Gay-pay-oo

(See front cover)

One day last week many a U. S. businessman thought his wish had come true; but soon Correspondent Walter Duranty cabled from Moscow:

"The rumor circulated in New York yesterday of a revolution in Russia is regarded here simply as an attempt to rig the wheat market.

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly that no upset is possible here without a grave disturbance inside the Communist party, the preliminary signs of which would be unmistakable. Nothing of the sort is evident now. Quite the contrary."

The reason why no upset of the Soviet Government is possible without "preliminary signs" is pronounced "Gay-pay-oo." Last week the first picture of Gay-pay-oo's supreme and secretive head reached the U. S.

The Gay-pay-oo or "G. P. U."* is the espionage department of the Soviet Government. It is usually described in eerie terms of terror. Facts:

Lubyanskaya, The large but unimposing G. P. U. headquarters face Moscow's unprepossessing Lubyanskaya Square. The building is not in the Kremlin where Dictator Stalin has his home and offices. The smaller buildings in the block behind G. P. U. are all interconnected and contain the homes of its lesser officials. The highest officials of G. P. U. live in rooms adjoining their offices and seldom stir outside. Each has his kitchen, his trusted cook. The entire G. P. U. block is guarded as a unit. Sentries mount double guard at each outside door and on each landing. The highest officials of the Government and of the G. P. U. itself cannot enter or leave without showing a written pass.

Menzhinsky, The Chief of the G. P. U. is Viacheslav Rudolphovitch Menzhinsky, son of a former nobleman and a Pole, like his late, great predecessor Felix Edmundovitch Dzerzhinsky, first head of the Ogpu which was then called the Cheka.

Comrade Menzhinsky is believed to suffer from ulcers of the stomach, and his complexion is sallow. He prefers to work, as so many Soviet officials do, very late at night, and his appointment calendar is always full of things for him to do at three and four a. m. His temper is easily aroused, but he appears to take sincere pride in his work. His job, as he conceives it, is to "Make the World Safe for the World Proletariat." His attitude is as universal as that of the Pope. Wherever upon the face of the earth Capitalism can be undone, in whole or in part, there is the place for an agent of the G. P. U.

Yagoda.The second ranking official of the G. P. U. is Comrade Yagoda. He is supposed to be "Stalin's man in the G. P. U." and also to direct a sort of private espionage service in the sole interest of the Dictator.

Unlike the celibate and sour Menzhinsky, Yagoda is married, happily it is said. About one quarter of the G. P. U. staff in Moscow are women. They are on the whole, more cheerful than the men, upon some of whom the strain of ceaseless office intrigue appears to have told grievously.

Work, Broadly speaking the work of the G. P. U. falls into four divisions: punitive action, general supervision, propaganda, intelligence.

For purposes of punitive action the G. P. U. has what amounts to its own army: a hard-featured personnel equipped with every engine of warfare, including gas. Let an uprising occur and this force moves upon the uprisers with a speed, a determination and a power which has thus far never failed.

Where the trouble is of a more personal character, the G. P. U. is equipped to carry an individual through the stages of arrest, interrogation, sentence and if necessary execution without going outside its own organization. For this reason it is said that "The Ogpu is the State." But as Josef Stalin controls both the Ogpu and the Government it is more correct to say that he is the state, or that in Russia there are two parallel states.

Patriarchs & Grafters, This "stately" aspect of the G. P. U. is even more evident in its function of general supervision. Anywhere in Russia, or outside it for that matter, a Soviet citizen or Soviet official will think twice before ignoring the suggestion or the order of an agent of G. P. U.

In a local emergency, such as the arrival of a carload of perishable foodstuffs with no one about to unload them, an agent will simply command all men within the sound of his voice to begin unloading, and will probably also command the station master to pay them for their trouble.

At its best the G. P. U. is patriarchal, at its worst it is the most efficient means for extorting graft ever devised.

Propaganda & Intelligence, An organization operating throughout the world, often in conflict with local laws, must move secretly and be ready to defend itself against inevitable exposures.

For this purpose an entire section of the G. P. U., it is understood, constantly fabricates bogus "secret documents" resembling the G. P. U.'s confidential papers. Theory: when the police (of Bangkok, for example) seize the effects of a G. P. U. agent a great many of his papers will prove to be "forgeries" (forged by the G. P. U.) and in the public mind (of Siam, for example) the work of the police will be discredited.

To Anglo-Saxons such involved methods may seem unreal, but Russians have always enjoyed intrigue and devious means more than any other game. In the cities of New York, Chicago, Washington, etc. the G. P. U. is believed to maintain numerous agents, and is believed to believe that they find things out. Perhaps there is nothing to be found out in the U. S., perhaps nothing escapes the free and vigilant press; but if President Hoover wants to find things out in Russian cities he will have to send spies there. In Moscow, where they know that their own press and that of more than one European country hushes everything that the Government wants hushed. Soviet statesmen believe, not unnaturally, that they are being smart by sending spies everywhere.

Faults &Horrors, The worst fault of the G. P. U. is that it intensifies the worst qualities latent in Russians: hesitation, laziness and the attitude of What does anything matter?

An engineer hesitates to fix his engine because if it goes wrong after that he may be seized by the G. P. U., convicted of "sabotage" and shot as a "counter revolutionary." His hesitation becomes laziness and indifference, until the G. P. U. perhaps arrests him for "willful negligence" and shoots him for "counter revolution."

Shooting is here a figurative term.

There are other punishments. Death sentences are, for cause, commuted.

Horrors laid at the door of the G. P. U. run the whole gamut from individual rape and extortion to general massacre of rebellious villages. One can believe little or much--as in the case of "German Atrocities" and the "Third Degree" administered by U. S. policemen.

The G. P. U. third degree is supposed to begin by awakening the prisoner in the dead of night, never telling him with what he is charged, and beginning gently with tea and perhaps cigarets. If he will not talk, and if the examining official smashes him suddenly in the face with the butt of a revolver, that is called "playing on the guitar."

When someone has to be beaten in Russia, and the someone may be a refractory Red Army soldier, or of course a prisoner of the G. P. U., the order is dat shompola, "to give the cleaning rod." A heavy "rod" of twisted wire, such as soldiers use to clean their rifles, is used as a whip.

Even the G. P. U.'s sharpest critics do not suggest that resort is had, except in the most urgent cases, to "taking the glove off." This is supposed to consist in fixing the arm of the man being questioned in such a position that the hand is immersed in water. The water is then boiled. It is asserted that after a time the flesh of the hand can be drawn off like a glove.

At the recent "Radio Trial" in Moscow, Professor Leonid Ramzin and the other "counter revolutionaries" who confessed by the hour bore no marks of torture whatever and were certainly in possession of both hands. The power of the G. P. U. lies less in horror than in the infinite ramifications of its net of spies. Fathers and mothers can scarcely be sure that their own children, rosy-cheeked "Young Pioneers," are not household spies whose babbling to an older child will reach the G. P. U. If President Hoover knew as much about every U. S. citizen as Dictator Stalin knows or can shortly find out about any Russian, the political future would hold for him few mysteries--for Knowledge is Power.

* One may, but Russians seldom do, add a fourth initial "O," making O.G.P.U. or "Ogpu." This stands for Ob'yedinennoye Gosudarstven-noye Politicheskoye Upravleniye, meaning United State Political Administration. M.G.P.U. is the Moscow Gay-pay-oo.

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