The Margin of Evil! (54 page)

'
How did you know? Georgii Radetzky said. He could see that he'd left himself wide open, now he was going to have to take it on the chin.

'
I see everything that goes to your desk. I don't blame you for throwing Kilduff's letter into the fire. In your shoes, I'd have done the same. Remember what I said to you in the forest?' Stalin said. The Boss carried on, 'Maybe there is a way out of this after all; maybe if we distribute these files to the Central Committee, they will see how preposterous these allegations against me were. Tomorrow, I will present these files to them. Let's see then, what Lenin and Trotsky have to say.'

'
But half of it`s true; everything in the first file is true. That's why Reilly wanted it. If that report was published in either England or America, it would blow the 'Onion Spires' right off of the top of this building, and it would also blow the whole 'Bolshevik Movement' apart,' Georgii said.

'
Yes I know, but remember Lenin wanted it in writing from Trotsky and Gerhardt; that is why Sverdlov, a man he trusted implicitly, was asked to investigate. But if I present it to them in the same way that they were going to present it to me, back in the days when Sverdlov was alive, I guarantee Georgii, that I will catch them all off their guards and I will also be able, and this will be our masterstroke, to quash, in one fowl blow, all unfounded allegations that have been made against me. We will beat them with their own stick. Besides, Comrade Radetzky, you're going to be there with me when we go onto the offensive. We will throw everything we have at them! Tomorrow we either sink or swim. Get a good night's sleep!'

With that
'The Boss' patted him on the shoulder and told him to be there at eight o' clock sharp. Whatever happened; tomorrow was going to be a long day.

Epilogue

The
'fat' one in the American pin stripe suit looked at his watch and then said to his colleague. 'Do you know we've had eight hours plus of this crap?'

'
He keeps on spouting this bullshit, 'then he grabbed Georgia's chin and squeezed it really hard, 'Doesn't hee.'

There was a knock on the door.
The fat one went outside. The other 'Gorilla' stared at him and, then adopting the 'good cop' tone, 'Radetzky, make life easy on yourself, just sign the confession. You know, better, than most, that there is no way out of here ... Just sign on the line, then we can all go home.

The
'Fat Bastard' returned, he was holding a file. 'Radetzky you live, it seems, too fight another day. We will see you tomorrow. But you're looking a little out of shape; so I think it's time for you to go on a little run around the building.'

Georgii hated the run.
His interrogator was right he was completely out of shape, but he hated having to run around the building. Always faster, faster and faster until you collapsed in complete agony.

Next day, the guards had to drag him out of his cell.
Georgii couldn't stand; the soles of his feet had been beaten to a pulp. He looked across at the two fat bullies. The thought that was always in his mind had returned, 'Same crooks, different uniforms.' Inwardly he sighed to himself and thought, nothing around here ever changes.

'
Non-person Radetzky, yesterday you told us a complete pack of lies. Not only that, you implicated 'Our Glorious' leader Stalin in heinous crimes against the state. Since we saw you last, I have had researchers looking for some shred of evidence to back up your fanciful lies. And do you know what ...'

He cut
'Fats' dead, 'Don't fuckin' tell me, you couldn't find anything, not even a single piece of evidence!'  Georgii was past caring, there was only one ending to this story; so he might as well have some fun, on the way to the shallow grave!

'
Let's start again', the 'fat' one in the pinstripe suit said. He carried on, 'You told us a story, albeit set nearly twenty years ago, of murder; racketeering; political and international intrigues with our Polski friends. Yes, we know about Trotsky, but no one has ever heard of Auguste Gerhardt or Yulia Kilduff. We have heard of Sidney Reilly, I believe that he was resident here for a while!'  He looked at his colleague and laughed.  Then back at Georgii, 'What else have you got, what happened at this Central Committee meeting?'

'
It was a work of genius. It was the moment, for me anyway, that Joseph Stalin arrived ...'

Georgii arrived at Stalin
's apartment as he had been bid the night before. The print department had duplicated the contents of the file. The committee meeting was scheduled for two o' clock that afternoon. That morning they decided how they would go about trumping Lenin, Trotsky and Gerhardt. They were led to believe that Gerhardt would not be in attendance as he was off on business elsewhere, or so it was thought. When they arrived he was sitting on a settee behind Trotsky. No problem, they were prepared for that eventuality, their plan relied, totally, on the element of surprise.

At the end Lenin asked if there was any
more business. Stalin stood up and said there was a little matter that needed some clearing up and, if everyone was patient, he would not keep them long. As he spoke, I distributed the copies to all those in attendance. They sat and read them in silence. I watched the expressions on their faces change, at one point Bukharin laughed, Kamenev snorted, but generally speaking the gamble was working.

After they
'd all finished reading. Comrade Stalin's performance was masterful. He called on anyone present to say that this was true. He even called on the accusers to step forwards; like naughty schoolboys each and everyone stayed silent. I watched Trotsky squirming in his seat, even Vladimir Iilyvich sitting there, head in hand, looked uncomfortable, and as for Gerhardt he remained ashen faced throughout. At the end there was an icy silence, only broken by Lenin trying to salvage something from the wreckage of that meeting. He summed it up by saying that if anyone had anything to say, now was the time and place to say it!  When nobody responded, he instructed that no further mention of this was going to be made, and all reference to this was to be struck from the record. I went and collected up all of the files. When I got to Comrade Gerhardt, for a second he held his file firmly in his hand and muttered, almost inaudibly, 'You'll regret this Radetzky!'  After the meeting I personally saw to the paperwork's incineration.

Georgii pondered for a moment.
All this talking kept him sane, and he reasoned that the more impatient they got and the more he told, and there was a whole lot more to say, it might incriminate them in the future. As far as Georgii Radetzky was concerned, he was dead and buried. But he wasn't going to go down without a fight!

'
Comrades, I haven't told you what I got up to elsewhere yet! Now let me see ... that would be in ... aaaaaaaaah, 1921 stroke thirty twoooooooo!'

To be continued
....

Appendix A: The Russian Civil War
.

The Russian Civil War lasted from 1918 until 1921. Its origins lay in the two revolutions, and the political turmoil, of 1917. As the disparate groups vying for power started to flex their muscles; they started to take sides and organise themselves. Some historians have argued that the seeds for catastrophe had been sewn many years before, under the reigns of Tsar's Nicholas and Alexander. 'The Autocracy' had started to show outward, visible signs of having lost touch and was increasingly anachronistic and completely out of step with the people and the times. To many inside and outside observers, the 'Ancien Regime', had many years before lurched past the point of no return.

Whichever way you look at it, as the
'Old Order' began to fail, there was an open held belief in Russia, certainly amongst the intelligentsia and the middle classes, that change was in the air.

When the moment came, and the old order started to falter; and the patriotism of August 1914, had given way to the deep rooted
despair of late 1916 early 1917, the Tsar did the decent thing and abdicated. The problem was Russia then overdosed on its new found freedom. On the one hand 'The Tsar' was gone, but everyone in power thought they knew what to do with the vacant chair he'd left behind. The real truth was no one really knew how to fill the political vacuum or, more importantly, what to do with the historic opportunity that time had presented them. The Provisional Government began to drift and others sensing this lined up to take advantage of Kerensky weak and ineffectual government.

Kerensky and Lenin, emerged as potential leaders in 1917.
During the early summer the money was on Kerensky to take Russia forwards.  Before and after 'July Days', he had edged into the lead over Lenin; but the failure of that summer’s offensive against Germany, and the perceived collusion in 'The Kornilov Affair', lost him all of his hard earned credibility.  By early October Kerensky, having tried to please everybody and no one, was already considered a lame duck; by November he had already packed his bags and was on his way into exile.

Lenin
's Bolshevik party had seized power. Their grip on the reins of government was by no means a firm one. The political situation was complicated. The Bolsheviks did not want to share power, and others did not trust them. Lenin and his followers believed that, if the revolution was to succeed, they could only fully achieve their aims of 'Permanent Revolution' by acting alone as 'The Workers’ ‘Vanguard Party'.

From October the political situa
tion began to deteriorate.  Both sides, 'Socialist Revolutionary' (SR) and 'Red' realised, almost at once, that, if they were to survive they would have to form a temporary alliance.

The Bolsheviks allied themselves with the SR party.
The union, at best a shaky one, only lasted for a few months, when the SR's, unhappy with their treatment at the hands of the Bolsheviks walked out, the coalition was dead in the water. From now on the Bolsheviks were on their own.  In many ways it gave Lenin the freehand he had always craved, he was now free from outside interference. Now, if the Bolsheviks believed that they could do what they wanted, they had to think again; because for every problem solved, another two would then appear.

The Whites had not wasted any time organising themselves.
At best they were a motley alliance of former Tsarist Generals, Admirals, Revolutionaries and other ignominious groupings. All of them had one thing in common they were opposed to Bolshevik rule. Some were 'Restorationist's' who simply wanted a return to the 'Good Old, Golden Days' of 'Old'. Others were 'Republicans', who did not share in 'The Red' Bolshevik dream. In turn some of these groups were mischievously financed and backed by Imperial Russia's former allies, who were keen, if only to save their own skins, to get the Russian 'Steam-Roller' back on track and 'Rollin' back into 'The War'.

But there was another grouping
and they were much larger than the other two. They were 'The Greens'. They were the ordinary people who just wanted to get on with their own lives. They lived in the towns and farmed the countryside. They did not care much for political intrigues and the terrorising of the populace. They wanted proper political representation and, to this end, they looked towards the SR's to fight their corner. When the situation in Petrograd and Moscow had become intolerable, they packed their bags and went back to the commune. When things became even more intolerable, they simply took what they could and vanished into the forest. There they waited and there they bided their time.

Unfortunately even though the SRs had gained the most seats in the elections to the political assembly
, (the Bolsheviks closed the assembly down), due to factionalism and by their un-cohesive nature, they found it almost impossible to agree on anything. This weakened their natural held advantage over the other two parties. So their very strength became their weakness even though, by virtue of their size, they were much bigger than the other two and also by claiming to be the only party that enjoyed widespread, national, support across the whole of Russia, something that, at the time, the other two could not claim. During those early days of the Russian Civil War, to some it appeared that whoever 'The Greens' allied themselves with would win the Civil War.

At various times during 1918 and 1919
'The Reds' and 'The Whites' came close to the decisive victory that would bring them power. But it did not happen. The Whites negotiated with 'The Greens', but they could not come to any agreement over land. The Greens soon realised that further negotiations with 'The Whites' were pointless, so they changed sides and allied themselves with 'The Reds'. In their estimation if the Reds were bad, 'The Whites' were even worse.

Several external factors eventually decided the Russian Civil War.
By 1919, 'The Great War' in Europe was over. Russia's former allies were busy arguing and carving-up Germany's assets and some of them had to deal with political unrest at home. Eventually they all lost interest, so they cut off aid and supplies to the enemies of Bolshevism. Without this crucial lifeline, 'The Whites' eventually withered and died. Those 'Whites', with the financial wherewithal that could get out, got out and spent their last days living it up, in the salons of Paris and Berlin. Eventually the last 'White' pockets on the Pacific seaboard gave themselves up in 1923. In the end 'The Whites' had lost, because they misunderstood what the Civil War had really been about, they had only wanted to turn the clock back, they had not fully understood the real issues that were at stake - peasants wanted land and town's folk wanted a political say in the way they were governed. So they, 'The Whites', had lost through a complete failure to reach any compromise or understanding with 'The Greens'. 'The Reds' on the other hand, knew only too well what the people wanted, so they paid them a little lip service and made a few, temporary, piecemeal concessions; that was enough, initially, to get 'The Greens' onside.

The
'Bolsheviks', knew only too well, that they had bought themselves a little bit of time. To them a reintroduction of limited capitalism, could only ever be a pyrrhic victory.  They knew that, if the real power rested with the people, then it would be those people who could, if the situation was not handled properly, bring them down. They also knew that the Russian peasant was happiest when he could take his crops to the market and get a return, a bottle of vodka, for his labours. He was not interested in 'Dialectical-Materialism'; the only thing he valued was money for his goods, he had no intention of handing his produce over, to the government, for nothing, and he certainly did not want to see the restoration of the 'Old Order', where he worked, for an absentee landlord, for nothing. For him it was a grudging case of, 'Better the Bolshevik Devil you're getting to know!'  But that was fine if he could not sell his wares and, if they did not want to play by age old rules, he would produce just enough for himself and his family. As far as the Kulak was concerned the towns and cities could starve!

Out of necessity, the Bo
lsheviks introduced NEP in 1921 and that effectively finished off the Civil War. The Reds knew that NEP could only ever be a short term fix. Sooner or later they would have to deal with the peasant, but now was not the time. Radicals in the Bolshevik party were violently opposed to NEP but, as Lenin said, 'you had to take one step back in order to go two steps forward'. By the end of the twenties, and with Lenin now, permanently, residing in 'The Kremlin' wall, Stalin, his eventual successor, firmly took the 'Bull-by-The-Horns' and decided to deal with the peasant once and for all. Collectivisation, and de-Kulakisation, was Stalin's answer.

B
ut was the struggle really over and was it really the end of the Civil War? The answer, unequivocally, was no. In the towns and on the steppe there was a 'Silent 'Green' Majority'; like the peasant, they did not understand the writings of Marx and Engels. They found life hard enough as it was, they just wanted to live in a world free from strife and oppression. They were by no means against change, they just wanted to have some say in it, bottom up, and not have it imposed on them, from the top down.

In a way it was this silent majority,
now relying on far more subtle and peaceful ways of resisting Soviet policies who were, as 'The Bolsheviks' had always feared, going to be the main catalysts for change. Seventy years later when it came, 'The Hammer & Sickle' was replaced overnight by the Old Russian Tricolour.

Appendix B: The Polish Soviet War 1919-20.

The Polish Soviet War was not really a 'full-on' war in the strictest sense. It was more of a series of low level campaigns and lack lustre skirmishes. Like many other international conflicts of the period its origins lay inside the finer details of 'The Treaty of Versailles'.

The
'Treaty of Versailles' had created 'The Second Polish Republic' but had done nothing to secure the new states borders with its Russian neighbour. Russia, for obvious reasons, had not been invited to the Versailles conference and, as a result, was not a signatory to the final treaty. This may have been a smart and calculating move on the side of Russia's former allies keen to get her back, or get the Bolsheviks back, for signing a separate peace with the Germans at 'The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk', back in nineteen-seventeen.

By nineteen-
nineteen 'The Bolsheviks' were still fighting for survival, in the Russian Civil War. Contrary to informed opinion they had managed to survive, not only had they managed to survive, they had managed to see off some of their opponents. In the east, they had started to push back, some of 'The White' armies beyond 'The Urals', and were making inroads into Siberia itself. So, in the west, the threat had pretty much gone, so the 'Bolsheviks' turned their attentions towards their enemies in the east.

At the same time the leaders of the new Poland were keen to re-establish the fledglin
g states international prestige and, along with that, their countries nineteenth century borders. The Polish leader, General Pilsudski, had his eyes firmly fixed on the Western Ukraine. Not only that, they also wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity and the confusion that the 'The Russian Civil War' had created. 

So after Polish forces had made successful i
nroads into the Western Ukraine, the Red Army counter attacked and forced the Poles all the way back to the gates of Warsaw. That August it looked like it was all over, game, set and match as they say, but they had underestimated the resilience of the Poles. Pilsudski successfully counter attacked and beat 'The Reds' all the way back into Russia. The Bolsheviks sued for peace and The Treaty of Riga secured Poland's borders for the next nineteen years.

But the peace held during those uneasy years.
The Russians wanted to get even and they would get even, from their point of view all they had to do was wait. Hitler gave them that opportunity and yet, on both sides of the divide, there were memories of atrocity upon atrocity, pogroms', summary executions, and prisoners of war starving to death in isolated prison camps.

Appendix C: Auguste Gerhardt.

Not much is known about 'The Okhrana' super sleuth Auguste Gerhardt (1878 – 193?). But one thing all historians of crime agree on, is that in the areas of concealment and suppression, when it came to covering up his past. Auguste Gerhardt was already a master. In fact at one point during the 'Late Soviet' era, it was even questioned whether, at all, he had ever existed. But there was enough evidence, already in existence in the west, to indicate that he had.

Early on in his career as an Okhrana agent Gerhardt had appreciated fully the value of anonymity.
It is rumoured that, as a member of the St Petersburg office, he always managed to keep out of photographs and disliked any form of publicity; but was expert at getting others to do his 'Dirty-Work' for him. Colleagues used to say that, even when he did, he never really did that much work on cases, but would get others, usually less experienced than himself, to do all the 'Donkey Work', but would shrewdly take some, or all of, the credit (depending on who the operative was) for solving them. 

Throughout the 1900
's a legend, founded on the solving, or at least non-solving, of several key cases, established Gerhardt's shadowy reputation, as one of the Okhrana's best, if not, 'The Best', detective. Critics thought of him as a complete fraud, only out for all he could get however he was protected by influential friends and members of the aristocracy. Favours were often paid and repaid and all this served to do was boost his standing and reputation, with the upper echelons of St Petersburg and in the poorly paid environs of the 'Counter Revolutionary' intelligence world.