Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

You are very clever. Fancy knowing the law so well! You can stand up to any interrogator. It would be impossible to trick you or frighten you! If you can prove that what you did was not criminal, then you will be helping your friends who are still free!

Krasin’s KGB cellmate claimed to have been converted from his previous political skepticism to Krasin’s dissident opinions, and gradually persuaded him that by standing up for those views during his interrogation he would be continuing his fight for Russian democracy. According to the absurdly stilted language of the interrogation report, “The agent also introduced the beauty of nature and the significance of art and literature into their conversations. This rekindled Krasin’s love of life and made him forget his bitter disenchantment.” Rumors fed to him that Yakir was now talking to his interrogator seem finally to have persuaded Krasin to take his cellmate’s advice. “The idea that Yakir was giving full, true and detailed evidence,” declared his interrogator Aleksandrovsky dramatically, “hung over him like the sword of Damocles.” 35

Krasin’s early replies to Aleksandrovsky’s questions were extremely cautious. Initially he limited himself to refuting alleged evidence that he had attempted to subvert or weaken Soviet power, refusing to answer anything he considered a leading question. He prepared written answers to those questions he accepted, sometimes preparing and correcting several drafts before handing one of them to his interrogator. This laborious procedure continued for two months, during which Krasin provided what the KGB considered “only worthless information.” Like all good interrogators, however, Aleksandrovsky was patient. “The importance of these first interrogations,” he believed, “was that they enabled psychological contact to be established.”

The first sign of a breakthrough came on September 27, 1972. As usual Krasin insisted that, “The accusation against me is monstrous. I cannot do what is against my conscience. I cannot admit that I am guilty of something that I have not done or repent of crimes which have not been committed.” But, for the first time, he seemed to accept that his career as a dissident was at an end. “I will not,” he announced, “carry on with my work.” Krasin added that he did not believe Aleksandrovsky’s main aim was to sentence him to another term in a labor camp. Henceforth the scope of the interrogation was broadened. Each day Aleksandrovsky allowed Krasin to choose the subject for discussion but tried, when the opportunity arose, to develop their conversation in ways which showed the hopelessness of his position and of the dissident cause. While discussing the fight against counter-revolution in the Dzerzhinsky era, Aleksandrovsky mentioned the case of the arch anti-Bolshevik Boris Savinkov, who had been lured back to Russia in August 1924. Krasin’s KGB cellmate was primed to raise the question of how long Savinkov’s interrogation had lasted. The answer, which Krasin doubtless discovered from a book lent him by his interrogator, was that after only nine days Savinkov publicly renounced his “bloody struggle” against the Bolshevik regime and declared that he unconditionally recognized the Soviet state. 36When Krasin asked him why Savinkov had recanted, Aleksandrovsky replied that he had seen the hopelessness of his situation, realized that his struggle against Soviet power was doomed to failure and understood that his actions were against the interests of the Russian people.

Whenever Krasin expressed interest in a subject during interrogation, Aleksandrovsky would try to find him relevant books and articles which would have a “positive influence” on him. He was thought to be particularly impressed by the stirring account by the British journalist Alexander Werth in his book Russia at War of the endurance and triumph of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War. On one occasion Krasin was even given copies of the banned periodical Posev, published by the émigré NTS (social democrat organization), which contained articles by himself and Yakir. Krasin was seen to rub his hands with anticipation as he opened the pages of the periodical. After a time, he put the copies of Posev down in disgust, declaring that it was “White Guard drivel” and that he had never read “anything so primitive and bereft of ideas.” From his reading of the file, Mitrokhin suspected that Krasin had been given fabricated copies of the periodical specially designed to arouse his indignation.

Krasin’s separation from his wife, Yemelkina, who was banished into internal exile at Yesineysk, was also used to increase the emotional pressure on him. Alexandrovsky noted cynically, “Krasin loved his wife greatly and was ready to do anything for her sake.” On visiting Yemelkina at Yesineysk, he found that she too was desperate to be reunited with her husband. Probably as a condition of being allowed to visit Krasin, Yemelkina agreed to reveal where she had hidden “anti-Soviet literature.” After an emotional reunion with his wife in January 1973, Krasin gave Aleksandrovsky the locations of four hiding places containing sixty allegedly subversive foreign publications and 140 microfilms (totaling 5,000 frames) of other “anti-Soviet texts.” 37Further pressure on Krasin was exerted during visits from his mother and other relatives and friends, all of whom had been expertly intimidated by the KGB. 38

Even after Krasin had agreed to plead guilty to the charges against him, however, he refused for almost two months to incriminate his friends. Step by step Aleksandrovsky overcame his resistance. First, Krasin agreed to talk about dissidents who had already confessed, then about foreign correspondents who had left Moscow and Soviet émigrés in the USA and Israel who were, as he put it, “beyond the reach of the KGB.” Next he identified people who, he said, had not committed any criminal offense but had merely read “anti-Soviet literature” and had been present when foreign correspondents were given the Chronicle of Current Events. Then, almost overnight, what remained of Krasin’s resistance to informing on his fellow dissidents collapsed. He spent ten days writing by hand a document of over a hundred pages setting out the evidence against dissidents, identifying sixty of them and giving details of numerous incidents previously unknown to the Fifth Directorate—among them the origins of the Chronicle of Current Events. To a triumphant Aleksandrovsky it seemed as though Krasin was “unburdening himself of a great weight.”

At Aleksandrovsky’s prompting, Krasin then spent two months composing an appeal to his fellow dissidents which was read aloud at a meeting in Yakir’s flat in April 1973 and, according to a KGB report, “made a strong impact.” “We started by demanding that the laws should be observed,” declared Krasin, “but ended up breaking them. We forgot the basic truth that we are citizens of the USSR and are bound to respect and keep the laws of our state.” Fifty-seven dissidents named by Krasin and Yakir were summoned for interrogation by the Moscow KGB. Some were subjected to emotional confrontations with Krasin and Yakir, who appealed to them to end the dissident campaign. According to KGB records, forty-two capitulated. Another eight “vacillated in evaluating their activities” but “gave assurances that they would not commit any anti-social acts in future.” Only seven remained completely unrepentant; all were given official cautions and put under “operational surveillance.” During 1973 a total of 154 people associated with the dissident movement were cautioned by the Moscow KGB, eighty of them “for possessing, writing and distributing ideologically harmful material and for anti-social and politically harmful conduct.”