According to former inmates, there were 52 kinds of torture used in the prison. Historian and Gulag researcher Lidia Golovkova, author of the book Sukhanovskaya Prison: Special Facility 110, compiled a detailed list of the ‘methods of interrogation’ used there. ‘It was regarded as the most horrific prison in the whole of the Soviet Union’, she told me. ‘The usual, simplest method used was beatings, which could go on for days, with interrogators working in shifts. They would beat prisoners on the most sensitive parts of their bodies; it was known as ‘threshing the rye.’ The second most common method was sleep deprivation, which could go on for 10-20 days. During interrogation, prisoners were often made to sit on a leg of an upturned stool, so that the slightest accidental movement would send the leg into their rectum.
‘Another form of torture was known as the “Sukhanovka Swallow”, where inmates were trussed up with a long towel that was forced between their lips like a horse’s bridle and then pulled down behind them and tied under their feet. You would think no one could stand this for more than a few seconds, but its victims were left like that for days on end. There were also overheated punishment cells, so called “tallow-boilers”, or in winter, prisoners could be dumped in barrels of icy water. Other methods of persuasion included prisoners having needles and pins forced under their fingernails, their fingers being crushed in a door, or being forced to drink their interrogator’s urine.’
I asked Golovkova whether people sometimes held out and refused to sign confessions even after torture. ‘That was very rare. The pain of the beatings and torture was so excruciating that 50-year-old generals would forget themselves and start crying for their mothers. General Sidyakin lost his mind and howled in his cell like a dog. Many prisoners were sent off to psychiatric hospitals for compulsory treatment immediately after their interrogation.
‘I only know of one documented case of a prisoner who refused to confess despite being tortured. He was Mikhail Kedrov, a member of a Moscow aristocratic family who became a Leninist Bolshevik and member of the Cheka, [the first incarnation of the Soviet secret police apparatus]. In 1939, Kedrov, with his son Igor and one of his friends, who also worked for [what in the 1930s was renamed] the NKVD, wrote a letter about abuse of power in the Security Services, and all three were immediately arrested and interrogated for 22 hours or more. The two young men were shot first, but Mikhail Kedrov refused to confess to anything, no matter what tortures he was subjected to. Amazingly, a court found him not guilty of any crime, but he was still not released from prison; and when the USSR entered the Second World War in 1941, he was executed on the direct orders of Lavrenty Beria.
First, for the sake of argument, let’s assume every word in that excerpt is uninpeachable historical fact. Taking it as fact, it is no worse than what the U.S. has done at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, that blacksite the Chicago PD used to disappear and torture people, etc., to say nothing of the horrors of the many dictatorships the U.S. installed and propped up throughout the Cold War. If you see this conduct as some moral event horizon you should want to burn the U.S. to the ground. This is not whataboutism, this is asking if you really give a shit about this stuff, or if it only offends your sensibilities when the Bad Countries do it.
Dispensing with the assumption that the except is proven fact, let’s examine the reliability of the sources (I’ll spoiler this section to not clog up the thread, but suffice to say it doesn’t look great):
spoiler
Lidia Golovkova: A search for “Lidia Golovkova historian cv” doesn’t turn up anything. Nor does the alternate spelling “Lydia.” Searching her on Google Scholar returns no articles she authored. She appears to be a real person – looks like she attended a conference organized by “The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia” in 2002 – but I’ve found nothing that would speak directly to her credibility as a historian, or lack thereof. She appears to be cited fairly regularly (sometimes in academia, more often in articles like the one you quote from), but it also looks like she’s cited in the same breath as noted hack Robert Conquest (example). Generously, she might be associated with positions only a minority of historians hold. Less generously, it looks like she’s doing motivated reasoning and pop history, like Conquest.
Sukhanovskaya Prison: Special Facility 110: Found a few mentions of this book, but no English translations. Two mentions in particular (here and here) both cite Russian-language editions. It’s odd how many of the same English excerpts can be found with a “cursory” search, despite the book at minimum not being widely available in English. Looks more like quote mining/citation hunting than all of these authors actually assessing what they’re referencing. It would be difficult for English speakers to evaluate, for instance, whether this work is consistent with information from USSR archives that were released after the country fell (a major turning point in Sovietology which separated serious historians from propagandists; see Conquest).
No, not particularly. But the reason for opposing it is much broader than torture. My assertion that Soviet police tortured people is only to show that Soviet cops were not particularly better than American cops, which is where this whole argument started, if you look up the comment chain.
So you were just doing reddit contrarianism, got it.
If you want to actually assess Soviet vs. American policing the way to do it isn’t to find a (poorly sourced) example of Soviet police misconduct, because you can find endless examples of the same from American police. Instead, you’d have to look at how the police typically act(ed) in each country. You might start by looking for something to show Soviet police were armed with more military equipment than American police, for example, but you’d be looking for a while.
There are countless examples of U.S. police misconduct that was ordered by superiors, and plenty more that was done with their full knowledge and tacit approval.
You don’t have to believe if you don’t want, but maybe consider providing it for other commenters on your instance who might stumble upon this thread.
There are any number of stories that even a cursory look will bring you
Where to begin?
First, for the sake of argument, let’s assume every word in that excerpt is uninpeachable historical fact. Taking it as fact, it is no worse than what the U.S. has done at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, that blacksite the Chicago PD used to disappear and torture people, etc., to say nothing of the horrors of the many dictatorships the U.S. installed and propped up throughout the Cold War. If you see this conduct as some moral event horizon you should want to burn the U.S. to the ground. This is not whataboutism, this is asking if you really give a shit about this stuff, or if it only offends your sensibilities when the Bad Countries do it.
Dispensing with the assumption that the except is proven fact, let’s examine the reliability of the sources (I’ll spoiler this section to not clog up the thread, but suffice to say it doesn’t look great):
spoiler
I love that when I assert that Soviet police tortured people your response is to accuse me of wanting to burn the USSR to the ground for it, lmao.
…so you’re saying you supported the USSR?
No, not particularly. But the reason for opposing it is much broader than torture. My assertion that Soviet police tortured people is only to show that Soviet cops were not particularly better than American cops, which is where this whole argument started, if you look up the comment chain.
So you were just doing reddit contrarianism, got it.
If you want to actually assess Soviet vs. American policing the way to do it isn’t to find a (poorly sourced) example of Soviet police misconduct, because you can find endless examples of the same from American police. Instead, you’d have to look at how the police typically act(ed) in each country. You might start by looking for something to show Soviet police were armed with more military equipment than American police, for example, but you’d be looking for a while.
“Misconduct is when police carry out the orders they’re given”
lmao, never change, tankie.
There are countless examples of U.S. police misconduct that was ordered by superiors, and plenty more that was done with their full knowledge and tacit approval.
Take your shit back to reddit