Damning Document

ONE WHO SURVIVED--The Life Story of a Russian under the Soviets--Alexander Barmine--Putnam ($3.75).

Whoever else buys this book, one copy will almost certainly be bought by the NKVD, Russia's secret police. It will be sent to Moscow to take its place in the vast NKVD archives beside the French edition, Vingt Ans au Service de I'U.R.S.S. (1939) of which this is an English amplification. In the NKVD's dossier, under the entry "Alexander Barmine, traitor, renegade, former Brigadier General of the Red Army, former Soviet charge d'affaires at Athens," will appear a new entry: "author of One Who Survived." This book will be one of the heaviest counts against Author Barmine if the NKVD is ever able to extend to him Russia's "highest measure of social protection"--rastrel (shooting).

Like the NKVD, U.S. readers would do well to ponder this political autobiography. It is important as history, supplying much material the world never knew or has already forgotten about Russia's internal and external affairs from 1936 to 1939. (Barmine points out that the Purge, and Soviet charges that most of Russia's general staff and high diplomats had committed treason with Germany, was one reason why Britain and France did not push harder for a Russian alliance in 1939.) The book is important as a record of the mechanics of the change whereby socialist states are transformed into police states. It is important as a moral and political indictment of Europe's and Asia's No. 1 power. And it is a readable story of escape and survival from a police network whose agents are kept almost as busy abroad as they are in Omsk and Tomsk.

A Shot at Headquarters. Barmine's story really begins in 1934, when a shot rang out in the Leningrad headquarters of the Communist Party. A student had killed Sergei Kirov, Leningrad Party secretary. Practically nobody outside Russia had ever heard of Kirov (he was Stalin's political heir apparent and a special pleader for peace between Stalin and the opposition). But he is not likely to be forgotten, for his assassination touched off one of history's most cryptic and luridly arresting episodes--Russia's great Purge.

By the time the Purge petered out, the highest measure of social protection had been extended to six presidents of federated Soviet republics, most of the Red Army's general staff, most of the leading sections of the NKVD, most of the Peoples Commissars, herds of Communist bureaucrats, droves of Old Bolsheviks and masses of Soviet citizens of all ranks, political shadings, sizes & shapes. Even the keeper of the Moscow zoo did not escape: he was charged with improperly feeding the lions. A certain "dizziness from success" led to excesses. Some comrades were liquidated by mistake. But they were posthumously reinstalled in the Party and the liquidators liquidated in their turn. Only the Russian Government knows how many people disappeared in the Purge. Estimates run to at least a million.

Hurtling Fugitives. One of the strangest manifestations of this unparalleled tragedy of blood was the weird fugitives who, shouting "Sanctuary!", suddenly hurtled out of the Communist night that had covered the activities of many of them and sought refuge in capitalist countries. Among the more distinguished refugees were Ignace Reiss (assistant chief of the West European Section of the NKVD), General Walter Ginsberg Krivitsky (chief of the West European Section of the Red Army's Military Intelligence) and Alexander Barmine. Reiss's body was found riddled with 15 bullets on a lonely road in Switzerland. Krivitsky's body was found in an obscure Washington, D. C. hotel. Barmine lived to tell this tale.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical Soviet official. But Barmine had kept as far away from politics as possible. He had always voted the straight Stalinist ticket. He had immersed himself in his diplomatic chores and a Baedekerian interest in Greek architecture and antiquities. During the early days of the Purge, people he knew were dropping right & left in Russia. But Barmine hoped that the bullets would somehow miss him.

Then one fine sunny day the telephone rang in Russia's Athens legation. It was the Greek Press Agency, asking which Soviet vice commissar of war had just com mitted suicide. Barmine did not know the answer but he foresaw the worst.

Writes Barmine: "That evening the legation staff gathered as usual to hear the Moscow broadcast. We exchanged small talk and even tried to make a few jokes. Nobody dared mention what was upper most in his mind. Over the air came the colorless voice of the Moscow spokesman : the subway was progressing nicely; a Party conference was in session. He read off figures concerning the housing campaign and the latest total of ore production. And then, without any change of tone: 'Gamarnik, ex-member of the Central Committee of the Party, fearing that his anti-Soviet machinations would be unmasked, has committed suicide. Weather report: the Central Observatory forecasts for tomorrow. . . .' " Barmine "walked out into the cool night air."

Scum, Mad Dogs, Vermin. A few days later Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and most of the top men in the Red Army's general staff were arrested and shot for "treason." Cried the Soviet radio: "Fascist traitors," "mad dogs," "criminal scum of humanity." "stinking vermin." Says Barmine: "I knew better."

Soon Barmine received a letter from one of his twin sons in Russia: "Dear Papa, they read to us in school the sentence passed on the Trotskyist spies, Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Kork, Uborevich and Feldman. . . . Wasn't it Feldman who used to live in our apartment house?" It was. And Barmine soon became aware that he must pay the usual price for knowing a liquidated man. Soon his comrades in the legation tried to lure him aboard a Russian ship which had unexpectedly appeared in the Piraeus.

But like Lewis Carroll's eldest oyster, Barmine . . .

winked his eye and shook his heavy head, Meaning to say he did not choose to leave the oyster bed.

The legation's secret NKVD agent took Barmine out for a drink and regaled him with stories of his former success in kidnapping recalcitrant comrades. Then he added: "You know, it wouldn't be difficult to get rid of a man in this country. There's always somebody willing to undertake a little job of that kind for five or ten thousand drachmas, and you can take it from me the police will know nothing."

Outraged Dignity. Says Barmine: "My sense of personal dignity was revolted by the alternatives: to submit to kid napping or to walk out. After the stories I had just heard, I knew what was in store for me. I had to decide where I would be of most help to the Russian people -- perishing in one of Stalin's prisons or living as a free man somewhere in the world, knowing the truth and speaking it out." Non-Russian readers may wonder why the choice was so difficult.

Barmine fled to Paris, where friends helped him to get a job at an airport. With the NKVD constantly at his heels, he came to the U.S. He served as a private in the U.S. Army, is now a citizen.

This book is his effort to carry out the resolution he made in Athens--to survive and speak out. It is a damning document. Sometimes its sodden weight of human malevolence, its recurrent three-note theme of jailed, tried, shot, is all but unbearable. One little story, a tiny detail of suffering, could stand for the whole tragedy that it highlights. Marshal Tukhachevsky's twelve-year-old daughter was not informed that he had been liquidated overnight. But when she got to school the next day, the other children shouted abuse at her and refused to sit in the same room with the daughter of a "fascist traitor." The little girl went home and hanged herself.

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