"In his instructions on the use of Red Terror, the Chekist M. I. Latsis wrote: 'In the interrogation do not seek evidence and proof that the person accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first question should be: What is his class, what is his origin, what is his education and upbringing? . . . These are the questions which must determine the fate of the accused.'"
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The gulag archipelago 1918-1956: an experiment in literary investigation I-II, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 96-97. Martin Ivanovich Latsis, born in 1888, was himself executed as a counter-revolutionary in 1938.
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