(1)Thank you for your blog! I admire that you dedicate so much of your time for so hard a topic, and I personally learned quite a lot from it (…for example, that brainwashing does not work). Lately I have read quite a lot about revolutionary movements in Russia (mostly XIX and beginning of XX century) - and it seems that accounts of political processes, trials, interrogations, torture etc. do sometimes paint a different picture than the works of scientists you quote.
2)For example , you stress repeatedly that solitary confinement causes such severe memory problems that it actually is useless for interrogators to use this torture to gain accurate information. During my historic readings, I have stumbled on some cases where it does exactly that. The case of Gregory Goldenberg springs in mind - Goldenberg was a member of a terrorist group „People's Wil“ which later assassinated tsar Alexander II.(3)Goldenberg was captured during the preparation of a bombing in November 1879and was put in solitary confinement during the interrogation. А very cunninginterrogator, deputy procurator A. F. Dorbrzhinskii, started tofeed into his delusions and spin a story about the government which reallywould like to usher liberal reforms and would not touch the revolutionaries ifthey went back into legal field. (4) In April 1880 (so, after severalmonths in solitary), Goldenberg confessed - and left a 80-page-report listingall the revolutionaries he knew (and he knew a lot), with their names,features, illegal addresses, etc. It was an accurate information and has leadto many arrests. (5) Another example is a process of Decemberists of1825. During the trial after a failed political uprising, more than a hundredpeople were arrested, put in solitary cells and interrogated - the most were insolitary confinement for half a year. They were forced to write confessions,and most, unfortunately, provided the interrogators with an accurateinformation that led to more arrests and convictions. (6) (The processwas very well documented, most survivors left memoirs and letters, and no oneclaimed afterwards, when they were pardoned and it was safe to do so, that theywere convicted for lies - so I gather that the information had to be *more orless* accurate). … And so I became really interested why it seems that in thesetrials solitary confinement *did not* cause memory problems? I have thought,may be these are the outliers, statistically? (7) Or it was so, thatthey confessed not because of it, but because of other reasons (wanting toavoid punishment/save their fellow friends etc.), and solitary did not manageto impede with their memory?) Or that the political prisoners with strongbeliefs have better chances to survive it? Or was a perception of memorydifferent? (meaning they had memory problems, but it was still possible forinterrogators to latch on the snippets of info? (sorry for wording, Russian ismy first language!)
Your English is absolutely fine. :)
But I’m not sure if thisquestion is about fiction or writing. Which is the focus of the blog.
Commenting onhistorical cases is interesting, but reading up on them and trying to figurewhat actually happened takes a lot oftime. Master project or PhD levels of time.
This is also somethingapologists love doing, bringing up historical hard-to-refute examples wherethey say torture ‘worked’.
I don’t think that’s your motivation(or indeed any of the readers on the blog) but it is a tactic I’ve seen used andone Rejali briefly discusses.
So what I’m going to dois I’m going to approach this not by intensely studying these particular cases(I’d love to but realistically I don’t have the time to do it properly) but bypointing out the bits that are usually missing from stories like this one.Basically I’m looking back over the detailed analysis of cases that do exist and drawing on the differencebetween what happened and what torturers saidthere to give an idea of what mighthave happened here.
Let’s start withGoldenberg.
To me the case you’redescribing doesn’t read like solitaryconfinement in the sense I use the term. Solitary confinement means 23 hours ormore a day without human contact.
That includes theguards and interrogators.
The situation you’redescribing sounds very much like the interrogator, Dorbzhinskii spent a lot of time with Goldenberg. That’sactually a very good (though manipulative) interrogation strategy.
It sounds as thoughwhat Dorbzhinskii did was isolate Goldenberg and then befriend him. He took months to carefully build up a trustingrelationship with Goldenberg, probably spending significant periods of timewith him every day. Because, well, it takessignificant periods of time over days, weeks and months to build up arelationship like that. I imagine Dorbzhinskii would have had to spend at least 3-5 hours a day with Goldenbergand probably spent longer (6-7 hours daily would not surprise me). He wasprobably also instructing the guards to be civil, friendly and treat Goldenbergwith respect as any abuse would have broken the trust he was building.
Building that kind oftrust is a good interrogation tactic,it’s something that really works. It’s something I’ve suggested in the past asan alternative to a ‘brainwashing’ narrative.
It sounds to me asthough Goldenberg didn’t confess because he was in solitary confinement: heconfessed because he trusted his interrogator. And that really seems to be oneof the main aims of realinterrogation.
I wouldn’t class thisas a torture case. I’d class this as clever, manipulative, interrogation.
And I’d therefore expect the information volunteered to bereasonably accurate (though it is worth mentioning that even witnesses andsuspects who want to give authoritiesinformation can make honest mistakes).
What happened with theDecemberists is rather trickier for me to pin down.
If the honest successrate was really that high then I’d suggest the interrogators were using similartactics to Dorbzhinskii. Again the fact that each prisoner had a cell tothemselves does not necessarily meanthey experienced solitary confinement.
And as you point outthere are a lot of reasons why people confess that don’t necessarily have anything to do with committing the crime.
The number one reasonfor false confessions in modern Japan is thought to be poverty (Rejalidiscusses this). Given the choice of confessing and receiving a lightersentence or losing all the money they have in a defence case that might fail a lot of people chose toconfess whether they’re guilty or not.
The pardons may alsohave been a major factor. If the Decemberists knew they were likely to bepardoned if they confessed then confessing (regardless of the truth of thematter) would have made sense. Because if they didn’t confess in that situation it could be seen as furtherantagonism towards the Tsar, inviting a ‘guilty’ verdict and a stiffpunishment.
Sometimes when people are guilty and the authorities don’tactually have any evidence against them they can be manipulated into confessingand giving more details of their crime away. This is usually done by foolingthe suspect into thinking the police already know all the details and have allthe evidence.
I’d suggest that couldhave been a tactic here.
It’s also pretty commonfor people to falsely confess if there is sometruth in what they’re saying. So for example someone who had attended a lot ofDecemberist meetings, or listened to them speak but not actively participated could probably be persuaded toconfess to more than just standingthere listening.
And I do mean persuaded rather than forced.
Essentially I feel likeif the police campaign against the Decemberists was this successful then thechances of it involving torture or solitary confinement (as opposed toisolating the prisoners from their allies) is pretty small. From yourdescription I would guess that theguards and interrogators used tactics to befriend and win the trust ofindividual prisoners.
They probably also promised them reduced punishmentsand said confessing would protect the prisoner’s friends and family.
Basically it soundsextremely likely to me that these particular cases didn’t actually involve longterm isolation or abuse. It sounds as though these cases met with successbecause the interrogators used non-violent tactics, to build up a relationshipwith the criminals involved. They got confessions and information by winningthe trust of the prisoners. That is realistic,sensible interrogation.
I might be wrong,because I’m going purely from your description and there are probably otherfactors that a detailed historical analysis would bring up. And it’s always worth considering who recordedpieces of history and why when looking at anything historical.
Hopefully this isenough to answer your question though (and help anyone who is thinking about writing interrogation in historical Russia). :)
