The monastery outside Moscow was officially named "Object 110,"
and known to prisoners as "Sukhanovka".
The annex acquired a horrific reputation for torture.
OBJECT 110 WAS ROOM 101
There were no rules of internal order,
and no defined rules for the conduct of investigations either.
Beria himself maintained an office there,
and personally supervised torture sessions
of the Sukhanovka prisoners.
GULAG: A HISTORY, by Anne Applebaum
Chapter 8 - Prison
page 146-148
....Their arrests and interrogations wore prisoners down, shocked them into submission, confused them, and disoriented them. But the Soviet prison system itself, where inmates were kept before, during, and often for a very long time after their interrogations, had an enormous influence on their state of mind as well...
As a rule, provincial prisons were filthier and more lax, Moscow prisons cleaner and more deadly. But even the three main Moscow prisons had slightly different characters.
The infamous Lubyanka, which still dominates a large square in central Moscow (and still serves as the headquarters for the FSB, the NKVD's and KGB's successor), was used for the reception and interrogation of the most serious political criminals. There were relatively few cells -- a 1956 document speaks of 118 -- and 94 were very small, for one to four prisoners....
By contrast, Lefortovo, also used for interrogation, had been a nineteenth-century military prison. Its cells, never intended to hold large numbers of prisoners, were darker, dirtier, and more crowded. Lefortovo is shaped like the letter K, and at its center, recalled the memoirist Dmitri Panin, "an attendant stands with a flag and directs the flow of prisoners being led to and from interrogation."
In the late 1930s, Lefortovo became so overcrowded that the NKVD opened an "annex" in the Sukhanovsky monastery outside Moscow. Officially named "Object 110," and known to prisoners as "Sukhanovka," the annex acquired a horrific reputation for torture: "There were no rules of internal order, and no defined rules for the conduct of investigations either." Beria himself maintained an office there, and personally supervised torture sessions of the Sukhanovka prisoners....
Butyrka prison, the oldest of the three, had been constructed in the eighteenth century, and was originally designed to be a palace, although it was quickly converted into a prison. Among its distinguished nineteenth-century inmates was Feliks Dzerzhinsky along with other Polish and Russian revolutionaires. Generally used to house prisoners who had finished interrogation and were awaiting transport, Butyrka was also crowded and dirty...
Traitors in family: Stalin's informers (new book about life in Russia) & Putin's youth groups defend Kremlin (just like Stalin's did). DailyMail/GlobeMail, Oct 17, 2007
20.Thought Police and 37.We Are The Dead and 38.Cellars and 39.Interrogation & Torture and 40.Electric Shock Brainwashing and 44.Room 101
TV SHOW "24" DENIGRATES AMERICA
Horror movie HOSTEL tops USA charts (shows torture as sport in pay-for-killing Soviet club using American boys as victims; sadistic sex, drugs, gore). Scotsman, Jan 10, 2006
SPYING FOR STALIN WAS BAD, RIGHT?
SOVIET GULAG'S HAUNTING LEGACY
DARK SIDE OF RED ARMY'S LIBERATION OF GERMANY
Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~
email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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