The Gulag Archipelago (51 page)

And, indeed, the tribunal was submissive and sentenced Samarin and Kuznetsov to be shot, but they did manage to tack on a recommendation for clemency: to be imprisoned in a con- centration camp
until the final victory over world imperialism!
(They would still be sitting there today!) And as for "the best that the clergy could produce"—his sentence was fifteen years, commuted to five. Other defendants as well were dragged into this trial in order to add at least a little substance to the charges. Among them were some monks and teachers of Zvenigorod, involved in the Zvenigorod affair in the summer of 1918, but for some reason not brought to trial for a year and a half (or they might have been, but were now being tried again, since it was expedient).

That summer some Soviet officials had called on Father Superior Ion at the Zvenigorod monastery and ordered him ("Step lively there!") to turn over to them the holy relics of St. Savva.

[Firguf, a former guards officer of the Tsar's household cavalry, who had "suddenly undergone a spiritual conversion, given all his goods to the poor, and entered a monastery, but I do not in fact know whether he actually did distribute his goods to the poor." Yes, and if one admits the possibility of spiritual conversion, what then remains of class theory?]

The officials not only smoked inside the church and evidently be- hind the altar screen as well, and, of course, refused to take off their caps, but one of them took Savva's skull in his hands and be- gan to spit into it, to demonstrate that its sanctity was an illusion. And there were further acts of desecration. This led to the alarm bell being sounded, a popular uprising, and the killing of one or two of the officials. (The others denied having committed any acts of desecration, including the spitting incident, and Krylenko accepted their denials.)

[But which of us doesn't remember similar scenes? My first memory is of an event that took place when I was, probably, three or four: The
peaked- head
(as they called the Chekists in their high-peaked Budenny caps) invaded a Kislovodsk church, sliced through the dumbstruck crowd of worshipers, and, in their pointed caps, went straight through the altar screen to the altar and stopped the service.]

Were these officials the ones on trial now? No, the monks.

We beg the reader, throughout, to keep in mind: from 1918 on, our judicial custom determined that every Moscow trial, except, of course, the unjust trial of the Chekists, was by no means an isolated trial of an accidental concatenation of cir- cumstances which had converged by accident; it was a landmark of judicial policy; it was a display-window model whose specifi- cations determined what product was good for the provinces too; it was a
standard
; it was like that one-and-only model solution up front in the arithmetic book for the schoolchildren to follow for themselves.

Thus, when we say, "the trial of the churchmen," this must be understood in the multiple plural . . . "many trials." And, in fact, the supreme accuser himself willingly explains: "Such trials
have rolled along through almost all the tribunals of the Republic.
" (What language!) They had taken place not long before in the tribunals in North Dvina, Tver, and Ryazan; in Saratov, Kazan, Ufa, Solvychegodsk, and Tsarevokokshaisk, trials were held of the clergy, the choirs, and the active members of the congrega- tion—representatives of the ungrateful "Orthodox church,
liberated
by the October Revolution."

The reader will be aware of a conflict here: why did many of these trials occur earlier than the Moscow model? This is simply a shortcoming of our exposition. The judicial and the extrajudicial persecution of the liberated church had begun well back in 1918, and, judging by the Zvenigorod affair, it had already reached a peak of intensity by that summer. In October, 1918, Patriarch Tikhon had protested in a message to the Council of People's Commissars that there was no freedom to preach in the churches and that "many courageous priests have already paid for their preaching with the blood of martyrdom. . . . You have laid your hands on church property collected by generations of believers, and you have not hesitated to violate their posthumous intent."

(The People's Commissars did not, of course, read the message, but the members of their administrative staff must have had a good laugh: Now they've really got something to reproach us with—posthumous intent! We sh-t on your ancestors! We are only interested in descendants.) "They are executing bishops, priests, monks, and nuns who are guilty of nothing, on the basis of indiscriminate charges of indefinite and vaguely counterrevolu- tionary offenses." True, with the approach of Denikin and Kolchak, this was stopped, so as to make it easier for Orthodox believers to defend the Revolution. But hardly had the Civil War begun to die down than they took up their cudgels against the church again, and the cases started
rolling through
the tribunals once more. In 1920 they struck at the Trinity-St. Sergius Mona- stery and went straight to the holy relics of that chauvinist Sergius of Radonezh, and hauled them off to a Moscow museum.

[The Patriarch cited Klyuchevsky: "The gates of the monastery of the Saint will shut and the ikon lamps will be extinguished over his sepulcher only when we shall have lost every vestige of that spiritual and moral strength willed to us by such great builders of the Russian land as Saint Sergius." Klyuchevsky did not imagine that the loss would occur almost in his own lifetime. The Patriarch asked for an appointment with the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, in the hope of persuading him not to touch the holy monastery and the relics . . . for after all the church was separate from the state! The answer came back that the Chairman was occupied in discussing important business, and that the appointment could not be arranged for the near future.

Nor for the distant future either.]

The People's Commissariat of Justice issued a directive, dated August 25, 1920, for the liquidation of relics of all kinds, since they were a significant obstacle to the resplendent movement toward a new, just society.

Pursuing further Krylenko's own selection of cases, let us also examine the case tried in the
Verkhtrib
—in other words, the Supreme Tribunal. (How affectionately they abbreviated words within their intimate circle, but how they roared out for us little insects: "Rise! The
court
is in session!")

E. The Case of the "Tactical Center"—August 16-20, 1920

In this case there were twenty-eight defendants present, plus additional defendants who were being tried
in absentia
because they weren't around.

At the very beginning of his impassioned speech, in a voice not yet grown hoarse and in phrases illumined by class analysis, the supreme accuser informs us that in addition to the land- owners and the capitalists "there existed and there continues to exist one additional social stratum, the social characteristics of which have
long since been under consideration
by the repre- sentatives of revolutionary socialism. [In other words: to be or not to be?] This stratum is the so-called '
intelligentsia
.' In this trial, we shall be concerned with
the judgment of history on the activity of the Russian intelligentsia
" and with the verdict of the Revolution on it.

The narrow limits of our investigation prevent our compre- hending exactly the
particular manner
in which the representa- tives of revolutionary socialism were
taking under consideration
the fate of the so-called intelligentsia and what specifically they were planning for it. However, we take comfort in the fact that these materials have been published, that they are accessible to everyone, and that they can be assembled in any required detail. Therefore, solely to understand the over-all atmosphere of the Republic, we shall recall the opinion of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars in the years when all these tribunal sessions were going on.

In a letter to Gorky on September 15, 1919—which we have already cited—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin replied to Gorky's attempts to intercede in the arrests of members of the intelligentsia, among them, evidently, some of the defendants in this trial, and, com- menting on the bulk of the Russian intelligentsia of those years (the "close-to-the-Cadets intelligentsia"), he wrote: "In actual fact
they are not [the nation's] brains, but shit
." On another occasion he said to Gorky: "If we break too many pots, it will be its [the intelligentsia's] fault." If the intelligentsia wants justice, why doesn't it come over to us? "I've gotten one bullet from the intelligentsia myself." (In other words, from Kaplan.)

On the basis of these feelings, he expressed his mistrust and hostility toward the intelligentsia: rotten-liberal; "pious"; "the slovenliness so customary among 'educated' people"; he be- lieved the intelligentsia was always shortsighted, that it had
betrayed the cause of the workers
. (But when had the intel- ligentsia ever sworn loyalty
to the cause of the workers
, the dictatorship of the workers?)

This mockery of the intelligentsia, this contempt for the intel- ligentsia, was subsequently adopted with enthusiasm by the publicists and the newspapers of the twenties and was absorbed into the current of day-to-day life. And in the end, the members of the intelligentsia accepted it too, cursing their eternal thought- lessness, their eternal
duality
, their eternal
spinelessness
, and their hopeless
lagging behind the times
.

And this was just! The voice of the accusing power echoed and re-echoed beneath the vaults of the Verkhtrib, returning us to the defendants' bench.

"This social stratum . . . has, during recent years, undergone the trial of universal re-evaluation." Yes, yes, re-evaluation, as was so often said at the time. And how did that re-evaluation occur? Here's how: "The Russian intelligentsia which entered the crucible of the Revolution with slogans of power for the people [so, it had something to it after all!] emerged from it an ally of the black [not even White!] generals, and a hired [!] and obedient agent of European imperialism. The intelligentsia trampled on its own banners [as in the army, yes?] and covered them with mud."

How, indeed, can we not cry out our hearts in repentance?

How can we not lacerate our chests with our fingernails?

And the only reason why "
there is no need to deal out the death blow
to its individual representatives" is that "
this social group has outlived its time.
"

Here, at the start of the twentieth century! What power of foresight! Oh, scientific revolutionaries! (However, the intel- ligentsia had to be
finished off
anyway. Throughout the twenties they kept finishing them off and finishing them off.)

We examine with hostility the twenty-eight individual allies of the black generals, the hirelings of European imperialism. And we are especially aroused by the stench of the word
Center
. Now we see a Tactical Center, now a National Center, and now a Right Center. (And in our recollection of the trials of two decades, Centers keep creeping in all the time, Centers and Centers, Engineers' Centers, Menshevik Centers, Trotskyite- Zinovievite Centers, Rightist-Bukharinite Centers, but all of them are crushed, all crushed, and that is the only reason you and I are still alive.) Wherever there is a
Center
, of course, the hand of imperialism can be found.

True, we feel a measure of relief when we learn that the Tactical Center on this occasion
was not an organization
; that it did not have: (1) statutes; (2) a program; (3) membership dues. So, what did it have? Here's what:
They used to meet!
(Goose-pimples up and down the back!) And when they met,
they undertook to familiarize themselves with one another's point of view!
(Icy chills!)

The charges were extremely serious and were supported by the evidence. There were two (2) pieces of evidence to cor- roborate the charges against twenty-eight accused individuals.

These were two letters from people who were not present in court because they were abroad: Myakotin and Fyodorov. They were absent, but until the October Revolution they had been members of the same committees as those who were present, a circum- stance that gave us the right to equate those who were absent with those who were present. And their letters dealt with their
disagreements
with Denikin on certain trivial questions: the peasant question (we are not told what these differences were, but they were evidently advising Denikin to give the land to the peasants) ; the Jewish question (they were evidently advising him not to return to the previous restrictions) ; the federated nationali- ties question (enough said: clear); the question of the structure of the government (democracy rather than dictatorship); and similar matters. And what conclusion did this evidence suggest? Very simple. It proved the fact of correspondence, and it also proved
the agreement, the unanimity, of those present with Denikin!
(Grrr! Grrrr!)

But there were also direct accusations against those present: that they had exchanged information with acquaintances who lived in outlying areas (Kiev, for example) which were not under the control of the central Soviet authorities! In other words, this used to be Russia, let's say, but then in the interests of world revolution we ceded this one piece to Germany. And people continued to exchange letters. How are you doing there, Ivan Ivanich? Here's how things are going with us. N. M. Kishkin, a member of the Central Committee of the Cadets, was so brazen as to try to justify himself right from the defendants' bench: "A man doesn't want to be blind. He tries to find out everything he can about what's going on everywhere."

To find out
everything
about what's going on
everywhere?
He doesn't want to be blind? Well, all one can say is that the accuser correctly described their actions as
treason, treason to Soviet power!