Thirteen Nasty Little Snakes, The Case of Stalin's Assassins

Thirteen young people, all college students, were arrested in 1944 in Moscow by the Soviet State security. They were charged with an attempt to assassinate Stalin. All of them were sentenced to different terms of forced labor in GULAG and three of them paid with their lives. A participant and a survivor of this affair, Victor Levenstein, tells us about this so called case in his memoir. The majority of the arrested were "children of the enemies of the People" – their parents where victims of Stalin’s purges of nineteen thirties. Their friendship began in the early school years in the privileged school in Moscow, where children of Stalin, Molotov and Soviet cultural elite where among the students.

The State security learned about this group of independently thinking young people and fabricated a case of "The anti-Soviet terrorist youth group planning comrade Stalin’s assassination". During the investigation the majority of the arrested were subjected to the physical and psychological torture. They "confessed" to the anti-Soviet activity and seven of them to the preparation of the assassination of Stalin. Interrogators concocted an adventure story of the assassination preparations featuring an apartment from the window of which the "villains" were going to shoot Stalin.

The book tells us about the interrogations in the infamous Lubianka, State Security prison where Mr. Levenstein and his friends spent almost a year. The machinery of the interrogation techniques is described in detail, explaining how they were forced to implicate themselves. We learn about the life in interrogation and transitional prisons, labor camps and exile, about the fascinating people the author came across on his "journey". One of them was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whom the author met at Ekibastus penal camp – the camp, where the action of Solzhenitsyn’s novel "One day in life of Ivan Denisovich" takes place.

The Russian version of the book "Tobacco smoke over the bunks..." was published in Moscow in 2009 by the prestigious publishing house "Russki Put’". The book presentation at the Solzhenitsyn’s library-foundation was a significant cultural event in Moscow. The Russian TV dedicated a segment to it on the channel "Kul’tura" (Culture) and on the Sunday program "News of the week". Radio broadcasts were also dedicated to the book including a program on the radio station "Liberty" for broadcast to Europe. Several positive book reviews were published in the Russian press.

A condensed version of the book appeared in the Russian language literary and political magazine "Continent", published in Moscow and Paris. In the preface to the published chapters the magazine’s editorial board wrote: "Victor Levenstein’s narration supplements books of A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Shalamov, E. Ginzburg with new very important details and facts, helping us imagine and understand the criminal machinery of repression created by Lenin and Stalin."

-- Victor Levenstein