PYOTR ORESHIN
(1887-1938)

To the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs
Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov
from the arrested poet Pyotr Oreshin
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STATEMENT (fragment)
 

...During the last three years I have been detained by the police three times, and have been accompanied to the NKVD for counter-revolutionary terrorist attacks against Stalin and Kaganovich. It's evident that these attacks carne about as a result of participation in a counter-revolutionary terrorist group, marked by the saying: «What's in the mind of the sober, is on the tongue of the drunk.»
Nikolay Ivanovich, I am not hiding anything from you. I am approaching you with a pure heart, to ask you for mercy. Allow me through you, Nikolay Ivanovich, to ask forgiveness for rny grave sins from Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich. In prison at night I can't sleep. I am conscious of the full gravity of my crimes. 1 don't want to hide anything from you, in order that I may finally purify myself of this counter-revolutionary filth.
Have mercy on me. I will give my life away for this mercy and with my work 1 shall prove my devotion to my country and government...
Pyotr Oreshin

4 December 1937                                                                                   Lubyanka

(From "Written in prison.

XXth century. Russia")

Bilingual edition - Russian/English.

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