Tag #148318 - Interview #95114 (Lazar Sherishevskiy)

I was arrested in spring 1944. It all started in the reserve unit near Gorkiy, when the KGB [31] special unit [responsible for checking political reliability of the troopers. There were special departments in all civil offices, army units and in prisons] reviewed my personal information and found out that my father had been arrested.  They also took away from me my notebook of poems where I wrote about the hardships of life in the army. They arranged for an informer to become my friend. His name was Yevgeniy Frolov, my co-tenant in the earth hut. He also wrote poems. I was 18 and innocent and was glad to make friends with someone like me. He wrote poor poems, though. The rest of my fellow comrades were common village boys. They were not bad, but uneducated for the most part. This man started talking to me about collectivization [32], arrests, i.e., tried to provoke me to express my thoughts. He talked provocatively of the regime and then wrote his reports, actually presenting the situation as if I was saying whatever he told me. These reports were then presented as evidence of witnesses. I read them getting familiar with my case. These ‘witnesses’ wrote everything they were told by the investigation officer. Some of those guys, who were uneducated, just signed what the officer gave them. I found this out many years later, after rehabilitation. The prosecution officer interrogated some of these ‘witnesses’. He asked one : ‘Is this your signature?’ ‘Right.’ ‘ Here you write that Sherishevskiy had similar talks with other military men.’ ‘What talks? – Similar, - sad the prosecutor. ‘What does it mean?’, - asked the witness. ‘But this is what you said!’ ‘What I said! His is what the officer wrote and told me to sign this! I am a soldier and he is a major. If a major order a soldier, this soldier must sign’. However, talks with agent Frolov were the most exposing. In late March 1944 the special department finalized its work. He brigade headquarters arrested me. Our division officer and a major from Moscow were waiting for me there. They declared I was writing anti-Soviet poems and that I was the son of an arrested man and that I was an enemy of the Soviet power and arrested for this reason. And they presented the evidence reports to me. They invited witnesses to the earth hut, interrogated me and issued minutes. They also presented to me somebody else’s poems cursing Stalin– they were illiterate poems. They were written to read the text from a mirror reflection, but the signature under them was no reflected writing, and it belonged to me.  Major Kuzmin asked me whether it was my writing. I said I didn’t write it. He stated that it was my signature. I said I didn’t sign it. He them showed me my intelligence reports and asked me whether this was my signature. I said it was. ‘And under the poem?’ ‘No’. ‘But they are alike.’ I said: ‘They are, but I didn’t sign this’. They also gave me a mirror to read the poem. It was cursing Stalin, but helplessly in terms of literature. I said I didn’t write such poor poems and they can find mine in my notebook. They took away my notebook with poems and letters from friends. They put me in a pit and I was kept there looking disgracefully. Then they transported me to Moscow. The major from Moscow and the major – head of our special department convoyed me. They had my poems and a thick folder with minutes of interrogations and my papers. Frolov, the informer, also went with us. They had their boots, buttons and badges polished and looked very decent before going to Moscow. Frolov looked proud and had a look of dedication to the cause that he served.  There were also 2 gunmen guarding me.