Michael Malice

This was 1920.

They were a bunch of kids in Moscow who were pickpockets between ages 11 and 15.

They rounded them up and they're like, all right, point out your accomplices.

And they would take them in the trams and you have to point out people.

Then they would take them back to the cellar, beat the crap out of these children.

And then they take them out again.

And if they didn't point out to anybody, they beat them.

They're like, all right.

So they just start pointing at random.

And the thing that was really sick about this story, if that wasn't sick enough, is that the screams that the other criminals, the adult hardened criminals had to hear from these children as they realized they were being taken back to the cellar.

It was just horrifying.

Because then it's like, oh, you couldn't get a confession out of him?

Are you an enemy of the people now as well?

And the thing that was even crazier is that a lot of these interrogators were frustrated because they're like, look, we both know you're innocent.

Just sign this confession and make my life easier.

They knew it was crap.

Stalin joked about it.

Joked about this.

This is one of his little jokes.

There was a kid who was arrested and he was said, oh, it was forced to say, you wrote Eugene Onegin, which is a play.