More than anything else, it was the Terror—sometimes called the Great Purges—that came to define Stalinism as a distinctive phenomenon in the history of Soviet communism (see p. 1052). Millions of people were caught up in this vast process of identifying and eliminating so-called enemies of the people, many of them loyal communist citizens. The three selections that follow, all from women, provide a small taste of what it meant to experience arrest and interrogation, life in the camps of the Gulag, and the agony of those left behind waiting for loved ones who had vanished into the Terror.

Personal Accounts of the Terror

1930s

[The first excerpt is from the memoirs of Irina Kakhovskaya, an ardent revolutionary, though not a party member, who was arrested in 1937 and spent seventeen years either in prison or in a labor camp. Here she describes her arrest and interrogation.]

Early on the morning of February 8, 1937, a large group of men appeared at the door of our quiet apartment in Ufa. We were shown a search warrant and warrants for our arrest. The search was carried out in violent, pogrom-like fashion and lasted all day. Books went pouring down from the shelves; letters and papers, out of boxes. They tapped the walls and, when they encountered hollow spots, removed the bricks. Everything was covered with dust and pieces of brick. . . .

At the prison everything was aimed at breaking prisoners’ spirits immediately, intimidating and stupefying them, making them feel that they were no longer human, but “enemies of the people,” against whom everything was permitted. All elementary human needs were disregarded (light, air, food, rest, medical care, warmth, toilet facilities). . . .

In the tiny, damp, cold, half-lit cell were a bunk and a half bunk. The bunk was for the prisoner under investigation and on the half bunk, their legs drawn up, the voluntary victims, the informers from among the common criminals, huddled together. Their duty was never to let their neighbor out of their sight, never to let the politicals communicate with one another . . . and above all to prevent the politicals from committing suicide. . . . The air was fouled by the huge wooden latrine bucket. . . .

The interrogation began on the very first night. . . . Using threats, endearments, promises and enigmatic hints, they tried to confuse, wear down, frighten, and break the will of each individual, who was kept totally isolated from his or her comrades. . . . Later stools were removed and the victim had to simply stand for hours on end. . . .

At first it seemed that the whole thing was a tremendous and terrible misunderstanding, that it was our duty to clear it up. . . . But it soon became apparent that what was involved was deliberate ill will and the most cynical possible approach to the truth. . . .

In the interrogation sessions, I now had several investigators in a row, and the “conveyor belt” questioning would go on for six days and nights on end. . . . Exhaustion reached the ultimate limit. The brain, inadequately supplied with blood, began to misfunction. . . . “Sign! We won’t bother you anymore. We’ll give you a quiet cell and a pillow and you can sleep. . . . ” That was how the investigator would try to bribe a person who was completely debilitated and stupefied from lack of sleep.

Each of us fought alone to keep an honest name and save the honor of our friends, although it would have been far easier to die than to endure this hell month after month. Nevertheless the accused remained strong in spirit and, apart from the unfortunate Mayorov, not one real revolutionary did they manage to break.

[The second selection comes from the memoirs of Eugenia Ginsberg, a woman who survived many years in perhaps the most notorious of the gulag camps—Kolyma in the frigid northeastern corner of the Soviet Union. In this selection, Ginsberg recounts an ordinary day in the camps.]

The work to which I was assigned . . . went by the imposing name of “land improvement.” We set out before dawn and marched in ranks of five for about three miles, to the accompaniment of shouts from the guards and bad language from the common criminals who were included in our party as a punishment for some misdeed or other. In time we reached a bleak, open field where our leader, another common criminal called Senka—a disgusting type who preyed on the other prisoners and made no bones about offering a pair of warm breeches in return for an hour’s “fun and games”—handed out picks and iron spades with which we attacked the frozen soil of Kolyma until one in the afternoon. I cannot remember, and perhaps I never knew, the rational purpose this “improvement” was supposed to serve. I only remember the ferocious wind, the forty-degree frost, the appalling weight of the pick, and the wild, irregular thumping of one’s heart. At one o’clock we were marched back for dinner. More stumbling in and out of snowdrifts, more shouts and threats from the guards whenever we fell out of line. Back in the camp we received our longed-for piece of bread and soup and were allowed half an hour in which to huddle around the stove in the hope of absorbing enough warmth to last us halfway back to the field. After we had toiled again with our picks and spades till late in the evening, Senka would come and survey what we had done and abuse us for not doing more. How could the assignment ever be completed if we spoiled women fulfilled only thirty percent of the norm? . . . Finally a night’s rest, full of nightmares, and the dreaded banging of a hammer on an iron rail which was the signal for a new day to begin.

[The third selection is from the poetry of Anna Akhmatova, probably Russia’s most famous modern poet. In this poem, “Requiem,” Akhmatova writes passionately about endlessly standing in line, either seeking information about her imprisoned son or trying to send him parcels, an experience that paralleled that of countless other mothers and wives during the Terror.]

In the awful years of Yezhovian horror,° I spent seventeen months standing in line in front of various prisons in Leningrad. One day someone “recognized” me. Then a woman with blue lips, who was standing behind me, and who, of course, had never heard my name, came out of the stupor which typified all of us, and whispered into my ear (everyone there spoke only in whispers):

—Can you describe this?

And I said:

—I can.

Then something like a fleeting smile passed over what once had been her face.

For months I’ve filled the air with pleas,

Trying to call you back.

I’ve thrown myself at the hangman’s knees,

You are my son and my rack. . . .

I’ve seen how a face can fall like a leaf,

How, from under the lids, terror peeks,

I’ve seen how suffering and grief

Etches hieroglyphs on cheeks,

How ash-blonde hair, from roots to tips,

Turns black and silver overnight.

How smiles wither on submissive lips,

And in a half-smile quivers fright.

Not only for myself do I pray,

But for those who stood in front and behind me,

In the bitter cold, on a hot July day

Under the red wall that stared blindly.