John Sweeney - The Useful Idiot

“So I see,” replied Jones.

Above them a dais was reserved for the lawyers. They filed in, the prosecutors hefting bundles of paperwork, led by the Prosecutor-General, Nikolai Krylenko. The defence followed, elderly pre-Revolution types, “former people”, hunch-shouldered, hesitant, playing out their role with threadbare confidence. Above the lawyers on a second, higher dais was the throne of the judges, three men in all – two nobodies on the wings but, in the centre, Professor A. Y. Vishinsky, spectacled, commanding. He banged his gavel, got a subdued hush, then called for the accused to be brought in. A squad of GPU soldiers entered carrying rifles tipped with long, strangely thin bayonets. Fifty-three of them, heads shaved, shabby, their faces grey, bereft of hope. They kept their heads down as they filed into the court, settling meekly behind the forest of bayonets in the dock.

Finally, Prosecutor-General Nikolai Krylenko got to his feet. More dwarf than man, barely five feet tall, his great head was out of proportion with his torso, giving him the appearance of a monstrous toddler. He stroked his chin and then started to talk: “The proletariat thanks the glorious GPU, the unsheathed sword of the revolution, for its splendid work in liquidating this dastardly plot.”

Krylenko nodded to the court clerk, who read out the names of the accused in a nervous high pitch. Each defendant stood up, bowed at the judges, said, “Da” and sat down. Then the clerk called out the next one. So it went on and on.

Jones, bored, switched off. He wondered about the men who had stopped following him. He hadn’t been tailed since Christmas Eve. The lack of consistency troubled him. Either he was a danger to the Soviet state or he wasn’t. The idea that the Cheka would take a casual interest in him, then get bored, was irritating. It meant that he was a bit of nobody. True enough, he thought.

In the courtroom, the clerk got to the letter N.

“Nekrasoff,” squeaked the clerk.

No answer.

“Nekrasoff,” he repeated.

There was a rising hubbub from the throng. How dare this scum Nekrasoff avoid the people’s justice?

“Nekrasoff?”

Krylenko got to his feet. “Comrade Nekrasoff’s counsel, will you please explain this insult to the court’s dignity?”

Nekrasoff’s counsel was tall and old and spindly, a grandfather’s clock from another time. Though he formed words, he was so far away from one of the court’s three microphones that nobody could hear a thing.

“Speak up man!” snapped Krylenko. “Go to the microphone and explain why your client deems it fit to insult the people’s court in this fashion.”

He shuffled stiffly to the nearest microphone. “My client is indisposed.”

“What? How dare this wrecking scum treat the people in this way!” yelled Krylenko. The crowd cat-called and yelled abuse, so much so that Judge Vishinsky had to work hard with his gavel to create order. Crowd hushed, he gestured to the defence counsel to explain.

“Comrade Nekrasoff is suffering hallucinations and, for his own good, has been placed in a padded cell where he has been screaming about rifles being pointed at his heart. He is prey to paroxysms so, with great respect to the court, it has been decided that it would not further the interests of the people’s justice for him to attend.”

Jones’ translator, Madame Koloshny, gabbled the words out at speed.

“Padded cell? What’s that about?” asked Jones.

“Sounds rather fun,” said Duranty out of the side of his mouth.

“The counsel advised the court that Comrade Nekrasoff has been placed in a padded cell for his own good,” said Madame Koloshny. “Nothing to add. You ask too many questions, Mr Jones.”

From the next seat, he heard Duranty suppress a snort of laughter.

Jones and Madame Koloshny didn’t hate each other. It was more miserable than that. After a month of working with her, Jones knew her well enough not to press her on the strange fate of the man in the padded cell. Madame Koloshny had been suggested by Oumansky as the perfect person for the role. She had been a beauty, once. Her dark hair was pulled back in a cruel bun, her lips rouged but thin, her cheeks and forehead as pale as porcelain. She was like a china tea set so delicate and refined that you would never want to use it lest you smash the teapot. Yet, somehow, she was hardier, testier than that.

Her English was excellent and, more to the point, she wasn’t too expensive. Jones was finding living in the Soviet Union much more costly than he had imagined. Food was far more expensive than it was back in Britain and he’d lost so much weight he had tightened his belt three notches. Far from saving money, he was living well beyond his means and had written to his father, a headmaster back in Barry, Wales, to wire him extra funds. So Madame Koloshny was perfect in every way. That is, except for the fact that she didn’t like journalism or Jones one bit. Her mantra was “you ask too many questions, Mr Jones”, but the whole point of being a good reporter, he knew, was exactly that. To be precise, journalism meant sniffing out things that didn’t feel right, worrying away at the truth like a dog with a bone. In Stalin’s Russia, there were so many things that made no sense that to be told “you ask too many questions” was all but unbearable.

The seats were hard and uncomfortable. Jones straightened his back and studied the wretches in the dock.

The defendant that haunted Jones most was Skorutto. He had the long nose, waddling gait and puzzled, silly manner of a duck who had somehow strayed out of its farmyard into the courtroom. Middle-aged, with cropped white hair, he had strong, heavily-calloused hands, and the mildest of manners. Skorutto was not only always pleasant to the GPU guards but also to his fellow prisoners, including the ones who had given evidence against him. He denied his guilt absolutely and with a calmness that made him stand out. Every now and then, while his co-workers were condemning him at length, he would turn to a pudding-faced woman in the audience and smile the sweetest of smiles at her.

Skorutto was supposedly a saboteur who, having spent a lifetime down the mines, first for the Tsar, then the Communist Party, had finally been caught by the authorities. They had revealed the truth about this monster who had worked underground his whole life. The evidence against him was damning. Seventeen of the twenty-four defendants had sworn that he had deliberately wrecked the work of the state. Yet he would not accept the truth. The difference between the weight of the charges and Skorutto’s own demeanour was – that word again – bewildering.

After some procedural to-and-fro which Madame Koloshny didn’t bother to translate, Prosecutor Krylenko called Comrade Skorutto to take the stand. But Skorutto was different today. The gentle duck had gone. Tottering slowly towards the witness stand, his body trembled and he mumbled something inaudible into the microphone.

“The accused must speak up,” demanded Krylenko.

Skorutto eyed Krylenko nervously, coughed and then addressed the microphone. “I have today written out and signed a statement confessing my own guilt. I was part of a conspiracy to wreck the Five Year Plan. With others, I conspired…”

He got no further. His words had barely registered when a scream slashed through the court.

“Kolya, Kolya darling, don’t lie! Don’t! You know you’re innocent!”

It was the pudding-faced woman in the audience. Skorutto slumped against the microphone stand, knocking it over. Judge Vishinsky adjourned the session for ten minutes. The ten minutes turned into an hour, then two.

While they waited, Duranty invited Jones to go outside with him to get some fresh air. Jones thanked him and said that, instead, he would hold the fort. The truth was that Duranty’s easy cynicism – which at first acquaintance had seemed so refreshing – now grated on him. So Jones sat tight on his hard wooden seat and thought yet again about Evgenia. She was the mystery of his life, not that Russia was ever easy to read. He was finding it harder and harder to reconcile the fantastic boasts of the Soviet propaganda machine with what he saw with his own eyes. Officially, the Five Year Plan was breaking all records. Officially, more tractors were being built than ever before. Officially, the electrification of the Soviet Union was cracking on apace. Officially, paradise was being built in the Soviet Union.