THE RED TERROR
VISHNIAK, MARK
The Red Terror Part 2 — Menzhinsky and the GPU By Mark Vishniak This is ihe second of Mark Vithniak's fire authoritative articlei on the history of the Soviet terroristic machine. Last...
...Many factories and streets were named, after him...
...his aide and successor, Dzerzhinsky was a teacher and an example to be followed...
...But this didn't prevent Lenin from using Menzhinsky, nor did it prevent Menzhinsky from serving Lenin's cause faithfully—in spite of fact that ten years earlier Menzhinsky had written: "If Lenin ever reaches power in fact, and not merely in imagination, he will make a men of it, the like of one made by Csar Paul I. Lenin is a political Jesuit, who has striven for many years to adapt Marxism to his own personal use...
...The author of these words couldn't 'foresee, of course, that sixteen years later he was to perish himself at the hands of representatives of other "very popular initials," those of the NKVD...
...Dfcerzhiffsky was not only a great terrorist, but a great Chekist as well...
...FOR MENZHINSKY...
...he acquired nice manners, and was at perfect ease in society, despite his natural reticence...
...Petersburg...
...UNDER MENZHINSKY the terror apparatus of the Soviet State was technically improved...
...Leninists are a clan of political gypiios...
...There is also a Dzerzhinsky mental sanatorium for GPU workers...
...But if Dzerzhinsky had not had these qualities, he could never have reached the heights of the Chekist art to destroy the enemy, qualities which lifted him far above his colleagues...
...Dzerzhinsky's ashes were placed inside the Kremlin walls...
...As DzerzhinskVs closest aide, Menzhinsky showed an extraordinary capacity for spotting the enemies of Soviet power...
...m UNTIL HIS DEATH on June 20, 1920, Dzerzhinsky held the title of head of the terrorist apparatus.* In fact, and later, the OGPU and the GPU were presided over by another, i.e., first by Menzhinsky, who replaced Dzerzhinsky, and then by Yagoda...
...Our task is to bring culture to the masses at a terrific speed...
...The task of the government is to create a new man animated by a new morality, according to which he would as easily kill on the party's orders as drink a glass of water...
...He was interested in higher mathematics and Persian art, he painted, played the piano, wrote decadent and erotic poetry and novels...
...His physical traits were preserved for posterity in painting and sculpture...
...They are the most popular letters of the international vocabulary...
...In private talks, Menzhinsky never denied the atrocities committed by his subordinates, but explained them as" excesses of local authorities: "This is a Revolution in wild country...
...Given the post of the People's Commissar of Communication Means ori April 14, 1921, he still remained dt the head of the Vecheka, and afterwards of the GPU and the OOPU...
...Vyflcheslav received a good aristocratic upbringing and education...
...Menzhinsky—the decadent poet— composed an ode in honor of Dzerzhinsky and of the Cheka: "Brought up not only in Russian literature, ibut on Polish as well, Dzerzhinsky became an incomparable psychologist and tested his knowledge at the price of the destruction of the Russian counterrevolutionary intelligentsia...
...Czar Nicholas II knew Menzhinsky's father...
...J But we ' are hampered by people/ like Denikin and Kolchak...
...Menszhinsky regarded the Cheka as the "personification" of Dzerzhinsky...
...One of DzcrzhinsKy's co-workers nt the Cheka surmised that Dzerzhinsky with his long personal experience as an inmate of prisons (where he spent 11 years) had had time to find out that psychologically people are weaker at night...
...The first volume was already published and the second and third volumes being prepared for publication, when Lenira definitely prohibited the continuation of this undertaking and ordered all relevant materials to be destroyed...
...The Lubianka Square in Moscow, where the Vecheka is located, has been renamed Dzerzhinsky Square...
...with a strong voice and ¦ love for wielding the knout, imagining thai it is their inherent right to serve as coachman for the laboring masses...
...He never was a weakling or humane," wrote Menzhinsky...
...TO CELEBRATE the fifth anniversary of the Vecheka the- Soviets prepared for publication a fourvolume account of its terrorist activities...
...It acquired its own permanent military and civilian staffs, its CHONs (Special Purpose detachments), its armies for internal use (VOKHRs), its economic and "cultural" establishments, its trusts and productive enterprises, workshops, sovkhozes, kolkhozes, stadiums and sport teams (Dynamo), its own staff of engineers, workers and all kinds of specialized party personnel...
...During the stillness of the night, intellectual resistance gets weaker, and one can get a confession by night out of u person who is very strong during the daytime...
...The Communist answered, "This, will never be found out, because those things were never counted...
...The procedure of questioning instituted by Dzerzhinsky outlived its creator and is still retained after three decades...
...He had a university education and studied law...
...His bust can be seen near the Lenin Mausoleum...
...He called the masses the "socialist guinea-pigs" Lenin mockingly called him "the decadent neurotic...
...The initials GPU are as frightening as the letters Vecheka...
...a e • VYACHESLAV RUDOLFOVICH Menzhinsky was the son of a professor of the exclusive Corps de Pageain St...
...He fcaid this long after Denikin and Kolchak had been defeated...
...Like Dzerzhinsky, he loved to work at night.* Rather plump, with a sleepy gaze as the result of his near-sightedness, moving with difficulty, he tirelessly conducted nocturnal cross-examinations...
...Lei us be judged by our accomplishments, and not by our 'expenditures'," said he...
...From his day stems the practice of show trials (the "Shakhtintsy" trial in 1928, the "Industrial Party" trial, the "Kulak C o u n t e r-Revolutionary" trial in^ 1930, and many others...
...On the fifth anniversary of the Cheka, the head of the Comintern wrote, "The sword which was put into the hands of the Vecheka is in good hands...
...Last week's article told the story of Felix Dierzhinaky...
...In order to work with the Cheka one doesn't have to be an artist, or to love nature or art...
...Remaining extremely polite and without raising his voice, he would catch people in contradictions and subject them to further torture or directly to execution...
...As a worshipper of the Cheka's creator, Menzhinsky's methods re- mained the same as those of his predecessor, in spite of the fact that the civil war was over and that the Bolsheviks had already won on all fronts...
...Speaking to a former Communist, the writer Boris I. Nikolaevsky once remarked that only when the archives of the GPU and of the NKVD are opened to public view will we learn the exact number of victims of Dalstfoy and Kolyma (forced labor camps...
...NEXT WEEK: THE OGPU, NKVD AND YAGODA...
...the ascetic who translated Lenin's ideas on terror into the famed Vecheka...
...It' was during the Menzhinsky period that the GPU became "a State within the State...
...Hp thought of himself as a Marxist, but in reality was 'more of an anarchb-sydicalist...
...During Menzhinsky's time the moral and ideological paeans for the Bolshevik terror continued...
Vol. 32 • May 1949 • No. 19
