Vl. Khediashev, Human Beasts. September 11, 1926

Original Source: Smena, 11 September 1926, p. 3.

The San-Galli Garden

In truth, it's not a garden. It's a dirty lot with a dozen broken trees and paths overgrown with grass and littered with beer bottles, cans, rags, and feces. It stretches out along Ligovka [Ligovskii Prospect, a street notorious for its lawlessness since at least the start of the twentieth century] and opens onto Predtechenskaia Street. Or rather, it doesn't open onto Predtechenskaia but has been forced to open onto it by a local gang that has ripped boards out of the fence every two or three meters, so that you can crawl out of it onto Predtechenskaia. Predtechenskaia, a street where in broad daylight old and young alike gamble" [Colloquial names for forms of gambling roughly equivalent to "blackjack," "pitch-and-toss," and, possibly, it game of dice played against a wall.] Where there is a bar on every corner. Where at night "the ring of the tambourine and the moans of the guitar" can be heard along the dark, unlit street. Where the gang roams. And in the crumbling houses the gang has set up its lairs. There it plans its "dry and wet" deeds.' [Thieves' slang for crimes the commission of which will (wet) or will not (dry) require the shedding of blood.]

And it is here, amidst all this filth and drunkenness, so little washed by the Revolution, that the Kooperator factory is located. The factory's workers live in damp, unenticing houses along Predtechenskaia Street near the factory.

And it was here, several days ago, that an act of brutality occurred the likes of which old Peter [Petersburg] cannot remember.

Brutality, which claimed as its victim a twenty-one-year-old peasant girl, Citizen B., who had come to Leningrad to study at a Rabfak and who lived with her brother, a medical student.

On Saturday, 21 August, at ten in the evening, she set out to see her girlfriend on Tambov Street. She walked along Ligovka. The street was noisy. Tens of drunks wandered aimlessly, and the air was thick with curses. Not paying attention to any of this, the girl went on her way.

Now came Chubarov Alley, and she turned into it to reach Predtechenskaia.

She never made it there. She was stopped and surrounded by boisterous local youths, of whom not a few were workers at the Kooperator. The youths were in a fine mood. Earlier in the day they had buried a comrade and had been imbibing heavily to commemorate his death. When they had carried their friend to the Volkovo Cemetery, they had already been fairly drunk, and they had put away a few more while at the Cemetery. And now these fellows stopped Citizen B. They threw a dirty rag over her eyes:

"Shut up," the gang, nineteen to twenty-five years old, warned.

They didn't give her a chance to say much. They grabbed her arms and dragged her along Predtechenskaia into the San-Galli Garden. They pushed her through a hole in the fence, into the garden. In the garden the beasts took the blindfold off her eyes. The girl saw that something was amiss. A large crowd had surrounded her. Their eyes were burning. They were cursing. They were laughing. Someone was singing songs.

-Unbutton it,-rasped a voice, and they began to take off her coat.

Citizen B. thought they were robbers, and she offered them her coat, if only they would let her go.

-What? Let you go?-The beasts roared.

-Lie down ... It'll be better that way!- and with a blow they knocked her legs out from under her.

She fell. She lost consciousness, but the beasts did not lose theirs. One after another they satisfied their raging passions.

Someone grumbled:

-We'll be heard. And so that they wouldn't be heard,' they dragged her to another place. The girl regained consciousness for a moment. She felt pain in her body. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth; she was not able to say a word.

-She's not breathing, the bitch! shouted the beasts waiting their turn.

-She better not have croaked,-one of the beasts said, -We have to bring her back to life.

And the brutal reanimation began. They beat her in the side, they beat her in the face, they pulled her hair and dragged her about the garden, they dragged her for a long time. Finally, they succeeded in making her gasp.

-She's spoken,-the beasts' voices cheered up, and once more they continued their disgusting work. One after another they raped the girl. Those who enjoyed themselves too long were dragged off.

Among the youths appeared Citizen K., no longer young, a forty-nine-year-old worker at the Kooperator.

-Don't butt in, old man, you don't have it anymore, but you're still hanging out with the girls,-the beasts laughed at the old man and didn't want to give him a turn at the victim.

-Just have a look now-whether I've got it or not,-and the forty-nine-year-old K. savagely began to do what twenty youngsters had already done before him.

Rare are scenes such as the one that occurred in the San-Galli Garden, and not only nineteen-year-olds came to this show, children came as well. They watched from the bushes.

The beasts knew what they were doing. Fearing that their victim might later identify them, they took off her underwear and covered her face with it.

When no fewer than twenty people had finished their business and they had pulled the suffering and exhausted girl to the exit to Predtechenskaia, from somewhere or other came a group of ten more, and the girl was raped again... This violent savagery continued for a long time ...

At the exit from the garden, they grouped around their victim. Someone asked:

Has everyone done it?

Everyone,-the voices responded.

At the exit from the garden they threatened the victim and with their fists extracted a promise from her that she wouldn't tell anyone what had happened.

Barely able to move, Citizen B. made her way home and there, along with the janitor, informed a policeman on duty. The police immediately carried out a raid and arrested five people. Two admitted participating in the rape.

Source: Eric Naiman, Sex in Public: the incarnation of early Soviet ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 251-253.