From the history of resistance? The case of Peter Rempel

Today we publish a letter that came from one of our media subscribers. The author of this text has spent more than thirty years researching the fate of his grandfather - engineer Petr Petrovich Rempel, who died in the gulag camps in the 1940s. During this time, strange circumstances have come to light in the story - it is possible that Petr Petrovich was indeed involved in the underground work of resistance to Soviet power.

My grandfather, Peter Petrovich Rempel, was born in 1885 in a Mennonite colony on the Dnieper River. At the beginning of the twentieth century he went to study at a technical institute in Germany (Technicum Mittweida). Before the revolution he was associated with revolutionaries. His grandfather had organized the escape from Siberia to South America of one Mennonite revolutionary, Cornelius Thyssen.

After his return to Russia in 1910 and until his last arrest in 1938, grandfather worked in machine-building factories and workshops in Arkadak, Lyubertsy, Balashov, Simferopol, Melitopol, Astrakhan and Aralsk. His revolutionary deeds are known from the recollections of his relatives, but there is no mention of them in the documents of the Police Department, gendarme directorates and district security offices. In 1934 and 1938 grandfather was under investigation. In 1939 he was sent to the camps, from where he did not return.

Now I turn to the strange circumstances. In 1934 my grandfather worked as chief design engineer at the Pobeda engine-building factory (the future ZMZ) in Melitopol. At that time it was part of the Soyuzdiesel State Trust.

In 1933 the arrests of engineer-"agents of German intelligence" began at Soyuzdiesel plants. The trust’s chief engineer, Professor Sergei Vladimirovich Pugavko, who had close ties to  Germany, was taken away. Professor Pugavko knew my grandfather well and had stayed at his apartment when visiting the Pobeda factory.  Along with Pugavko and others, the engineer Reutsky was also arrested.

Soon after their arrest, Pugavko and Reutsky "confessed" to involvement in a spy-sabotage “organization” run by German intelligence. This was a fairly common "confession" for that time. They named all the members of the "organization" known to them, including my grandfather, head of the "organization" at the Pobeda factory. Naturally, my grandfather was also arrested. Stalin was briefed on the Soyuzdiesel case and on my grandfather's involvement in it (the briefing notes have been published). The members of this "organization" all received different sentences. Professor Pugavko worked in a secret research and development laboratory in Leningrad. After his release he continued to teach at a technical university and died in Moscow. Interestingly, neither Prof. Pugavko nor the engineers in the Soyuzdiesel case (Reutsky, Konstantinovsky, Preobrazhensky et al) were rehabilitated in the 1950s or in the 1990s, when all defendants in the mass trials of the 1930s, convicted on grounds of self-incrimination and incrimination against each other, were rehabilitated. I was unable to obtain Pugavko's investigation file because he had not been rehabilitated, so I do not know exactly what the charges were based on and why he, like the other engineers implicated in the Soyuzdiesel case, was never rehabilitated.

Now for what concerns my grandfather, Peter Rempel The investigation in the Dnepropetrovsk GPU lasted six months during which he never admitted his guilt. In March 1934 his case was transferred to Kyiv, to the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR. On April 20, 1934, he was released from custody by the decision of the Economic Department of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR. In his investigation file kept in the Zaporizhzhya archive, most of the documents are missing, including those concerning his release. What documents remain in that file (the testimonies of several witnesses and the indictment) do not attest to the possibility of his release. The documents dealing with grandfather’s release disappeared as early as 1939, when he was under investigation in Kzyl-Orda, from where a request was sent to the Dnepropetrovsk UNKVD for information about the investigation in 1934. The Dnepropetrovsk UNKVD was silent at first, and then sent an incomprehensible answer. My grandfather's file could not be found in the archives of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR.

Here we have the first mystery: what could have happened at the investigation in 1934 to cause my grandfather’s release (despite the grave charges reported to Stalin, and the testimony of witnesses) and documents in his file to disappear? Other defendants in this case were not rehabilitated. Theoretically, one could suppose that grandfather was recruited by the NKVD, but there is no evidence of this anywhere, including in his case files from 1938-1939. And judging by grandfather's active anti-communist position, his staunchness and tenacity during the investigation, this would be hard to believe.

Grandfather's mysterious colleague was Latvian Arved Johannovich Raudonikis, born in 1900. (He was 15 years younger than my grandfather.) Their close friendship began in the early 1930s or before and lasted until both were arrested in 1938. Grandfather worked alongside Raudonikis, and for several years they moved in tandem from job to job and from town to town with their families.

In 1933 my grandfather Rempel and Raudonikis were working at the Pobeda factory in Melitopol. At his 1938 investigation, Raudonikis said that he left Melitopol in 1933 to escape the wave of arrests at the plant. Yet by 1934 he had a job in the Melitopol prison administration. A surprising choice for a man hiding from arrest!

Other circumstances are no less strange. Right after his release from the 1934 investigation, grandfather got a job as head of production at that same Melitopol prison where Raudonikis was working. Presumably, grandfather would never be offered a "good" job after his release, so Raudonikis helped him get a job at the prison. Or perhaps grandfather and Raudonikis were looking for an opportunity to organize the escape of their comrades? Grandfather had experience in organizing such escapes from pre-revolutionary times.

A few months later, grandfather went to work at the Astrakhan machine factory. In negotiating the conditions of his work, he made a very unusual demand, which was written into his labor contract. The factory undertook to produce grandfather's "inventions" on its equipment at his expense. What kind of "inventions" these were is unclear.

In 1935 Raudonikis and my grandfather moved to Astrakhan where they again worked together. In 1937, they both moved to Aralsk and got jobs at the Aralsk State Fishery Trust. Grandfather worked as head of the trust’s machine shop, Raudonikis as head of the supply department.

In February 1938 Raudonikis was arrested. Under investigation in the Aralsk district department of the NKVD, he gave no evidence for many months and only on July 14 "confessed" that in 1932 my grandfather had involved him in a spy-sabotage organization headed by Pugavko and acting on orders from German intelligence. The organization allegedly meant to overthrow Soviet rule with the help of German intervention. Pugavko "appointed" my grandfather Rempel as Raudonikis's handler—apart from these two, Raudonikis knew no other member of the "organization". Raudonikis carried out my grandfather's assignments all the years and in all the places they worked together, from 1932 until the day of his arrest. For his work he only once received remuneration from Pugavko–250 rubles. Raudonikis attributed his moves from town to town to his attempts to avoid arrest. Incidentally, Raudonikis said that my grandfather passed information to German intelligence through a man who worked at the Czechoslovak consulate in Moscow.

Shortly after this testimony, my grandfather was arrested and Raudonikis was shot (he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1990 without a request from his relatives).

After his arrest, my grandfather withstood all the torture and during the ten months of the investigation repeatedly said that he had never engaged in espionage or sabotage. At the same time he spoke of Raudonikis as his friend. In order to obtain incriminating material, a prison informer named Panchevsky was put in my grandfather's cell. Panchevsky then recounted his conversations with my grandfather to the investigators; inquiries were sent to the NKVD in Dnepropetrovsk, Kyiv and Moscow, but no confirmation of Raudonikis's testimony could be obtained.

The investigator asked grandfather about his acquaintance in the Czechoslovak consulate. Grandfather gave his surname (Weydrich), but said that he had known him in 1929, when Weydrich worked in the warehouse at the Pobeda factory.  After that he did not keep in touch and did not remember who told him that Weydrich had found work at the Czechoslovak consulate. An inquiry about Weydrich was sent to the Lubyanka, whence came a very interesting reply:

A Czech man named Ferdinand Ferdinandovich Svoboda (b. 1896), whose former surname was Weyndrich, had indeed worked at the Pobeda factory. Until 1928, Weyndrich-Svoboda worked at the Czechoslovak consulate in Kharkov. After the consulate closed, he took a job in the warehouse at the Pobeda factory. While working there, Weyndrich-Svoboda was arrested in connection with a Czech spy ring. However, sufficient evidence against him was not found, and he was released. Moreover, "in view of... his total deafness, making it impossible to conduct an investigation, the case against him was dismissed.” After that Svoboda went to Moscow and found work as a yard keeper at the Czechoslovak mission. "Among the mission staff, Svoboda is well trusted and has excellent connections to Soviet citizens suspected of espionage, including persons known to him as far back as Melitopol." (Who were these "acquaintances from Melitopol"?)

This letter from the NKVD raises a lot of questions. It’s not clear why the deafness of a person under investigation would lead to the dismissal of the case and the release of the suspect. Even less clear is the situation where the NKVD simply observes a Soviet citizen suspected of espionage working for years in foreign missions and cultivating extensive “suspected-of-espionage” connections.  All of this can only be explained, it seems, by the NKVD having recruited Svoboda and used him as an informant. This is not spelled out in the letter, but such an explanation is self-evident. Or could there be other explanations?

Eight months into the investigation, my grandfather submitted an application to the prosecutor asking for the return of the eye-glasses taken from him at the time of his arrest. His request was refused: glasses were forbidden in prison cells (this story of the glasses had a strange continuation, which I’ll go into later). In that same application, there is one point that I cannot understand. My grandfather wrote:

“I had two inventions in my apartment: one secret military-grade, the other executed only on paper. This second invention is a pump (for pumping large quantities of liquid) that is driven by the pumped liquid itself. During the search no inventory was made of the confiscated documents. Therefore I ask you to take measures to preserve these inventions and, if  permissible, to allow me to finish the second one so that it can be used. This pump would make it possible to solve the problem of irrigation, regardless of natural conditions.”

These assertions raise many questions. First, the absurdity of “inventing” a pump that pumps liquid by means of the energy of the liquid itself is obvious. Maybe grandfather was counting on the ignorance of the investigators and thus hoping to do some engineering work in detention? Or maybe he wanted to give a skewed interpretation of some potentially dangerous designs and drawings? These are the only suppositions I can make.

The first assertion–about a “secret military-grade invention”, ready-made–seems even more paradoxical. As if grandfather were “planting evidence” of his own subversive work. After all, it’s hard to imagine an engineer who works in the repair shop of a run-down fishery trust being officially busy at home with military-grade developments. How can this be understood? I see only one explanation: grandfather really had some “ready-made” invention and the drawings of another device at home; for some reason he believed that these inventions had fallen into the hands of the NKVD; he may have written the application to show that there was nothing criminal in these “inventions”, which he himself calmly and casually reported. This explanation seems like a bit of a stretch, but I have not found a simpler one. At the same time, the search protocols say nothing about the drawings or the “ready-made” invention, which are never mentioned in the investigation materials. The next event is no less surprising than grandfather's supposed error: the investigators “overlooked” what grandfather had told them. As for drawings, the investigator noted that there were some in the file. And then looked no further. In my grandfather’s file there are indeed drawings on millimeter paper: not of a “pump”, but of the fishery trust’s heating system, which grandfather was fixing before his arrest! As for grandfather's words about a “secret military-grade invention,” the investigator simply ignored them. That is, both my grandfather and the investigator erred: grandfather revealed what he shouldn’t have and the investigator, by some miracle, did not notice! Evidently, these NKVD officers were used to standard fabricated cases and did not suppose that the accused could have engaged in actual sabotage.

About the “ready-made” invention, there’s a story in our family. Before his last arrest, my grandfather showed my grandmother a hidden time bomb. He said it was made using his latest designs. Grandfather told her that if he was arrested, she should keep this bomb and give it to the people who would come for it. The bomb contained no explosives. Grandmother carried it with her on all her wanderings through Central Asia from 1942 to 1948. In 1948, the bomb was brought to Moscow, and stored in a communal apartment in Sokolniki until the mid-1950s, when it was thrown away by relatives, lest it be found.

Was this bomb one of the inventions that my grandfather had contracted for at the Astrakhan metal factory in 1934? Could this really have been? Or is there another explanation?

The trial took place in June 1939. There were no grounds for charging grandfather with espionage and sabotage, apart from the executed Raudonikis’s “confession”. Grandfather was tried for “wrecking” at work. He attempted to refute the charges, but the verdict was predetermined, as is recorded with utmost naivety in the court's ruling: Rempel stated that “all the material in the case is false... During the trial, he tried to confuse the witnesses and the court with all kinds of words and remarks to justify himself... He behaved incontinently and disrupted the inquiry.” Grandfather's “words and remarks” were not entered into the record. In his final statement to the court, Rempel told the witnesses: “You, too, will soon be sitting in prison, like me.” Grandfather was sentenced to “only” 10 years in the camps. 

On the night of July 28, some prisoners were due to be transferred away from the NKVD’s Aralsk district department. At that point, evidently, grandfather's self-control deserted him. He began to shout through his cell window, calling on prisoners to refuse to go. As a result, three prisoners (Rempel, Nazarov and Antonov) refused to leave their cells. Grandfather also shouted at the guards, who recorded his words in their reports:

“We’ll talk to you in about two years. You knuckleheads will all be like this yourselves, then we’ll talk to you differently. There are a lot of us.” One of the escorts objected: “That won’t happen, where’d you get that information?” Grandfather replied: “We have that information from many people, and there are many people for them to tell. It’s so and will be so, because there are places where you’re already being destroyed, and you’re all beasts.”

Other guards reported grandfather’s words this way:

“We’ll talk to you in exactly two years and we will destroy you. Japan has already begun to attack, soon they’ll attack the Soviet Union, and then we’ll talk to you.”

“We'll talk to you in exactly two years, we'll settle accounts with you. Soviet rule will not last long. Japan is already doing its work...”

“The Soviet Union will soon collapse, Japan will take over. And then in two years I'll come back and cut off your heads.” He shouted something else too, and said many words against the Soviet government that I didn't understand. (Translation from the Kazakh)

He swore at the police and the NKVD officers. Rempel jumped on the police chief and was about to hit him, he said he would tear his head off. I grabbed Rempel to stop him. Rempel said he would burn them or come back in one or two years, and they would rot by themselves. And he said something else I didn't understand. (Translation from the Kazakh)

The three prisoners who refused to be transferred lay down on the ground. The guards tried  to “persuade” them, and then “force had to be used”. The three were bound and dragged onto a cart.

My grandfather’s words are interesting. It’s clear that in a state of affect he said what he had kept silent about during the investigation (although he obviously didn't say everything). First of all, grandfather referred to a group of people fighting against Soviet rule. Were they coordinated fighters or ordinary people who rejected the communist terror? And secondly, equally striking is his claim about the imminent defeat of the USSR. The hopes for a Japanese invasion must have been connected with the Battles of Khalkhin-Gol that were then taking place. But those were military actions on the country’s eastern edge. How could he have had such confidence in the fall of the USSR “in exactly two years”, i.e. in July 1941?

The next event took place that same night. The bound prisoners were loaded onto carts and taken to the station. There a Stolypin car was being loaded in a siding. Grandfather did not know that his wife had learned about the transfer and bribed the guards so that she and he could meet. The meeting took place on a railroad embankment. At this meeting grandfather said: “They never discovered the real thing.” What was the “real thing”?

What was it? Who were the people preparing explosive devices in the late 1930s? Obviously (given grandfather's mood) those bombs were intended for the fight against Soviet rule, but what exactly were their plans for overthrowing the government? Who took part in that endeavor?

After that, there was no more news from grandfather. Or rather, there was one message. One night in 1942, a former convict, a criminal, came to Aralsk and said that he had been in camp with grandfather. He said that the camp was in the north of the European part of Russia, somewhere between Vologda and Arkhangelsk. Grandfather had died shortly after arriving there. Before he died, grandfather had asked the criminal (who was soon to be released) to find his wife and tell her about his death. For confirmation, grandfather had given the criminal his glasses (or rather his glasses case).

From the observation file in the Kzyl-Orda UNKVD, it became clear that grandfather had been sent to the Soroka camp of the NKVD Gulag to build the Belomorsk-Arkhangelsk railroad. By 1941, construction of the railroad was mostly finished, and several tens of thousands of prisoners from Soroka were distributed among other large camps, while the old and sick were sent to the surrounding correctional labor colonies. Not a single letter came from my grandfather from the camps, although I myself have seen letters from a Soroka prisoner. A woman in Lviv keeps them.

In 1992 I was in the Arkhangelsk Department of Internal Affairs. There they found my grandfather's record card. True, the information on the card did not always match my grandfather's. Matched: surname, first name, patronymic and year of birth. Did not match: nationality (German, not Dutch), education (lower, not higher) and profession (without profession, not engineer). It’s clear the cards were filled out carelessly: essential identification information was exactly noted, while low-level clerical workers could invent the rest. According to his record card, my grandfather (if it was him) was in the Kodinsky penal colony until December 1942, and from 1942 to 1944 in the Emtsevsky penal colony, both in the Arkhangelsk region. The prisoner’s personal file, said the Arkhangelsk Department of Internal Affairs, was not preserved. Those files were supposedly kept in the basement. Then a pipe burst in the basement, the files got wet and were disposed of. I don't know if that’s true.

In 1992, a woman who had worked in the canteen in the 1940s was still living in the settlement at the Emtsevsky penal colony (the colony was still in operation). She recognized my grandfather from a photo, but couldn't remember his name until I told her. She said that he had worked in the colony office, making calculations and drawings.

Assuming the record card refers to my grandfather, he died two years after the criminal's visit to Aralsk. Then what was that about? From Solzhenitsyn's books and Tamara Petkevich's memoirs we know that NKVD officers sometimes passed ostensible messages from prisoners to their relatives on the outside. The meaning of these actions was not always clear. That the criminal’s message may have been a  prank is partly evidenced by grandfather’s request that his eye-glasses be returned (that is, his glasses were kept in the NKVD). But all these assumptions are shaky: the glasses could have been returned to him before he was transferred; the record card could refer to another person; the criminal could have received the glasses and his wife's address from grandfather, but lied about his death, etc. I don't know which version is the most likely. In any case, the geographical location of the penal colony is roughly the same in the observation file, on the record card, and in the criminal's tale.

So there you have it, an amazing story. I, of course, researched this case for many years, but I never discovered the “real thing” that the NKVD investigators had missed. From certain juxtapositions, inconsistencies and fragmentary words, I began to see the vague outlines of what was or could have been.

Maybe someone knows something about these same circumstances from another angle. Or maybe someone is studying the history of resistance to Soviet rule in the late 1930s and will be interested in what I learned. Conventional wisdom says that all organized resistance had been suppressed by the mid-1930s, but my grandfather’s example shows that that is not entirely true.