Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

They began the interrogation of Maria Spiridonova by stripping her of her disguise. In the semi-darkness the naked pinkness of the voluptuous body that emerged from the rags had silenced them. Here was no ordinary pug-faced terrorist, but a young woman of quite outstanding physical beauty. The burly uniformed men circled her, pulling her hands away from those parts of her body she sought to protect. When she persisted, they tied her hands behind her back and began turning her round; pushing her first this way and that, to show off her best points. Almost by the way, they continued to question her; keeping up the charade of legitimate investigation as their excitement mounted. Twisting and turning to face each of them she stumbled and fell, was dragged up again by her hair (such fine hair, they kept saying, the hair of a real lady) then forced once more onto her knees.

Someone slapped her once, and then again. This slapping seemed to break a spell: she could be touched. At first squeezing, then pinching and finally clawing, their rough hands left welts on her breasts, thighs and buttocks. From the floor she was lifted like a doll and placed on the waiting room table, where she was bound securely by thick artillery belts. Someone produced a flask of vodka. The onlookers passed round cigars and began to smoke.

The hands returned, pinching, squeezing, making her squirm. Still she refused to talk. They began slapping her again, then punching her. Loosening the belts, they threw her onto the floor and kicked her from one side of the room to the other. Then she was put back on the table again. Their calloused hands and roughened nails raked her breasts. Eventually tiring of their sport, her interrogators stepped back and allowed the others in the room to try their skill. When they began burning her nipples with their half smoked cigars, she fainted. Buckets of cold water were collected from the tap on the station platform. They revived her and began again.

* * *

The interrogation took the rest of the morning and all the afternoon. That evening, she was carried onto the last train to Moscow, accompanied by an officer and two guards. The officer made sure that they had a compartment to themselves. During the night, they raped her repeatedly; the officer went first. Gagged and bound, she went beyond life, into that limbo which is not death, yet is not of this world; the land of the tortured.

She was still alive when they reached Moscow the following morning. So horrific were her injuries that when she was taken to the prison, she was immediately put into solitary confinement in the hospital wing. After a few months she was sent to Yakutsk. There was no trial but, because her case had attracted the interest of the international press, she was kept alive, although once more in solitary confinement. More months had passed until an inquisitive American journalist became intrigued by her disappearance. He was able to bribe her gaolers and secure a brief interview.

First appearing in the American newspapers, his horrified account of her story travelled back, via London, Paris, Berlin to St. Petersburg. Despite the public outcry, the security services stood firm: Maria Spiridonova was a Russian citizen. It was an internal matter which, in due course, might or might not be investigated. She remained in jail, the symptoms of the syphilis that she had contracted during her rapes visibly deteriorating her health. The journalist had described her appearance as that of a careworn woman in her mid-sixties. She was twenty-three years old.

And there were others like her; women of unquestionable bravery and principle who, goaded beyond endurance by the repeated injustices, the endless repression, the corruption and the massacres, had calmly and deliberately risen from their piano practice or had put down their needlepoint, or taken off their artist’s smocks, joined the Essers and steeped their arms in blood so that the iniquities of the tyrant would not go unavenged. But, as the cult of assassination grew, the evidence of the effectiveness of the propaganda of the deed became more questionable. Individual terrorism, the main platform of the Essers, had become counter-revolutionary. One state functionary was replaced by another and his guard doubled. It negated the important role of the organised proletariat, the fountainhead of real power, and the necessity of discipline that was essential if things were genuinely to change.