The Female «Stalin»

• 19.08.2015, 8:10

Charter97.org continues to publish extracts from Andrei Sannikov's book Belarusian Amerikanka or Elections under Dictatorship

The beginning of extracts is available here.

- He spoke with a soft voice. That was the matter of Party functionaries in the Soviet era. That was how they raised their significance, forcing their interlocutor to unwittingly strain their ears and try to make out the incomprehensible mumbling of some puffed-up turkey. Zaitsev spoke softly, into his mustache. He primarily looked at the table, occasionally threw a glance to me which evidently was supposed to seem penetrating. He smoked. To be sure, here, he messed up. “Stalin” couldn’t smoke slender women’s cigarettes.

I wouldn’t have known that I was being taken to the chairman of the KGB, if on the night before, they hadn’t kindly thrown a newspaper with photographs of all of Lukashenka’s government into my cell. Before that, it had never occurred to me to take an interest in how this or that “minister” looked. I looked at the newspaper and therefore recognized Zaitsev. Otherwise, I would have thought that he was the usual KGB man of a rank lower.

The bringing of me to Zaitsev was also staged in the Stalinist traditions. I was taken out from my cell on December 31, not long before lights out. The cell was getting ready to celebrate New Year’s; we had even made selyodka pod shuboy (literally “herring in a fur coat,” a regional dish made of herring covered with layers of vegetables and mayonnaise), thanks to the herring, beats and onions that they served us from time to time for dinner. On the window sill stood a Christmas tree made from an upturned stem of grapes with ornaments made from the foil of cigarette packets. Right before Zaitsev, I had been taken to Orlov, and I had not even asked him, but rather confronted him with the fact that we planned to celebrate New Year’s. Orlov said something about the regimen, but not very convincingly. I realized that they would not forbid the prisoners to stay up after lights out that night.

After the appearance of a large group of people detained December 19 at the Amerikanka, sometime within a few days, the prison officials turned off the outside antenna. There were television sets in a lot of the cells, the reception was bad, but even so, at least something could be seen. It was at least some distraction from the grim reality. They turned the antenna off, but by KGB habit, they lied that something had broken, and the population of the Amerikanka was left not only without entertainment, with one-sided news, but without a clock, because this was not allowed in the cells.

I earned the sincere respect of my cell-mates by suggesting a way to get the television working. We made an antenna out of a pair of eyeglasses with a steel frame. A cell-mate had an extra pair. We took the plastic ends off the sides, stuck it into the mount, and the signal began to get through. Then we perfected our “antenna,” adding on to its end a metal prison mug, a “helmet.” By turning this “helmet,” we could get rather tolerable reception. Our “antenna” received more channels than a stationary antenna.

The table was set, the television was working, we were taken to the shower, we had only to wait until midnight and greet the incoming year 2011. And suddenly I was jerked from the cell, not told a thing, and taken to God knows where.

I had not given any testimonies, so it was not to the investigator. They took me out of the prison building and into the KGB building. So that meant I was going to see the investigator anyway. I walked with difficulty, my leg was still hurting after the beatings. They took me along the long corridor and brought me to an office in the annex. There was no one in the office. It was a typical but for one person, which meant it was for a boss. Memory has blanked out the setting of the room, but I recall that I looked around it. I was offered to sit down. I sat down with difficulty in a chair against the wall; the guard who had brought me stood next to me. The boss came in, it was KGB chairman Zaitsev, a man with a mustache, and asked me to move to the table, and let the guard go.

Zaitsev offered me coffee. I didn’t refuse. I hoped that the bosses’ coffee would be good quality. It turned out to be shitty, in keeping with the institution.

Zaitsev began to speak, and I couldn’t believe my ears. Out poured such a lot of Soviet nonsense, familiar to me from bad propaganda films, that I found it difficult to believe in the reality of what was happening. The Party Stalin-style manner of speaking just barely audibly in this case was relevant. I didn’t have to strain to hear, there was nothing important for me or for further communication with the henchmen in Zaitsev’s torrent of words.

Espionage…foreign agents…coup d’etat…terrorism…millions of dollars…Gusinsky…Berezovsky…explosive devices… fighters… weapons…the rest of them cracked…you may not get out of prison…a pure-hearted confession…think of your family…we know everything…millions of dollars…treason…who is running this…

Sometimes Zaitsev was simply touched and disheartened.

“You know what all the spies and agents seek in our country? What their purpose is?”

“Perhaps, security?” I suggested, mistakenly thinking that I was dealing with someone responsible for this very security.

“Their purpose is our people. That is our main wealth and our secret.”

“???”

Dumping all his delirium on me, Zaitsev at a certain point became beside himself and forgot that he should speak in a quiet and persuasive voice. When I, objecting to him, said “This is my city and my country,” Zaitsev switched to a shout. “You’re presuming a lot, who are you, and who gave you the right!” he shouted. That was understandable, he was not from Minsk like most of my henchmen.

The forced conversation finally ended. I was brought to a cell where two brood hens, let’s call them “animal” and “cop,” continued to work me over. They cited as an example the fact that at least three of their former cell-mates from among those arrested on the Ploshcha who were “smarter,” and wrote to Lukashenka, who correctly talked with Zaitsev and for a long time, were now either getting out or about to get out any minute. I began to realize why I had ended up in this cell. They had the best indicators for re-education.

Nevertheless, we celebrated New Year’s with the tree, herring “in a fur coat” and Russian and Belarusian pop music on the television set. Everything as it should be.

The next coerced conversation with Zaitsev took place on January 16. They prepared me well for it. Every day, they chased me, with my sore leg, up and down the steep stair case with all my things, including the mattress and the bedding, to a personal inspection in a cement basement. They stripped me naked, and forced me to stand naked against the wall in terrible cold, gleefully throwing my things on the floor, and forcing me to squat down on my sore leg. They pretended to move me to another cell, for which I had to drag a wooden pallet, aside from the bedding, upon which I slept on the floor. People in masks stealthily beat me on my feet, cracked over my ear with an electric taser, and banged on the iron staircase with clubs as I climbed down. When they took me out of the cell, they tightened the hand cuffs painfully on my wrists, they made a “sparrow,” lifting up hand cuffs tied behind my back to the point of crunching in the joints, and painfully jabbed me in the back with clubs.

The “animal” then got to work on me when I got back to the cell, very cunningly winding himself up to a hysterical pitch, that because of me, people were suffering. Later, the “cop” started in nicely trying to persuade me to give testimony.

The second time, on January 16, 2010, Zaitsev seemed even more disgusting. He demanded acknowledgements. He was noticeably nervous, and even broke into angry tirades directed at me, forgetting about his “Stalinist” mask. Apparently, he needed to have results showing the “exposure of the conspiracy,” and he didn’t have any.

Zaitsev threatened my wife and son. I could not help but take extremely seriously his exclamation that the most brutal things would happen to them. What could be harder when Irina was next door in a cell of the Amerikanka, and they tried to put Danik in an orphanage. It became clear that Zaitsev was threatening physical reprisals over them. To my shocked question, “how can you?” he whispered something like “enough standing on ceremony.” It is hard to imagine that a minister, and even one bearing a general’s rank, would openly threaten the murder of a woman and child.

With difficulty, I withstood the second meeting with the chairman of the KGB, and thought that I would lose my nerve at the next meeting. But fortunately, there wasn’t a third meeting.

Despite the general threatening tone of the conversation. Zaitsev twice “broke down.” The first time was when he asked what the slogan of my campaign meant, “Time to change the bald tire!” Saying it, he couldn’t help but break out laughing and then immediately began coughing in fright. He knew well that even the main KGB chief was monitored and likely we were being recorded on a camera.

The second “break-down” was significant: he told me that only two of the candidates for president had gathered the necessary number of signatures. Later I tried to summon him to court as a witness so that he confirmed this. Of course he didn’t come, and of course he wouldn’t have confirmed it even if he had come. For then it would turn out that, confident in his impunity and in the durability of the regime, Zaitsev had openly admitted to me that the authorities falsified the elections. Out of 10 candidates for president, only two gathered the necessary 100,000 signatures. That meant that two should have been registered. I think Zaitsev was putting Lukashenka “in parentheses” and meant the two opposition candidates. But he wouldn’t have made an offense against the truth if he had spoken about all 10 candidates. Lukashenka wouldn’t have gathered all the signatures honestly. It is hard to imagine a more absurd situation: the chairman of the KGB admits the elections were falsified… in a conversation with a candidate for president, accused of organization of a protest against the falsification of the elections.

Zaitsev’s admission was openly impudent. He was essentially admitting that the authorities realized that the dictator was losing and cynically manipulated the electoral processes, brutally suppressing a peaceful demonstration, protesting against these manipulations, and throwing people in prison for the fact that they would not accept the falsification.

To be continued