STOLYPIN'S NECKTIE

[A fictional account with the ring of truth]

Russia has over the centuries had its fair share of brutal rulers, and in the twentieth century there were a few who elevated brutality to an art form.

Pyotr Stolypin was appointed by Czar Nicholas II as Prime Minister of the Russian Empire in July 1906 in addition to his role as Interior Minister – a combination of positions that concentrated enormous power in the hands of a single official. This power he wielded with aplomb in dealing with leftist unrest against the Czar. Stolypin imposed Martial Law and implemented a system of “special courts” to facilitate speedy trials, convictions and swift executions for suspects. In the period between 1906 and 1909 the hangman’s noose dispatched approximately five thousand unfortunate souls at the behest of these courts. Alarmed at the regularity with which the “last drop” squeezed the life out of leftist radicals, often on spurious grounds, a Duma (Parliament) member Fedor Rodichev remarked that the gallows had become “Stolypin’s efficient black Monday necktie.” Although he retracted his statement under pain of retribution, the moniker “Stolypin’s necktie” clung to Pyotr long after his own demise at the hands of an assassin, Dmitry Bogrov, in 1911. Shot in his arm and chest, Stolypin met his maker four days afterwards, and was joined ten days later by the one who had arranged the meeting. Bogrov was hanged for his successful killing of Pyotr, who had survived ten previous attempts on his life. Stolypin lies buried in Kyiv (Ukraine) where the deed had been done.

Not many years hence, Lenin’s Bolsheviks ushered in a period of seven decades of Communist dictatorship that was maintained by hands that spilt blood with alacrity. It was a trail of blood starting with the Czar’s entire family executed in a dank basement in Yekaterinburg, giving particular poignancy to the sad, long era that the Red Flag was hoisted over the Kremlin. There was no dearth of Cheka, NKVD and KGB merchants of death that squeezed the executioner’s trigger in the service of Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev and their ilk. Of all these, Lavrentiy Beria was quite possibly the most dedicated killer. He oversaw Stalin’s Purges that began in Transcaucasia in 1934, the Katyn Massacre of Polish intellectuals and officers in 1944 and ethnic cleansing on a gigantic scale. Beria had no qualms about arranging the execution of scores of Jewish doctors in the 1951 Doctors’ Plot – all of them falsely accused by the paranoid Stalin of orchestrating the poisoning of Soviet officials. In a strange twist of fate, Beria was himself executed in December 1953 – crawling on hands and knees, pleading to be spared. A lead bullet to the head brought a swift end to possibly the most depraved of the Russian scoundrels that ran amok under the aegis of the hammer and sickle. 

It was to the Soviet Union that communists the world over bowed in humble adoration. In South Africa a Communist Party had been established in the 1920s and diehard adherents blindly followed their heroes in Moscow. In their fervent aspiration to advance the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat at the southern tip of Africa, three friends and comrades traipsed across to the Soviet Union to be imbued with the distilled essence of revolutionary communist doctrine. Unknown to them, the trip was foolhardy, given the Russian propensity to mete out severe consequences to anyone they deemed to harbour the slightest aberration concerning communist doctrine. 

In the 1930s the Soviet Union still held their noses and traded with South Africa – paying scant attention to the gaping chasm between the economic ideologies. Trade trumped qualms and the Arop Petrol Company in Russia sold their fuel on the open market in South Africa – at ten pence per imperial gallon (4.5 litres) to the motorist. A visit by South African communists to Moscow would not have been viewed askance at the time.

The three comrades alighted from their train coach in Moscow with no hint of trepidation. They were met by Russian Political Commissars and spirited off to Party headquarters. Assessment of the purity of their political philosophy, further indoctrination and assistance in spreading the communist “gospel” would be undertaken with intense passion – or so it appeared initially.

Albert, Maurice and Lazar settled into their small room in a typical Soviet apartment block along Leninskiy Prospekt. These were not the usual exemplars of the world’s proletariat, however. These were well read, philosophically and ideologically savvy South African activists. At home they had been accustomed to crossing swords with the overwhelmingly anti-communist line of thought espoused by the bulk of the population. They were opinionated and could lucidly lay out a line of argument and were not given to suspending their own logic at the whim of anyone holding differing views. But this was Russia in the 1930s! Stalin was in charge and Beria was his henchman.

Not too long into their stay it was detected that the three held views more closely aligned with those of Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s arch enemy and exiled rival. Trotsky had long been in Stalin and Beria’s crosshairs – and would meet a sticky end in 1940. Russians crossed would not easily forget. The Soviets’ hatchet men will hunt down presumed traitors, ideological deviants and troublemakers relentlessly. The executioner would operate surreptitiously, yet swiftly once the target has been located, and Stolypin’s necktie or any method to assassinate would be applied without batting an eye.

Once identified as Trotskyites, the three disappeared like the mist at sunrise. They were never heard from (or of) again. It was not uncommon for opponents to be airbrushed out of history, and the Soviet Union was large enough to make some troublesome South Africans vanish. No literature produced in either country mentions their names, alludes to their trotting off to Moscow or the fact that they simply dropped from sight.

Best to remember the thread that winds its way along Russian history. The ghosts of Stolypin and Beria are hauntingly familiar.

©Paul M Haupt