Conveyor of Fabricated Cases
In the morning, work was somewhat sluggish. The time difference was noticeable - in Moscow, good people were still asleep, while the workday had already begun here. Frunze, of course, is an interesting little town: the Asian color and the buildings of modern European architecture in the center created a strange combination. But all of this attracted attention, was memorable, and somewhere deep down, it was even liked after the noisy, bustling Moscow with its clattering trams, overcrowded communal apartments, and the harsh atmosphere of the native institution.
The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court was suffocating from work - it was becoming increasingly more.
Business trips to various corners of the Union were becoming more frequent and longer. But this one, to Kyrgyzstan, was certainly more pleasant than, say, somewhere up north. And the mood was still somewhat festive. Preparations for the demonstration were underway in Central Square of Frunze, and huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin draped in red cloth hung on the building of the republican Central Committee.
Soviet people were preparing for the October holiday.
But today, for Alekseev, Zaitsev, Boldyrev, and Batner - two military lawyers and military jurists of the first rank - it was necessary to consider forty investigative cases in a closed court session, involving defendants accused of counter-revolutionary state crimes.
Last year, local Chekists uncovered and dismantled the counter-revolutionary organization of the Social-Turanian Party. It emerged, according to the NKVD, in early twenty-seven after the unification of the Alash-Orda members and Pan-Turkists. In September '33, the former Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kyrgyz ASSR, Yusup Abdrakhmanov - who is listed in this case as one of the leaders of the STP - passed on the reins of governance and the counter-revolutionary nationalist organization to his successor, Bayaly Isakeev, along with his high position.
The investigators undoubtedly worked thoroughly, simply well: the testimonies of the arrested did not require additional judicial investigation. After all, why go through each one?!
Moreover, everything was indeed completely clear. For example, how the English were conducting extensive work on the illegal transfer of counter-revolutionary insurgent personnel to Soviet territory. They did this under the guise of defectors among Chinese citizens - Uighurs, former Basmachis who fled to China from the USSR, kulaks, and other anti-Soviet elements.
There are no questions regarding the mechanism of establishing connections between the STP and the English consulate in Kashgar, Japanese-German intelligence agencies, and foreign nationalist émigré formations.
"Having 'developed' the STP for five years, NKVD employees established not only its leaders and rank-and-file members throughout the republic but also the distribution of forces in all party and state institutions of Kyrgyzstan. In the apparatuses! Of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B), the Central Executive Committee, the Council of People's Commissars, the NKVD, the ministries of justice, agriculture, education, health, editorial offices, cooperatives, technical schools... And everywhere - the top officials! In Kyrgyzstan, as everywhere in the country, the enemies of the working class were seizing the conquests of October.
By the way, here is an arrested individual - the former head of the Naryn district department of the workers' and peasants' militia of the NKVD. Case No. 4614. Shafikov Shakir Galimovich, born in 1903, a native of the village of Tarkazy in the Bashkir ASSR, a Bashkir. Member of the VKP(b) since 1926. In custody since February 22.
A year ago, he was recruited into a counter-revolutionary, insurgent, terrorist organization. He established contact with the leadership of the Social-Turanian Party in Naryn. He was instructed to recruit new members into the STP from among the militia workers. He created a combat unit to carry out terrorist acts against representatives of Soviet power. What else is there to clarify with the defendant if there is an interrogation protocol from April 20?
Here is the investigator's question: where was the weapon of the combat unit located?
He... told me that the weapons, about a thousand units of Japanese and English manufacture, were redirected to the Ak-Talinsky district... I do not know the exact location of the weapon storage.
We have data that you are a participant in the STP, engaged in espionage activities.
Do you confirm this?
- No, I did not engage in espionage activities.
- What can you add to your testimony?
- I told everything I knew. I cannot add anything more.
Two years of study in Leningrad, at the police school, did not go to waste for this defendant: now, at the court session, he does not plead guilty and refuses to testify from the preliminary investigation. Well, that's his business. The secretary - military jurist of the first rank Batner sets the time for the verdict: 10:55.
On average, twenty minutes are spent on each defendant.
11:20. Case No. 4600. Charges under Article 58, paragraphs 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: armed uprising with the aim of forcibly detaching any part from the USSR, providing assistance to international bourgeoisie, espionage, undermining state industry, transport, trade, monetary circulation, and cooperation, terrorist acts against representatives of Soviet power.
The arrested individual, who is now standing before the lawyers from Moscow, is just over forty. Three months after his arrest, almost a year ago, he wrote two statements to Moscow. One began with the address "Dear Joseph Vissarionovich!", the other, five days later, was addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, the Commissioner of State Security comrade Yezhov.
Perhaps now, here, he will finally hear the long-awaited answer - the letters could not have gone unanswered!
Half a century later, I read these letters from '37, from the Frunze NKVD prison. Each is on two sheets of yellow paper, written in pencil on both sides. Numbered and included in the inventory of documents of investigative case No. 4600. Copies are also attached, typed on a typewriter. But even in the original, the signature is quite legible: b/pres. of the SNK of the Kyrgyz SSR, now arrested Isakeev.
It must be acknowledged that the NKVD investigators did their job well. In the midst of complete, blatant lawlessness, they meticulously and diligently collected papers related to each arrested person, even if only slightly.
Too diligently, too carefully.
The cases generally consisted of testimonies of one arrested against another. From the protocols of strange interrogations and even stranger confrontations: the arrested usually spoke a lot, willingly, and in detail, and in the polite questions of the investigators, there was already contained an even more polite answer.
At what time, in what state, does a person, knowing the punishment that awaits him for a crime, say: I engaged in active counter-revolutionary activities up until my arrest, I joined counter-revolutionary activities in twenty-two, a few words about my activities in preparing for an uprising against Soviet power in Kyrgyzstan, from this moment begins my active terrorist activity...
Where and when was this possible?
Where and when was it?
They said this day after day, month after month, often for years. They spoke, knowing they were innocent.
But knowing that in two decades, another hand would sew another document into the archival case of the Military Collegium: a ruling to annul the verdict and terminate the case for lack of corpus delicti.
... The lights had long been turned on.
The ashtray had been emptied several times.
In Moscow, restaurants were still open, new films were showing in cinemas, the metro was operating... Outside the windows stood a deaf Asian November night. In fifty-five minutes, it would be November sixth. And there were still six cases left.
Here is the next one - No. 4418. The arrested was transferred from Moscow, where he studied at the historical-party institute of the red professorate, previously he was the second secretary of the KirObkom of the VKP(b). Arrested at the request of the NKVD of the republic. The arrest warrant - No. 198 signed by the deputy people's commissar of internal affairs of the USSR, comcor Frinovsky. Expelled from the party a year ago, twenty days before the arrest. He has a family: wife Nagima, sons Chingiz, Ilgiz, daughters Lucia and Roza.
The investigative cases that I hold in my hands were destined for the fate that befell those whose names were written on the covers during the first interrogations: to forever disappear into the bowels of the NKVD. Inaccessible archives, deep kilns for firing bricks. Time arranged things in its own way.
As it should have happened sooner or later.
The cases filed in the archives continued to live their unnoticed, hidden from all, unrelated to others, similar lives.
Because memory continued to live. And children grew up, next to whose names in the questionnaires of arrested fathers was indicated their age: usually, numbers from the first decade. On a sheet of diagonal lines from a school notebook, probably from the eldest son - he was ten then - this letter from case No. 4418 is written. Next to it lies an envelope with two stamps: two women workers in headscarves - the symbol of the Soviet woman of the 40s.
Moscow, to the People's Commissar comrade Beria.
... According to information I received from the NKVD of the Kyrgyz SSR, my husband was sentenced in November 1938 by a troika to 10 years with exile to the Far East without the right to correspondence. Besides the above-mentioned, I cannot obtain any information about my husband, and his fate is completely unknown to me, whether he is alive or not. Since recently many individuals accused as enemies of the people have been found innocent, I decided to appeal to you and ask you to review my husband's case.
October 24, 1939.
November 22, 1939.
To the head of the Kirov RO of the NKVD of the Kyrgyz SSR
Notify citizen Ayitmatova Nagima,... that her husband was sentenced correctly and exiled to distant camps without the right to correspondence.
Head of the I special department of the NKVD of the Kyrgyz SSR, lieutenant of state security Saakov.
To the Chief Military Prosecutor of the USSR
... For 20 years we have had no news about the fate of our father, we do not know whether he is alive or not, when he was sentenced, by whom he was sentenced, we do not know whether he is really guilty before the Motherland?.. We are eagerly awaiting news about our father's fate.
... it is important for us to achieve the truth, and if our father is innocent, to restore him and our unblemished honor...
Aitmatov Chingiz, July 15, 1956, Kyrgyz SSR, s. Chon-Aryk.
These letters, statements, complaints from wives, children, brothers should, in my opinion, be extracted from closed archives. So that we and those who come after us know for sure, from primary sources, what we went through. And why we became who we are.
These are documents of the time. Not those multi-page, verbose protocols of interrogations, confrontations, from which the investigative cases of executed people are composed.
Without guilt.
Without investigation.
And without trial.
Protocols of the closed court session of the traveling commission of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR from November 5, 1938...
The defendants do not plead guilty. And refuse their testimony from the preliminary investigation.
There are no witnesses in the case at the trial.
There is no material evidence in the case.
But what, in fact, did all this matter? If it was known: in the country, the "extraction" of hostile classes, enemies of the Stalinist regime was in full swing. The number of those arrested for counter-revolutionary crimes in '37 was ten times greater than in the previous year.
But this current '38 seems to be breaking all records...
Back in '30, at the XVI Congress of the VKP(b), Stalin set the directive to fight against the right and left deviations in the national question. Following the Leader's directive to intensify the struggle against "local nationalism" and in order to create conditions for "IMPLANTING - (this is the very word chosen by comrade Stalin) Leninist internationalism," the organs of the GPU of Kyrgyzstan in '32 "got on the trail" of the conspiratorial terrorist Social-Turanian Party.
The process, to be honest, was not very complicated for them, lawyers with extensive experience: the cases are similar, the crimes are mostly the same - belonging to the STP. And the questionnaire data are practically identical, and the ages are all roughly the same, thirty-five to forty, and most of them were arrested in the autumn-winter of '37 and this spring. The chairman of the city council, the secretary of the Central Committee, a hydraulic engineer, a collective farmer, the people's commissar of health, the director of a publishing house, a shoemaker from a production cooperative, a writer-professor, the people's commissar of agriculture, a military commissioner - senior political instructor, secretary of the district committee, trade inspector, another people's commissar...
After the young Asian faces, the next defendant - brought in right after Aitmatov - even caught the tired attention. This was no longer the STP: undermining state industry, planning terrorist acts against representatives of Soviet power, organizational counter-revolutionary activity...
Kuzmin Iosif Ivanovich, a Belarusian, born in the village of Yuzefovka, Mstislavsky district of the Belarusian SSR, residing in Frunze at Sovietskaya, 73, an engineer of telephone and telegraph construction of the Communications Administration. He is a member of the counter-revolutionary terrorist organization of the right. He engaged in sabotage during the construction of telephone-telegraph lines, telephone stations, and civil structures. "The State Security Administration... uncovered and liquidated... the counter-revolutionary terrorist organization of the right, which conducted active sabotage and subversive work within the system of communication organs, aiming to overthrow Soviet power and restore capitalism in the USSR"...
They were dead tired. They wanted to finish this "workday" as quickly as possible, to stack the last case reviewed, and finally issue the last verdict for today.
Perhaps, hurrying time, the presiding officer, military jurist comrade Alekseev, took out the passport from Kuzmin's case. Perhaps he opened it, perhaps he flipped through it... Judging by everything, Galina Iosifovna Romanovskaya, speaking about her father at a meeting with the President, still did not know that the passport of Iosif Ivanovich had been preserved.
Here it is, all in the same envelope - one of the few, rare documents not only in case No. 4297 but in many others, sewn together in the style of Vyshinsky by military jurists from the Ulrich department according to the patterns of military and jurists from the Yezhov department.
The author of the model this time was in the shadows. Probably, we will never know whether the authoritative, high court requested personal instructions from the Leader on what verdict to issue. As was the case, say, in January '35, when the Chekists of the Northern region completed the investigation into the case of yet another counter-revolutionary terrorist group. Most likely not.
The "question of the STP" in Kyrgyzstan was probably too trivial for the Master. Too mundane - in '38, the agenda of the court session.
Kuzmin's passport: issued by the first city department of the workers' and peasants' militia of the city of Frunze on January 16, 1937. Valid until January 16, 1942.
I do not know, perhaps seeing this date, comrade Alekseev smirked. On December 1, '34, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted a resolution, based on which the sentence to the highest measure of punishment in cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts was executed immediately,
Outside, it was the night from the fifth to the sixth of November.
Excerpt from the book "The Secret of Chon-Tash." published with the author's permission, Regina Khelimskaya.
The Secret of Chon-Tash. Daughter and niece of "enemies of the people"