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September 11 2000 RUSSIA
Putin was elected by poll fraud, says report
FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW
PRESIDENT PUTIN would not have won the March presidential election outright without systematic ballot-rigging by his supporters, according to an investigation that casts doubt on the Russian leader's legitimacy.
By the official count Mr Putin won the election in the first round by 2.2 million votes, but at least that many were stolen from other candidates and no fewer than 1.3 million were manufactured by adding names of nonexistent voters to the electoral rolls, the Moscow Times reported this weekend.
Vote-buying, ballot-stuffing and brazen doctoring of figures were documented in 12 regions over the past six months. The research is likely to embarrass both the Kremlin and foreign leaders, especially Tony Blair, who have decided to champion Mr Putin as Russia's democratic choice.
The newspaper's eight-page report, headlined 'And The Winner Is?', lists dozens of instances of alleged fraud and voter-bullying that have been largely ignored by foreign election observers but almost certainly saved Mr Putin from having to face his main challenger, Gennadi Zyuganov, the communist leader, in a second round.
The apparent fraud includes the wholesale rewriting of returns from polling stations that gave Mr Putin an extra 550,000 votes in Dagestan alone; the bribing of local officials and voters to stuff ballot boxes with Putin votes in Tatarstan; a votes-for-vodka scheme in Novosibirsk that guaranteed a bottle for every Putin supporter; and the simple swapping of tallies in Bashkortostan at polling stations where Mr Zyuganov was edging ahead.
Across the country pressure was brought to bear on local officials to deliver comfortable majorities for Mr Putin by any means available, according to the report. Those who failed were sacked, as in the case of two electoral district heads in the Kursk region fired by the governor after recording wins for Mr Zyuganov.
Immediately after the election the Communist Party alleged huge fraud worth seven million votes for its leader. The claims were dismissed as partisan, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe called the election broadly democratic. Russia's Central Election Commission has likewise brushed aside most fraud claims, but was itself responsible for the biggest single boost to the Putin vote: between the Duma elections of December 1999 and the presidential contest three months later nearly 1.3 million new names were added to the commission's lists of eligible voters. Asked to explain the discrepancy, the commission claimed that nearly 500,000 voters displaced by the Chechen war failed to vote in December but did in March, for the man who displaced them.
It also said, wrongly, that 550,000 teenagers reached their 18th birthdays in those three months. Pressed further on the origin of the 1.3 million "dead souls" - many of them given fictional addresses that came to light when real voters saw that their apartment buildings had been given extra floors - the commission removed all data on the election from its website. Few doubt that in a second round run-off Mr Putin would have defeated Mr Zyuganov, but the new evidence strengthens the view that his rise to power was a masterful manipulation of democracy rather than a vindication of it.
At the weekend Mr Putin told Larry King on CNN that he could have handled the sinking of the Kursk submarine better. "The only thing which could have been changed was possibly to halt my working meetings, to suspend them at my place of vacation," he said.
"But again, this would have been a PR action, since in any city or country throughout the world I'm always linked to the military."
FYI
Also from same edition:
September 11 2000 RUSSIA
President's aides 'trying to get dissident jailed'
BY GILES WHITTELL
RUSSIA'S best-known dissident has accused President Putin's aides of trying to influence the Supreme Court to return him to jail for publishing information about the country's rusting nuclear submarine fleet.
Aleksandr Nikitin, who drew the world's attention to hundreds of decaying Russian navy nuclear reactors, said yesterday that another submarine disaster could happen unless work on dismantling 110 submarines speeds up.
The former naval commander, who was jailed for 22 months before being acquitted of treason last year, said a Supreme Court hearing that will decide his fate this week had been tampered with by the Kremlin and in particular by Viktor Cherkessov, a notorious former KGB dissident-hunter now serving as Mr Putin's special representative in northwest Russia.
Five years ago Mr Nikitin exposed the collapse in safety standards and obsessive secrecy in the Northern Fleet that the Kursk disaster underlined last month.
The former submarine captain said yesterday: "Cherkessov started this affair, pursued it and lost. Now he wants to overturn the verdict and he and the President's aides have put pressure on the court to do so." He said he had evidence that Mr Cherkessov's office illegally had contacted at least one member of the court's panel of judges.
The Times has learnt that despite major injections of foreign money, recycling efforts at the giant Severodvinsk shipyard where the Kursk was built are going at barely a quarter of the speed intended under the Start I and II arms control treaties.
Workers and the money to pay them are scarce. A target of dismantling four submarines in Severodvinsk and ten nationwide this year has little hope of being met and plans to store their spent nuclear fuel in Siberia have been abandoned for lack of funds. In the shipyard's latest setback its power was cut off because of unpaid bills.
A total of 72 of the vessels still have their nuclear reactors on board and 30 are in danger of sinking because the hermetic rubber seals round their main ballast tanks have perished, Mr Nikitin said.
Severodvinsk, 600 miles north of Moscow, is a place of surreal contrasts. Some of its birch forests are little changed since the 1500s. Other forests have become dumping grounds for warhead casings.
Last month Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, heeded international calls for increased funding for Russia's nuclear clean-up by announcing an £80 million grant that triples the amount Britain offered previously. Similar sums have been put aside by Japan for Russia's Pacific Fleet, and America has paid nearly £1.5 billion over the past ten years to help to make the former Soviet nuclear arsenal safe.
Despite such assistance, the reality for Severodvinsk is bleak and dangerous. Work has begun on only one of the four Delta class strategic missile submarines due for decommissioning this year. The rest, with dozens of smaller nuclear-powered vessels, are tied up three abreast in a naval cemetery with one of the highest concentrations of nuclear reactors in the world.
"The world should be worried," Nikolai Kalistratov, director-general of Severod_vinsk's Zyozdochka shipyard, said.
"In the Northern and Pacific fleets combined we have 170 rusting submarines with nuclear reactors on board. They are a serious problem that we do not have the money to solve, and if they sink they will be very hard to raise."
I turned on LKL because I wanted to see what Putin was like. He came across to me as cold, calculating, & sinister. I would not trust him at all.
And yet Russia now has 1/3rd the Tax Rate of America. The government is trying to clean up corruption, especially amongst the corporate giants. The Media routinely critizes the government. The economy is moving into recovery. There is a crack down on violent crime and terrorism. The military is being rebuilt and the president is a man who served his country and is a baptized, practicing Christian. Hmmm, now how does this compare with what is happening in, lets say: the US?
So that is where CarVILE was just before the elections in Russia. Funny, I didn't know he was over there.
Rush once refered to the 90's as the decade of fraud and deciet. But it is more like the time of the final deciet. The final war between good and evil.
I think we should send better "observers" over to Russia next time to show how elections can be rigged without getting caught...
I like this guy Putin.
The NWO doesnt as he isnt some lackey like Boris Yeltsin that let the oligarchs lie, cheat and steal. The NWO will try to destroy Putin anyway possible, so they can carve up Russia, bit by bit and steal her resources and enslave her people. Just like they are doing in Yugoslavia. The day I will answer to Madeline Albright is the day I would fight.
I spend a good deal of time in Russia. I speak the language, and try to stay abreast of the Russian news. I've come to believe that Putin leads a group of Russian nationalists in the Security Forces and Army who see 1989 as a foreign takeover. There are very strong xenophobic undercurrents to Putin's statements. The ethnic aspect to his campaign against the Oligarchs is unmistakable. Look at Berezovsky's open letter to Putin over control of the ORT network. Berezovsky offers to transfer his stock in ORT to a committee of the 'creative intelligentsia.' These are ethnic code words. Compare that to the list of members of this committee published the next day, and you will see very few ethnic Russian names. Aksyonov is the only one that I'm fairly certain is ethnic Russian. I suspect that the masks may be coming off soon enough.
Walter Yannis
One of my US Senators was elected via voter fraud. When we tried to protest, we were calledd everything you can imagine. RINO's in the Senate conviently looked the other way, and said nothing.
ODERINT DUM METUANT
Let them hate, so long as they fear.
Though it reversed, they hate because they fear.
I also think the NWO gang started the propaganda spiel on Putin. They don't like him because he is an obstacle on their way to dismember Russia. But Russians are to blame also, they should have seen what's coming for them after what had happend to Yugoslavia. And still they are not doing anything about it.
I missed LKL, but I've seen Putin on C-Span and those exact terms, "cold, calculating and sinister" came to mind too. Also, from following some of the news on him, I could add "melagomania and evil".
Did you ever read the article about the Russian high school girl who wrote a letter to Putin and didn't use the right punctuation and he ruined her future in college because of it? It was posted on FR a few months back. I bet that story is the tip of the iceberg.
Russians are behind in the art of hypocrisy. And they foolishly think that they should say what they think or mean.
Putin is clearly lacking the "polished presentation and face mask skill". He's not your neigbor next door, that's for sure.
What a beautiful story, was it true?
Did you ever read the article about the Russian high school girl who wrote a letter to Putin and didn't use the right punctuation and he ruined her future in college because of it? It was posted on FR a few months back. I bet that story is the tip of the iceberg.
I missed that article but based on what I saw of him; I can see him doing that & more!
The NWO doesnt as he isnt some lackey like Boris Yeltsin that let the oligarchs lie, cheat and steal. The NWO will try to destroy Putin anyway possible, so they can carve up Russia, bit by bit and steal her resources and enslave her people. Just like they are doing in Yugoslavia. The day I will answer to Madeline Albright is the day I would fight.
Oilfield. You have a good understanding of what is going on. The media in Russia is controlled, just as it is here in the U.S. Putin is playing hardball with the Oligarchs. The Feudal warlords control the russian press have no intention of giving back what belongs to the people of Russia....it's resources (oil, minerals, land) that were stolen which the U.S. condones to this day. This, my friends, is a real travesty.
Do not trust the Russian press. It is controlled by these corrupt oligarchs, and has become an instrument to influence the masses while they steal the country blind.
Remember this, and your instincts will not fail you...
Did you ever read the article about the Russian high school girl who wrote a letter to Putin and didn't use the right punctuation and he ruined her future in college because of it? It was posted on FR a few months back. I bet that story is the tip of the iceberg.
And by the way people, watch this poster carefully. She seems to be doing a good job of smearing and swaying public opinion with her innuendo.
"I am shocked! Absolutely shocked to find there is gambling going on here!"
Yes, We the People, Please do watch my postings carefully. I'm sure not an expert but I don't make up stories. Whether this story is true or not, it was reported in the Electronic Telegraph, Russia Today and I think I also read it on AFP.
Letter to Putin leaves schoolgirl out in the cold.
According to Putin's autobiography, when pressed by his interviewer about the KGB's sordid past, Putin says that his "notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories." Calling himself "an utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education," he praises the work of secret informants, in a passage excised from the Russian edition; and he makes a distinction between those who inform for money or grudges and those who help the state out of "idealistic principles."
It's my opinion that it takes a special breed of person to be a KGB snitch and its not my kind of person. Here's an excerpt from interviews about Hungarian gulags.
The KGB in Hungary
The KGB began its activities in Hungary in the earliest days of the Soviet occupation, developing the AVH and Katpol as security agencies for the suppression of anti-Soviet or anti-Communist agitation. The AVH chief, Gabor Peter, received his preliminary training from his Soviet comrades in the KGB, and other AVH officers were only appointed to higher ranks after completing courses at the KGB academy in Moscow
Through these agencies, the KGB exercised the supervision of the country, first under the leadership of Marshal Voroshilov, and then under his successor, Major General Fyodor Byelkin. Byelkin, a short, pudgy officer, referred to simply as "the Governor" by Hungarian members of the AVH, participated in every major political decision of the country. Laszlo Rajk, the minister of interior, and his entourage were arrested under Byelkin's command in 1948 when no internal Hungarian agency would take responsibility for the deed. The Major General orchestrated the proceedings of the trial, determined who was guilty and of what crimes, what confessions would be made in the courtroom, and, finally, who should be executed. Although he made his primary headquarters in the Baden-bei-Wien enclave, he felt equally at home in the Budapest detachment on Vilma Kiralyne Utca (Queen Vilma Street). Byelkin developed a congenial relationship with the general secretary of the Hungarian Communist party, Matyas Rakosi. *6/2 The other great show trials of the period between 1947 and 1950 were also organized and directed by the KGB. In later years, the Soviets concentrated more on cases connected with the West or with anti-Soviet activities, and left cases concerning internal liquidation processes to Gabor Peter and his crew The last time the Soviets intervened directly in Hungarian internal affairs was most likely in 1952, when they arrested Peter and his closest staff on the orders of KGB strongman Lavrenti Beria, with the complete cooperation of Rakosi's clique. The KGB had to carry out the arrest because by that time Peter had grown so powerful that no Hungarian security agency was able to do it. In addition to the KGB, other Soviet "advisors," about whom most of the high-ranking Party functionaries knew, participated in the decisions of the various cabinet ministries, synchronized economic plans with Soviet interests and goals, and oversaw the execution of these plans. They also performed a significant role in the re-education of the country; in training the army and in the collectivization of the work force.
When the KGB agents infiltrated Hungary, they took over several buildings in Budapest, choosing as their headquarters number 32 on the former Vilma Kiralyne Utca (today Gorky Avenue). They also occupied the prison on Conti Street for trials and the holding of detainees, and a hotel on Szondi Street for interrogations. The Soviet guard units were specially selected for their discipline. Their provisions, equipment and clothing were of higher quality than in other units; they enforced orders handed down to them without question and thoroughly. Conditions in the KGB prisons varied according to the time. Treatment was at its worst while Stalin was still alive, but after his death in 1953 it became somewhat more moderate. Provisions improved and there were fewer occurrences of sadistic torture and extreme disciplinary measures, with more effort made to adhere to regulations.
The Soviet occupation forces arrested Hungarian citizens in Hungary without concern for formalities or the legality of their actions just after the end of the war. After mid-1946, when the AVH and the Katpol had been established, the KGB used them to take over execution of arrests. Most detainees were accused of espionage, organizing resistance or conspiracy. Anyone suspected of having performed espionage activities for the Western powers or even of having contacts with them was considered guilty by the Soviet justice system. These unfortunate men and women were sent off to Siberia.
Arrests were usually carried out during the night on the orders of Soviet authorities, and those captured were taken to a holding prison by curtained car. At the end of the journey, Hungarians were dragged out of the car only to confront a Soviet soldier. From that point on, the victim was at the mercy of alien soldiers of an alien power: all constitutional and human rights ceased. If he had a momentary hope that some mistake had been made, he got a rude awakening when he was hurled into a basement cell and bodily searched by more Soviet guards. Later, the personal belongings of the detainee and all papers relevant to the investigation were handed over to the AVH. The formality of this official transfer over with, the Hungarian citizen was from that moment on a Soviet prisoner in his own country. The interrogation of Hungarian prisoners turned over to the Soviet counterintelligence organs was a comparatively swift affair. The records of confessions were produced with ease, as there was no need to investigate the charges or to consult witnesses. Once arrested, the detainee was considered guilty. The task of the KGB was simply to compile the suitable charges - after all, Soviet courts would never question the credibility of Soviet security organs. Contrary to accepted legal practice, the prisoner had to prove that he had not committed the crimes the interrogator wanted to accuse him of; as far as the Soviet state was concerned, the Hungarian in their custody was "guilty until proven innocent."
The interrogations were always conducted by two people: a KGB officer and an interpreter. The Soviet officers were almost without exception ethnic Russians, and one almost never saw an officer of Asian or other origin. The interpreter played a major role in the proceedings. The accused could not speak Russian and the interrogator could speak only a rudimentary Hungarian; the result was that the interpreter had the final say and could enter whatever he or she wished. The charges were written in Russian, so the detainee never understood the contents anyhow Female interpreters often added to the exhausted prisoner's confusion with sarcastic comments and jibes. When the charges had been compiled, if the accused refused to sign, he was taken back to the basement cells and kept there until the cold and the symptoms of starvation made him realize the futility of his resistance.
During the trials, the Soviet military courts passed judgment over Hungarian citizens as if they had been empowered to do so by some paragraph of Hungarian law or international code of justice. The fact that the accused was a Hungarian citizen and the alleged crime was committed on Hungarian territory did not seem to offend the prosecution's sense of justice. If Soviet state organs declared a person to be an "undesirable element" (as they did with the leader of the Smaliholders, Bela Kovacs), if they decided that his or her activities endangered the interests of the Soviet Union or the cause of international communism, that citizen was arrested, tried, and, if the Soviet authorities saw fit, executed. There was no difference between Budapest and Vladivostok as far as the KGB was concerned: they both fell under the Soviet sphere of influence.
The Soviet military courts handled all Hungarian trials without exception. Two to four uniformed soldiers sat next to the judge and constituted an "impartial" jury There was no lawyer for the defense, but there was no necessity for one: arrest by the KGB was an automatic indictment of guilt. The entire circus was so one-sided, the mere thought of referring to Hungarian law or asking for a Hungarian defense lawyer seemed ridiculous. The trials were over in minutes. By the time the dazed defendant realized he had been listening to records of evidence and relevant legal paragraphs, it was all over.
The final step was forcing the accused to sign an incomprehensible document. Occasionally, the Hungarian knew some Russian and discovered entire sections of the recorded confessions that were completely fabricated, topics that had never even been discussed during interrogation. Some withdrew their confessions during the trials, but it never did them any good: the prosecutor cited this or that paragraph of the law declaring them mentally incompetent, illiterate, or for some reason unable to sign their names. Another tactic was to accuse them of having exhibited contemptible behavior during interrogation-cause enough in itself to convict them.
Afterwards, there was nothing left for the former Hungarian citizen but to begin speculating how many years he would spend at which and what kind of forced labor camp. It is unlikely that exact figures will ever be known of how many Hungarians were convicted by Soviet courts, how many thousands perished under the inhumane conditions of the labor camps, and how many survived to return home. The numbers of these postwar prisoners, however-judging from the estimates of survivors, the size of transports and the proportion of Hungarians working in the camps-could have been between 10,000 and 15,000.
Gyorgy Kolley, a Roman Catholic priest and boy scout leader, gave an account of his arrest and interrogation, which led to eight years imprisonment by the Soviets: "The Hungarian Scout Movement was disbanded on 10 June 1946 and its leadership was arrested shortly thereafter on various grounds connected with the anti-Soviet sentiments of the scouts. As an officer of the National Cub Scout Federation, I was arrested on the morning of 11 June 1946 by the AVH and charged as an accomplice in the 'conspiracy' of the Scout Movement. I was first taken to 60 Andrassy Street, where I was introduced to the AVH's methods of interrogation. For days on end I was forced to stand in front of a plaster wall, lit from behind me with powerful lights. I had to keep my arms outstretched horizontally, standing on tiptoes. If I shut my eyes, fearing the light would blind me, the interrogators kicked me. When I collapsed, they revived me with a bucket of cold water.
"During almost every interrogation session, the soles of my feet were beaten to twice their normal size. In addition to the torture, we were hardly given anything to eat and I could feel my strength waning day by day. On one occasion, I encountered two of my scouts, Miklos Unden and Laci Dietzl. *6/3 They maintained their innocence when faced with charges of conspiracy and murder, and hoped to be released soon. Instead, we were all taken to various prisons; I went to the Marko Street prison, where I was in the same cell as Bishop Zadravetz, *6/4 while others were transferred to the Soviet prison on Conti Street. One day I was taken in a curtained car to the villa at 32 Vilma Kiralyne Utca, which I later realized was the KGB headquarters in Hungary. "Prisoners were lying on brick benches in the damp basement without blankets or even straw pallets, many of them wearing only underclothes. One of them was Laszlo Almassy, the popular Africa travel writer, and others I later realized were Catholic priests with whom I was to be sentenced. I was interrogated by the Soviets many times, and the brutality of the sessions was supposed to force me to sign records admitting that I had led an anti-Soviet conspiracy. Each time I refused, I was taken to the cellar to be beaten. In the end, the interrogating Soviet officer warned me that if I continued to refuse, they would put a cross instead of my signature on the confession and pass me off for an illiterate. This was what eventually happened. When the 'investigations' were completed, we were taken in a prison van to the Conti Street military courts. I again met Unden, Dietzl and the others; their entire bodies were covered with black and blue bruises. We were kept there until 9 September under extremely harsh conditions. Food, brought twice a day, consisted of something that reminded us of poison-ivy soup. We ate from a rusty tin can with a wooden spoon. Sanitation in the rest of the prison was just as bad."
Zoltan Kopacsy was arrested in August 1948 in connection with the Hadvary case. *6/5 He remembers his arrest and interrogation this way:
"Soviet officers participated in our interrogation at Katpol, which had not been the case before, and as far as I know; after. In the beginning of December, I was taken from my cell with many others, hands tightly tied with ordinary string, and taken by closed car to the KGB headquarters on Vilma Kiralyne Utca, once an elegant villa. Now altered, the basement had been divided into tiny cells. Five or six of us were held in a space no larger than three by four yards, lying on damp musty straw and given scarcely adequate food. The guards' behavior ranged from the tolerable to the appalling. Later we discovered the reason for the inconsistency: apparently, it depended on the influence of the political officers and the threats they issued.
"We only spent a few days at the headquarters before we were transferred to Baden-bei-Wien in trucks camouflaged as bakers' vans. The basement cells there had no straw on the floor; we lay on our few items of clothing, and whoever had a coat used it as a blanket. During the day we had to sit with our backs to the wall. We were forbidden to stand or walk. After 'lights out' we had to lie still. Eating was a horrible experience: a basin of scalding hot food was handed in to the six of us in the cell with six spoons. Slow eaters or anyone not able to take the hot soup soon starved. Later we were given smaller basins with food for two or three prisoners-a minor improvement. The guards treated us roughly, always shouting and doing whatever possible to make our lives miserable.
"We were usually interrogated at night, beginning around ten o'clock and ending at dawn. This routine had its purpose: prisoners were not allowed to sleep during the daytime, and the guards made sure we had no opportunity to rest by keeping us busy with cleaning, control measures and other non-stop disturbances. By the time the prisoner was completely exhausted, he was taken up for interrogation. At that point, his level of resistance was at its lowest ebb and his ability to judge the situation was poor. The officers were moody, alternating the manner of questioning between rough and friendly, attempting to persuade us to say what they wanted to hear. The only means of communication was through an interpreter, adding to the prisoner's confusion. Our interpreter was Ruthenian. He hardly spoke Hungarian and was malevolent towards us during the interrogations, and then also interpreted for our trial. Anything could have gone on in that courtroom without our being able to know what the interpreter had quoted us as saying." Another prisoner, a friend who was also in the Hadvary case with me, remembers his trial:
"It was customary that during our trial we spoke no Russian and our designated 'interpreter' hardly knew any Hungarian. We neither knew nor cared about what he was translating; we knew none of it mattered, that it was only play-acting - it was only unfortunate that we had the leading roles. Our trial took place in the Baden-bei-Wien Soviet military court. We were led up from our cells to the courtroom at about nine in the morning of 24 February 1949. At the trial, we saw each other for the first time after half a year's imprisonment. The sight was disheartening: we were starved, broken, unshaven and dirty, and what was worse, our faces reflected no feeling of hope. Armed guards were stationed between us, taking care that we not exchange a word.
"The tribunal consisted of two officers, a presiding lieutenant-colonel and an interpreter. There was someone to take the minutes, but no defense lawyer in sight. The trial began with the chairman of the court reading out the records of evidence. All we could glean from the reading was our names and the various points proving us guilty. Everyone accused had been forced to memorize these points and repeat them fluently on command, so we recognized them as they were read. We were sentenced on points two, six, nine and eleven of Paragraph 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code for anti-Soviet and anti-state activities. This law had been created specifically for such acts committed by non-Soviet citizens. The first three points covered organization of dissent, spying and diversion, and number eleven dealt with criminal conspiracy Each point carried twenty-five years in a strictly regimented labor camp.
"Each defendant's accusation and sentence was read individually and translated. The only thing we understood was the prospect of the next twenty-five years in some labor camp. Not once was it mentioned in court that we were not Soviet citizens, that our "crimes" had not been committed on Soviet territory, and that our forced removal from Hungary violated every standing international agreement. Our sentences were never given to us in writing, nor did we ever see any final verdict of our case. The entire act took only two hours, and by the time we came to our senses, it was over. That same afternoon of 24 February 1949, we were taken to the Neukirchen prison. * "Neukirchen was extremely over-crowded, with small cells packed with thirty to forty people; at night, to stretch out, we had to lie on top of each other like herrings. Food and treatment by the guards was as bad as usual. We never got any exercise in Neukirchen, and hadn't at Baden either -something all prisoners know is critical to maintain strength and mental health. We met other Hungarians in the prison, all sentenced to twenty-five years. After a month of constant hunger, cold and general hardship, we were taken away. What followed was so much worse, I wish I could wipe it from my memory forever!"
After being sentenced, the prisoner's status changed from that of a mere detainee to that of a slave, a slave of the Soviet Union, without any rights, but expected to labor towards the building of socialism. Men were stripped of their names and given numbers for their identity; numbers for whom no one was ever again accountable. If a prisoner died of starvation, from freezing, through beatings or by one of a variety of maladies, the cause of death was never entered on the records; a mark was simply placed after his number indicating that he no longer existed. Millions of people perished in this way under Stalin's reign. The new slave was indoctrinated to the barbaric conditions of his new life during the transport to the camps. Although the journey lasted several months, no provisions were made for even the most primitive sanitation. The conditions were made even less tolerable by the bestial behavior of the guards. When a train finally arrived at a labor camp, survivors fell to their knees and gave thanks for their deliverance from the sickening stench and physical discomfort of the cattle cars.
After the Second World War, the Soviet Union annexed Ruthenia, a territory which had belonged to the former Hungarian empire and, after 1920, to Czechoslovakia. The new Hungarian-Soviet border checkpoint was Zahony-Csap, where the European rail system ended and the Soviet began. All cargo and passengers had to be moved from cars on the narrower gauge rail to cars on the wider Soviet system. Hungarian prisoners of war and, later on, Hungarian citizens sentenced by Soviet courts also had to be transferred in this way.
Several friends described the experience of being at the Zahony-Csap station during such a transfer. Accounts like this were commonplace in Hungary: "Railroad workers, soldiers and weary prisoners worked ceaselessly, transferring the contents of trains arriving from all westward directions into trains headed east. Soviet and Hungarian railroad men and civilian officials shouted orders, attempting to direct the transport station's endless stream of traffic and to alleviate the difficulties created by the meeting of standard and narrow gauge rails. Meanwhile, military trains arrived and departed. From the tops of open boxcars, Soviet soldiers stared with resigned expressions at the chaos below them. "Suddenly, Soviet and Hungarian officers appeared, agents of the KGB and the AVH. They barked orders; a track was cleared for an arriving Soviet cargo train. Soldiers surrounded the sealed cars; everyone else, civilian laborers and railroad workers alike, were cleared away A few minutes later, another train - also sealed - arrived from Nyiregyhaza in Hungary; only a few Soviet soldiers could be seen on it, armed with machine guns. Like a ghost train, it glided silently out of the station and stopped next to the Soviet train. The chaos ceased momentarily. In the building, nervous people exchanged silent looks. They could hear boxcar doors slide open and slam shut, and then the sounds of people stepping on the gravel under the ties. Who were they? No one knew Some thought that these groups of people herded from one train to another in a secretive manner were Soviet soldiers being transported home for some breach of discipline. Others suspected something far more ominous.
"The transfer took only a few minutes. The operation seemed to have been carried out according to a carefully premeditated plan. The trains departed: one to the East completely sealed-even its wire covered air-vents nailed shut; the other heading back into Hungary, its car doors left open, revealing barbed-wire partitions inside. 'Stolypinski, *6/7 a Soviet railroad man murmured, giving his Hungarian colleagues a resigned wave. The drama was over. The AVH and KGB men disappeared, and the feverish activity of the station resumed as if nothing had happened."
Who would have thought in those times of growing peace, hailed in unison by both East and West, that the mystery trains concealed thousands of men and women who were being taken away in silence, hands tied, to life in slave labor camps a world away? Who would have thought, when the dreaded memories of gas chambers still surfaced to remind people of what had been - and what must never happen again - that tens of thousands were waiting with glazed eyes for the inevitable relief of death? Who would have dared to suppose that deep in the cellars of prisons, in the poisonous air of coal and lead mines, or in the maddening storms of the icy tundra, hundreds of thousands were perishing? Their deaths were not accompanied by the sympathy of other human beings or honored with the tolling of bells. The KGB, the AVH and other state security organs did their work thoroughly. Untold numbers were eliminated without a voice raised to indict a new generation of murderers. Under the spell of its own naivete, the West remained silent. But the East was also silent, the East which observed the sealed trains departing for the distant regions of Siberia.
Former labor camp prisoners recall their experiences on the Soviet transport system:
Dezso Pongratz: "My day of departure came around the end of October. First they took us to Lemberg (Lvov), separated into several groups. After a few days, they again herded us into cattle-cars headed north, 1,500 of us at a time. Every car was packed with eighty to ninety people. The tiny windows had been boarded up, and the doors fastened shut from the outside. A small opening had been cut into the floor of each car to serve as a lavatory. Once a day, if they did not forget, we were given a bucket of water and served a watery gruel. The journey must have taken weeks; by the time we arrived, 490 of the 1,500 were dead." Another prisoner recollects:
"The order to transport us to the Soviet Union came after seven months of imprisonment. We were all weak and in poor health. Our hands were tied behind our backs with half-inch thick tape, and our worldly possessions had been rolled in a small bundle and wedged under our bound arms. In this position, climbing onto the trucks proved impossible. The soldiers 'helped' us up by simply throwing us on top of each other. Somehow we managed to sit upright, heads hung on our chests. If anyone looked up, a guard would hit his head with a wooden mallet.
"When we arrived at the station, the 'Stolypinski' or the train for transporting prisoners was already waiting for us. This infamous transportation system of the Stalin era may be worth describing. The inside of every car was divided into three sections with barbed wire. The middle strip with the heating stove, about three yards wide, was for the guards. To the right and left of this strip there were spaces for the prisoners' two-tiered bunks. In the corner of each section a hole had been cut into the floor and covered with barbed wire, through which the prisoners could relieve themselves. The guards cut a small square of barbed wire out of the bottom of each division-which we were supposed to crawl through with our hands tied behind our backs holding the bundle. Once we were underway the doors to the cars were locked shut. If the Soviets wanted to load or unload a prisoner, there was a hole cut into the center of the car floor to the track beneath the train. In the dead of winter, with our hands incapacitated, expecting us to get up into the box-car through the hole was an inhuman demand. After the journey started, the ties were loosened for most of us, but the guards began making distinctions between prisoners. Those of us considered to be particularly 'dangerous' (for example, any of us with contacts in the West who would be able to spread unpleasant rumors of the Soviet Gulag if we were to escape), were never allowed to have our ties loosened.
"For the duration of our enforced pilgrimage, we were forced to lie prone on the bunks or on the ground, absolutely still. The act of rolling over required permission from the guards, and talking or leaving our spot without permission was strictly forbidden. If someone died during a leg of the trip, his body lay among the rest of the prisoners until the train stopped at a station and a guard discovered the corpse. We were only given food and water when the train stopped, and then we were passed metal plates or tin cans containing cabbage soup or a thin gruel through the wire divisions. Washing ourselves during the journey was unthinkable. It is no wonder that so many of us perished during the four to six week journey. Sometimes only two-thirds or a half of a transport was still alive when the train arrived at the designated camp.
"We traveled under these conditions through Hungary, as Hungarian citizens, accused and sentenced by the Soviet Union. When we arrived at the Zahony-Csap border station, we were harshly transferred from the European gauge rail cars to a Soviet train. One by one, we exited the cars and were forced to kneel in rows of five along a 100 yard stretch, surrounded by twenty-odd soldiers carrying machine guns. When we reached Lemberg, the point of departure from Poland to the Soviet Union, the train stood on the tracks for two days before the guards even opened its doors. Since we were considered dangerous, the journey to Vorkuta was comparatively quick: ten days. We were interrupted by constant searches - as if it were possible for us to acquire anything along the way. The discomfort of the crowded, filthy car and the effects of the meager rations - a suffering we imagined could not get any greater - was increased by the gradual onset of the Russian winter."
Soviet Labor Camps
Even in the years of the Cold War, the West took great care not to unduly publicize the subject of the underworld of the labor camps - although after Stalin's death the new Soviet leadership no longer denied that millions had died or had suffered unjustly in the perceived interests of the Socialist state.
There is no need to write in detail about the camps; the horrors have been exposed by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in his books about the Gulag, especially in The Gulag Archipelago. *6/9 However, it is worth adding that everything Solzhenitzyn wrote about the camps is true and not exaggerated, as many Western critics have assumed. Solzhenitsyn and other victims of the camps have testified through their writing that during the years between 1945 and 1956 about 8 million prisoners were held annually, spread out among 2,000 concentration camps and several hundred prisons and mental institutions. According to some sources, *6/10 the Gulag population came to 42 million during Stalin's years. No one can estimate how many might have perished in the course of the interrogations and the inhumane conditions prevailing in the camps during this time: the number may have been 3 million or as many as 5 million.
Hungarians in the Soviet Concentration Camps
For the Hungarian prisoners, the bitter years passed very slowly in the Soviet camps. There was no glimmer of hope for the isolated prisoners, so far from their homeland. Hamlet's tormented question "to be or not to be" seemed self-indulgent, losing all meaning to those forgotten souls struggling for existence in the camps. Many perished, unable to tolerate the inhumane conditions physically or mentally.
Medical care in the camps was rudimentary, from the equipment and furnishings in the hospital barracks to the availability of medication and instruments. Even the most common medication was difficult to obtain. The sick were treated with ascorbic acid, nicotinamide and given better provisions than the laborers and rest. Many prisoners were in the hospital because of malnourishment, scurvy or simple exhaustion. Apart from typhoid fever, dysentery, tuberculosis or serious infections from injuries suffered in the mines, dystrophy was the most common illness in the camps. In many patients, the serious nature of the undernourishment prevented their bodies from accepting food.
The survivors to this day cannot tell what kept them alive, but they were willing to give an account of their experiences.
K. Gyorgy, a Catholic priest and boy scout leader, spent six years in the Soviet Union:
"We were taken to a camp in Medvezsugorszk on the shores of Lake Ladoga, not far to the north of Leningrad and near the Finnish border. During the war, it had been a Finnish military camp which the Soviets wanted to convert into a prison facility. When we arrived, the camp was in ruins; our first task was to rebuild it. But to prevent us from escaping, they took away our shoes and clothing and gave us straw slippers and ragged prison uniforms in exchange. We were forced to work ten to twelve hour days reconstructing the camp on almost nonexistent rations. The conditions took their toll; after only a few weeks, of 1,500 only 850 of us were left alive.
"It appeared that I could not escape my fate either: I suffered from scurvy, and the wounds on my legs were beginning to fester. Fortunately a Lithuanian prison doctor interceded for me and managed to have me transferred to a camp where prisoners suffering from incurable illnesses were kept. Although there were some physicians among the convicts, their efforts were in vain because we were not supplied with any medication. In a few weeks, half of the 120 prisoners in my hospital barracks were dead. Every day they dragged two, three or four corpses out of the building.
"When my condition improved, I was taken to Camp Number 19, where I stayed for a few months. I met Tibor Rozsa there, another Hungarian, whom I had known when he was a young student at a Catholic high school. He was still a student there when he was arrested and tried. By the time I saw him, he was nothing but skin and bones.
and re: post #21, Sorry, madrussian and WeThePeople..., but having been blessed with Hungarian great-grandparents, I won't be a good candidate for any ex-KGB's fan club, especially one who still idealizes the work he did there.
Thanks for the flag.
The American People forget too quickly all the horrors committed by the Communists! Our current prez & worst lady are closet commies and have been since the sixties!
Yes, We the People, Please do watch my postings carefully. I'm sure not an expert but I don't make up stories. Whether this story is true or not, it was reported in the Electronic Telegraph, Russia Today and I think I also read it on AFP.
As I wrote before, was it true?
The KGB, apart from its shameful role in supporting the regime, was also counter-acting the American CIA, a task that still has to be done and there is no shame in doing that.
I don't admire or not even like Putin. But you can't deny that compared to drunk Yeltsin, Putin does a better job in pulling Russia together and trying to create at least a resemblance of order. I don't appreciate shallow conclusions made based on some tabloid stories and applying your American standards to other countries. Only in America admitting a shameful behaviour will do much more to damage a person's reputation than doing 1000x more bad things and flatly denying everything.
As I said, "whether it is true or not" meaning it could be a smear job done by the press, but your reply above implies that Russians could never be as hypocritical as us westerners and human nature is full of hypocrisy regardless of the nationality, and communist cultures even more so (in my opinion).
I'm only posting my opinions and my misgivings based on my observations and personal biases, we all have personal biases. If my conclusions that it takes a special breed of person to be proud of being a Secret Police snitch seems shallow to you, so be it. I'm sure many KGB were not bad people, but there was more going on in the KGB than just countering the CIA. No totalitarian state could survive without using such a system to instill terror in its subjects.
And let me just say that I hope you are right and I am wrong, and he's great for Russia.
and he makes a distinction between those who inform for money or grudges and those who help the state out of "idealistic principles.
Is the above the source of your "proud to be a snitch" conclusion? Doesn't follow.
Speaking of snitches, "informing the authorities" is an almost subconcious reflex in the US.
Yes, that's my source. From his own words then he is saying that it was a virtue to turn in someone for the revolution. All those people who didn't agree to be atheists or who said they didn't agree with communism or were just disliked by the snitches often got turned over to the authorities.
From his own words then he is saying that it was a virtue to turn in someone for the revolution. All those people who didn't agree to be atheists or who said they didn't agree with communism or were just disliked by the snitches often got turned over to the authorities.
No he wasn't saying that. You make a quantum leap between Stalinism and the later years and lump everything together. If what you say had been true, Putin should still be a Commie and he isn't.
Okay, so I guess he only turned in bad people for idealistic reasons, nobody knows but him and those he turned in.
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