What was that about Russian elephants?

He was referring to a method of torture used by the Russian secret police called the slonik or "little elephant" where a gas mask is placed over the subject's head and the air supply is repeatedly cut off until just seconds before the suffocating subject passes out. The hose of the mask is said to resemble an elephant's trunk.

It's a torture technique where they used to starve you of oxygen by blocking the end of that tube that connected to the gas mask...your lungs got so desperate for air that you'd rupture blood vessels everywhere and probably heamorrage and all sorts before passing out. the body has amazing muscle strength when it is desperate for survival that it does awful things to your internal organs when it heaves for air. Not pleasant.