Political Repressions at Leningrad State University

Most of interrogation transcripts share several similarities: at the first interrogation, the suspects usually strongly denied participation in counter-revolutionary organizations, but later most of them gradually admitted to counter-revolutionary conversations first, then -- to approval of terrorism as a method of fighting against the Soviet government, and finally confessed to planning terrorist attacks on the country's top leadership. It is highly unlikely that such confessions, which in fact guaranteed the suspects either the death penalty or a long-term imprisonment, were obtained without putting physical or psychological pressure on them. For example, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Geography M.M. Yermolaev wrote in his memoirs that he had pleaded guilty in order not to go through so-called “processing” by the interrogators one more time. In his testimony, he deliberately called himself a French spy because he did not speak French. In doing so, he hoped that at the court session the absurdity of such self-incrimination would become evident. However, he was wrong as it turned out that no one cared about such small details at the trial.

The main suspect in the “Pulkovo Affair”, Professor of Physics B.V. Numerov, in his complaint to the Prosecutor's Office, also wrote that he had been forced to sign false records containing only allegations without any substantial evidence. Having signed them, Numerov assumed that without any facts it would be impossible to find him guilty. The list of Numerov's “confessions” in the case file is huge as he was convicted under five paragraphs (6, 7, 8, 10, and 11) of article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. He confessed to working to overthrow the Soviet government and establish a fascist dictatorship, to recruiting terrorists, to counter-revolutionary propaganda, to subversion and sabotage, to industrial espionage for Germany and to using German agents in order to transfer classified information on some inventions, including those which were created by Nu- merov himself, as well as to many other terrible crimes. At the same time, later, while being in prison, Numerov in his petitions to various authorities pointed out a number of inconsistencies in his case. For example, according to the testimony of Associate Professor of Physics A. S. Sluchanovsky, who denounced Numerov as a counterrevolutionary conspirator, in June 1936 the latter allegedly took part in the “illegal meeting” in Leningrad, although in fact at the time Numerov was on an expedition and observed a solar eclipse . Unfortunately, all Numerov's complaints and letters did not have any effect, and his case was not reviewed. Numerov was executed in Orel during the World War II on September 15, 1941 by the decision of the USSR Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, when German troops were approaching the city.

At the same time, the probability that these confessions may have been the result of a plea deal and in return the suspects may have been given certain promises cannot be ruled out. However, on the basis of the available case files it is hardly possible to say to what extent these promises were kept by the investigators.

Among the teachers under investigation were those who strongly denied all the charges and did not confess to anything. Therefore, it can be concluded that not all the suspects were tortured, and some NKVD officers did not aim at extracting confessions from them at any cost. For example, Professor of the Faculty of History G.V. Abramovich initially was told by the investigator that there was no substantial evidence against him, but later he was informed that the situation had changed, and a conviction was inevitable . Despite the suspect's plea of not guilty, G.V. Abramovich was sentenced by the Special Council of the NKVD to 5 years imprisonment “for counterrevolutionary activities” but avoided the capital punishment. After serving his first sentence, he was re-sentenced to exile for three years, and upon completion of the exile, in the 1960s, G.V. Abramovich worked as a Director of a secondary school in Leningrad.

Assistant Lecturer of the faculty of Geology, Soil and Geography E.A. Popov, who also did not plead guilty, instead of putting his signature in the interrogation records, even dared to write “in this wording, I cannot sign it” . Subsequently, at the trial, he categorically denied the charges of preparing a terrorist attack on Stalin but was nevertheless sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. Professor of the Faculty of History, N. I. Ulyanov, who also denied organizational links with terrorists and counter-revolutionaries, got a relatively lenient sentence of 5 years in correctional labor camps. His future was more fortunate as after being released N. Ulyanov managed to emigrate to the United States where he taught at Yale University and continued his career as a historian.

The former Dean and Professor of the Faculty of History, S. M. Dubrovsky, also vigorously denied all the charges. At the interrogation, he said that the investigation should identify real Trotskyists and conspirators instead of persecuting innocent people . Since Dubrovsky was denounced by the testimonies of other suspects, he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, but luckily was not executed and after the death of Stalin worked as a historian in Moscow. Professor and the head of the Department of Dialectical Materialism A.G. Kogan as well as Professor of the Faculty of Biology E.M. Kreps, also pleaded not guilty to participating in the Trotskyist-Zinoviev plot and received relatively lenient sentences of 5 years in correctional labor camps. As we can see, most of the LGU teachers who did not admit their guilt ultimately avoided capital punishment, and this tactic of behavior during the investigation was more advantageous for them.

Within the framework of the current article the role of various judicial and extrajudicial bodies that passed sentences on LGU teachers was also examined. Most of them were convicted at the field session of the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court chaired by the corps military lawyer I. O. Matulevich, who was subsequently expelled from the Communist party and lost the rank of the Lieutenant-General of Justice for violation of the law in the period of mass repressions. Some suspects were tried by the Special Council of the NKVD (the so-called Special troika of the NKVD) and by the Commission of the NKVD and the USSR Prosecutor (the so-called “Big dvoika”). The last three bodies were extrajudicial, i.e. the decisions were made in absentia, without summoning suspects, and sentences were passed not individually but according to lists.

The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, although being a judicial body, also used expedited trial proceedings. Only the suspect was brought before the Military Collegium, the defense and witnesses were not allowed, and the trial itself usually lasted from 20 minutes to 1 hour. It was also impossible to appeal against the verdict since according to the decree of the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee “On the Procedure for Prosecuting the Cases on Preparation and Perpetration of Acts of Terrorism” of 1 December 1934, the suspects sentenced to capital punishment were supposed to be executed immediately either on the day of the trial or the next day.

Thus, there were only few substantial differences in the decisions of the Military Collegium and extrajudicial bodies as both of them used expedited trial proceedings and the suspects had little or no chances of proving their innocence in such circumstances. The only difference between them was that at the session of the Military Collegium the suspect could completely or partially recant his testimony or claim that he had signed the interrogation transcripts being in a “poor health”. For example, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Geology, Soil and Geography S.V. Voskresensky recanted all the confessions he had made during the investigation, namely subversion and sabotage at the Hydrological Institute, preparation of terrorist attacks using hydrometric instruments, recruitment of terrorists, and many others. A similar course of action was chosen by Assistant Lecturer of the Faculty of Biology S. I. Gorshkov, who claimed at the trial that his testimony in the interrogation transcripts was not accurate, and that he had torn up the indictment handed to him after the end of the investigation to be signed . As a result, Gorshkov and Voskresensky managed to avoid capital punishment and were sentenced to 10 years in correctional labor camps.

In a situation where the suspect did not plead guilty, he had to explain why the others gave incriminating statements against him. The key factor was whether the suspect and the denouncer were on bad terms or not. If there was no hostile relationship between them, it was almost impossible for the suspect to prove his innocence. For example, despite pleading not guilty, Professor of the Faculty of History M. D. Kokin was sentenced to capital punishment. At the trial he was unable to explain what motives the other suspects had had to testify against him .

Another University lecturer, Professor of the Department of Dialectical Materialism P.L. Kucherov, claimed during the court hearing that all the incriminating denunciations had been a personal vengeance of those who had hostile relationship with him. In addition, he refused to sign the interrogation records because it was not indicated there that he had been opposed to Trotskyism before the arrest. Firstly, Kucherov was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court to 10 years imprisonment, but 10 months later he was executed by the decision of a Special troika of the NKVD of the Leningrad Region .

On rare occasions where the cases were referred to a regular court, a lawyer was involved in the litigation, and the suspects could expect more lenient sentences. For example, Professor of Mathematics N. I. Idel'son was sentenced by the Special Collegium of the Court of the Leningrad Region to only three years imprisonment under article 58-10 for counter-revolutionary propaganda , and this was an extremely rare case when the suspect was not charged with anything else except “counter-revolutionary conversations”. It can thus be concluded that at the time of political repressions in the 1930s, the severity of the sentence largely depended on the type of judicial body that considered the case.

The fate of many convicted LGU teachers was unfortunate since more than half of them were either executed or died while in prison. This happened, for example, to the Director of LGU M. S. Lazurkin, who, according to the investigation records, committed suicide by throwing himself out of the window during the interrogation . Under another version, he was killed by the investigator while being interrogated, after which his body was thrown out of the window to stage the suicide . We'll probably never find out what really happened there. However, Lazurkin's signature in the last interrogation transcript, where he allegedly admits being recruited by Bukharin as a member of the counter-revolutionary organization of the Right Opposition in Leningrad, is quite different from Lazurkin's signature in other documents, and most likely it was forged by the investigator.

Apart from that, the verdicts passed at the field sessions of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in 1936 could be revised later, and the convicts could be re-sentenced to stiffer penalties. According to the decision of Special troika of the NKVD and other extrajudicial bodies, capital punishment was applied to some teachers who were already serving their sentences. This is what happened to B.V. Numerov (the Professor of Physics and the Director of the Astronomical Institute), P. F. Babaylov (the Associate Professor of Political Economy), P. L. Kucherov (the Professor of Dialectical Materialism) . Many of the convicted teachers after serving their sentences were exiled in the 1940s. This was the fate of T. N. Gornstein (the Professor of Dialectical Materialism), S. M. Dubrovsky (the Professor and Dean of the Faculty of History), S. V. Voskresensky (the Associate Professor of the Faculty of Geology, Soil and Geography), G. V. Abramovich (the Associate Professor of the Faculty of History) and some others .

To sum up, we can draw a number of conclusions about the specific features of political repressions at LGU in the 1930s. Firstly, in percentage terms the scale of repressions at the University was approximately 10 times higher than in the USSR as a whole. This is due to the special attention of the NKVD and Soviet authorities to the intellectual elite to which the Leningrad professorship belonged. Secondly, within the current study it was not possible to identify the only “target group” of University teachers who were repressed in the first place. At the same time, most often the victims were middle-aged male teachers occupying the positions of Professor or Associate Professor, Russian or Jewish by their ethnic origin, while their party affiliation and participation in the Revolution of 1917 as well as their service in the armed forces were not predominant. Thirdly, it is quite obvious that most of the University teachers did not commit the crimes that they were charged with. As a rule, there was no physical evidence in the case files, and instead the NKVD mostly used confessions and incriminating statements of other suspects. Fourthly, the investigation sought to present any meetings of teachers at the University or elsewhere as “illegal gatherings of counter-revolutionary terrorists” who allegedly were making sophisticated plans for the physical elimination of Soviet leaders. At the same time, the severity of the sentence against LGU teachers depended primarily on which body -- judicial or extrajudicial -- was considering the case, and on whether the suspects pleaded guilty or not. In order to obtain the necessary confessions, it is highly likely that the suspects were subjected to psychological and physical pressure by the investigators, but the torture is unlikely to have been used against all the LGU teachers under arrest.

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