Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

Ahmed came darting up to help him fill a mug with water. “There, there…. It’ll be all right.”

Klim took a deep draught of water, his teeth chattering against the rim of the mug. Half the contents of the mug spilt onto the floor.

“Hey…” called Billiard. “Why are you covered in blood?”

“Two women were killed just now,” Klim replied.

“By the guards?”

Klim nodded. He sat down on the platform and tried to take off his shirt, but his fingers would not obey. Somebody helped him.

“You lie down now,” Ahmed was still fussing about. “Don’t worry. You’ll feel better soon. We’ll sit here at your feet to shield you so the warden won’t see you. You know yourself it’s forbidden to sleep in the daytime.”

Klim lay down and covered himself with his coat, pulling it right up over his head. There was an awful throbbing and ringing in his temples, and the faces of the intelligence officers kept floating up in front of his eyes. How many of them had questioned him over the last forty-eight hours? There must have been at least ten of them.

At the moment when Galina had raised the pistol, Klim had shut his eyes. This is it, he had thought. A shot had rung out, and he had felt something warm spatter onto his face. The red-haired woman who had been standing over him fell to the floor, spilling the glass of boiling tea all over herself. A red hole gaped where her eye had been.

After that, everything became muddled in his memory—the smell of gunpowder, the sound of boots in the corridor, a shrill scream, the door bursting open. Then there had been a second shot, which left his ears ringing. He had seen Galina slide slowly to the floor. Behind her on the wall was a bloody smear.

If only he could erase all these memories from his mind! If only he could go to sleep, never to wake up. He hadn’t the strength to endure anything more.

Now, Klim heard the sounds of voices. The priests who had been brought in to the cell were chanting something, but he could not make out the words.

Elkin was done for, and now, Galina was dead. She had wanted to save Klim, but that was as impossible as trying to dig somebody out from an avalanche with a teaspoon.

Now, the intelligence officers would clear away the dead bodies, wash the floor, and put Klim back on the “conveyer belt.”

The purge was to be carried out in the so-called “Red Corner,” the OGPU employees’ reading room. A table had been brought in for the chairman, and chairs were gathered from all over the building.

There were so many people packed into the room that the atmosphere was stifling. Alov found himself a place in the far corner just behind Diana Mikhailovna. His nerves had brought on fits of coughing again. He tried to restrain himself as long as possible, his face turning crimson, before finally giving in and hacking into his fist.

Ivanov, an elderly, disheveled man with a goatee, addressed the assembled employees. It was time, he announced, that the OGPU rid itself of ideological backsliders who were sabotaging the efforts of the government to build a new world.

Alov stared blankly ahead of him at the ornamental comb in Diana Mikhailovna’s hair, dreaming about the precious tablet, now out of reach, that would have stopped his coughing.

“Now, comrades, to business,” said Babloyan, consulting his list of employees. “First, we have Valakhov.”

Valakhov stood up, flushed with embarrassment, and began to give an account of his career. His greatest achievement so far had been the time he had discovered a wounded officer of the White Army hiding out in his neighbors’ shed and reported it to the Reds. The filthy White had been shot, together with those who had sheltered him, and Valakhov had been recommended for the district division of the secret police. Soon, he had been transferred to Moscow and had come to Drachenblut’s notice. And that was it.

“Any questions?” Babloyan asked the assembled officers. Everybody had fallen silent.

Ivanov studied Valakhov’s files for some time.

“It says here that you are a member of a three-man stewardship team for the Communist University for Chinese Workers. What stewardship duties do you undertake in connection with this position?”

Valakhov looked around at his colleagues nervously. “Well, I do different things. Ideological work, that is.”

There were sniggers from the audience. Valakhov had recently bragged about his visits to female students dormitory and how he had forced his way into the women’s changing rooms when he was drunk.

As it turned out, Valakhov did not have the faintest idea of basic political science or political economy and was completely ignorant about international events.

“It’s a disgrace!” Ivanov addressed the audience. “Just look at the level of political awareness among your fellow employees!”

Valakhov put his hand to his heart. “But I’m on duty for days on end. I don’t have time to mess about with books!”

“I think Comrade Valakhov is the kind of man we need,” said Babloyan in a conciliatory tone. “Not so long ago, he couldn’t read or write, and now, he is being entrusted to carry out serious work. He has definitely made progress. We shall have to hope that in the future, he’ll become better acquainted with the theoretical side of his work.”

It was decided by two votes to one (Babloyan and Drachenblut against Ivanov) to allow Valakhov to keep his Party membership card.

There were sighs of relief all around.

However, things did not go so smoothly for everyone. One female officer, who was about to go to Paris for a clandestine mission, was expelled from the Party because her father had been a member of the clergy. Diana Mikhailovna, on the other hand, was allowed to keep her membership, even though her father had been a senior civil servant in the Tsarist administration.

At first, nobody wanted to put any questions to their colleagues; they were afraid it would put them in the firing line when it was their turn to be interrogated. But as time went on, employees who had escaped the purge began to point the finger at each other, reminding of illegally acquired trips abroad or the use of office telephones for private conversations and flirtations.

Eteri Bagratovna informed on an employee from the finance office who had posted a notice advertising foreign shoes for sale. “She’s a profiteer!”

It turned out that none of the assembled employees were able to explain the difference between a Trotskyite and a loyal Party member. All these people who had been so zealously engaged in fighting counter-revolutionary activity had no idea what it actually involved.

Ivanov clutched the remnants of his gray hair. “And this is the Foreign Department, the pride of the OGPU!”

With each new case, it became clearer exactly what sort of people worked for the secret police: opportunists looking for easy money and ordinary bureaucrats—petty, ignorant, and vindictive.

They had taken up residence in the citadel of the Lubyanka like hyenas in caves. They went out to hunt because they needed to eat, and they hung on to their positions because everyone was afraid of the OGPU and because they themselves feared nothing and no one except the hyenas in the lair next door.

Alov had not raised his hand nor asked any questions. It was quite obvious the views of the employees had no effect on the decisions of the commission. Drachenblut and Babloyan had already decided in advance who would be “drowned” and who would be “saved” and settled all questions with a vote of two to one.

The meeting had been going on for three hours.

“Oh, why don’t they hurry up!” whispered Diana Mikhailovna barely audibly. “Now all the stores are about to shut, and I’ve got no food in the house.”

Alov tried to get away to go to the bathroom, wanting to check up on Rogov at the same time, but he was not allowed to leave.

“You should have thought about going to the bathroom earlier,” muttered Ivanov.

Only Eteri Bagratovna, was allowed to leave the room once in a while to bring in a fresh carafe of water or replace a broken pencil.

Once, on her return, she walked up to the chairman’s table and said something to the members of the commission. Drachenblut and Babloyan glanced at one another.

“Well, then,” said Ivanov in an ominous tone, looking around at the silent officers. “Let’s have a look at Alov’s work record.”

Babloyan picked up Alov’s files and began to shower him with questions that had nothing to do with Marxism and was all about Dunya and the theater group.

Alov, stifled by his cough, was unable to defend himself.

“I fear our friend Alov has absolutely lost his consciousness of class war,” pronounced Babloyan. “Where does he get this haughty attitude toward the efforts of the proletarian youth?”

Ivanov nodded in agreement. “His actions fail absolutely to answer the demands of our ideology.”

Drachenblut listened patiently as they talked gibberish about imperial chauvinism and poor moral character.

“Which of you supports the opinion that Alov has cut himself off from the masses?” Drachenblut asked.

Those officers who had not yet been questioned immediately realized that Alov was a clear candidate for dismissal. His name could take up one of the spaces on the quota for expulsion, and they all began to attack Alov.

Even Zharkov joined in. “For some time, Alov has been a man without a societal face.”

Not a single specific accusation was made against Alov. Everybody merely called him names that signaled something bad. What could he say in return? “It’s not true! I do have a societal face!”?