Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

From prolonged standing, the detainee’s body was very swollen, and she weakened and, unable to stand, began to fall. Then Boyarsky proposed that Zarubin [another investigator] and I tie her to the wall. For that purpose he put handcuffs on the detainee’s hands himself, with her hands crossed behind her back, and said we should tie a rope from the handcuffs to a hook stuck in the wall. In addition, Boyarsky said we should string a rope across the detainee’s chest, under her arms, and tie it to a nail in the wall. After that, Boyarsky himself grabbed her braids and tied them to a nail, so that she could not lower her head to her chest or let it rest on her shoulders…. We did not give food or drink to the detainee, we did not take her to the bathroom, and a strong odor began to come from her. Boyarsky came in from time to time and demanded testimony from her, but she did not give any, after which Boyarsky said, “You’ll hang here till you rot, or till you give us testimony.” Toward the end, the detainee began to hallucinate; she groaned, at first loudly, then more and more quietly. At around four or five in the morning, the detainee died. 264

Only after Boyarsky was exposed in 1990–1991 in the press (and then at the institute) as a former executioner was he deprived of his scientific degree.

However, exposure of another former MGB investigator in the mass media, Pavel Grishaev, 265did not result in his dismissal. In 1946, he was a member of the SMERSH-MGB team 266that brought a few German witnesses and the testimony of other high-ranking Germans kept in Moscow prisons to the Nuremberg trial. Two years later, Grishaev became one of the most notorious investigators involved in anti-Semitic trials and purges. He was a member of the team that tortured the arrested members of the famous Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. 267Maryana Zaitseva, a victim of the Allilueva case that preceded the JAC case, later described Grishaev’s style of “interrogation”:

He behaved as an executioner beating me up with a rubber truncheon. As a result I used to faint and was repeatedly given medical assistance. Grishaev showed the truncheon covered with blood to my husband [he had also been arrested and Grishaev also “worked” on him] saying that “this is the blood of your wife”… All interrogations took place at night… Knowing that according to the rules of Lefortovo Prison it was prohibited to sleep during the day, he deprived me of normal sleep for a month… Other investigators of the Department for Investigation of Especially Important Cases were present during my night interrogations—Komarov, Rassypinskii, Likhachev, and others, including former Minister of Security Abakumov, who accused them of being incapable of handling interrogations… 268

When the seemingly all-powerful Minister Abakumov had been arrested in 1951 in his turn, Lieutenant Colonel Grishaev became deputy head of the Department for Investigation of Especially Important Cases and was appointed an investigator of the Abakumov case. Abakumov was kept constantly handcuffed and with the help of Grishaev was subjected to many types of tortures, which he had used before to interrogate his own victims, including a cold cell with a refrigerating system. 269

Grishaev successfully escaped any punishment, whereas many of his colleagues were shot to death after short trials after Stalin’s death. Moreover, after Stalin’s death he worked as a teacher of law for thirty-five years, became a professor of law and then an “Honored Public Figure” (a special title in the Soviet Union). What a cruel joke! In 1964, after appeals of his former victims to the Communist Party offices, he received “a Party reprimand,” which was erased in 1967. In 1990, he was defended by the officials of the All-Union Institute of Law following newspaper articles about his past: “The article in the newspaper was written with a contemporary evaluation of the past; it does not take into consideration all his [Grishaev’s] later life and scientific and teacher’s careers. His 35-year work at the institute was irreproachable.” 270

Another Grishaev colleague, Daniil Kopelyansky, who interrogated Raoul Wallenberg, preferred the career of an architect after he lost his job at the MGB during the purge of Jews from the organs after Abakumov’s arrest in 1951. In the 1990s, he was frequently seen at the library of the Architects’ Club House in Moscow. In 1991–1997, he refused to release any information about the fate of Wallenberg.

Of course, Boyarsky and Grishaev, as well as the other numerous investigators who are still alive, deny participation in any crime. 271Mysteriously, they do not remember details of interrogations or the names of victims. (Nazi war criminals often suffered a similar type of amnesia.) They are proud of their secret service careers and will keep the secrets of the organs until their death. (When KGB officers resigned, they signed a special document promising to never release details of their work.)

Many NKVD/MGB/KGB officers mentioned in this book considered science a prestigious job for their children. Sons and daughters of Mairanovsky, Boyarsky, Khvat, Kruzhkov, Solovov, and Sudoplatov became scientists at Moscow University and research institutes within the Soviet (now Russian) Academy of Sciences. Like children of Nazi functionaries in Germany, all of them believe that their fathers were only following orders from above.

Some of the Soviet scientists, usually devoted Communist Party members, had few qualms about working with the OGPU/NKVD/MGB/KGB. Analysis of the secret KGB textbook History of the Soviet Security Service shows that the work of the Soviet secret services would not be possible without secret agents. 273Thus, a Special Letter of the Secret Operational Directorate of the OGPU from July 20, 1928, plainly said that a “qualified fight” against “anti-Soviet counterrevolutionaries” should be based on a well-organized network of informers and secret agents. 274In the late 1920s, OGPU deputy head Yagoda boasted:

We can turn anyone into a secret informer [ seksot in Russian]… Who does want to die of hunger? If the OGPU starts to work on a person with the goal to force him to be an informant, his resistance is useless. Eventually, he will be in our hands: we will force to kick him out from his job and he will not be accepted anywhere else without a secret approval of our organization [organy]. Especially if the person has a family, a wife, and children, he is forced to capitulate soon. 275

Basically, there were three types of secret agents and informers: special agents (spetsagenty), special informers (spetsosvedomiteli), and informers ( osvedomiteli, or seksoty ). 276Special agents were professionals or semiprofessionals who temporarily or permanently served at the NKVD/MGB/KGB. Special informants were recruited to the secret service for special assignments only. However, informants were the most numerous group and were recruited for collecting information about alleged anti-Soviet activity within all of Soviet society. All these secret collaborators signed special agreements with the OGPU-KGB, were given pseudonyms for their reports, and kept secret their contacts with the security service. In the late 1950s–1970s, the KGB additionally introduced the category of “trusted persons” (doverennye litsa) . 277These individuals made their connections with the KGB widely known but kept secret the type of information they provided to the KGB. Their work with the KGB was based on their enthusiasm; they did not sign agreements with the KGB and had no special KGB alias.