Yet the interrogators themselves were also under enormous personal duress. “If some of you entertain doubts and vacillations,” Yezhov told his men, “if some of you, for this or that reason, do not feel strong enough to cope with the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bandits, then let them say so and we shall release them from the investigation.”[ccxvii] It was a beautiful piece of totalitarian doublespeak. The only reason someone might feel the need to show mercy to those who were plotting against the people would be some sort of sympathy with them, or some sort of squeamishness about the Party’s
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