11. An Underwater Forest of Swaying Corpses
Rozalia Zemlyachka had tens of thousands executed by drowning with weights tied to their legs. When the waters were calm and visibility was good, rows of standing bodies off the shores of the Crimea could be seen at the bottom as they swayed like a horrific underwater forest, and gently moved back and forth with the currents. The author of the macabre executions returned to Moscow, and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner – then the highest Soviet military award.
She spent the rest of her life climbing the Communist Party’s rungs, and joined the Central Control Commission – the organization that kept a watchful eye on the party. Zemlyachka worked closely with the NKVD during the Great Terror, and so impressed Stalin with her ruthlessness that she was made head of the Control Commission in 1939. That made her the only woman in the USSR’s highest administrative body, the Council of People’s Commissars. She died of natural causes at age 71 in 1947, and was honored with a burial in the Kremlin.