The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As long ago as 1919 the chief method used by the interrogator was a revolver on the desk. That was how they investigated not only political but also ordinary misdemeanors and violations. At the trial of the Main Fuels Committee (1921), the accused Makhrovskaya complained that at her interrogation she had been drugged with cocaine. The prosecutor replied: “If she had declared that she had been treated rudely, that they had threatened to shoot her, this might be just barely believable.”6 The frightening revolver lies there and sometimes it is aimed at you, and the interrogator doesn’t tire himself out thinking up what you are guilty of, but shouts: “Come on, talk! You know what about!”