The Great Terror at 40
《大恐怖》四十周年
In the late Sixties when my book The Great Terror came out, it was still true that, as the great historian François Furet noted, after the war and the demise of fascism, “all the major debates on postwar ideas revolved round a single question: the nature of the Soviet regime.” He adds the paradox that communism had two main embodiments—as a backward despotism and as a constituency in the West that had to be kept unaware of the other’s reality. And, up to the last, this was often accompanied by a view of the Cold War as an even exchange—with the imputation that any denigration of the Soviet regime was due to peace-hating prejudice.
上世纪六十年代后期，我的书《大恐怖》（The Great Terror）刚出版之际，有个论断还是正确的。如著名历史学家弗朗索瓦·傅勒所言，在二战结束与法西斯主义消亡之后，“战后所有的重大理念之争都只围绕着一个问题：苏联政权的本质。”他补充道，共产主义的两大现实是相互矛盾的：一个是落后的专制统治；另一个则是它在西方世界所获得的支持，这些支持者必须对前一项现实保持无知。直到最后，这一悖论通常还伴随了另一种观念，认为冷战是一场公平对抗，将任何对苏联政权的贬斥都归罪于厌恶和平的偏见。
What was the condition of our previous knowledge of Stalinist actuality before, let us say, 1956? We had for decades had a large amount of real information about the purges, all often rejected or ignored, while little truth and much falsehood had emerged from Moscow. However, since 1956, starting with the revelations of Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech it was (or seemed) indisputable that a regime of lies and terror had indeed been in existence. Over the years that followed came the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which, as Galina Vishnevskaya put it, “let the genie out of the bottle, and however hard they tried later, they couldn’t put it back in.”
比如说，1956年之前，我们对斯大林主义的真实状况到底知道多少呢？几十年来，我们拥有大量关于苏联政治清洗的真实资料，却大都不被认可或者被忽视，与此同时只有零星真相和大量谎言从莫斯科传来。但是，自1956年起，以尼基塔•赫鲁晓夫“秘密演讲”所揭露的为开端，这样一个事实已变得（或至少看起来）无可争议：那里早已存在一个由谎言和恐怖维持的政权。之后的数年间，《伊凡·杰尼索维奇的一天》【译注：索尔仁尼琴的一部中篇小说，以作者自己的劳改营生活为素材写成。】出版了，借用卡丽娜·维许涅芙丝卡雅的评价，这本书“将妖怪放出了魔瓶，不管当局之后多么努力，都已无可挽回。”
So by 1964 or 1965 it had gradually become plain that a huge gap in history needed to be filled, and that the facts released over the past few years, plus the often denied testimony of some of the regime’s hostile but increasingly justified witnesses, could be put together, if carefully done, to produce a veridical story, a real history.
所以，到1964或1965年，一项清楚的共识逐渐形成：历史有一道鸿沟需要填补，如果将过去几年间揭露的真相，和过去遭否认但现在渐渐变得可信的苏联政权敌对证人的证言放在一起，足够仔细的话，就能呈现出一个真实的故事，一段真实的历史。
When my book came out in 1968, the publishers were surprised to have to reprint it time and time again to meet demand. Reviews, from left and right, were almost all very favorable. And it was soon published in most Western languages—and also Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, and Turkish.
我的书于1968年出版之后，出版商们吃惊地发现，需要不停地再版才能满足读者的需求。从左派到右派，几乎所有的书评都表示了赞赏。不久，这本书的译本也纷纷出版，不仅大多数西方语言有译本，还有印地语、阿拉伯语、日语以及土耳其语的译本。
Over the decades that followed, “the period of stagnation” as it became known in Russia, there was little further public addition to our knowledge—or to that of the Soviet citizen. But in those years came many breaches of the official silence. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn “illegally” gave us The Gulag Archipelago. From Andrei Sakharov came striking interviews and interventions. There was a flowering of samizdat and, to counter it, many arrests (and confinement in penal “psychiatric” wards— as reported by my friend Vladimir Bukovsky and others—as well as the Gulag).
在接下来的几十年中，俄国进入了一个此后被称为“停滞期”的阶段，我们几乎再没得到更多关于苏联政权的公开消息，苏联人民也是如此。但是在那些年间，官方的沉默也几次三番被打破。亚历山大·索尔仁尼琴 “非法地”将《古拉格群岛》传递出来。安德烈·萨哈罗夫【译注：苏联 “苏联氢弹之父”，人权运动家，1975年获诺贝尔和平奖。】则让我们看到了令人震惊的警察询问和干涉【编注：此句原文颇费解，姑作此译】。地下文学出版发行曾经历了一段兴盛期，与之相应的，有很多人因此被逮捕（以及被监禁在刑罚性的“精神病院”——由我的朋友Vladimir Bukovsky及其他人所报道——还有古拉格）。
And there was Roy Medvedev’s Let History Judge — from, what is more, a devoted Leninist: a deeply detailed blow at the Stalin terror. There was a liberalism of the catacombs. Above all, the old falsifications lost credibility among anything describable as an educated class in Russia. The public acceptance of what they knew to be not merely falsehoods, but stupid and long-exposed falsehoods—the mere disgrace of it ate into the morale of even the official intelligentsia, as I remember noting in conversations with Soviet diplomats. Meanwhile, the original 1968 edition of The Great Terror had been published in a Russian version (in Florence, in 1972) and was soon being smuggled into the USSR, where it was welcomed by many outside—and, as we now know, inside—official circles.
还有罗易·梅德韦杰夫的著作《让历史来审判》——特别是它来自一位真挚的列宁主义者，这是对斯大林恐怖统治沉重而细节详尽的一记重击。墓室里也藏着自由主义。尤其是，过去的弄虚作假已在俄国任何可称为受过教育的阶层中丢尽信誉。人们公开接受那些他们明知为错，而且还是愚蠢至极、久已揭露的错误——仅仅是由此产生的耻辱就能侵蚀掉甚至身在朝堂的知识阶层的士气，我记得自己在与苏联外交官的交谈中就有此观感。在此期间，1968初版的《大恐怖》也发行了俄文译本（1972年，在佛罗伦萨），并且不久就被走私到苏联，受到了官员圈子以外的热烈追捧——还有，如我们现在所知，也包括了官圈内部成员。
In the early 1980s came the realization by some in Moscow that the whole regime had become nonviable economically, ecologically, intellectually— and even militarily—largely because of its rejection of reality. When it came to Soviet history, and Stalin’s Terror, there was, as on other themes, some sharp disagreement in the Politburo—later to produce the attempted coup of 1991. The highest leadership itself had not managed to find the facts about the fate of its own relatives! It is only years later that records of these disputes have been published.
1980年代初期，莫斯科的一些人终于意识到，整个政权在经济层面、生态层面、智力层面——甚至是军事层面——无法继续维持下去的主要原因是它自身对现实的拒绝。当谈及苏联历史和斯大林的恐怖统治时，如同谈及其它一些议题一样，政治局中存在着尖锐的分歧——后来还曾引发了1991年的未遂政变。甚至连苏联最高领导层都弄不清楚有关其亲属下落的事实！数年后，有关这些争论的记录才被公开出版。
One finds Mikhail Gorbachev telling his colleagues, “Millions rehabilitated— that is the great service done by Nikita Khrushchev.” Why did this “stop short?” he asked. “Because Khrushchev too had blood on his hands.” As to his successors, they had done their best to keep the truth unknown: “Under Brezhnev, under Andropov, under Chernenko, even members of the Politburo had no information.” As to what followed, Stalin’s “use of the Kirov murder to bring in repression,” the only motive was “the struggle for power.” And Gorbachev adds: “Plots against him—that’s all rubbish (chepukkha).”
我们看到，米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫曾对他的同僚说，“数百万人被平反了——这是由尼基塔•赫鲁晓夫完成的伟大贡献。”但为什么又“突然停下了呢？”他问道。“因为赫鲁晓夫的双手也沾满鲜血。”而他的继任者们则尽其所能隐瞒真相：在勃列日涅夫、安德罗波夫、契尔年科治下，甚至连某些政治局成员都不知道相关信息。”正如戈尔巴乔夫接下来所说的，斯大林“借基洛夫谋杀案实行镇压”的唯一动机就是“夺取权力”。”他还补充道：“针对他的阴谋——那全是胡说八道(chepukkha)。”
“And this was Stalin,” Gorbachev told his colleagues. “How can that be accepted, let alone forgiven?”
“这就是斯大林，”戈尔巴乔夫对他的同僚们说道。“这怎么可能被接受，更何谈原谅？”
He then speaks of “3 million sentenced, and that the most active part of the nation. A million shot. And that is not counting the share of dekulakization and the fate of people at the time of deportations. And this was Stalin. How can that be accepted, let alone forgiven?”
他接着谈到了，“三百万人被判刑，而这些人正是这个国家最有活力的那部分。一百万人被枪毙了，这还没算上反富农斗争所造成的死亡人数和当时被流放者的命运。这就是斯大林。这怎么可能被接受，更何谈原谅？”
This was not for publication. But the whole direction of glasnost, amongst other things, brought a mass of officially banned knowledge out of hiding. The first public mention in Russia of my book was when Katrina vanden Heuvel interviewed me for Moskovskie Novosti in April 1989.
这些本不会被公开。但是，在公开性政策等的大方向指引之下，大量官方封禁的内幕得见天日。俄国对我的著作的首次公开提及，是在1989年4月，《莫斯科新闻报》发表了记者Katrina vanden Heuvel对我的采访。
When I was in Moscow later that year, it was all over. Through the decade there had been little reply to the book from the party establishment. But now the Stalinist writer Aleksandr Chakovsky called me “anti-Sovietchik number one” at the last plenum of the Central Committee. By that time the Russian edition was being serialized (in a million copies each month) in Neva.
那一年再晚些时候，我正呆在莫斯科，一切都结束了。十年来，当权政党对这本书的回应微乎其微。但是现在，斯大林主义作家Aleksandr Chakovsky在中央委员会最后一次全体会议把我称作的“头号反苏联者”。那时候，俄文版《大恐怖》正在《涅瓦》杂志上连载（该刊月发行量一百万份）。
The new openness had produced so much new material that it became possible, and even necessary, to produce a new edition of this book. The Great Terror: A Reassessment was published in 1990. Over the next four or five years, I was welcomed in Russia, making many friends, speaking to cultural and other groups and at conferences hosted by the Soviet Foreign Ministry.
新采取的公开性政策带来了如此多的新材料，使得为这本书重写一个新版本不仅是可能的，也是必须的。《大恐怖：重新评估》于1990年出版。在接下来的四、五年间，我受到了俄国的欢迎，结交了新朋友，向文化类与其它性质的团体发表讲话，还参与了由苏联外交部主办的研讨会。
Going into Izvestiya to collect payment for a contribution to a Moscow journal, I saw a portrait of Nikolai Bukharin (purged and executed in 1938) hanging alongside those of the other former editors. I spent some weeks being filmed there for the documentary series Red Empire, made by Granada Television. As I encountered those I had met earlier abroad, it was hard not to relish Andrei Voznesensky’s saying he could hardly believe I was there: could he pinch me to make sure?
在我前往《消息报》为我向莫斯科一家刊物的投稿领取稿酬时，我看到尼古拉·布哈林的画像（于1938年遭清洗、处决）与历任主编的画像挂在一起。我在莫斯科停留了几周，参与摄制了由格拉纳达电视台制作的系列纪录片《红色帝国》。当我在那儿与此前曾在国外见过的人相见时，安德烈·沃兹涅先斯基的说法就很容易引起我的回味，他说他真不敢相信我会出现在那里：他能够打我几拳来确认吗？
The information now available established the story clearly as to historical essentials, and in a generally correct way as to almost all crucial details. But we were soon like modern historians of an ancient empire who have had to rely on a few inscriptions, some only recently deciphered, when a huge store of firsthand records is discovered under some pyramid. It was enough for generations of archaeologists… . So eventually we come to the 2008 edition.
现在，可用的资料已然建构起整个故事，基础史实清晰，几乎所有的重要细节总体上都是正确的。但是很快，我们就像是研究古代帝国的现代历史学家了，本来一直依赖着一点点的碑文，其中一些还是最近才被破译的，忽然有天却从某个金字塔底下发现了大量的一手记录。这些记录足够好几代的考古学家去研究了……所以最后我们看到了2008版的《大恐怖》。
By far the most substantial additions, or amendments, to our knowledge have been the set of decrees on “Mass Operations” in 1937–38. The lists of those sentenced by the Military Collegium were sent to Stalin, and given his approval, with only a few Politburo members also signing.
到目前为止，对我们的认知产生了最实质的补充或者修正的，就是1937-1938“集体处决”的一系列判决了【编注：这次“大行动”是指1936-1938年大清洗期间由苏联内务人民委员会（NKVD）实施的一系列针对特定类别人群（比如富农、少数民族、外国人）的行动，共导致一百多万人被逮捕，数十万人被处决】。被苏联最高法院军事委员会审判的人，人员名单会递交给斯大林，获得他的批准和仅少许几个政治局成员的签字。【编注：大清洗期间经斯大林亲自签令处决的，据统计有681,692人。】
Nor did this informal leadership group have much time to spare. Records show that they had to make so many decisions on other urgent matters of policy that these terror orders were usually handled in twenty or thirty minutes. But when it comes to the Mass Operations, one finds that the number of victims in these accounted for nearly twenty times the number of victims of the Military Collegium and other lesser tribunals.
但这个非正式的领导小组也抽不出太多时间。记录显示，还有很多紧迫的其他政策事项需要他们做出决定，以至于这些恐怖命令通常在二、三十分钟内就被解决了。但到了“集体处决”阶段，我们发现，受难者的数量几乎是被军事委员会或其他次级法庭判刑的受难者的二十倍。
The mass terror was ordered in detail from the top, and was directed, with the numbers to be repressed laid down for each province and republic, for each stratum of the population—with individual crimes of terrorism, espionage, and so on added later by the local troika—and the lists of names then submitted to Moscow for final approval.
大恐怖是细致地自上而下要求的，各省、各共和国和各个阶层都受指定的镇压人数指导——个人犯下的恐怖主义活动罪、间谍罪及后来由当地三人领导小组增加的罪行——接着，罪犯名单就会递交给莫斯科以获得最终批准。
That is to say, the strata were condemned as such, and the mass terror was seen as a removal of all that seemed unassimilable to the Stalinist order. Stalin’s mass action against a section of the population was thus taken on “ideological” grounds, merely disguising it as a purge of terrorists, spies, and saboteurs necessary to the safety and survival of the regime.
换言之，社会阶层是因其存在本身而被定罪的，大恐怖行动可以看做是一项清除所有被认为无法被斯大林秩序同化的群体的行动。因此，斯大林针对该国人口的一部分所采取的大规模行动是出于“意识形态”基础，只是伪装成了为保证政权的安全和生存，对恐怖分子、间谍和破坏分子的肃清。
In the 2008 edition we have much new material on the personalities and activities of the key secret police operators and of the whole mechanism of terror.
2008年的版本中，我们增加了许多新材料，主要是关于秘密警察中核心人物的活动与性格，以及大恐怖的整体运作机制。
My book has been faulted for giving too little attention to the context of Russia and of the Russian historical and mental backgrounds. We find what seem to be contradictions. Any reader of the country’s great literature may feel an especially Russian humanism arising from the depths of the “national character.”
我的书有所不足，对俄国当时所处的历史情境、俄国的历史背景与精神背景给予的关注太少。我们发现了其中的一些矛盾。读过该国伟大文学的读者也许能从他们的“民族性格”深处感受到一种俄式人文主义。
On the other hand, Ronald Hingley (in his classic The Russian Mind) saw the fictional and the real Russian as living in great dullness interspersed with, or accompanying, extreme outbursts, but also possessed by a view of the country’s past and present as deplorable yet containing as recompense a wonderful future with some sort of national glory compensating for everything. A complementary trait often reported is the fear that a Russian, or Russia, is being deceived or cheated—the sort of thing we see in Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls and in Soviet xenophobia.
但另一方面，罗纳德·辛格雷（在他的杰作《俄罗斯心智》中）看见的却是虚构的、真实的俄国人生活在极度的无聊之中，点缀或伴随着极端的爆发。不仅如此，他们的头脑中同时也有一种观念，认为整个国家的过去和现在是恶劣的，但也相信会有个美好的未来作为补偿，那时某种国家荣誉将能弥补一切。而经常报道的一种相关特性是，一种对俄罗斯人或俄罗斯正在遭受欺骗的恐惧——从尼古莱·果戈理的《死魂灵》和苏联的仇外主义中可见一斑。
But this does downgrade Russia’s other options—liberalism or pluralism. As Boris Pasternak put it, in the 1880s came “the birth of an enlightened and affluent middle class, open to occidental influences, progressive, intelligent, artistic.” There are many historical and modern examples of this more “Western” style of thought in Russia, deep-set, and though often disenchanted continuing to present a more viable and civilized future. The present leadership has, at least to a large extent, given up Soviet-type economics.
但这的确低估了俄罗斯的其他选择——自由主义或者多元主义。举Boris Pasternak所言为例，1880年代“开化、富裕的中产阶级开始出现，他们愿意接纳西方影响，进步、睿智并且富有艺术气息。”纵观俄罗斯古今历史，这样的例子能够举出很多。这种更为“西式”的思想风格是根深蒂固的，尽管经常幻灭，但仍持续代表着一个具有更高可行性与文明度的未来。现在的领导层，至少在很大程度上，已经放弃了苏联模式的经济。
But one can have “reform” without liberalism— as with Peter the Great and Pyotr Stolypin. Above all, we are still far from the rule of law—much more important than “democracy.” As elsewhere, the problem seems to be to free the idea of the “nation” from both archaic barbarism and from the more recently bankrupted verbalisms that have partly melded into it.
但是，一个政权是可以不走自由主义道路而完成改革的——比如彼得大帝与彼得·斯托雷平所做的那样。毕竟，现今的俄罗斯还远没有做到法治——这比“民主”更为重要。和别处一样，问题似乎在于要将“国家”这一观念从陈旧的野蛮中解放出来，同时也从已部分融入其中、但不久前已破产的空洞教条中解放出来。
The history of the period covered by The Great Terror sees the enforcement of Stalin’s totally intolerant belief system—with terror as the decisive argument. Terror means terrorizing. Mass terror means terrorizing the whole population, and must be accompanied by the most complete public exposure of the worst enemies of the people, of the party line, and so of the truth. We know the results. One of the strangest notions put forward about Stalinism is that in the interests of “objectivity” we must be—wait for it—“nonjudgmental.” But to ignore, or downplay, the realities of Soviet history is itself a judgment, and a very misleading one.
《大恐怖》中提及的历史时期，见证了斯大林彻底不容异己的思想体制的贯彻过程——恐怖就是这一体制的硬道理。恐怖意味着施加恐吓，大恐怖则意味着对全体国民施加恐吓，同时必然伴随着对人民和政党的死敌，因此也是真理的死敌的最全面、公开的揭露。我们知道这样做的后果。对于斯大林主义，人们提出的最怪异的概念之一是，为了“客观性”，我们必须做到——听好了——“不加评判”。但是，刻意忽视或淡化苏联历史的实情，这本身就是一个评判，并且还是极具误导性的那种。
翻译：Eartha（@王小贰_Eartha）
校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
编辑：辉格@whigzhou