COMMUNISTS: How They Do It

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Pressure. "I was ordered to stand facing the wall upright at a distance which allowed me to touch the wall with two fingers of my outstretched arms. Then to step back some twelve inches, keep my heels touching the floor, and maintain balance only with the contact of one finger on each hand. And while standing so, the interrogation continued ... I recall that the muscles on my legs and shoulders began to get cramped and to tremble, that my two fingers began to bend down under the pressure, to get red all over and to ache, I remember that I was drenched with sweat and that I began to faint, although I had not exerted myself in any way. If I would try to substitute [fingers], I would be instantly called to order . . . And when the trembling increased up to the point when I collapsed, they made me sit and speak. I did get several minutes respite, catching my breath and wiping my face, but when I had uttered again that I was innocent, it was the wall again . . .

"After a time of this, I broke down. I told them I was willing and eager to tell them all they wanted . . ."

Blows. "Here I want to describe their methods of interrogation: you are a spy and a traitor; tell us what tasks you were given to do, who gave them to you, in what manner and with whose help you achieved them, and to whom and in what manner did you report? . . . One of the superiors insisted that I add specific information as to my secret preference for the British and on my spying for them on the Americans . . .

"No generalities, no overall statements of guilt accepted. And this went on, hour after hour, throughout the night, throughout the day, without respite or end. How can I best explain? The only straw for which I could reach is the impression that I had, in my emptied, vacant thoughts, of some sentence that had pleased them, or that had conformed with the pattern I had so often seen in the newspapers. And if I were to stop and plead fatigue, or poor memory, or ask to rest—the wall again, and the slaps, and the blows in the nape [of the neck]. And I remembered I would come up gasping and talk and talk and feel utterly broken . . .

"You plead with them not to force you to incriminate innocent persons, persons whom you know have never engaged in any such activity—no response. Speak on, tell us more . . ."

Satisfaction. "I rarely could perceive [in the interrogation] any personal hatred or enmity for me—contempt certainly, but sooner an academic, detached dealing with an annoying problem in order to achieve the goal, and a fanatic, rabid -obsession of devotion to Communism and hatred for Anglo-American resistance to them—all the newspaper talk is to them gospel truth. And in this respect they are to be taken as disciples and fervent followers of the dogma. Not much imagination, nor quick brains nor much intellectual baggage nor sensitivity—but enormous stores of character, undeviating loyalty to their creed, fanatic belief in their own cause, fanatic hatred and mistrust of anything else . . ."

[By this time Shipkov had invented espionage incidents involving many of his friends and several members of the U.S. Legation staff.]