sociologic, philosophic etc. I could answer only in general features. Here’s approximately what I said. The society of the USSR at the end of 30-th differs extremely from the Russian society of the beginning of XX-th century. All the progressive forces of Russia before the October revolution that had led to the February revolution were completely destroyed after Bolshevics came to power. Decisive social changes occurred. The majority of the working and creative part of peasantry was liquidated, the other considerable part of it was ruined and moved to towns, as a result a numerous strata of lumpen- proletarians arose. The progressive-minded part of workers and intellectuals also was destroyed, now the workers are mostly former peasants. Now already there are no hereditary politically educated workers - those who struggled for democracy and freedom, such as Shlyapnikov, Lutovinov, Sapronov, M. Ivanov, I.N. Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, Muralov. Who can rise against tyranny? Moreover, unprecedented in number and technical equipment apparatus of punitive organs is created. The tragic events in Vorkuta demonstrated that even a harmless protest against tyranny is ended with the cruelest violence, but there is silence in the country and masses applaud to the bloody tyrant. I remember that clever and courageous women Tankhilevich and Sapozhnikova answered that at any conditions it is necessary to secretly keep organized community of people having conformity of opinions who do not agree to submit to tyranny. They mentioned the reaction period at the time of Alexander !!!. I answered that then the whole of Russia craved for changes and repressions could not change anything, the repressions themselves were very liberal in comparison with Stalin regime. Then only tens of revolutionary-terrorists were executed, and at Soviet regime millions were killed and millions were put to prisons and concentration camps. It is time to change our concept of revolution and reaction, of tyrants and liberals. We have now to use a new experience acquired by humanity. Now Neron and Kaligula look in other way when we compare them with Hitler and Stalin.</p>
<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-56886647847809876372013-11-30T07:05:00.002-08:002013-12-11T09:41:57.307-08:00Vorkuta Rebelion 1936<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>
In 1936-37 unprecedented terror was raging all over the country. By day and by night revolutionary tribunals, “extraordinary threes” sentenced to death and the sentences were immediately fulfilled. Even in the time of savagely cruel Ivan Grozny with his oprichniks there was nothing of the kind. Every family was feeling horror and fear. Certainly, Stalin did his criminal vile deeds not alone, millions of “worshippers” and hundreds thousands of oprichniks were ready annihilate anybody and any number of victims according to his directions. But oprichniks also felt then blind fear: they already knew that their chief Yagoda was declared “enemy of people” and arrested. It was necessary quickly deliver from the former ‘liberalism’ in the concentration camps, the regime began quickly become tougher. They daily made “shmony” (searches) by day and by night . Shook up everything , in posting the sentries searched every prisoner, political prisoners were not allowed to correspond. For the least fault the prisoners were sent to “Bour” ( barrack of special regime) or to Brick works in Vorkuta. Brick works meant death. I knew about events in Vorkuta from Pasha Kunina, Vladimir Kossior’s wife, she was sent to Kochmes after the end of hunger-strike in Vorkuta. Pasha told me that a committee of prisoners was created, at the beginning it carried on talks with the camp administration on softening the regime and afterwards organized strikes and hunger-strikes. Vladimir Kossior, Victor Eltsin, Grigory Yakovin and Pasha Kunina were in the committee. Both strike and hunger-strike acquired mass-character and continued about 100 days. The prisoners held out very steady, the camp administration was evidently confused. The weakened hunger-strikers were fed by force: they were drawn on the stretchers to a medical unit and liquid food was led in through probe, those who resisted were tied. Some especially weakened strikers were taken to a medical unit in Usa station. Vorkuta administration continually got in touch with Moscow to get instructions concerning hunger- strikers. They received instruction, and promised hunger- strikers to comply with their demands. Then the prisoners stopped the hunger- strike. They recovered very slowiy, they could not work, most of them were lying on plank-beds. Their faces were deathly pale, they were very lean, their eyes were sunken, dull. When Pasha felt a little better, she was sent to a women camp Kochmes. When Pasha was telling all this she could hardly restrain from tears, her eyes were dreary, as if she foresaw something more terrible. Vladimir Kossior was taken to Moscow, as they told, for retrial of his case. Vladiir then, certainly, did not know that his two brothers, members of the party Central Committee, were already imprisoned, while they had always defended Stalin line, opposed supporters of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin. This fact was very typical, Stalin already began to do away with his supporters. Pasha did not know about it but intuitively did not believe that her husband was taken to Moscow for retrial of his case. Vladimir Kossior was an oppositionist long ago, he opposed not only Stalin, but sharply criticized Lenin at the X-th party congress, when the last offered very resolutely to struggle with all the opposition groups.
When I only had a free minute, I tried to meet Pasha, although it was forbidden to enter the women’s barrack. I imperceptibly stole into the barrack, Pasha and I sat on a bench and spoke quietly. We had a lot of things to recollect.</p>
<p>
I first met Pasha at the beginning of 1921 at the workers faculty of Moscow University, we were seating side by side at lessons. She was then 26-27 years old, her husband Vladimir Kossior was a member of presidium of the Central Professional Units and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Trud” (labor). Then he was one of the leaders of the workers’ opposition and was already beginning to suffer from repressions. Pasha acquainted me with Dina Belotserkovsky, who became my wife. They were close friends from young age, worked together in sewing workshop in Poushkin street in Kiev, in 1910 they entered the social-democratic movement, worked together in the underground, organized strikes. After the Civil war Dina and Pasha worked in Commissariat of public education, she fought to find a home for every child, organized professional schools and courses. When Dina and I lived in Moscow, and later, when it was possible, I often called on the 1-st House of Soviets, where Pasha’s family and her mother lived. Vladimir Kossior always shared the newest information of party congresses and struggle in Central Committee. Besides that, he always deeply analyzed the processes going on in the party and could anticipate the future, he earlier than others foretold that Stalin’s gang would gradually deal with all the popular leaders of the party and that all the differently minded people would go to jail. But he did not speak of mass massacre; he evidently did not suppose that matters would take such a turn. </p>
<p>I reminded Pasha that in 1928 she sent me a scarf, mittens and a fur cap to Butyrka jail and I had no chance to thank her. Pasha recollected that in 1921 I helped her to understand the depth of “Capital” by Marks. Once when everybody were sleeping in the barrack she asked me to sing in low voice arias of Varangian guest and Nadir which I sang in her flat long ago. She said that the arias reminds her of better days. Our meeting and talks stopped suddenly. It was severe winter, 40 degrees C. below zero. The whole concentration camp was agitated. Pasha Kunina was offered urgently to collect her things: she was escorted to Vorkuta. Why such a big escort, when they take a weak woman? We only knew that this escort do not carry to freedom. Pasha, pale and shivering, went out of the barrack with a bag in her hands, quilted jacket unfastened, the cap does not cover ears, and she was without mittens. It seems O. Ya. Sapozhnikova thrust warm mittens in her hands. Pasha sat into the sledge, her lips were trembling, her black eyes sparkled feverishly. Prisoners tightly surrounded the sledge, women were crying. When the escort tried to drive away the crowd, the women began to shout: “Barbarians, butchers, you should rather work in the coal pit, than to escort women!” Agitation rose, the guards were confused. I rushed to Pasha to tell good-bye but immediately received a violent stroke on the back with a butt. But I rushed to my old friend again, embraced and kissed her and I saw big tears streaming on her face. Pasha told: “Grisha, we see each other for the last time, I feel this is the end.” The horse moved, and the sledge with Pasha and two guards rolled to the Ussa river, the sledge with two other guards following them. We watched them for a long time, waved hands and caps. It remonded me of Surikov’s picture “Boyarynia Morozova”. But here a hereditary proletarian was carried who gave out all her conscious life to the struggle for freedom of working class in Russia. Whether a time comes when Russian artists will paint scenes of Soviet prisoners’ life? The scene of Pasha Kunina carried in the sledge to Vorkuta was engraved in my memory for all my life: Pasha dressed in quilted jacket, crying, two guards with rifles by her sides was not carried to monastery like boyarynia Morozova but to execution. </p>
<p>Two weeks later in the evening when we were already laying on the plank-beds the chief of the regime entered the barrack accompanied with two warders and ordered everybody to get up and form. First he enumerated 50 surnames of prisoners in Vorkuta camp and then read aloud the decision of Vorkuta “camp three”, where it was said that the enumerated prisoners were sentenced to death for sabotage, refusal from work and rebellion. During the whole month they called each day new 50 surnames and decision of execution. About two thousand people were named. I heard the names of dear Pasha Kunina, Victor Eltsin, Grisha and Mark Rubashkin, Feodor Dingelshtedt and many others, whom I knew very well before my arrest in 1934. They were excellent, pure people, romantics who gave their mental and physical powers to the struggle for better future of people. They were shot in icy cold tundra by representatives of this people, who fulfilled orders of the barbarian leader. All of us were shocked, many of us heard of death of relatives and friends. I could not sleep, could not fulfill my daily duties, that meant cutting down bread ration, which could lead to death. I made every effort to pull myself together. In one of the lists that were read I heard the names of Sasha Brazhenkov and Makar, they were sent to the camp for criminal cases. They helped a lot to political prisoners and saved me in very hard situations. They did not take part in the strike and hunger-strike but the camp administration decided to deal with them: they behaved too independently. Soon we got to know terrible details of Vorkuta tragedy from witnesses who escaped by some miracle. The barracks were surrounded by armed guards. The prisoners still weak after a prolonged hunger-strike, were put into chains, and led or carried under a big escort in the direction of Brick Works and there they were shot with machine-guns. The killed were not buried, the corpses left on the frozen earth were soon covered with snow but for a long time arms, legs and heads were seen. This terrible picture of unprecedented crime of bandit gang ruled by Kremlin barbarian I should name a kind of apotheosis of Bolshevic power in analogy with Vereschagin’s picture “Apotheosis of war”, where a big burial mound of human skulls is shown.</p>
<p>Trains with coal from Vorkuta and oil from Ukhta move on Pechora railway. Nobody of contemporaries realizes that those coal and oil are clots of blood of the whole generation of people who dreamed of free Russia, and they were killed only because of this dream and their remains were left in permafrost zone for good. And who will answer for these crimes? The main criminal is buried with honour near Kremlin wall as a “Leninist and hero of Russian revolution”. “Demons” by Dostoevsky are just babies in comparison with Kremlin cannibal of XX –th century. All the executions in Vorkuta, as well as executions before and after that were conducted according to personal directions of Stalin. GULAG, Vorkuta administration, Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria are only disgusting and criminal tentackles of the Kremlin dragon. At those far and terrible days I decided: if I get free, I would write about concentration camp and the main murderer, maniac- gensec. We cannot afford that the generations after us should not know about it. For many years criminals leaded by “the great helmsman” cannot be forgiven. </p>
<p> After Vorkuta tragedy a lot of NKVD (later KGB) workers drove through Kochmes to Vorkuta. They were to substitute for those who carried out the cruel massacres: the main criminal decided to get rid of executioners and witnesses of Vorkuta crimes. </p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-32726102464322992642013-11-04T03:39:00.002-08:002013-11-04T03:55:12.257-08:00Machno - extract from memoirs Our group of convicts was standing near the jail gates for about an hour. Suddenly an iron bar banged, the gates opened, and we were led into an insatiable throat of the stone monster. More than one generation of revolutionaries were led through these gates. My wife (she is older than I) told me later, that she had been imprisoned there in 1912 for taking part in a demonstration on the occasion of the execution on the Lena river.
Our group was separated into smaller units, one of them was taken away immediately. Women were left on the first floor, and a small group, including me, was led upstairs to the second floor, where we were dressed in striped clothes, each of us was given a pair of underwear and a round cap resembling those that academicians were wearing. We were distributed to cells. I was pushed into a stone cell with a narrow bar of window, overlooking deserted Pollevaya street. Soon I learned that our cell was ment to prisoners sentenced to death, which fact left little hope. Our cell contained 18 prisoners, and the next one contained more than hundred.
The chief of the jail was some Belokoz, he remained here from prerevolutionary time; my wife, who had been in the jail before the revolution, still remembers him.
In two cells rather mixed groups of prisoners were collected: social revolutionaries (S.R.’s), anarchists, bolsheviks, members of Boond, zionists, makhnoists, a counterfeiter and just people that took part in actions against government. The largest group were peasants from Novomoskovsk, who were charged of participation in the rebel against Denikin. The peasants in our cell were considered instigators, the rest were scattered about the jail. The makhnoists in our cell were born in Goulyay-Polle or in the surroundings of this center of Makhno movement. All of them were men of Makhno units. One of the prisoners, a man of delicate appearance with a very intelligent face, with a high forehead and a small beard was sitting in a corner and did not take part in conversations. Brodsky, the prisoner, arrested for fabrication of false money, especially, marks, told me that the silent man was a brother of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of V.Tch.C. There was also a left social revolutionary that totally denied the participation of “S.R.’s” in the attempt on Lenin’s life, as well as in the murder of Volodarsky and Uritsky. Contrary to general opinion he claimed that S.R.’s were principally against individual terror. At the same time he condemned Maria Spiridonova, the leader of left S.R.’s, accusing her in political carreerism because of her taking part in bolsheviks’ government.
One of the makhnoists in our cell, Moskalenko, a clever and educated man, a convinced anarchist, who had been imprisoned for many years in tzarist jales, disproved in a peculiar way Marx’s theory of economical factor in historical process. He said: “According to Marx, the working masses only want to eat, consequently, the history is advanced only by hungry people. And only landlords and capitalists are to blame for their starving conditions. Really, - he continued, - the working people suffer first of all from the state: bureaucracy, army and police.” On his opinion, the politics is the decisive force of social development, and in politics it is first of all necessary to struggle with those, who hold tight to their personal interests. Moskalenko thought that Lenin in his statements pursued only gaining his personal power, thinking little of freedom for people. In those faraway times I did not agree with such opinions, though already in 1921 when Lenin became the head of the government and the defeat of the workers’ oppositions, expressing the interests of the advanced workers, was going on, I started to meditate on the position that anarchist Moskalenko had expressed in jail.
One of the young makhnoists Grigory Karetnikov, a relative of well-known at that time ataman Karetnikov, a nearest associate of Nestor Makhno, described in detail the life of N. Machno. I reproduce the story that he told me in jail cell, precisely enough.
Ataman Nestor Ivanovitch Makhno was born in a poor peasant family in Goulyay Polle, Alexandrovsk region, near Yekaterinoslav. In his early years he became a orphan, was a beggar, often slept in hay stacks and stables. In summer he worked as a farm hand, in autumn and winter helped a blacksmith for food and shelter.
He learned to read and write on his own, liked to read adventure novels very much. In 1905 he joined a terrorist group. They set on fire landlords estates and even killed provocateur agents and especially cruel policemen. Makhno was sentenced to penal servitude. There he became intimate with anarchists, especially with Volin, a Jew.
The February revolution set Makhno free and he returned to his homeland. Makhno was elected to worker-peasant council in Goulyay-Polle, he made violent massacre of land lords, and turned over their land to poor peasants. He was a great authority in his homeland and in all the Ukraine. When Yekaterinoslav region was occupied with Germans, Makhno created partisan groups of the most brave fellows and stroke painful blows on the Germans. German Headquarters estimated the ataman’s head at million roubles, but nobody betrayed him. Makhno had to escape to Moscow, where he renewed his connections with anarchists. He returned again to his homeland with an anarchist group and created a large detachment of peasants, faught with German invadors and hetman Skoropadsky troops. Exactly then Makhno developed a peculiar tactics of fight and used famous machine-gun carts. Simulating peasant weddings and burials, Makhno penetrated on machine-gun carts into positions of German forces and hetman Skoropadsky units, swiftly moved in the rear of Denikin army, seizing arms and ammunition. In all the towns, which even for a short time surrendered to Makhno units, all the prisoners were realesed from jails, irrespective of their political views. Karetnikov continued his story. “Our countryman managed to form several large detachments, which were headed by atamans Schous, my relative Karetnikov, Marchenko, Vasilevsky, Kourilenko and others.” My neighbour spoke with delight of organization talent of his ataman, compared him with haydamaks’ (Ukrainian Cossacks) leaders Gonta and Karmelouk. Karetnikov thought that only Makhno sincerely wanted to give the land to the peasants. He spoke also of gathering of Makhno units and representatives of 72 small Ukrainian regions. There several important decisions were accepted, including organization of “communes without authority”. All of Makhno’s groups were formally united into a separate brigade under the leadership of Makhno, subordinate to Soviet Zadneprovsky battalion under the command of famous Dybenko, one of the leaders of October revolution. Later I got to know that responsible messengers from Moscow repeatedly visited Makhno, including Kalinin, Manuilsky, Karl Radeck. They tried to arrange somehow cooperation of Makhno’s groups with Red Army, but without success. I listened to Karetnikov with great interest, I was fascinated with the biography of modern Stepan Razin. Seeing my interest to the personality of Makhno, Karetnikov gave many interesting facts, testifying that Nestor Makhno undoubtedly was a very outstanding person of our unfortunate epoch.
The military tactics of Makhno could arise exactly in the period of civil war. Native wit of the peasant leader perplexed experienced military men. The units of Makhno with their machine-gun carts smashed regiments and divisions under the command of experienced military specialists.
At the end of August the Makhnoists from our cell were called to meet their relatives, who brought them luxurious parcels from the country. They came back with sacks full of Ukrainian lurd, fried geese, cucumbers and tomatos, melons, apples and Ukrainian bread. The lads laid out all of the food on beautifully embroidered towels and invited all the cellmates to share a meal with them. One of them found a note, skilfully shoved under the skin of fried goose. It told that soon the ataman would enter the town with his men and release all of the prisoners from jail.
One night, when all of us were lying on the floor, we heard remote peals. We thought that thunderstorm was beginning. Brodsky told me that somebody stroke a hollow iron barrel in the jail yard. Makhnoists slept soundly. A lamp glimmerd above the cell door, I heard snorring of the guardian in the corridor. I crawled noiselessly to the narow bar of the window, overlooking Polevaya Street. I peered into the darkness, suddenly a lightning flashed, followed by a crash. No doubt, it was a cannon fire. Hearing steps in the corridor, I quickly lay on the floor and did not move. Soon I heard machine-gun bursts. Morning came. The next cell, the largest in the jail, was unusually quiet. Suddenly the keys jingled, the heavy door of our cell opened. A group of guardians entered, in front of them in a black great coat was the chief of the jail Belokoz, known for his ferocity. He ordered everybody to lie down and announced. “For the least violation of jail regime, for loud talks we will shoot up”. We lay quietly on the stone floor, I heard the thump of my heart. We were not led out to wash, only allowed to carry out close-stool. When Brodsky and I were carrying close-stool, we were escorted with increased convoy. At night two anarchists were taken away from our cell, one of them shouted, “Good bye, brothers, they are leading us to execution.”
Soon we heard shots from the prison yard. At night nobody slept, each one said last farewell to his life in his thoughts.
Suddenly something banged deafeningly in the jail yard, we could hear hum of a great mass of people and sounds: “Hurrah! Brothers, come out to freedom! The town is in the hands of ataman Makhno!”
In the corridor there was hum and song, it was anarchist hymn: “Down with shameful and slavish love, we will drown the people’s grief in blood…” In some cell the prisoners began to sing Marcelleze. We began to beat on the cell door, it seemed to us that we could be forgotten. But already near our cell somebody shouted: “Move away from the door!” After several violent strokes with a hammer from the corridor the door came off its hinges. We rushed into the corridor with a cry, ran off downstairs, mingled with the crowd of released prisoners from other cells, and continuing to shout we ran out into the jail yard. It was pouring. But we, coming out of Yekaterinoslav Bastilia, suffered little from it. The rain seemed to us a delight, we felt refreshed after our cells, soaked with rotten and stinking air of close-stool and the breath of the doomed ones. For the first time in my life I felt so deeply the spirit of freedom.
When the croud of people in striped clothes came out of the prison gates to the square, all of them saw an extraordinary picture. In the huge space between two jales hundreds of machine-gun carts stood with handsome and well-fed horses, harnessed to them. There were machine-guns on all the carts, makhnoists were seated near them, dressed in leather jackets and raincoats above them. The makhnoists met each group of prisoners that was running out of the prison gates with shouts: “Long live freedom, long live anarchy, down with casemates!” They gave a loaf of bread and a sausage to each one of the released prisoners. We heard that Belokoz, the chief of the jail, who did not manage to make off, was thrown down from the roof.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-25862089408002410662011-09-24T02:15:00.000-07:002011-09-24T02:16:13.042-07:00My meetings with Trotsky. Analysis of Trotsky's personality and his erroneous conception of proletarian revolution.CAPTER 4<br /><br />L. D. TROTSKY . SEVERAL FEATURES OF HIS PORTRAIT<br /><br />About his first wife Alexandra Lvovna Bronshtain. The origin of<br />absolutely wrong theory of proletarian revolution<br /><br />EXTRACT FROM “TURNS OF DESTINY AND TYRANNY”<br /><br />BOOK 3 p.134 - 153<br /><br />Since the year 1919 fate many times brought us together with L. D. Trotsky in various, sometimes very critical situations: in the fronts of Civil war, at his numerous meetings in front of great masses of people and in small lecture-halls, in Moscow Revvoensoviet hospital, in Glavcontsesscom, in private apartments and even at his meeting with his first wife A.L. Bronshtain, his daughters and grandchildren, living in Leningrad. In the book 1 of my memoirs I told in detail of my prolonged meetings with L.D. Trotsky. In this chapter of the book 3 I gave an account of the facts that help, to my mind, to restore the personality of Trotsky, his complicated, contradictory, brilliant, versatilly talented, courageous and spiritually strong person. I also tried to explain totally contradictory to the character and believes of Trotsky his behavior and statements in the last years of his life in the USSR: passiveness, indecision, contradictory and illogical behavior.<br />During years of Soviet power enormous heaps of lies were devised about what was going on in Russia/USSR in the period of the first thirty years of the XX-th century, and especially about Trotsky. Already in the middle of the 20-th years it was very difficult, and about 1928 impossible to publish any material about Trotsky without check up and approval of Central Committee of the Party.<br />For example, in the year 1928 after Trotsky’s arrest and exile to Alma-Ata I wrote a big article “The legend of Trotsky”. However I tried, it was impossible to publish it, though as a manuscript it was rather widely distributed in Moscow, Leningrad and Ivanovo-Voznesensk. In the article I stated my own point of view on so-called “trotskism”, I tried to show that “trotskism’ was not a principally new political trend, and that Trotsky represented position of traditional social democracy. At the same time I expressed my opinion of the dirty and totally false campaign, carried out against Trotsky, which was induced by the fear of the Party ruling clique of his great popularity in the Party, army and in the midst of the most qualified workers. Then were still alive those, who very well remembered Trotsky’s activity in the revolution of 1905, of his activity in 1917 as the chairman of Petrograd Soviet. There were legends of his decisive activity in October 1917 and during Civil War. And nobody knew, what “the true leninists” Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev were busy with in those fiery, strained days. Already after several years, when I summarized my impressions of meetings with Trotsky and analyzed his actions, numerous speeches and articles of those old years, I came to a conclusion, that all that was written about him did not express the profound essence of his personality. We, his contemporaries, perceived him in absolutely another way, than the following generations, we saw quite another meaning in his words and actions, than the historians and commentators of the following years.<br />The secret agreement of the Central Committee members against Trotsky arose already in 1921. It was demonstrated by Zinoviev’s speech at X-th Party congress, when he used for the first time the labels “trotskism” and “trotskists”.<br />I came across with the preparation of the open campaign against Trotsky at the beginning of 1923 when I was a student of the Institute of Red Professorship {IRP). At that time so-called “Bukharin school” in IRP – Slepkov, Astrov, Ugarov, Maretsky brothers – intensively collected “historical material” for 1910-1916 of the menshevik’s past of Trotsky and of his principal disagreement with Lenin. In conversations of the group hints to nationality of Trotsky began to creep, and consequently doubts of his ability to express “the spirit of Russian people” were expressed. It was known, that all the participants of “Bukharin school” were members of youth monarchy organizations before October 1917, but in 1923 these political chameleons were already with “loyal Leninists”. Attacks on Trotsky were planned beforehand and were conducted on wide front both in the Central Committee and in local organizations of the Party. Everywhere executive workers were changed in the Party and State staff, new personnel was selected mainly on the criterion of the hostility to Trotsky. Thus any self-seekers and rascals managed to creep on the high posts. They took the place of intellectual, talented and initiative people. Stalin – the secret manager of the whole campaign against Trotsky was actually supported with this numerous army of newcomers – dull, obedient, unprincipled Party bureaucracy.<br />10 years passed since October upheaval, and in the ruling party and state already formed all the necessary conditions for the Central Committee of the Party to begin an open struggle against Trotsky and his supporters. In this connection it will be proper to mention an interesting observation of German philosopher Gegel.. In his brilliant to my mind work “Philosophy of History” he noted the following historical phenomenon: when the historical aim is gained, the persons, that were striving for it, fall away like unnecessary dry seed-coat. These persons either die early, like Alexander Makedonsky, or are killed, like Julius Caesar, or are exiled to an island, for instance, Saint Helen, like Napoleon. This general conclusion by Gegel can be practically without reserve attribute to what was going on at the end of twenties in the USSR. The aim, to which the Bolsheviks were striving, - the capture and consolidation of power was gained. It has to be noted, that yet in 1918 Martov, one of the mensheviks’ leaders, foretold, that after gaining power Bolsheviks would start “to devour one another” and this inevitably would result in dictatorship of a small group of “leaders” and elimination of democracy.<br />Now I will tell about the first wife of Trotsky Alexandra Lvovna Bronshtain (Al.L.}<br />We got acquainted in 1925, when coming to Leningrad from Moscow we settled in the former hotel Astoria, one side of which overlooked Isaaky square. At that time this former hotel was called House of Leningrad Soviet. Al.L., her sister, grandchildren Lev and Volia occupied three rooms. Sometimes two daughters of Al.L. and Trotsky appeared there. Alexandra L. was an interesting, charming, whole-hearted, very delicate and truly noble person. Her appearance was pleasing, but not gaudy, figure a little plump, her face almost round without cosmetics, middle height, dark and partly grizzled hair. Her clothes were simple and neat. Her manner was calm and dignified, when she was speaking her always sad eyes were looking attentively at the interlocutor. She loved very much little children, when she saw them, a very kind smile appeared on her face.<br />Al.L. was born in the Ukraine, in the town of Nikolaev. While studying at secondary school, she took a great interest in social problems, practiced self-education, participated in meetings and circles. She met Lev Bronshtain in one of the meetings. When social-democratic groups were defeated in Nikolaev, Al.L. was arrested, spent several months in jail and was sentenced to exile to Siberia together with L. Bronshtain. On the way to exile they registered their marriage in Moscow deportation jail. Two daughters were born in exile. L.D. Bronshtain escaped abroad, he got a passport on name L.D. Trotsky from underground workers.<br />After her return from exile A.L. met with Trotsky several times abroad, but then he already had another family. My wife and Al.L. were great friends. When we had a free time, the three of us spoke sincerely of everything: of the history of socialist movement, which Al.L. knew very well, of music, literature and education of children.<br />Sometimes our conversations concerned Trotsky. Al.L. spoke of him with great respect, rendering him his due, acknowledged his knowledge, wide erudition, great talent as a journalist-publicist, outstanding talent of organizer and public speaker.<br />Sometimes she regretted that Trotsky, who sharply broke up with Lenin in 1910-12 years, did not get close with Plekhanov and Martov, with whom he had to her opinion a lot in common. Actually Al.L. regarded G.V. Plekhanov with reverence. Considering relationship between Trotsky and Lenin, A.L. believed that Lenin till 1917 was unfriendly with Trotsky and sometimes openly hostile and she could hardly understand why after the year 1917 they came to rather confidential relations. In fact, it was known, that at that time Lenin asked Trotsky’s support in many crucial, significant cases.<br />When I returned to Leningrad from exile in 1927 I told my wife and Al.L. of my adventures for the last time: meeting and conversation with Smilga , conversation with Trotsky in Glavcontsesscom, visit to the Control Commission of Party Central Committee, mission {a regular exile} to the Ural and exclusion from Party in Kungur. Al.L. utterly approved my behavior in Central Committee and my exclusion from Party. I remember her phrase: “People absolutely devoid of principles and any cultural and moral traditions and even often illiterate came to the Party machinery on all levels. Many of them are brutal in their nature.” Al.L being a very delicate person, over sensitively reacted to brutality.<br />Discussing my conversation with Trotsky in Glavcontsesscom Al.L adviced me to try to meet him again and to make it more clear about two most important to her opinion points.<br />- What makes Trotsky to be indecisive as before, whereas Stalin gang becomes more and more insolent?<br />- What is his estimation of the feasible progress of the situation in the Party and in the country, whether he considers it possible establishment of democratic methods of ruling in the Party?<br />It may seem strange, but soon I met Trotsky once more, and discussed situation with<br />him, including Al.L.’s questions. The meeting took place at the end of 1927. Then the XY-th Congress of Communist party had just finished. It affirmed the decision of plenum of excluding from the Party of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rakovsky, Smilga, Muralov, Pyatakov, Radek and many others, mainly old Bolsheviks, joining to united opposition. There was a phrase going by in Moscow: “Moisey took out Jews from Egypt, and Stalin did from the Central Committee”. Anti-Semites approved this. The formal reason for exclusion of the old Bolsheviks was the following accusation: sliding to menshevism, creation of the opposition and illegal organizations with the aim of division of the Party. The XY-th congress was a special, a most important stage in the Stalin’s struggle for unlimited power.<br />Practically, all those, who presented the backbone of the Bolsheviks before February revolution and played a dominant role both in October 1917 and in the period of Civil war, were expelled from the Party. Three groups of delegates clearly represented themselves at this congress: Stalin gang, which began imperceptibly build itself yet from the time of Civil war, oppositionist-capitulators group and as usual a numerous group of hesitating. Neither of those expressed interests of any class or social layer of the main mass of the people. The struggle for power was going on.<br />At the eve of new 1928 year my wife and I invited Al.L. to our apartment and I spoke in detail of my latter meeting with Trotsky. Al.L. noted that actually the life crossed out the main principal aim of Trotsky for permanent revolution, when the working class of the West would support Russian revolution. It was very hard for Trotsky to realize this fact, he gave too much force to revolutionary movement.<br />After this meeting and till my arrest in the autumn of 1928 I rarely saw Al.L. On irony of fate close friends of Trotsky I.N. Smirnov and S. Mrachkovsky asked me to visit several large cities in the central Russia, the Ural and Caucasus with the purpose to convince Trotsky’s supporters to dismiss their organizations. It was hard to me to accept this offer, I disliked it very much. Only respect for these people made me to go.<br />In autumn of 1928 I was arrested, imprisoned in Lubyanka and Butyrka and exiled to Siberia. At this time we could realize rare decency of Al.L. In summer her younger daughter Nina who shared her father’s ideas, died, the elder daughter Zina was seriously ill. At this time Al.L. was helping my family, always expressed hope on my prompt return from exile. Al.L. even helped to organize my wife’s and our two years old son’s a trip to Siberian village Suerskoe to see me.<br />In the year 1930 I was released from exile ahead of time upon application by Kirov and returned to Leningrad. Again we often met Al.L. By this time she was notably weakened: her daughters’ death effected her very much, the senior daughter died soon after the junior. Though Al.L. continued working in the education department and taught historical materialism at the University, nothing left from her former optimism. Raising up of grandchildren was her only stimulus for life. Little Lev had excellent memory and was more serious than children of his age. He knew a lot of his grand- father, was proud of him, showed album with Trotsky’s photos beginning from secondary school age. Al.L. was very pessimistic about her grandchildren’s future, as well as about general situation in the country.<br /> Last time I saw Al.L. at the end of December 1934 in the corridor of Leningrad House of imprisonment before trial. Kirov was murdered recently, and in Leningrad people were arrested in the unprecedented mass scale. The cells of the House were over-crowded, newcomers were interrogated in a large corridor. I was sitting at one of the numerous little tables in front of a very young interrogator who just began to ask me. Suddenly I saw Al.L., she was led into the corridor, she also noticed me and nodded her head. I rose abruptly from my chair and shouted: “Dina and I were arrested last night, now we are being interrogated…” Immediately three operative workers ran to me and offered to follow them, one of them pushed me in the back. I turned around and pushed him off with force. Three others ran to me, caught me by the arms and in a minute pushed me into a stone bag – punishment cell. I never saw Al.L again..<br />In Vorkuta concentration camp I heard that when she finished her term in the concentration camp she was exiled somewhere. Many years later, when my jail-concentration camp history was finished and I returned to my family, my wife and I very often recollected Al.L. and our very interesting conversations with her. The image of this noblest woman never waned in the years that passed.<br />Now I will try to explain basing on my personal impressions from meetings with Trotsky, his friends’ stories, my opinions of his speeches, his articles of those old years and his actions, his passive behavior in the period of 1924-1927 years, utterly not becoming with his personality. Political storms were seething around, extremely acute struggle inside the Party was going on, but Trotsky, who was a fighter by nature, looked at the situation as if he had a detached view. Actually, he was in that period very popular in the Party, among people and especially in the army. In this connection I expounded in the second book of my memoirs what V.M. Smirnov told me, when we were together in exile in the village Suerskoe. In the year 1926 V.M. Smirnov was present at the meeting of Trotsky and a group of military men headed by the chief of Moscow military garrison N.I. Muralov. This group offered to arrest Stalin and all those close to him in the Central Committee and OGPU. Reaction of Trotsky was unexpected for the group. He did not support the military men, but was again and again convincing them to decline from violence. V.M. Smirnov was acquainted with Trotsky for many years since emigration period, knew him as a very resolute and energetic person. At that meeting in 1926 he saw quite another person: irresolute, inherently broke down and clearly reticent. Life totally cancelled his ideas on the events going on after the monarchy fall in Russa.<br /> I knew people that rightly enough forecasted the post-revolution situation in Russia. These people weren’t political figures, often had not much knowledge, moreover they did not practiced futurology. Whereas Trotsky, a greatest politic of his time, talented man, who was capable to think sensibly in various situations, failed in estimation even of approximate progress of events after February revolution. I tried to understand the logic of his thoughts and actions, the logic of his conception of the revolution and to realize if only a little the basis of this obviously erroneous conception. I was aware that it was a very difficult task, that it was for historians to fulfill it, but still probably the opinion of one of his contemporaries, who met him in many different circumstances, would be interesting for someone. By the way, it should be taken in consideration that mountains of lies were piled around this man.<br />From his young years Trotsky was filled with uncompromising protest against social injustice and complete lack of rights in Russian empire. Then Marxist ideas quickly spread about the whole world. But it is necessary to discern two parts in Marxism, which seem to be closely connected. The first and the chief is political economy of capitalism, set forth in the main Marx’s work “Capital”. Economists in the whole world consider “Capital” one of the most fundamental and authoritative studies in economy. All those, who seriously studied “Capital”, were charmed with the logic, depth, systematic character, encyclopedic width of this really titanic work.<br />The second, political part of Marxism is dedicated to the theory of proletariat dictatorship. Marx, sitting in the British Museum library, during many years studied contradictions of the capitalism on the example of advanced, industrially developed England with formed long ago high-qualified, politically literate working class. As a result he came to a conclusion that proletariat dictatorship would solve all the social contradictions. Other possible ways of solving the eternal problems of the mankind Marxism unfoundedly did not appreciate.<br /> The second part of Marxism relates to prognostic sphere, which is always a risky business, where probability of mistake is great. I guess that the second part is artificially drawn to the first one with the aim to give completeness to the whole theory. Essentially, the proletariat dictatorship according to Marx is one of the possible variants of solving contradictions in the capitalist society. The second part of Marxism found ardent supporters in the very limited circle of politicians, sociologists, historians, generally advocates of radical social and state reforms. So it is not surprising that for Trotsky, who was very much inclined to social radicalism, namely the second part of Marxism became an extraordinary revelation, a kind of Bible of the revolution. This fact prevented him to get a wider understanding of the social processes, in which psychology of people, historical traditions and customs, religion, moral and other features of human spirit play a significant role. Infinitely worshiping Marxism, Trotsky rarely exceeded the bounds of political, economical and social aspects and hence made the basis of his theoretical conceptions very narrow. He obviously underestimated the significance of philosophy and history. How could he develop the conception of the revolution in such a country, as Russia without being acquainted with a huge scientific historic material by V.S. Kluchevsky or to write of conquer of power without reading, for instance, “Political treatise” by B. Spinosa?<br />I had another question: Was it possible to transfer general views of revolution on the country, which by its origin and historical development for centuries was “out of general rules of historical life?” And one more question: how Trotsky conceived ordinary Russian citizen, whom he supposed to make happy after revolution, what were his psychology, inclinations, traditions, relation to religion and to other nations, i.e. all that, which presents spiritual sphere of ordinary person’s life? Obviously, if this person is deprived of possibility to follow the habits and rites of his ancestors, he suffers of very hard situation, when all the past has to be forgotten and he has to begin to live in a new way, if he has enough will and energy.<br /> Social revolution from the Trotsky’s point of view (as well as Lenin’s) had to break all the past. Trotsky once used an expression: “What is lost in the tradition, is gained in the range of revolutionary movement.” It is difficult to understand, in which way the range of revolutionary movement can substitute traditions of centuries? At the same time the words by L. Tolstoy are understandable: “Many simple people have true faith, which they need, it gives them meaning and possibility of life.” <br /> I think that some narrowness of Trotsky’s initial position, squeezed into Marxism bounds, was one of the most significant reasons of Trotsky’s errors both in the analysis of the current events and in the forecasts for future. <br />Revolution in Russia led to results, contrary to those Trotsky counted on. World socialist revolution proved to be Utopia. It can be said that this was the consequence of the most serious mistake in methodology that was the origin of principally wrong Trotsky’s approach to the analysis of social processes going on in the world. Some of his mistakes can be explained by his long absence from Russian reality and that he could not realize what was going on among people masses.<br />Actually, at the beginning of new century young Trotsky was sent to tsarist jail, sentenced to exile to Siberia, wherefrom he soon escaped abroad. He returned to Russia for a short time, participated actively in the revolution of 1905, and approximately in 1906 he already presented his conception of socialist revolution in Russia based on proletariat dictatorship with the following transfer of the revolution process into European countries. Afterwards he emigrated again. Thus Trotsky, who considered Russian proletariat the main motive force of the revolution, did not clearly conceive the structure and the general level of Russian proletariat, its essential distinction from European working class, practically, English working class, that Marx meant, speaking of the leading role of proletariat in contemporary society. <br />It should be mentioned that two essential peculiarities were characteristic of Russian proletariat of pre-revolutionary period. First, the number of the most qualified, politically competent, advanced part of the working class was very small. Secondly, during the First World War the structure of the working class changed considerably. Many peasants, running away from the villages to escape a call to military service, came to factories. At that time I was working at Bryansk works in Ekaterinoslav and saw how the new workers, keeping close relationship with the village, were different from experienced hereditary workers. By the way, the majority of workers in Ekaterinoslav, the largest industrial center, supported socialist-revolutionaries, but not bolsheviks. <br />Now, what I think of the theory of permanent revolution that according to Trotsky’s conception was a necessary condition both when the bourgeois-democratic revolution transferred into socialist one and when it transferred from national bounds to world scale. It did not matter, in which country the revolution would take place earlier: in advanced or in a backward one. <br />It was supposed that the revolution process would spread from Russia to Europe, and more progressive and organized working class of Europe would be at the head of “world-wide revolution’. But at this point a question arises: in which way and in which stage Russian revolution could be attractive to European countries? It is not necessary to speak of Civil war period. In the years 1923-25 I was serving my first administrative exile in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the largest textile industry center. Three years passed after Civil war. The condition of workers, especially working women, was terrible: the hardest housing conditions, lack of rights for workers and oppression from the administration, very bad food supply, hard working conditions. At my numerous meetings with workers they sharply criticized local party leaders, they told that party bureaucrats behaved much worse, than former tsarist officials. At the same time Trotsky continued to speak of “permanent revolution”, while he undoubtedly knew what was going on at mills and factories. What was it, he was unwilling to consider real life or was afraid to confess first of all to himself of the utmost ruin of his concepts and program?<br />I was asking myself another question: why Trotsky thought that Bolshevik party was the advanced part of proletariat and was expressing its interests? After the Bolsheviks gained the power very soon the true aims of the ruling party became evident. It was not by chance that the first opposition in the Party was the Working opposition that expressed the interests of the most advanced part of proletariat which had been the main force of October upheaval.<br />Already in the year 1922 the principal disagreements between the opposition and Central Committee of the Party became evident. When Bolsheviks came to power, there was no dictatorship of proletariat, but dictatorship of the Central Committee over the people, including proletariat. It was inevitable. The structure and all the activity of Bolshevik party from the moment of its organization was based on the most rigid centralization and authoritarism.<br />How was it possible that Trotsky did not understand what was going on? I should note that I always considered Trotsky, as I do now, when I write this book, the greatest politician of XX-th century and versatilly talented person, possessing many qualities of people’s leader: will, energy, clearness of purpose, clearness and depth of analysis of any most complicated situation, rare oratory ability and capacity to impress huge people masses. Many people spoke of his talent as a journalist, for instance, the well-known English writer and play-writer Bernard Shaw called him “the king of pamphleteers”. A.V. Lunacharsky called Trotsky a man of great talent and admired his literary-critical articles. There were many estimations of this kind. Naturally, I asked a question: how could it be that this very talented person, a man of great experience in politics could not foresee the consequences of revolution in such a country, as Russia. Partly I presented my opinion above: This was in some degree the consequence of methodologic mistake – the limitation of his concept by Marxism bounds and insufficient knowledge of the events and social processes, proceeding in Russia during first twenty yeas of the XX-th century.<br />I think one more point was important. I will take the risk to set forth my probably somewhat unexpected opinion. <br />In spite of all Trotsky’s talents he was by mentality a brilliant tactician, but in no way strategist. He liked to cite Bonapart’s words: “First we have to begin fighting and after that look out.” Trotsky could extraordinary quickly analyze circumstances and any most complicated situation, to choose the main, generally right line of action and to convince people in the necessity to support his decision. All that and his extraordinary energy, clearness of purpose, composure and courage helped him to gain success in the most complicated situations. Still these qualities are insufficient for the right forecast of the development of political, economical and social processes for long perspective, especially in the world range. At this point I again found the answer in works of great philosopher, citizen of Holland B. Spinosa. He already in the XY11-th century came to a conclusion that the highest form of knowledge was intuition, in considerable degree a natural property, developing depending on many factors and conditions. People capable of highly developed intuitive thinking can more or less correctly estimate general trends of the social processes development for a long prospect. Trotsky did not possess this gift. To my mind, this was also one of essential reasons of his erroneous estimation of possible consequences of the revolution. <br />After October upheaval Trotsky rather quickly understood what was going on, though for the next several years he remained in the powerful stream of events that overwhelmed Russia.<br /> I guess that already in the years 1923-1924 Trotsky realized his very serious mistake.<br />Everything that he was actively fighting for during all his conscious life proved to be Utopia. So-called revolution of proletariat (indeed the capture of power by a small group of professional revolutionaries) turned to be dictatorship of a small group of the Party with all the signs of transfer to a personal dictatorship.<br />Moreover, in one of latter conversations with me he told that the dictatorship of one party would finally lead to fascism, which in the definite historical conditions may be the most acceptable form of social life not only for Russia, but also for some European countries. This somewhat belated understanding was, of course, a great personal tragedy for Trotsky. <br />I think this was the origin of his unusual behavior in the period of 1924-1927 years: passivity, indecision, discrepancy of statements and unwillingness to use force against Stalin gang. His arguments lost his usual logic and force of convincing. It seemed he did not believe himself in what he called for, but could not acknowledge it even to himself, as so many years and forces were given to struggle. Still Trotsky continued, though rather listlessly, to call his supporters to stay in the ruling party, spoke of the presence of living forces in Party and of the future, already not near, rather far world revolution.<br />Many years later after imprisonment in jails and concentration camps I thought a lot of my life and of my generation’s life and came to a conclusion that the hardest cataclysms shaking Russia at the XX-th century were natural. All that had to occur early or late.<br />Several generations of young people in Russia, feeling very strong moral enthusiasm unselfishly fought against absence of civil rights, most acute social injustice, extreme backwardness, infinite inertness and falsity, corruption and tyranny of the State power. <br />This struggle sometimes accepted liberal forms (going to enlighten people and propagandize socialist ideas), sometimes extremely radical: (terror, revolution).<br />At the XX-th century, as at all times, the most part of those who struggled for better life, including Trotsky, sincerely believed in possibility of just democratic society in Russia. Thousands of young people, pure and noble romantics, deeply believing in the final triumph of justice, devoted their lives to struggle for better future of people. Almost all of them laid down their lives either in the fields of Civil war or under the knife of Bolshevist guillotine. Most of them could not foresee in those bygone years what would be the end of their struggle in such country, as Russia. <br />The general misfortune of all the generations of fighters for the better future of Russia was from one side the naïve idea of “people’s wisdom”, from the other side – absence of understanding of deep, fundamental peculiarities of this people based on the conditions of origin and historic development of Russian state. It is striking that in the XX-th century the peoples populated Russian empire kept many ancient traditions, morals, customs, prejudicies, superstitions and notions of the paganism epoch. Russian people, as well as 300 years ago in the reign of the first tsar of Romanov dynasty, was deeply convinced in the special destination of Orthodox Church and divine origin of tsarist power, was hostile to representatives of other religions and alien persons (foreigners and others). <br />It is a complicated contradiction: in spite of revolts, popular uprisings and revolutions that periodically shook Russia, the most part of people masses in town and in village possesses slavish psychology and doesn’t accept democratic ideals in spite of relatively high education level of some layers of the society - they have low general cultural level and are very ignorant. It was not at all by chance that reactionary tsarist regime was followed by a most cruel dictatorship, savage, globally non-humane regime having no analogues in history. This regime finally destroyed people’s strength, its spirit, the sense of self-respect. Thus the people not only submitted meekly, but began to consider the savage dictator almost God-like man, a new tsar-father.<br />Such a paradox. What told V.V. Shulgin, one of the most reactionary advocates of Russian monarchy, a typical chauvinist: “Under the guidance of Stalin Russia became a world empire, Stalin achieved object that many generations of Russians strived for. That’s a pity that he is not a real tsar, he possesses all the necessary qualities… Russian people has almost religious necessity to be ruled by tsar-father, to whom it could trust”. Shulgin said this in the middle of XX-th century, when he returned to Russia after long emigration and realized that he struggled with Soviet power in vain. Bolsheviks fulfilled the cherished dream of the Russian monarchists. Nobody of them were never confused what was the price and form of this achievement. Somebody noted: the leaders as a rule correspond to the Messian expectations of the people masses.<br />Probably, each person, trying to comprehend the past and what is going on at present, has his individual approach in estimation of the events. Trotsky, for instance, actually always made conclusions from the class positions, from Marxist approach. In the same way he considered the proceeding of historical process, its periods, especially the period of rapid development of revolutionary movement in Russia from the beginning of the XX-th century. I in my memoirs approach this period from the other side. After all that I survived I began to pay attention first to the scale of senseless perishing of people at one or other period. From the first years of XX-th century the giant slaughter-house began to act, wherein at the beginning thousands, later millions of people were killed. It is difficult to say when the first step was made. As to me, already in the year 1905 being a little boy I became a witness of a bloody Pogrom of Jews in Alexandrovsk (now Zaporozhye), this slaughter-house already worked. Russian-Japan war, revolution of 1905 – the scale of people perishing increased. <br />In the year 1914 Russia joined in the First World war: the slaughter-house was in full swing, next was February revolution of 1917, Civil war, destruction of the country, mass hunger, jails, concentration camps, the Second World war, again jails and concentration camps. Only in the years 1954-55 the scale of mass destruction of people began to shorten, millions were set free from jails and concentration camps, I was released before the appointed time of imprisonment, I did not finish my term, came out 8 years earlier the appointed term by the last sentence. In 1952 concentration camp court sentenced me to the next term – ten years of concentration camp and one year of the camp jail. In the charge I was incriminated anti-Soviet activity, Zionism and trotskism. It is known that the general character of charges on every stage of struggle against “enemies” was determined by Stalin personally. It seems, in 1952 not long before the death of Kremlin maniac the spirit of Trotsky gave him no rest. I think, Stalin saw in Trotsky his absolute antipode, contrary to him in everything.<br />To my mind, L.D. Trotsky was “the mirror of Russian revolution”. On the basis of his fate – of a brilliant, complicated, talented, contradictory, courageous person the development of revolutionary movement in Russia with its upsurges and recessions, with a rapid growth in the years 1915-1916, with a big but short-termed victory in February 1917 and crushing tragic catastrophe in October of the same year can be followed. The capture of the power by Bolsheviks was a fatal catastrophe both for Russia and for Trotsky, in spite of the fact that he more than anybody promoted the success of October armed revolt and victories in the Civil war that consolidated new power. <br />It is very strange that critics of Bolshevism unite Lenin and Trotsky basing on their short-termed alliance, ignoring the fact that they were in many points utterly different. They came to October 1917 by different ways. From the year 1903 when RSDRP split into two fractions, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks with Lenin at the head, Trotsky actively opposed Lenin for many years. <br />It was evident that Lenin and Trotsky absolutely differently treated Stalin. Trotsky understood very well what kind of person Stalin was. At the time of Civil war Trotsky recommended to prosecute Stalin for his corrupting activity in the Red army, verging with crime. Trotsky offered to prosecute him in Revtribunal, but Lenin defended and fenced him off.<br />It is worth while to think why Stalin till the end of his days so severely, pathologically continued to hate Trotsky. Even after Stalin oprichniks killed Trotsky enormous efforts were made to utterly remove from people’s memory everything of his revolutionary activity, his role in October 1917 and Civil war. At the same time merits of Lenin were excessively exaggerated, absolutely deceitful legends about “revolutionary” Stalin were invented. I underline once more that for years of Soviet power a huge army of historians, politologues, writers and other falsificators rewrote the history of revolutionary movement in Russia and especially the history of February revolution and armed revolt in October 1917, Civil war, inner-Party struggle. As a result, today in the USSR very few people know anything of L.D. Trotsky and if they know, they think he was only a politician.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-50504505847347361202011-09-03T03:29:00.000-07:002011-09-24T02:15:29.209-07:00My meetings with Trotsky. Analysis of Trotsky's personality and his erroneous conception of proletarian revolution.Extract from “Turns of Destiny and Tyranny” , Book 1, chapter 5, p.498-502, 506-514<br /><br />I entered Glavcontsesscom and reported Trotsky’s secretary of my coming. I came exactly at the time settled before. When I entered into Trotsky’s study I saw a man sitting at the table, who was wearing a white-snow suit. His grayish-green unwinking eyes looked at me through pince-nez glasses. What was striking in his face was a sharp vertical line on the lower lip. The face seemed a little puffy. Trotsky was holding in his hand a red paper case resembling very much the case with so-called “Lenin’s will”, which I read in 1924, when Ivanovo-Voznesensk regional secretary Simeon Zorin gave it to me in his office. Trotsky invited me to sit closer to his desk, switched on a fan, standing on his desk, and said: “The fan is meant not only for cooling the air, but for making noise because of the immense curiosity of the informants”. I was astonished: I could hardly imagine that in 1927 there was organized constant hearing of conversations of many Central Committee members.<br />I began my report of the situation in Leningrad with Zinoviev’s speech at the meeting of Putilov works, mentioning the funny position, in which the former Komintern chairman and the closest Lenin’s supporter got into. I mentioned the telegram from Central Committee sent to Zinoviev directly to Putilov Works. I added: “Zinoviev in Putilov works was as frightened, as before October”.<br />Trotsky smiled, he evidently thought of his “October Lessons”. Then he remarked: “Grigory Evseevitch now understands well his fatal mistake, when he in the year 1924 immediately after Vladimir Ilyich’s death invented his legend about trotskizm and menshevist wing in the Party.<br />I decided to make it more exact: “No, Lev Davydovich, not only he made mistakes, all the members of Politbureau made mistakes, including you, when in due time you could not fire Stalin from the General Secretary post.”<br />Further I tried to state my own opinion of Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s “mistake” before October. In a quiet manner I said that Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s mistakes, using Lenin’s words, “were not casual”. Trotsky stopped, looked at me with his unwinking eyes and asked:<br />“What does it mean?”<br />I resolutely blurted out:<br />“It means, Lev Davydovich, that Russia was not ready for social revolution in 1917.”<br />Trotsky was stunned with my answer. It seemed to me, that the organizer of October revolution would call me menshevik, supporter of Martov and Dan. But this did not happen. Trotsky did not answer and was silent for some time. Then he walked several tines to and fro in his study, sat in his arm-chair and began to develop his idea:<br />“I would like that comrades in Leningrad understand, that after Vladimir Ilyich’ s death the Party is suffering a crisis: it either will go by a new democratic way or degenerate and become a government party of state capitalism… Only façade of socialism will survive, but actually it will be state capitalism system. In the conditions of Russia it will lead to absolutism.”<br />I was listening to Trotsky very attentively, trying not to miss a single word. Trotsky continued:<br />“We have to be supported by an advanced, more conscious group of the Party and try to do our best in consolidation of all the supporters of the democratic way. I think, now Zinoviev and Kamenev, advanced workers of Leningrad, Moscow and Ural understand this… I suppose, soon Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky will also understand this. After that it will be possible to develop a new program, its essence I call democratic socialism.” Trotsky spoke in such a way, as if he addressed not one person, but a big audience, working class, people. At first I decided, that one of the leaders of Russian revolution and the main leader of October upheaval had got to a conclusion, that the dictatorship of one party became outdated, that it would inevitably lead to unlimited tyranny. But suddenly Trotsky began to speak that it was by all means necessary for the opposition to stay inside the Party with the aim to unite all the live forces of it against the forming oligarchy of Party bureaucracy. In this connection it was necessary to dismiss organized opposition groups.<br />I was not only stunned with such unexpected conclusions, but simply deafened. Some time I could not collect my thoughts. I could hardly believe that in the year 1927 when Stalin clique during several years and especially after Lenin’s death actively and successfully acts for liquidation of all the opposition groups in the Party, Trotsky still did not realize uselessness of the struggle for a new democratic way in the Party. Couldn’t he see that first of all supporters of democratic methods of guidance are expelled from the Party? Support of which sections of the population and Party he counted on? I mentally planned my objections and asked his permission to give my account of situation. Trotsky offered me to speak out. I said the following:<br />“Lev Davydovitch, don’t you see that the moment is missed? It was possible to unite people against the usurper in the years 1923-24. But then the majority was busy with attacks against those, who criticized ”Lenin” Central Committee, with mutual squabbles and scholastic argues of possible socialism building in one country. At the same time Stalin, using his position of general secretary, changed the secretaries of regional committees and political workers in the army, selected people, loyal to him in the GPM (General Political Management) organs. Today such apparatus of suppression is built, that Central Committee can not only get rid of all criticizers in the Party, but oppress any different minding in the country. And what has become of Leningrad proletariat? The best part of it perished on the fields of Civil War, the worst hung on the Party and government stuff. The social basis of the working class has changed due to coming of great masses of peasants to towns, I can illustrate this fact with real figures for Leningrad. Absolutely unprincipled people with clearly petty-bourgeois psychology came to government and Party staff. All that is the basis of the regeneration of the Party and will promote unlimited dictatorship of a small group in the Party. The numerous new Party members and especially all ranks of bureaucracy do not need democratic socialism, they are panic-stricken and afraid of democracy. As to the leaders, that guided revolutionary movement of masses, they either died after the social upheaval, as Lenin did, or were executed as Danton and Robespier, or are exiled to the places, located not very far. Probably, this is natural for all the revolutions, both bourgeois and proletarian ones.”<br />I said all that spontaneously and rather excitedly, I became hot. Trotsky noted my excitement, put his hand on my shoulder and said: I see, you thought a lot about all what was happening in the Party and in the country and take it painfully. You think as a philosopher, it seems, you chose philosophy as a scientific school?<br />I answered:<br />“Yes, I am very much interested in the history of philosophy, especially Spinosa attracts me.”<br />Trotsky asked me to compose myself. I noticed that my excited speech effected him. But I, using this rare possibility, decided to continue this conversation and asked:<br />‘Lev Davydovich, don’t you think, that Lenin in all his fundamental works accented his attention on the worker-peasant dictatorship, and not on a proletarian one, and that he secretly hardly believed in the revolutionary mission of the Russian proletariat, integrally connected with the peasantry?”<br />Further I asked Trotsky a psychological question:<br />“Don’t you think, that the execution of his brother Alexander Ilyich influenced very much on the psychical and mental condition of Lenin? Actually, Lenin in the course of his political struggle tried to connect Marxism with narodniks and Blankism.”<br />Trotsky smiled broadly and said:<br />“You are right, all the essence of Leninism is in that, actually in the peasant question… All those, who took up the peasant question, concealed their distrust not only in Russian proletariat, but in European proletariat too… Those, who criticized my notorious theory of permanent revolution, meant this fact, my theory was repeatedly misinterpreted not only by Bukharin school, but by my present-day friends – Zinoviev and Kamenev.” He added: “You as a scientist-marxist, should know, that the theory of permanent revolution was developed not by me, not by Parvus, but by Marx.”<br />Further Trotsky said, that neither Marx, nor Engels ever supposed that the socialism problem could be solved in the limits of one national state… If such attempts are done, such socialism will have little distinctions from Zubatov socialism, which is a police socialism.<br />Here our conversation interrupted: the secretary came in and told that there was an urgent affair. Trotsky went with me to the door, pressed my hand and said that he was glad to have such a sincere conversation.<br />Very excited and bewildered I left Glavkontsesscom.. I decided to walk, to calm down and think over the conversation with Trotsky. I understood that he called up all his supporters to stay in the Party and refuse from the organizational registration of the opposition. But I already saw in Leningrad that Stalin gang started open suppression of its enemies and it is quite logical, that the first step in this struggle was expelling all the differently minded persons from the Party. Thinking our conversation over, I began to understand, that he himself hardly believed in the possible unity of the democratic forces inside the ruling Bolshevik party.<br />Soon I was expelled from the Party, and it was impossible for me to work in the education sphere. I came to Moscow, where I hoped to receive some work, connected with edition and translation of the materials on history of philosophy. I was staying at my old friend Nikolay Vikhirev, who was a colleague of Evgeny Preobrazhensky in Glavprofobr (Professional education department). Evgeny settled my second meeting with Trotsky…<br />I approached Sheremetyev lane, which connects Nikitsky street with Vozdvizhenka. It is adjoined from one side by buildings of Moscow University, from the other side – by government houses, where Molotov, Voroshilov and other high-ranking persons were living. In a large apartment of one of these houses lived practically former people’s commissar of Interior Beloborodov. When Trotsky was offered to leave the apartment in the Kremlin, Beloborodov invited him to settle with his wife Sedova in his apartment. He was that Alexander Beloborodov, who being the chairman of the Ural Soviet, signed the decision of the Soviet of tsar Nikolay the Second and his family execution…<br />With a dim feeling I entered into Beloborodov’s apartment. In a small room to the right lied Beloborodov, he suffered from angina pectoris… Next to this room there was a rather large room with a long table, covered with oil-cloth. Several young men were sitting around the table, they were copying a new big article by Trotsky: “At a new stage”. I promptly began to read it. It was a brilliant from the literature point of view pamphlet with a profound philosophic analysis of our reality after Lenin’s death. The article substantiated the necessity of transfer of the Party and country to wide democracy, sharply criticized the bureaucratic management in the Party and government apparatus. Profoundly analyzing the process of the Party degeneration, Trotsky confirmed his former theory of Thermidor.<br />When I was copying the article, Trotsky entered. He recognized me at once, shook my hand and invited me to his room. I entered. The room was long, but narrow. A lot of books, journals and newspapers were on the shelves and on the floor. On a small table there was a manuscript. Trotsky offered me a chair, walked about the room several times, readjusted pince-nez , through which almost unwinking eyes twinkled.<br />I was looking closely at the features of the greatest tribune and revolutionary of our epoch. He was the leader of revolution in 1905 at tsarist regime, was at the head of Petrograd Soviet at Provisional Government, carried out practical guidance of October upheaval in 1917, and at last, at the most hard period of the Civil war he was at the head of Revvoensoviet of the republic.<br />Trotsky always was in the most difficult sectors, where often the fate of not only a military operation was being solved, but of the Soviet government itself. 1918. Red army was created of mobilized peasants, former soldiers of tsarist army, of partisan detachments, of refugees, running away from White armies, and only of the small part of reliable workers detachments, Latvian gunners and Baltic sailors. Besides, there were anarchic attitudes of some Party members, taking up high posts in the Red army. They did not want to submit the central military command, objected to enlisting in the army of military specialists from former tsarist army, and already then began to group about Stalin. In the country there was dislocation, hunger, cold, typhus, cholera.<br />It was necessary to have very special qualities, to guide successfully the creation of efficient army in those enormously complicated conditions, the army that resisted regular, well equipped white armies, and at the same time to be in the most critical sectors of military operations. When Trotsky arrived, the situation changed dramatically It was in the summer of 1918 near Kazan, in the summer of 1919 in the South-West front near Ekaterinoslav, in the autumn of the same year near Petrograd. Thanks to rare courage, extraordinary energy, organization and speaker talent and personal bravery he managed literally save the army or front from as it seemed inevitable defeat. Ten years of Soviet power, which owed to L.D.Trotsky more, than to anybody else by its existence, passed. And now he becomes the main object of attacks from the Party and Soviet authorities. Stalin gang is afraid of his popularity in the masses, Party and army, and feverishly prepares to his arrest and exile.<br />And now I found myself in his home beside this man, who asked in a weak voice to tell about situation in Leningrad. Somehow I could not concentrate, my attention was drawn to very sad face and grayish hair of Trotsky. I had to make an effort to begin. I told something like that: “The workers of Leningrad are indignant with the decisions of XY-th Party Congress, there are many oppositionists in Leningrad, they are expelled from the Party, fired from work, they are being shadowed.” I also expressed my own opinion: “At this stage the opposition is weak, it cannot address people, as it has no press organ and has no access to radio. And even if an attempt was done to address the Party and people, any actions of this kind would be immediately stopped. The whole huge oppression machine is in the hands of Stalin gang.”<br />After such sad information I asked Lev Davydovich to answer several questions, to which I wanted to know exactly his opinion. I added that these questions interest a lot of people. Trotsky sat at one side of the small table, I sat at another side, and a sincere dialogue began, when I asked questions, and he answered. At last I could concentrate, I remember our conversation very well.<br />- Trotsky: It is necessary to inform working class and Party members of a new stage of our revolution.<br />I: What is the essence of this new stage?<br />Trotsky: This is the combination of state capitalism with Thermidor. We come out against both, we stand up for democratic development of socialism.<br />I: Is there always a connection between the degradation of the ruling party and social revolution?<br />Trotsky: Yes, Thermidor expresses those processes in the society, which began from the beginning of NEP (New Economic Policy) that is from the moment of formation of new bourgeoisie in the country, especially kulaks.<br />I: Don’t you think that the leaders of the Party may degrade on the reason that is laid in the human psychics, in the tendency by all means to keep the power and privileged position?<br />Trotsky: I don’t exclude psychological factor, politicians’ striving for power, for ruling over subordinates. But such people also depend on the social surroundings, in which their character is formed.<br />I: As we know from the history, tyrants and despots were at all times, but their social essence was different, though the bureaucratic clique always was the basis of the tyranny. Don’t you think, Lev Davydovich, that the dictatorship of proletariat and one party system inevitably create such bureaucratic clique, oligarchy?<br />Trotsky: When we made upheaval in October, we counted on the dictatorship of proletariat, but not on the dictatorship over proletariat.<br />I: How could you rely on this principle, if you knew well, that Russian proletariat was not numerous and its consciousness and culture did not reach the necessary level. When Marx and Engels brought forward the idea of the dictatorship of proletariat, they proceeded from the experience of English industry and historical tradition of English proletariat. You also knew Marx’s answer to Vera Zasulich on this question.<br />Trotsky: Yes, Lenin and I knew all that. But in October we had two aims: to abolish absolutism, to put an end to Romanovs’ House, to take away the land from the landlords and give it to working peasantry. We did it. The second problem was more complicated – we supposed to give impulse to socialist movement in European countries. The second problem was not solved, and this was the main reason to disagreement in the Party… The forced concession to Russian petty bourgeoisie, comprising the majority of population in Russia, was the result of our hopes failure to social revolution in Europe.<br /> I: Do you stick now to the theory of permanent revolution?<br /> Trotsky: This theory was first suggested by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin.<br />Socialism can win only in the whole world scale, the revolution in one country has to raise revolution process in other countries – this is a peculiar chain reaction. But this does not mean at all that the victory of socialism inevitably leads to the dictatorship of proletariat… Socialism may win also in the parliament state, if the majority in the parliament are working class representatives.<br />I: Fridrich Engels came to this conclusion before his death – I know that. But is the socialism compatible with one-party system and absence of democracy? Today is practically impossible for different groups in the Party to express their point of view.<br />Trotsky: The political and historical experience, especially after Lenin’s death demonstrates that without wide democracy, without workers’ right to form groups with their platforms the socialism remains a myth and Utopia.<br />I: Do you acknowledge now, that your position and Zinoviev and Kamenev’s position about groupings at the tenth Party congress was not right? As you know, Zinoviev, Kamenev and you then fought frantically against working opposition, democratic centralists, and did not acknowledge the legitimation of the fractions and groupings?<br />Trotsky: It was the greatest error. Party without free discussion of economical, political and ideological issues is not a political party, but Jesuit order.<br />I: Lev Davydovich! Tell me, what do you think will be the situation in the Party and country after the fifteenth Congress?<br />Trotsky arranged his pince-nez, knitted his brow, walked with long strides along his narrow room, then stopped in front of me and began to speak. I remembered almost all his arguments.<br />- The situation in the country and in the Party is now finally determined. The country won’t take the way of socialism, but the way of state capitalism, profit and wages, these typical features of any capitalist society, will be kept in the Soviet state too. The category of surplus value, i.e. exploitation of the working class also will be kept. This surplus value from one side will be the economical basis of the capitalist accumulation and the expansion of the production, from the other side it will be a huge fund for paying the enormous mass of privileged bureaucracy, for keeping the army and GPM, and also for maintenance of a huge gang of political adventurers abroad... Instead of social-economical classes the castes will be formed, their position will differ both in incomes and conditions of life and in their rights. Trade Unions in our country are deprived of possibility to defend working class interests, of the right to strike. A small group of people will rule the country, from which group inevitably one person will be promoted, who will do away with all the different minded persons… Creative work will take place only in techniques, as it is necessary first of all for self-defence of the caste system… The Party will rely on the Army and punitive structures… Court, prosecutor office will not use law or constitution, but will base on caprices and tyranny of a tyrant or oligarchy… In politics not international interests of the proletariat, but national aspirations will prevail. Patriotism will inevitably grow into nationalism. In the nearest years the country will take the fascist way, the fascist methods of ruling the country will take place as if to keep the unity in the Party… The suppression of the elementary democracy in our country will compromise the idea of the proletariat dictatorship in the whole world, the advanced workers of England, USA, France, Italy, Scandinavian countries, Japan will turn away from us. Instead of these all kinds of political plotters from East countries and Africa will drag behind us. All the backward members of the world society will group about us.<br />I:<br />Is it possible to come to the conclusion, that social-democrats, mensheviks and social revolutionaries were right in their forecasts?<br />Trotsky:<br />We have to acknowledge, that we made a lot of political errors, when we pushed away true revolutionaries, who gave their lives to working class…All the democratic forces have to unite to save the working movement from fascism. Fascism is not only typical German or Italian phenomenon – it is capable to infect the whole world’s working movement… Russia won’t stay away from so-called national-socialism… Russian chauvinism can rise again on the historical scene.<br />I: Practically the question is: what has to be done? How can we save the working movement from fascist influence? What is the tactics for the nearest future?<br />Trotsky: Now it is necessary to disarm organizationally, to dismiss all the groups and fractions to save the advanced forces of the Party. It may seem strange to you, but the circumstances oblige us to do it. Soon new forces will join us, those ones that as yet struggled against us…Already now a blow is being prepared at those, who helped Stalin to crush the opposition in the fifteenth Congress, who in spite of the Lenin’s instructions supported Stalin at the critical period. Neither in Politbureau, nor in the Central Committee of the Party there is no unity, there is also three groups there: open Stalinists, Bukharin supporters and always hesitating marsh. We are strong theoretically, but we let go the State machinery – this is the heel of Achilles of all our politics – we have to own this sincerely. The new stage in the working movement has to involve all the live forces of the advanced countries of the world. It is necessary to unite these forces and to oppose fascism, including the fascism of Stalin type.<br />Lev Davydovich spoke with such animation, as if he had the former audience of thousands in front of him, his eyes flashed, there was metal in his voice. I saw and heard again Trotsky of the old days. Our conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door. Trotsky’s wife Sedova came in. She asked us to eat something, she told Trotsky: “Today you have only drunk a cup of tea.” She was a very nice woman, there was nobleness in her voice and manners, soft features and crow’s feet about eyes told of her kindness and selflessness. I mentally compared her with Alexandra Lvovna Bronshtain and told to myself: “They are both good.” I refused from dinner, thanked Lev Davydovich for his answers to my questions. He pressed my hand, smiled and said: “We have to hope for better future.”<br />In spite of these words, I was in low spirits. I went to say good- bye to Beloborodov. I could not suppose then, that I would never see neither Trotsky, nor Sedova, nor Beloborodov again. In the middle of April 1928 Trotsky will be arrested and exiled first to Alma-Ata and later abroad.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-9598097277439622552011-01-24T10:02:00.000-08:002011-01-24T10:07:05.117-08:00Autobiography by Grigory GrigorovArticle by <a href="http://minaev.blogspot.com/">Dmitri Minaev</a><br />Recently, I finished reading memoirs of Grigory Grigorov. He was born in 1900 in Ukraine, in a family of a poor tailor. The book starts in 1905, when his family lived in Aleksandrovsk, with one of his first recollections, a pogrom. In 1911, he graduated from a five-year Jewish school and started working: at a footwear factory, as a newspaper boy, an assistant at a barbershop... In 1915 he made acquaintance with a couple of students who ran education groups for workers and who helped him find good books, and he started learning. In just two years, Grigory managed to prepare for the gymnasium exams, which included math, geography, history, physics, chemistry, biology, German and Latin languages. In 1917, he was already reading Caesar in Latin and Schiller in German. At the same time, he read philosophy books, books about religion, classical Greek literature, Shakespeare's works. What's more important, these two students who became his close friends, were socialists. They introduced him to Marxism. By that time Grigorov was working at a factory, and the choice of socialism was quite natural for him. <br /><br />What is so interesting about this book? Firstly, it's a detailed description of life in the early USSR. Secondly, it is one of few biographies written by the people from the other side of the revolution. And, finally, to a certain degree, it has explained to me the way of thinking of the people who fought in the Red Army for the bolsheviks. Grigorov, like many others, was disappointed with the way the things went. I'd say he should have listened better to the wise people, like Bondarenko and Likhachov. There's a bunch of things where I would disagree with Grigory Grigorov, but he had made his choice and the book is a frank justification of that choice. <br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://minaev.blogspot.com/2011/01/autobiography-by-grigory-grigorov.html">Full article</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-40323366646340997392010-12-06T04:04:00.001-08:002010-12-06T04:04:39.584-08:00From The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online XVI2010, no. 23, p. 159-160<br /><br />Not many members of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union survived Stalin's terror regime. Those who wrote about their experiences of struggle and repression constitute even a lesser quantity. In 2005, the OGI publishing house released such a rare document – the first volume of the memoirs of Grigorii Isaevich Grigorov (1900-1994), revolutionary, scientist, dissident and GULAG inmate. Born into a Jewish craftsman family, Grigorov joins the revolutionary movement as a teenager, takes part in the revolutions of February and October 1917, fights on the side of the Reds in the Civil War, becomes imprisoned by Denikin and is freed again by Nestor Makhno. After the war, Grigorov succeeds in obtaining a proper education through rabfak institutions, specializes himself in philosophy and becomes a "red professor", obtaining a doctoral degree with a monograph on Spinoza and being close to Abram Deborin, Evgenii Preobrazhenskii and David Riazanov. Having an independent mindset and not being content with the bureaucratization of the party, Grigorov associates himself with the Opposition from 1923 on, and is forced to move to Siberia, where he can work relatively freely due to his friendship with Vladimir Kosior. From 1926 on, when the struggle between the United (Communist) Opposition and Stalin's circle reaches a new level, Grigorov takes part in the work of clandestine circles, crossing paths with Lev Trotskii, Karl Radek, Victor Serge and other prominent oppositionists. The first volume ends with the author's expulsion from the party in 1927.<br />A planned 2nd volume did not see the light in Russia for unknown reasons. Instead, Grigorov's son, who lives in Israel, has put out a very limited print run of the 2nd volume in 2008. Dealing with the period between 1928 and 1972, it proves to be a fascinating and highly valuable source on the Stalin era. In 1928, after the "capitulation" of Radek, Preobrazhenskii and Smilga, Grigorov is more than ever active for the Opposition – yet in a way that fails to please him: Carrying out the controversial tactical decision of the Left Opposition's leadership to disband on oppositionist groups in order to be able to operate within the party, he goes on a liquidatory mission into the Soviet province , including the Caucasus, and is confronted with frustration of rank-and-file oppositionists who are not at all willing to give up the organized struggle. In the same year, Grigorov faces arrest and deportation to a village in the Ural, where he spends the next two years together with Decist leader Vladimir Smirnov, first-hand experiencing the brutal peasant collectivization. After a brief period of freedom back in Leningrad, Grigorov and his wife (an old Bolshevik revolutionary herself) get arrested straight after the Kirov murder in 1934. What follows is an odyssey through several GULAG camps, where the couple manages to stay together for most of the time. Grigorov experiences the Trotskyist prisoners' famous hunger strike in Vorkuta (in which he does not take part) and the massacre that followed thereafter – and it is striking that the information on these events, which he brought to paper in the 1970s-1980s without access to any sources, corresponds with the findings of recent research.1 After being released in 1939, again his freedom does not last long: he is mobilized into the army for the war against Finland, captured by enemy troops and spends the following (comparably easy) years as a POW in Finland. In 1944, after the Soviet Union made peace with Finland, Grigorov is arrested again by the infamous SMERSH counter-intelligence, and another period of GULAG imprisonment begins, ending only in March 1955. During the times of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Grigorov works as a schoolteacher and succeeds to get back into science, shifting to geology (using the experience he gained participating as forced laborer in geological expeditions during his imprisonment). His monograph on the entanglements of philosophy and geography gets published in Kiev in 19832, while his memoirs, which he has been secretly writing from the mid-1960s until 1983, of course remain unpublished during Soviet times. During late perestroika, in 1988, Grigorov writes a letter to Soviet historian Vladimir Billik where he shares his memories on the encounters with Trotskii.3 Shortly after, in 1989, he immigrates to Israel together with his son's family, where he dies in 1994.<br />The memoirs of Grigorii Grigorov, contemporary of the 20th century in a literal sense, have an immense historical value for scholars of the Left Opposition, but also they are fruitful as a source for several aspects of the Russian Revolution, the early Soviet Union and the times of Stalinism. And, above all, they are highly fascinating read.<br />While volume one is sold out, volume two can be obtained from Grigorov's relatives for € 20 incl. shipping. Orders may be directed to fluffy2001 at gmail dot com (you can write in Russian, English, and Hebrew).<br /><br /><strong>Gleb J. Albert, Bielefeld</strong><br /><br />1 Comp.: Jean-Jacques Marie: Der Widerstand der Trozkisten im Gulag 1936 bis 1938. Der Hungerstreik und das Massaker in Vorkuta. In: Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (2007), pp. 117-136; ld.: Les trotskystes a Vorkouta in: Cahier du movement ouvrier (2007), N0 34.<br />2 G.I.Grigorov: Prichinnost' I sviazi v geografii. Metodologicheskii askept, Kiev, Vishcha Shkola, 1983.<br />3 Grigori Grigorov: Souvenirs sur Trotsky. In: Cahiers du movement ouvrier (2005), N0 27, pp. 67-72.<br /><br />Grigorij Grigorov: Povoroty sud'by I proizvol. Vospominanija. 1905-1927 gody, Moskva, OGI, 2005. 536 p. (Chastnyi archiv). ISBN 5-94282-281-6; Grigorij Grigorov: Povoroty sud'by I proizvol. Vospominanija. 1928-1972, s.p., [2008]. 682 p. No ISBN.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-88506862285867179802010-10-22T13:12:00.000-07:002010-10-22T13:13:41.866-07:00Second book published in PetersburgThe second book has been published in Petersburg.<br />The publishing house of Historical and Regional Studies Society<br /><a href="http://www.kannas.nm.ru/index.htm">Karelia</a> under E.A. Balashov management has published 800 copies.<br />It contains the extract about <a href="http://www.kannas.nm.ru/Grigorov_Memories.htm">finnish captivity.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-49253383882566686602010-10-22T12:58:00.000-07:002010-10-22T13:03:19.254-07:00The third book of Grigory Grigorov memoirThe third book of memoir Grigory Grigorov has been published.<br />The third book of my grandfather's memoir "Turns of destiny and tyranny. Memoir. The consequencies and analysis of what happened in Russia/USSR in the XX-th century.<br /><img src="https://sites.google.com/site/grigorygrigorovmemoirs/home/grigory-grigorov-memories-book3-1.jpg"><br />The first book was published by OGI publishing house in Moscow in 2005. The book was selled out in OZON.<br />The second book was published in Israel in 2008. We have now about 10 books for sale.<br /><br />The third book was published in Israel 10.10.10.<br /><br />Please send your comments and questions to:fluffy2001 at gmail dot comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-7848091196731958312010-10-18T13:55:00.000-07:002010-10-18T13:58:11.224-07:00Letter from Bradley L. Schaffner, Harvard UniversitySlavic Division<br />Widener Library of the Harvard College Library<br />Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts o2138<br />January 20, 2009<br />Mr. and Mrs Vissarion Grigorov<br />Dear Mr. and Mrs. Grigorov<br /><br />On behalf of the Harvard University Library, I wish to acknowledge and thank you for the gift of your father's two volume memoir "Povoroty sud'by i proizvol: vospominaniia 1905-1972" (Moskva: 2005; 2008). His memoir is a welcome addition to the Harvard college Library' slavic collections.<br />Since 1638, Harvard has benefited from the generosity of friends, faculty, alumni and others interested in creating and expanding our library collections.The colledge library makes every effort to add donated material to our permanent collections.<br />Thank you again for your interest in and support of Harvard's libraries.<br />Sincerely yours,<br />Bradley L. Schaffner<br />Head, Slavic DivisionUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-65397591839735784812010-08-08T10:35:00.000-07:002010-08-08T10:36:53.828-07:00Fragment from from “Turns of Destiny and Tyranny” by Grigory GrigorovOur group of convicts was standing near the jail gates for about an hour. Suddenly an iron bar banged, the gates opened, and we were led into an insatiable throat of the stone monster. More than one generation of revolutionaries were led through these gates. My wife (she is older than I) told me later, that she had been imprisoned there in 1912 for taking part in a demonstration on the occasion of the execution on the Lena river.<br /> Our group was separated into smaller units, one of them was taken away immediately. Women were left on the first floor, and a small group, including me, was led upstairs to the second floor, where we were dressed in striped clothes, each of us was given a pair of underwear and a round cap resembling those that academicians were wearing. We were distributed to cells. I was pushed into a stone cell with a narrow bar of window, overlooking deserted Pollevaya street. Soon I learned that our cell was ment to prisoners sentenced to death, which fact left little hope. Our cell contained 18 prisoners, and the next one contained more than hundred. <br /> The chief of the jail was some Belokoz, he remained here from prerevolutionary time; my wife, who had been in the jail before the revolution, still remembers him. <br /> In two cells rather mixed groups of prisoners were collected: social revolutionaries (S.R.’s), anarchists, bolsheviks, members of Boond, zionists, makhnoists, a counterfeiter and just people that took part in actions against government. The largest group were peasants from Novomoskovsk, who were charged of participation in the rebel against Denikin. The peasants in our cell were considered instigators, the rest were scattered about the jail. The makhnoists in our cell were born in Goulyay-Polle or in the surroundings of this center of Makhno movement. All of them were men of Makhno units. One of the prisoners, a man of delicate appearance with a very intelligent face, with a high forehead and a small beard was sitting in a corner and did not take part in conversations. Brodsky, the prisoner, arrested for fabrication of false money, especially, marks, told me that the silent man was a brother of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of V.Tch.C. There was also a left social revolutionary that totally denied the participation of “S.R.’s” in the attempt on Lenin’s life, as well as in the murder of Volodarsky and Uritsky. Contrary to general opinion he claimed that S.R.’s were principally against individual terror. At the same time he condemned Maria Spiridonova, the leader of left S.R.’s, accusing her in political carreerism because of her taking part in bolsheviks’ government.<br /> One of the makhnoists in our cell, Moskalenko, a clever and educated man, a convinced anarchist, who had been imprisoned for many years in tzarist jales, disproved in a peculiar way Marx’s theory of economical factor in historical process. He said: “According to Marx, the working masses only want to eat, consequently, the history is advanced only by hungry people. And only landlords and capitalists are to blame for their starving conditions. Really, - he continued, - the working people suffer first of all from the state: bureaucracy, army and police.” On his opinion, the politics is the decisive force of social development, and in politics it is first of all necessary to struggle with those, who hold tight to their personal interests. Moskalenko thought that Lenin in his statements pursued only gaining his personal power, thinking little of freedom for people. In those faraway times I did not agree with such opinions, though already in 1921 when Lenin became the head of the government and the defeat of the workers’ oppositions, expressing the interests of the advanced workers, was going on, I started to meditate on the position that anarchist Moskalenko had expressed in jale.<br /> One of the young makhnoists Grigory Karetnikov, a relative of well-known at that time ataman Karetnikov, a nearest associate of Nestor Makhno, described in detail the life of N. Machno. I reproduce the story that he told me in jail cell, precisely enough.<br /> Ataman Nestor Ivanovitch Makhno was born in a poor peasant family in Goulyay Polle, Alexandrovsk region, near Yekaterinoslav. In his early years he became a orphan, was a beggar, often slept in hay stacks and stables. In summer he worked as a farm hand, in autumn and winter helped a blacksmith for food and shelter. <br /> He learned to read and write on his own, liked to read adventure novels very much. In 1905 he joined a terrorist group. They set on fire landlords estates and even killed provocateur agents and especially cruel policemen. Makhno was sentenced to penal servitude. There he became intimate with anarchists, especially with Volin, a Jew. <br />The February revolution set Makhno free and he returned to his homeland. Makhno was elected to worker-peasasnt council in Goulyay-Polle, he made violent massacre of land lords, and turned over their land to poor peasants. He was a great authority in his homeland and in all the Ukraine. When Yekaterinoslav region was occupied with Germans, Makhno created partisan groups of the most brave fellows and stroke painful blows on the Germans. German Headquarters estimated the ataman’s head at million roubles, but nobody betrayed him. Makhno had to escape to Moscow, where he renewed his connections with anarchists. He returned again to his homeland with an anarchist group and created a large detachment of peasants, faught with German invadors and hetman Skoropadsky troops. Exactly then Makhno developed a peculiar tactics of fight and used famous machine-gun carts. Simulating peasant weddings and burials, Makhno penetrated on machine-gun carts into positions of German forces and hetman Skoropadsky units, swiftly moved in the rear of Denikin army, seizing arms and ammunition. In all the towns, which even for a short time surrendered to Makhno units, all the prisoners were realesed from jails, irrespective of their political views. Karetnikov continued his story. “Our countryman managed to form several large detachments, which were headed by atamans Schous, my relative Karetnikov, Marchenko, Vasilevsky, Kourilenko and others.” My neighbour spoke with delight of organization talent of his ataman, compared him with haydamaks’ (Ukrainian Cossacks) leaders Gonta and Karmelouk. Karetnikov thought that only Makhno sincerely wanted to give the land to the peasants. He spoke also of gathering of Makhno units and representatives of 72 small Ukrainian regions. There several important decisions were accepted, including organization of “communes without authority”. All of Makhno’s groups were formally united into a separate brigade under the leadership of Makhno, subordinate to Soviet Zadneprovsky battalion under the command of famous Dybenko, one of the leaders of October revolution. Later I got to know that responsible messengers from Moscow repeatedly visited Makhno, including Kalinin, Manuilsky, Karl Radeck. They tried to arrange somehow cooperation of Makhno’s groups with Red Army, but without success. I listened to Karetnikov with great interest, I was fascinated with the biography of modern Stepan Razin. Seeing my interest to the personality of Makhno, Karetnikov gave many interesting facts, testifying that Nestor Makhno undoubtedly was a very outstanding person of our unfortunate epoch. <br />The military tactics of Makhno could arise exactly in the period of civil war. Native wit of the peasant leader perplexed experienced military men. The units of Makhno with their machine-gun carts smashed regiments and divisions under the command of experienced military specialists. <br />At the end of August the Makhnoists from our cell were called to meet their relatives, who brought them luxurious parcels from the country. They came back with sacks full of Ukrainian lurd, fried geese, cucumbers and tomatos, melons, apples and Ukrainian bread. The lads laid out all of the food on beautifully embroidered towels and invited all the cellmates to share a meal with them. One of them found a note, skilfully shoved under the skin of fried goose. It told that soon the ataman would enter the town with his men and release all of the prisoners from jail.<br />One night, when all of us were lying on the floor, we heard remote peals. We thought that thunderstorm was beginning. Brodsky told me that somebody stroke a hollow iron barrel in the jail yard. Makhnoists slept soundly. A lamp glimmerd above the cell door, I heard snorring of the guardian in the corridor. I crawled noiselessly to the narow bar of the window, overlooking Polevaya Street. I peered into the darkness, suddenly a lightning flashed, followed by a crash. No doubt, it was a cannon fire. Hearing steps in the corridor, I quickly lay on the floor and did not move. Soon I heard machine-gun bursts. Morning came. The next cell, the largest in the jail, was unusually quiet. Suddenly the keys jingled, the heavy door of our cell opened. A group of guardians entered, in front of them in a black great coat was the chief of the jail Belokoz, known for his ferocity. He ordered everybody to lie down and announced. “For the least violation of jail regime, for loud talks we will shoot up”. We lay quietly on the stone floor, I heard the thump of my heart. We were not led out to wash, only allowed to carry out close-stool. When Brodsky and I were carrying close-stool, we were escorted with increased convoy. At night two anarchists were taken away from our cell, one of them shouted, “Good bye, brothers, they are leading us to execution.” <br />Soon we heard shots from the prison yard. At night nobody slept, each one said last farewell to his life in his thoughts. <br />Suddenly something banged deafeningly in the jail yard, we could hear hum of a great mass of people and sounds: “Hurrah! Brothers, come out to freedom! The town is in the hands of ataman Makhno!”<br />In the corridor there was hum and song, it was anarchist hymn: “Down with shameful and slavish love, we will drown the people’s grief in blood…” In some cell the prisoners began to sing Marcelleze. We began to beat on the cell door, it seemed to us that we could be forgotten. But already near our cell somebody shouted: “Move away from the door!” After several violent strokes with a hammer from the corridor the door came off its hinges. We rushed into the corridor with a cry, ran off downstairs, mingled with the crowd of released prisoners from other cells, and continuing to shout we ran out into the jail yard. It was pouring. But we, coming out of Yekaterinoslav Bastilia, suffered little from it. The rain seemed to us a delight, we felt refreshed after our cells, soaked with rotten and stinking air of close-stool and the breath of the doomed ones. For the first time in my life I felt so deeply the spirit of freedom. <br />When the croud of people in striped clothes came out of the prison gates to the square, all of them saw an extraordinary picture. In the huge space between two jales hundreds of machine-gun carts stood with handsome and well-fed horses, harnessed to them. There were machine-guns on all the carts, makhnoists were seated near them, dressed in leather jackets and raincoats above them. The makhnoists met each group of prisoners that was running out of the prison gates with shouts: “Long live freedom, long live anarchy, down with casemates!” They gave a loaf of bread and a sausage to each one of the released prisoners. We heard that Belokoz, the chief of the jail, who did not manage to make off, was thrown down from the roof.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-61324494694020056322009-01-08T06:35:00.001-08:002009-01-08T06:35:52.225-08:00Summary to memoirs by Grigory GrigorovB O O K 2<br /><br /> In 1928 Grigorov was asked to fulfil a very serious mission. The supporters of exiled by that time Trotzky asked him to dismiss fractions and groups loyal to Trotzky. He met with a lot of groups in Bryansk, Rostov-na Donu, Vladicaucasus, Tiflis and Baku. This part of memoirs gives a real picture of honest and loyal revolutionaries, bewildered and disappointed with the ruin of their ideals. All the people, with whom he met in Caucasus, knew Stalin very well and called him a traitor, who worked before the revoluton in Ohranka. Grigory was shown a document about Stalin’ work as an agent. These people did not expect anything good from Stalin.<br /> After his return to Moscow he was arrested and put to Loubyanka jail. He was sentenced to exile in Siberia, where he met in a village near Tumen with V.M. Smirnov, an oppositioner, who was called “Marat of Russian revolution”. They lived in the same village and were spectators of the process of “Complete collectivization” in action and supported peasants in their struggle.<br /> After the exile Grigorov returned to Leningrsd to his family and from 1930 to 1934 he worked as a lecturer of philosophy in VASKHNIL, where he supported academitian N.I. Vavilov and even organized Vavilov’s meeting with S.M. Kirov, and in Hertzen Pedagogical Institute. He also lectured in Seminar of composers and playwrights. This rather quiet period was possible only thanks to Kirov’s support and finished with Kirov’s murder.<br /> In December of 1934 G. Grigorov and his wife Dina were arrested and sentenced Grigory to 5 and Dina to 3 years of concentration camps in Vorkuta. Part of his term Grigory was helping geologists and studied well the structure of minerals in the region. Many of Grigory and Dina’s friends participated in a hunger strike in Vorkuta. Instead of considering their conditions and demands they all were shot in so-called Brick Works. About 2,000 prizoners were shot then. <br /> At the beginning of 1939 Dina was set free and at the end of the same year Grigory also left the concentration camp. Dina went to Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) region, where her children lived after their banishment from Leningrad as children of “enemies of people”. She took her son from orphanage and went to live in a village, as she was forbidden to live in town. Dina began to work as a school teacher. When Grigory returned, they moved to a small town of Bor near Gorky, where he worked as a teacher of geography at school. <br /> With the beginning of the World War 2 Grigory was called up to military service. He was sent to Karelia and soon was taken prisoner by the Finnish army. In Finland Grigory realized what was the real democracy. The regime in the prisoners’ camp was much milder than that in the Soviet concentration camps. <br /> When the Red Army entered Petrozavodsk, Grigorov was investigated by SMERSH and was charged with 10 years of concentraton camps. He was transported to Krasnoyarsk and then in the barge hold to Dudinka and further to one of Norilsk concentration camps. There he worked in a coal pit, fell ill and was taken to a camp hospital. An imprisoned doctor I.F. Kotsuba saved his life and helped him to stay in hospital as a hospital attendant.<br /> While working in the hospital Grigorov openly expressed his opinions and some of hospital personnel reported on him to “Koum” (authorized MGB agent) in the concentration camp). After an investigation by the former he was put to an inner jail of the camp and in 1952 was sentenced by “troika” to another term: 10 years of concentraton camps and one year of inner jail.<br /> After Stalin’s death a cruel murder near the fence of an imprisoned woman, who suddenly saw her father in the men’s camp and forgot about the rules, caused a mass riot. The slaves rose and were not more afraid of the jailers. 5 camps were on riot. Several days the prisoners ruled in the camp. Grigory was selected to the committee of 5 persons, and they wrote declaration to the government, where they formulated their demands. A commission from Moscow led negotiations with the prisoners. Soon Grigory was sent to Krasnoyarsk in the barge hold again up the Enisey river. The conditions were very hard: the prisoners were not allowed to be on the deck, they were suffocated in the hold, and had to use one huge “parasha”(a huge barrel) as a toilet. Very soon the prisoners began to die of dysentery. About 100 men died.<br /> The survivors were put to another concentration camp. There Grigory worked as a doctor, as there was not enough medical staff there. In 1955 Grigorov was set free from his last concentration camp in Taishet, being mentally and physically healthy. Since 1941 his family didn’t know, if he was alive: the correspondence was forbidden. Only in 1954 the correspondence was allowed. Grigorov returned to his family to the town of Dzerzhinsk, Gorky region, where his wife lived with their daughter Vera. Grigory began to work at school as a teacher of geography. As he had no diploma, he entered Gorky Pedagogical Institute and during one year passed all exams at the age of 57. Till 1965 he was under supervision of KGB. Only then he was rehabilitated. His friends – his former students helped him in that. Grigorov began to dictate his memoirs, his daughters typed them. This work continued 17 years. Only in 1989 the memiors were taken abroad, and his son Vissarion put them in order. The first book was published in Moscow in 2005. Now we have published also book 2.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-87876671634382992842009-01-08T06:33:00.000-08:002009-01-08T06:34:22.151-08:00Summary to memoirs by Grigory GrigorovB O O K 1<br /><br /> The author was born in 1900 in Ukraine in a poor family. His father was a tailor, Grigory was the sixth child of 8. His parents were critical of tzarist regime, especially his mother Rachel. From the age of eleven Grigory had to work. At 16 he was working in Bryansk plant in Ekaterinoslav. Working by day and studying by night, he prepared during one year for examinations for the full course of secondary school (gymnasium) and passed the exams successfully. His friends Abraham Shlionsky (later a well-known poet in Israel) and Matus Kanin instructed him and helped a lot n his studies. Grigory became a witness and participant of stormy events before February revolution in 1917. In 1919 he was called to military service in the Red Army and there he was enlisted to Bolshevic Party. Being sent with a secret mission to Sevastopol he was captured by officers of general Shkouro of White Army and endured severe tortures, but never made a confession. Grigory was imprisoned in Ekaterinoslav jail. Soon all the prisoners were set free by the army of Nestor Mahno. Grigory went to anarchists’ meeting and listened to speeches of Mahno and Volin, one of anarchists ideologists. The speech of Volin impressed him greatly. Many pages of the book are dedicated to anarchist movement of Machno. <br /> In 1921 Grigory entered Moscow University, where he studied philosophy. Professor Lubov Akselrod recommended him to the Institute of Red Professorship. In 1925 he became professor of philosiphy. He wrote several original works: “The Freedom and Necessity in Spinoza Philosophic System”, “Kantian Theory of the Sky” and others. His work on Spinoza became his dissertation.<br /> In 1922 Grigory met Dina Belotzerkovsky, who became his wife. During the Civil War Dina had been comissar of a front hospital, she had joined the Bolshevic Party earlier, than Grigory.<br /> In 1923 Grigorov was sent to an administrative exile to Ivanovo-Voznesensk, because his independent position and open criticizm of the governing circles did not agree with the Bolshevic ideology. There he visited factories and saw hard conditions of workers, that lived half-starving life and lost their rights, which they had had before 1917. On the other side there grew new “nomenclature”, that rose from social bottom. The next exile was to Siberia. <br /> In 1925 G. Grigorov and his wife were sent to work in Leningrad. He was offered to organize workers’ faculties “rabfacs” in Leningrad, the institutions, that were helping workers to get prepared for universities. His wife began to work as the chief of rabfac of Polytechnical Institute. His next administration exile was to Ural in 1927, where he worked in pedagogical college. In Kungur he was expelled from the Bolshevic Party. After exile he twice met wth L.D. Trotzky in Moscow in Glavconsesscom and in Beloborodov’s (former chairman of Ural Soviet) apartment. After these two meetings Grigorov understood that Trotzky “who earlier had power, now submitted to power himself”. Grigory understood that Trotzky’s personal tragedy would become the tragedy of the whole nation.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1132844208094079022.post-17609059895018782642007-05-04T01:44:00.000-07:002007-05-04T09:27:48.963-07:00Dear Publisher!Re: Grigory Grigorov<br /><strong>TURNS OF DESTINY AND TYRANNY</strong><br />If you are interested in a book, that gives a profound historical and philosophical analysis of what happened in Russia in 1917, the prehistory of this tragic event, given by professor of philosophy Grigory Grigorov, born in 1900 in Ukraine, who was an active witness of the revolution and described what he saw from 1905 to 1972 in his three books. At the age of 16 he began to help to one of Bolshevik groups in Ekaterinoslav, being a worker, took part in the Civil War, and after the war entered Moscow University and received the degree of professor of philosophy at the Institute of Red Professorship in 1925. By this time he got disappointed in Bolshevik politics, especially for the persecution of the opposition. He was expelled from Bolshevik party, was exiled and arrested, returned to his work as a professor in Leningrad, and in 1934 after Kirov murder he and his wife were arrested and sent to a concentration camp in Vorkuta. Grigorov finished his last confinement only in 1954, returned to his family and wrote his memoirs. It was impossible to publish his books in Russia, and only being in Israel his family managed to publish only the first book (1905 – 1928) in Moscow in 2005. The first book was published in Moscow in number 2,000 copies and sold very well. It was bought by students, intellectuals, historians in Russia, Israel, England, Germany and Finland and received a very high rating. It was emphasized that the book had been written by a unique witness. The language is very good, the pictures, drawn by the author are extremely vivid, because G. Grigorov had a unique memory, which allowed him without any documents to restore the events of his life and his meetings with people in detail.<br />The second book (1929 – 1972) is ready and waits for its publication. The third book, containing philosophical analysis of the époque and including such chapters, as: “Myth of Stalin and Reality”, “Stalin and Hitler - Spiritual Twins” and others is being prepared. <br /><br />Please contact me on email <br />fluffy2001 at gmail dot comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0