Vsevolod Meyerhold

Victims of the Great Purge (16 person items)

"Theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested in 1939 and shot in February 1940 for "spying" for Japanese and British intelligence. His wife, the actress Zinaida Raikh, was murdered in her apartment. In a letter to Vyacheslav Molotov dated 13 January 1940, Meyerhold wrote: The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap ... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs wer"