Prince Mukhransky's Resolve — The Metekh — In the Hands of Sadists — A Shunned Locality — "Shooting Nights" — A Biter Bit.
Among the thousands of persons imprisoned in the gaols of the Trans-Caucasian Tcheka at the same time as myself were fifteen officers, among them General Tsulukudze, Prince Khimshieff, and Prince Mukhransky, whose brother was married to the daughter of the Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovitch. They were all charged with organising a mythical counter-revolutionary plot and being concerned in the Georgian rebellion of 1923, and after prolonged, torturing examinations were sentenced to be shot.
Prince Mukhransky resolved not to sell his life cheaply. He succeeded in getting hold of a large nail, found in the room. When, on the night appointed for the execution, the door opened and a party of Tchekists headed by Schulman, Commandant of the Trans-Caucasian Tcheka, known as the "Death Commandant," entered to fetch away the condemned officers, Mukhransky flung the nail as hard as he could into Schulman's face, aiming at his eyes. The heavy nail broke the executioner's nose. Schulman groaned with pain. At once an incredible noise arose. The whole prison was awakened by cries and shots. The room was filled with smoke. All the fifteen officers were killed on the spot by the escort. The prisoners in other rooms were ordered to wash away the streams of blood.
The executioner Zlieff, plenipotentiary extraordinary in Ossetia of the Gpu of the Mountain Republic, used to force the muzzle of a revolver into the mouth of the prisoner he was examining and turn it about so that it crushed the gums and knocked out teeth. My cell companion in the prison of the "Gor-Gpu" was subjected to this torture. He was an old Ossetian, who was accused of the following offence (to quote from the indictment itself):
"The accused once walked past Tchelokaeff's[7] door."
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After a few weeks I was transferred to the chief prison in the Caucasus — the Metekh[8] at Tiflis. As at the present day, the Metekh was used in 1923 as a place of detention for political prisoners only; ordinary criminals were lodged in the Government prison. There were in the castle 2,600 "White Guards," including a large number of Georgian Mensheviks.
Inhuman reprisals were carried out methodically on these defenceless people — I saw many old men, women and children. Once a week — on Tuesdays — a special commission, consisting alternately of members of the Trans-Caucasian Tcheka and the Georgian Tcheka, sat in the commandant's office in the prison and drew up a list of victims, paying no more regard to the degree to which, in each case, proof of guilt existed than to the voice of humanity. The whole personnel of the castle, the "Zaktcheka" and the "Gruztcheka," was filled with sadists.
Every week, on Tuesday nights, from sixty to three hundred persons were shot in the prison. That night was veritable hell for the whole Metekh. We did not know who was marked down to be shot, so everyone expected to be shot. Nobody could get a wink of sleep till morning. The ceaseless bloodshed was a torture not only to the prisoners, but to people living in freedom outside. All the streets round the Metekh had long been uninhabited; the population of this quarter had abandoned their houses, unable any longer to listen to the shots of the executioners, the shrieks and groans of the victims.
The Tchekists in the Metekh were always drunk. They were regular butchers. Their resemblance to butchers was heightened by their habit of rolling up their sleeves to the elbow and walking through the corridors and cells, sometimes tumbling to the floor, drunk with wine and with human blood.
On "shooting nights" from five to ten men were taken from each room. The procedure of reading out the list of those doomed to die was drawn out by the Tchekists to an average minimum of a quarter of an hour in each room. There was a long pause before each name was read, during which the whole room shivered with terror. Even people with strong nerves could not withstand such torture. On Tuesday nights half the prisoners in the castle sobbed till morning came. Next day no one could eat a morsel of food; the prison dinner was left untouched. This happened every week. And prisoners from the Mountain Republic who came to the Solovky in 1925 told us that it was still happening then. Many people could not endure the prolonged nightmare and became insane. Many committed suicide, in every conceivable manner.
While I was in the castle a well-known Tiflis Tchekist, Zozulia, a Cossack from the Kuban, was placed among the prisoners to act as an agent provocateur. This executioner, in a comparatively short space of time, had shot over six hundred persons with his own hand — a fact which he did not deny. At last he was recognised and killed by the prisoners.
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I spent four months and a half in the Metekh, and prepared myself for death every Tuesday.
Then began an endless series of journeys and fresh prisons. From the Metekh I was transferred to the Government prison at Tiflis, thence to the "Timakhika" prison at Baku, where I spent a fortnight, then to the Tcheka prison at Petrovsk (three weeks), thence to Grozny, and from Grozny in "Stolypin trucks," specially constructed for prisoners, to Vladikavkaz. Everywhere was the same total suppression of human personality, the same torture by nocturnal interrogations, starvation and blows, the same lawless, indiscriminate shootings.
[7] See Chapter I.
[8] See Chapter I.