Chapter 7
But the good times ended unexpectedly and all too quickly. On December 1, 1934, S. M. Kirov, first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee, the second man in the Communist Party after Stalin, was shot at the door of his Smolny office in Leningrad. And this high-profile, yet private event suddenly turned out to be a fateful word in the fate of millions of Soviet men, women, and children.
The murderer turned out to be a young man, Leonid Nikolaev, a frustrated misfortunate communist who was also jealous of Kirov for his wife. But during interrogation, under torture, he was forced to confess that he had allegedly shot at the behest of a certain Trotskyite-Zinoviev Center, which operated in the country and brought together thousands of supporters. The former leaders of the party, Lenin’s comrades, were immediately arrested and imprisoned. Mass arrests of “Trotskyists” and “Zinovievists” took place all over the country. Under interrogation by the National Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), under torture and threats, almost all of them confessed to their hostile intentions and to belonging to some “united center”.
Years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, prominent historians and writers were able to get to the bottom of the true causes of the repressions of the 1930s. To establish a personal dictatorship, Stalin became convinced of the need to physically eliminate the entire old guard of communists who could resist him. To this end, he surrounded himself with poorly educated, cowardly, unprincipled, but loyal and obedient “associates” in order to use them to subjugate the powerful and well-organized punitive apparatus of the National Commissariat of Internal Affairs.
By the end of 1934 Stalin had prepared to carry out his diabolical plan, and the murder of Kirov, most likely conceived and carried out by the NKVD itself13, became a convenient pretext to launch mass repression. To mislead their people, as well as public opinion abroad, the majority of those arrested were forced, through brutal torture, blackmail, lies, and threats, to “confess” in writing to non-existent plots and criminal schemes against Soviet power and the leaders of the Party and the government in the NKVD’s jails. Physically and morally broken people slandered themselves and those needed by the investigators and did so not only in private offices but also publicly, at trials, hoping in this way to save themselves and their loved ones.
The majority of those who remained free willingly believed these vile lies printed in all the Soviet newspapers, took them for truth, and, at the call of the agitators, demanded at special meetings held on this subject everywhere, from factories to schools, “to destroy the traitors like rabid dogs”. Joshka and Braina, like everyone else, also believed the official reports. Not only at meetings but also at home, they sincerely condemned the unmasked enemies, disgusted by their insidious schemes.
A little time passed, and one day Gershon himself was summoned to the NKVD. The investigator, having warned that the conversation was confidential and not subject to disclosure, focused on the biography of Commissar Voronchenko.
All sorts of dates of their meetings, the names of witnesses, and statements by the Commissar himself were clarified. By the nature of the questions and hints, Gershon quickly realized that Voronchenko was suspected of belonging to the Trotskyists, and they expected Joshka to confirm this.
However, he did not hesitate to dismiss all suspicions against the man he had known well for many years and respected for his honesty and integrity. The investigator reproached Joshka for his unwillingness to help the authorities in their important work, shook his head disapprovingly, and, as he said goodbye, once again strictly instructed him not to tell anyone about the conversation he had.
Joshka was very disturbed and alarmed by this event. Just like himself, he was sure that Voronchenko, a communist with a pre-revolutionary record, was clean before the Party and the Soviet authorities, and suspicions of treason or betrayal could only be explained by a gross provocation. Choosing the right moment, Joshka told the Commissar about the conversation at the Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Voronchenko became visibly alarmed and confused. He thanked Joshka, but still reproached him for failing to comply with the requirement of silence.
From that day on, the former frankness and trustfulness of the Commissar in his relations with his deputy was replaced by suspicion and aloofness. This saddened Joshka; he tried, but could not understand the reason for the distrust that had arisen until finally, he came to believe that it lay in the general fear that came from the high-profile trials in Moscow of prominent Party and state figures, many of whom had already been sentenced to execution by shooting squad.
In rare, frank conversations with Braina, Joshka now expressed his conviction that there was deliberate intimidation of dissenters in the country to strengthen Stalin’s authority among the masses. This was also served by the increasing praise of the “genius leader” in the newspapers, on the radio, and at the numerous meetings which all workers, employees, and students were obligated to attend. But Joshka tried to explain these measures by the necessity of rallying the people around the party for the successful fulfillment of the plan for the rapid industrialization of the country.
Braina, too, was very concerned about the changes taking place in the country, but for the fate of her husband, it seemed, one need not worry. After all, he came from a poor working-class family, had fought for Soviet power in the underground, was one of the first organizers of the Belarusian Komsomol, a devoted communist who had never been a member of any faction. He has nothing to fear, there simply can be no claims against him! …
At the beginning of 1936, one evening in front of the house, Joshka was met by a stranger who asked to hear her out on an important matter. It turned out that she was the daughter of the chief accountant of the Pleshchenets District Council, who had been arrested on an anonymous accusation of sabotage. The father managed to give his daughter a note in which he wrote that he had been the victim of slander and advised her to seek help from Gershon, to ask for his intercession.
Joshka knew this honest man well, but he was aware of the danger of his treatment at the NKVD in the face of such an accusation. His sense of duty nevertheless overcame his fear; he arrived at the NKVD and vouched for the loyalty of the arrested man in written form, refuting the anonymous man’s arguments. Gershon was well-known in Belarus, they believed him. The accountant was released, and his children forever kept the good memory of their father’s savior.
But the overall arrest statistics in Belarus clearly did not satisfy Stalin, and in early 1937, he appointed M. Berman, a zealous executor of the Master’s will who had been correspondingly trained in Moscow under the guidance of the head of the State Political Department, Genrikh Yagoda, as the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Republic.
For about two months, Berman compiled and coordinated lists of future victims. The situation in Minsk changed drastically; the city was filled with alarming rumors and a premonition of trouble. In early May, Braina found a note in her mailbox in which Belarusian nationalists threatened the Communist leaders with imminent reprisals. Joshka passed the note to the NKVD, but there was no reaction. Suddenly, however, mass arrests of people at night began, accompanied by a furious campaign in the local newspapers to publicly accuse and expose them. Editorials daily stigmatized renegades to the Homeland, spies, and saboteurs, naming the surnames of well-known and universally-respected party and state figures. People read these reports in silence, but no one dared to discuss them or exchange opinions. Fear of the unknown caused everyone to shut themselves away.
Every day Gershon returned from the Commissariat of Education preoccupied, concentrated, and silent. When questioned by Braina, he answered briefly that the NKVD had uncovered and liquidated the enemy conspiracy and that honest people had nothing to fear. However, these words did not bring comfort, it was evident that Joshka himself doubted them.
Meanwhile, at the end of May, the children went on summer vacation: Lena went to a pioneer camp and Kim went to a kindergarten cottage. Both were in the woods near the village of Drozdy, not far from each other. Every Sunday the parents could visit both their children.
Unexpectedly, the families of workers in executive positions, the Gershons’ neighbors from the 3rd House of Soviets14 on Ostrovskogo Street, began to return from their cottages. Only the wives and children came back, though, without their husbands, who had been arrested at the cottages. Everyday life looked more and more like a nightmare, inexplicable, and full of inescapable worrying anticipations. Newspaper reports of the arrests invariably ended with furious calls, ostensibly in the name of outraged people: “Uproot! Uproot! Uproot!”
On a Sunday afternoon in mid-June, Joshka and Braina went to visit the children. They went to visit Kim first, but they arrived just in time for the afternoon nap. The teacher recommended to Braina not to deprive the child of rest, and informed her that according to the new routine, henceforth parents must visit their children only once every two weeks. Joshka did not hear this, only learning the news from Braina on the way to Lena’s camp. He immediately asked the chauffeur to come back. “I want to say goodbye to him,” he said firmly, and, despite Braina’s objections, he insisted. A foreboding sense of impending separation had already settled in him.
Kim was asleep at the window. Joshka tapped on the glass, and the boy woke up and was very happy to see his father. He opened the window and found himself in his father’s strong arms. Joshka threw his son over his head several times, held him tightly to his chest, said goodbye, and returned him to bed through the window. As the parents walked to the car, they saw their son in the window, waving both hands at them.
At pioneer camp, everyone was in the dining room for lunch. Lena was always distinguished by discipline and did not want to leave the table at Braina’s request, although the counselor allowed her to do so. And her parents did not have time to wait until the end of lunch, so Lena never said goodbye to her father, which she always remembered with tears afterward.
Joshka’s premonition was right. His turn for Golgotha was approaching.
On June 26, at two in the morning, when Joshka was already asleep and Braina was still sitting at her desk getting ready for class, the phone rang and an unfamiliar male voice asked: “Is Joseph Yefimovich home?” Braina did not even understand at first whom they were asking about: it was the first time she had heard her husband called by his first name and patronymic. Usually, officially they addressed him by his surname, Comrade Gershon.
A few minutes later there was a knock at the door, and Braina suddenly remembered the threatening note. Waking her husband, she informed him of the call and the unknown men waiting outside the door. The frightened Braina kept repeating, “Don’t open it right away, they’ll shoot you!”
Joshka took a revolver out of the nightstand and went to the door. “Open immediately, NKVD!” was heard behind the door. Joshka opened the door.
One by one, three uniformed men quickly entered the room, a revolver flashed in the first one’s hand. He snatched the weapon from Joshka’s hand and asked menacingly, “What took you so long to open?” While Joshka and Braina tried to explain the reason, the uninvited guests produced a search warrant and immediately began going through the cabinets, tables, looking through books, photographs, papers. Joshka helped them, giving explanations, answering questions. The search lasted until the morning, all the while Braina sat without moving and without taking her eyes, full of pain and horror, off her closest person in the world.
Finally, the command could be heard, “Pack your bags, you’re coming with us. You can take only the bare essentials!” Braina handed her husband the briefcase prepared by Ida with a change of underwear, clothes, and some sandwiches, and persuaded him to put on his raincoat. They hugged each other and said goodbye. Before they left, Joshka said, “Braina, no matter what they say, you know: I am not an enemy of the Soviet power!” And then he added quietly, as if to himself, “And the children, our children are at the cottage… Goodbye, Lenochka, Kimochka…” After kissing Ida, Joshka grabbed a bundle of books with his free hand and, accompanied by the Chekists, went down the stairs to the waiting black “Emka”. Braina and Ida went out onto the balcony and watched in a daze as Joshka opened the car door, put his books and briefcase on the seat, ducked his head, and stepped inside. The two attendants sat on the sides. The doors slammed, the car moved, and the ill will of criminal political intriguers forever deprived the friendly family of a beloved husband, a kind, caring father, and devoted brother…
The convulsive stupor in which Braina had spent the last few hours left her at once. She collapsed on the couch and in inconsolable grief just cried, cried, cried… Nearby Ida sobbed, moaned, and wailed. Here it is, real trouble: inevitable, inexplicable, as if a natural disaster, an earthquake, a flood, or a terrible fire. But this was no elemental phenomenon, it was the work of human hands! What for?! Why? For what?!? There was not a single intelligible answer. Only a dead end, an abyss, emptiness…
After a while, the women remembered that they had not put cigarettes, soap, and tooth powder in Joshka’s briefcase. They ran to the NKVD office. The answer was harsh and rude, “No parcels. Not allowed!”
New and agonizing thoughts came to mind. Not for a moment leaving her thoughts about how to help a dear person out of the whirlpool of slander and suffering, trying to think of those who could intercede for Joshka, Braina settled on Voronchenko.
And, as if by magic, around 9 a.m. the phone rang. The People’s Commissar asked why Gershon was late, as he was already expected at the bureau meeting. Braina answered that he would not come, and did not have time to add anything else; Voronchenko understood everything from the tone of her voice and frantically interrupted the conversation.
The next day the newspapers reported that another spy, traitor, saboteur, and enemy of the people, former Deputy Commissar Gershon, had been unmasked and arrested in Minsk. The newspaper article again ended with the terrible calls: “Uproot! Uproot!” And very soon the Gershons who still remained free were to learn what this meant.
Neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers began to avoid meeting with Braina and Ida the day after the newspaper report. In the street, in the streetcar, in the store, sometimes it seemed that even strangers cast suspicious, and even openly hostile glances in their direction.
Since Joshka was arrested two days before his paycheck, and the family always existed according to the Soviet “paycheck to paycheck” principle, there was no other way but to go to the People’s Commissariat of Education in order not to be left without bread. Braina called Voronchenko, said hello, and politely asked how she could get her husband’s salary. In response, the People’s Commissar irritably cut off, “We do not give salaries to traitors of the motherland!” Nevertheless, at the end of the next day, a messenger brought Braina a bag of money. And a few days after Gershon’s arrest, the same fate befell Commissar Voronchenko himself…
Every night the “black crows”15 took people away. An abyss seemed to have opened up in the country, swallowing one person after another. The survivor cursed the disappeared one day, and the next day disappeared without a trace in the maelstrom of obscurity.
Very soon all the prisons and basements of the NKVD became overcrowded, even the speedy courts could not cope with sentencing, and then the “wise leader” made a radical decision, fully consistent with his inhumane nature. Now, instead of courts, on Stalin’s orders, so-called “troikas”16 were urgently formed locally. They usually consisted of the head of the local NKVD organ, the secretary of the Party Committee, and the chairman of the local Soviet of People’s Deputies. And this trinity of often illiterate and ignorant people, without going into the materials of the investigation, without the participation of representatives of the prosecution, defense, witnesses, and even in the absence of the accused themselves, listened to the regular lists of names of the doomed and issued death sentences which were not subject to appeal and were immediately carried out. All that was required was a note in front of each victim’s name, stating that the accused confessed guilt in writing and signed the protocol of interrogation in his hand. These formal “confessions” and the signatures to them were “provided” by professional investigators-executioners in the most savage ways in the NKVD dungeons.
Joshka was accused of betrayal during the Polish occupation of Belarus, as well as of spying for Germany and participation in the Trotskyite-Zinoviev anti-Soviet conspiracy. He was beaten, deprived of sleep, and made to faint by endless interrogations, but he still would not admit to the absurd accusations. And when he had almost no strength left, the investigator threatened that he would now demand the arrest of Braina and interrogate her. In this way Joshka, like thousands of other honest and courageous people, was faced with a fateful choice: either he would sign a confession and thus leave his wife free, or he would not sign, and then he could only blame himself…
This was a flawless often-used NKVD trick. Joshka, physically and mentally exhausted, was so horrified at the thought of Braina’s arrest that he agreed to sign a confession, but only to the fact that he had allegedly participated in the Trotskyite-Zinovievite anti-party bloc. He demanded, however, that it be made clear in the record that his wife had nothing to do with this and knew absolutely nothing.
The investigator agreed to this condition; after all, it meant almost nothing to him. But Joshka unknowingly signed his own death warrant, although immediately after the “confession” the interrogations and torture stopped for a few weeks.
In the overcrowded cell of the Minsk prison, debates about the causes and consequences of the mass arrests went on without rest among acquaintances and strangers of former party figures. Most agreed that some anti-Soviet conspiracy did exist and that their arrests were due to the inevitable and quite forgivable haste in liquidating it. They wanted to believe, and they sincerely believed, that soon the investigators would figure it all out and free them, they just had to wait patiently for the trial.
Separately, a small group of scientists, members of the Academy of Sciences, were held in a cell, who unexpectedly suggested that everything that was happening was a well-prepared action to seize power in the country by a small group of adventurers who had infiltrated the leadership of the party and actually ran the state. In this case, as the scientists believed, the constant praise of Stalin, which creates and strengthens a mythical image of a genius leader of the party and the country in the minds of people, is nothing but the psychological manipulation of the population, preparing people for the regime of absolute personal power of the dictator. The mass arrests of Communists, business leaders, and ordinary citizens, and their absurd accusations of non-existent crimes, are then a well-planned preemptive elimination of the real opponents of the future dictator.
This clear, logical reasoning explained convincingly the essence of what was happening, and Joshka deeply appreciated their correctness. After all, he had been close to a similar understanding of events before, he only hesitated to draw the final conclusions, for they seemed too villainous to him.
In his memory arose the heated debates that had raged in Kashinsky’s secret Marxist circle on the eve of the revolution about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the possible catastrophic consequences of this form of power for society. The Bolsheviks then fervently persuaded their opponents that the dictatorship exercised by the Soviets of People’s Deputies reliably guaranteed the collegial leadership of the country by the best representatives of the society elected by the people, which completely excluded the possibility of one-man dictatorship. And young, unsophisticated Joshka Gershon had fully trusted such predictions.
But only 19 years had passed since the revolution, and the real power in the country was completely in the hands of the party, while the Soviets of People’s Deputies had become its obedient puppets. Under such conditions, the head of the party could indeed become a contender for the role of sole head of state.
And yet most of the cellmates disagreed with the suspicions about Stalin. They assured him that either he knew nothing about the repressions or that he was being deliberately misled. And once he figured it all out and understood what was going on in the party and the country, he would quickly restore order and punish those responsible for the mass illegal arrests.
Joshka, on the other hand, felt frustration and bitter resentment, caused by a belated epiphany, which came only in a prison cell where nothing could be changed. But would he have been able to resist total arbitrariness even when he was free? Party discipline, introduced even by Lenin, demanded that Communists scrupulously fulfill everything that was dictated to them from above. Most party workers habitually obeyed this demand without even thinking about it, the more so because such behavior was fully encouraged and facilitated a successful career. Any attempt let alone to condemn but even to criticize Party leaders in earnest was considered factional activity incompatible with membership in the CPSU(b). Party congresses obediently carried out prearranged decisions, diligently demonstrating loyalty to Stalin and his cronies.
The lack of control of these leaders by the party itself and the state as a whole and their blind obedience to them eventually led to arbitrary rule, the total elimination of dissidents and simply undesirable party members.
In his youth, Joshka joined the Communists only because he sincerely believed in the party, which proclaimed its main goal to build a new human society, where the life of every citizen would be dignified, interesting, and happy. He never sought power, wealth, fame, or a career. Even now, sitting in prison, he did not regret his youthful choice of ideas.
On the other hand, he regretted and felt guilty that his native party, from a united collective of selfless fighters for truth and freedom, had turned into a crowd of intimidated philistines, dutifully and in a cowardly manner watching the unjustified repression against their own comrades, many times practiced in battle and labor. His own arrest, his forced self-incrimination, and his confession to far-fetched, non-existent crimes served as indisputable and tragic proof to Joshka that the repression unfolded was not justified by anything, but was caused by the criminal intentions of the highest leaders of the Party and the state.
As a result of slander and falsification, he, Joshka, has now also been turned into a “traitor to the motherland,” which was officially announced in the newspapers. Consequently, Braina, the children, and
Ida are now the rejected family of an “enemy of the people”. How hard, how painful to realize that he had been the unwilling cause of the misfortune in which they all now found themselves! He so wanted to know at least something about them, to support and reassure them… But alas, all communication with them had been cut off. He could only wait and hope that it would not always be like this, that when the investigation was completed they would be allowed to see each other and this painful uncertainty would be over.
Braina, meanwhile, felt her new position as the wife of an “enemy of the people” more and more acutely. A neighbor, whose husband had been arrested before Gershon, came over one evening and began persuading her to follow her example: to give up her treasonous husband and to reclaim her maiden name. She said that in return, she was promised to keep her apartment and her job.
This conversation was unintentionally overheard by Lena. She was already a 7th grader, but still not old enough to properly assess what had happened. Braina immediately had a serious talk with her daughter, explaining to her that her father was a crystally honest, innocent man wrongly accused of treason.
Braina persuaded her daughter, “There is no doubt that he will soon be exonerated and come home, and what the neighbor advises is tantamount to betrayal, and that is the most disgusting and shameful thing a person can do. We must patiently endure unjust accusations and reproaches, bearing in mind that outsiders easily believe what is written in the newspapers”.
Nevertheless, to at least protect her from the boycott of her classmates for the time being, Lena had to be transferred to another school. It was easier with little Kim: his family convinced him that his father had gone on a long business trip and would not be back soon.
Soon Braina was suspended from regular school work, but she was allowed to teach part-time at an evening school for working youth.
Gennady Shvedik was fired from the Academy of Sciences after a general meeting of the department where he worked expressed political distrust in connection with the arrest of his brother-in-law.
Less than two months after Gershon’s arrest, Braina was asked to vacate her official apartment and move to Ostrovsky Street, to an old two-story house that had belonged to a middle-class merchant before the revolution. The commandant of the elite Third House of Soviets, who knew Joshka well, carefully hiding his sympathy, nevertheless helped Braina to load her things into the car that had arrived from the government garage. And the Gershon family, as if by the will of an evil wizard, suddenly found themselves in a dark, neglected, uncomfortable room of no more than nine square meters, with only a small window and spots of dampness on the walls on the first floor of a small brick house, where the families of the workers of the bakery were living. Its tall smoky chimney was visible in the distance. The squalor of the new dwelling, with water oozing from the ceiling drop by drop on top of everything else, was horrifying and made the state of despair, hopelessness, and despondency even worse.
It was at this time that Braina’s younger brother, Solomon Shvedik, arrived unexpectedly from Moscow. The cheerful, jovial, resilient actor quickly lifted everyone’s spirits and revived hope for a favorable outcome to Gershon’s case. He declared confidently, “This injustice can’t go on much longer. Soon the authorities will sort it all out, and Joshka will be back. You must stick together and help each other in the meantime. At least be happy that you’re all together”. That was Solomon’s way of comforting Braina and the others, knowing in his heart that Joshka’s situation was, in fact, worse than ever.
Using his connections and acquaintances, Solomon got an appointment with one of the influential leaders of the NKVD in Belarus, and together with Braina they told him the whole story of Gershon’s life and asked for help in freeing the innocent man. But in response they heard the usual excuse, “Calm down, we’ll sort it out. And we will certainly free the innocent”. Having gained nothing, the brother and sister went back to wait and hope for the best. Solomon soon returned to Moscow.
It was October, the month in which Gershon’s case was scheduled to be heard by the military board of the Supreme Court of the Republic. According to the investigator’s assurances, the confession to which he had coerced Joshka was to be punishable by only a few years in labor camps, not to mention, of course, parting with his party card. In the depths of his heart, Joshka hoped for an objective review during the trial of the ridiculous accusation and his complete acquittal.
But he could not even suppose that his fate did not depend on the court, that his name was already on the list submitted to the notorious “troika,” and he especially could not know that he was already among those for whom a “final” decision was planned, without right of appeal and with immediate execution of the sentence.
On October 29, 1937, in an office of the Minsk Commissariat of Internal Affairs, three well-trained laymen, obedient executors of the diabolical plan, in a perfectly ordinary atmosphere listened attentively and quietly to the list of familiar and unfamiliar names, then signed their names with showy unanimity, affirming the collective “supreme measure” and, trying to contain their involuntary agitation, left in haste for their homes, trying not to think about those whom they had just deprived of their right to live. The conscience of the NKVDers was almost at peace, their justification was the certainty that they were doing the will of the wise leader and, therefore, the will of the entire party. And the next day, on October 30, the firing squad completed this horrific atrocity.
The Kuropaty tract near Minsk, which was named after the white flowers that bloomed everywhere in spring, was chosen for such executions. The area of the old pinewood of about 15 hectares, enclosed by a three-meter fence with barbed wire on top, was guarded by dogs and sentries. A gravel road was even laid from the Logoyski Tract to Kuropaty for this purpose.
The eyewitnesses of one of these executions many years later told the Belarusian human rights activists about what they saw and remembered forever, “A large gate in the high fence opened, where one after another an “Emka” car drove in, followed by three closed trucks, which people called “black crows”. All the cars lined up at a deep hole five meters long and three wide. Four soldiers, wearing caps and jackets, strapped in gripes and boots, got out of the “Emka”. Two with revolvers in their hands stood on the edge of the pit, the other two approached the first truck. The door opened, and five or six men came out one by one with their hands tied behind their backs. They were lined up along the edge of the pit.
Then the soldiers began to untie people’s hands and immediately shoot them in the back of their heads. The executed fell into the pit. Then the next batch was brought out, and the whole thing was repeated. Some of the victims screamed, begging not to be killed, but most were silent and seemed to have little understanding of what was going on. The last two prisoners were forced with shovels to cover the pit with sand, after which they were also shot.”
In the post-Soviet years, a group of Belarusian activists headed by well-known human rights activist Zenon Pazniak17 researched the Kuropaty graves, recorded eyewitness accounts, and determined that from 1937 to 1941 at least 250,000 victims of Stalinist repressions were shot there.
The relatives and friends of the repressed knew nothing for years, and sometimes decades, about these hasty convictions and mass murders of innocent people.
The wives, children, and other relatives who remained loyal to the arrested “enemies of the people” did not miss the slightest opportunity to find out any information about their loved ones at the prosecutor’s office, the NKVD, or the prison. They uncomplainingly endured the rudeness and humiliation on the part of the penal officers, who, depending on their mood, either revived some hopes or waved off the unfortunate petitioners as if they were pesky flies.
But gradually rumors began to trickle in about mysterious, copycat sentences: 10 years without the right to correspondence with exile to an unknown distant land. After this the wives and close relatives with even greater insistence, overcoming fear, insults, and all kinds of prohibitions, rushed to find out where the convicts were, seek permission to see them, and to send them parcels.
Such actions stirred public opinion, aroused interest in the personalities of the repressed, and raised doubts about the legitimacy of mass arrests. This, too, became dangerous for the authorities and, in their opinion, required further expansion of repression up to the ultimate “uprooting of hostile nests”.
On July 5, 1937, the Political Bureau of the CPSU Central Committee passed a secret decree on the families of “enemies of the people,” according to which the wives of convicts and their children over 15 were to be isolated in penal labor camps for 8 years without any trials, while younger children were to be sent to public education in special orphanages.
In October, the first arrests of the wives of “enemies of the people” became known in Minsk. Upon learning of this, Braina realized that she would not escape this fate and began to prepare in advance for the inevitable. She prepared her bag and first put there a specially bought paper dress without buttons to avoid the procedure of cutting the buttons in prison.
On November 2, Braina had an appointment with a National Commissariat for Internal Affairs investigator, who informed her that Joseph Chaimovich Gershon had been sentenced to the notorious “10 years of penal labor camps without the right of correspondence.” There was a faint hope, at least in time, to find out where he would serve his sentence, to go there and try to help him in any way possible…
The only thing Braina did not expect was that she had only three days of freedom remaining. On the night of November 5-6, there was a knock on the window, and she heard the familiar “Open up, NKVD!” Two men in uniform and a policewoman came in. They presented a search warrant and a warrant for the arrest of “the wife of an enemy of the people, Gershon Braina Borisovna.”
There was no space in the small room to put the things the Chekists looked through. They had to vacate the bed where Lena and Kim slept. Half-asleep, Lena was very frightened. She had not quite recovered from the arrest of her father, and now her mother was being taken away from her! Panic and horror from the trouble and the unpredictable future seized her, she sobbed hysterically. Ida and Braina, also in tears, comforted her as best they could.
One of the soldiers stopped rummaging through things, squatted down beside Lena, and began to assure her that everything would eventually turn out fine, they just had to hope, believe, and hold on. His words had an unexpected effect, Lena began to calm down, and seven-year-old Kim became interested in the uniform and insignia of a military man, guessing that he was a border guard. They got to talking and got to know each other. The border guard continued his search, simultaneously talking about his service and the dogs that help apprehend intruders. Kim was happy to have met a real border guard and paid no attention to the strange surroundings.
Braina sat motionless in her chair, staring at her children and thinking intensely about them. Where would someone’s malevolent desire take them? What awaits them, so trusting and defenseless, with the shameful label of “children of an enemy of the people”? What trials, hardships, and experiences await them? Who will help them in difficult times, who will support, reassure them? Will she ever see them again, or are they parting forever?
It was pitiful to look at poor Ida, too. She had never been interested in politics, but she firmly believed that Joshka and Braina were innocent victims of antisemitic slanderers, so God would help them and everything would end happily in the end. In reality, she, the sister of an “enemy of the people,” faced the miserable fate of an elderly, lonely, socially outcast woman.
The search ended by morning with absolutely no results: no matter how hard the Chekists tried, they had to leave empty-handed, but the car was held up somewhere.
Kim declared that he was hungry. The day before, Ida had baked pies for the upcoming November 7th holiday. Everyone, including the Chekists, sat down at the table, drank a glass of tea with the pies, and praised Ida for her culinary skills. Ida packed the rest of the pies in Braina’s bag.
Barely controlling her tears, Kim’s mother told him that she was going to visit her father, but that they would soon return home together. She told Lena over and over again not to leave Kim under any circumstances, and to report everything that would happen to them in writing or verbally as soon as possible.
About nine o’clock in the morning, the sounds of a car from the courtyard rang out. Braina’s mind became foggy, and with a half-crazy expression of wide-open eyes, accompanied by the Chekists, she went out into the yard, where curious neighbors were crowded together. Ida and Lena followed, crying profusely. Looking at them, Kim also wept.
The Chekists, without delay, put Braina inside and settled themselves in, the car rolled out of the yard and after just a few minutes drove into the territory of the Minsk prison on Volodarskogo street.
When the door of the waiting room opened, Braina saw a whole crowd of women, most of whom were familiar to her. When they recognized Braina, they cheered, “Finally! We thought they’d forgotten about you, or maybe you’d left here in time!”
It turned out that more than 70 wives of “traitors” had been brought to the prison that night. The women had already had time to cry and exchange their bitter premonitions, they were tired and hungry. Ida’s feast cakes couldn’t have been better-suited for the occasion. No sooner had Braina learned from her acquaintances about the events of the past night, than the wardens began their “special treatment” on them: buttons were cut, sharp objects were taken away, personal items were checked. Then everyone was assigned to their cells.
Braina was placed in a four-bed cell with women she knew well, which eased much of the new rigors of prison life. Everyone was concerned with the same questions: “What’s going on? What will happen to us? Where are our husbands, children, relatives now?” No matter how much one thinks about it, no matter how much one talks about it, even with the understanding of the situation, relief does not come.
At night the bolts rattled, the cell doors were unlocked, the guard called one of the women in for a routine interrogation. Often it was Braina. The interrogator insisted on her confessing that she was an accomplice to her husband, an enemy and traitor to the country, and demanded that she tell him the facts she knew about his criminal acts, connections, and accomplices.
Not only did Braina completely deny these fabrications, but she gave more and more examples of his patriotism, his devotion to the Komsomol and the Party, his honesty and unselfishness. This infuriated the investigator, “Your husband is a spy, an enemy, a traitor; you know this well, but you maliciously deny it and continue to help him with it! You will not get away with this!”
In response, Braina naively referred to the fact that she was in prison, having no guilt behind her, that it was very easy to check, accordingly, and Joshka was illegally accused on the unverified denunciation of some slanderer. To this, the investigator only bluntly repeated the previous accusations. At last, at a regular interrogation, the investigator put a blank sheet of paper, an inkwell, and a pen in front of Braina and told her to tell the whole truth about her husband, warning her of the consequences for giving false testimony.
After briefly describing Joshka’s biography, Braina concluded by rejecting all accusations against him, attributing them to slander or a tragic mistake. She was not called in for questioning again.
13 In 1990, the publication “Progress” published the book of a dissident, the people’s deputy of the USSR R.A. Medvedev, called “On Stalin and Stalinism” in which the author, analyzing the results of the vote at the XVII meeting of the Communist Party, writes: “He [Stalin] felt danger for his position and for his power, and this danger was personified for him in the form of S. M. Kirov and many delegates of the XVII summit.”
14 The 3rd House of Soviets in Minsk (now #23 Bogdanovicha Street) is a five-story building in the spirit of constructivism, which was built in 1936 according to a special design by architects A. Denisov and V. Varaksin. Before the war, it was home to the families of Red Army commanders and nomenklatura workers.
15 “Black Crow” (also known as raven, crow, black crows, black Marusya) — since the mid-1930s this is the name Soviet residents gave to closed black official cars designed to transport suspects and those arrested by the NKVD. Later the “crows” were repainted, hiding behind the inscriptions on the sides, “Drink champagne”, “Keep your money in the savings bank”, “Groceries”, “Sausages” and others. But everyone knew their true purpose.
16 Republican, Krai and Oblast NKVD troikas were extrajudicial bodies of criminal prosecution that operated in the USSR in 1937-1938. Their decisions were made in absentia by the materials of the cases submitted by the NKVD bodies, and in some cases and in the absence of any materials, according to the lists of the arrested. The procedure for considering cases was free, no minutes were kept.
17 Zenon Pazniak is a Belarusian politician and public figure, photographer, archaeologist and art historian. One of the founders of the Martirologue of Belarus (1988). He was the first to reveal to the public the truth about the crimes in Kurapaty.