The Suppression of Liberty
In December of 1917 there was established in Russia for the protection
of the Revolution and “to carry on the merciless struggle against those
trying to overthrow the Soviet system; against sabotage, banditage and
espionage and speculation” an organisation known as the Extraordinary
Commission. It has an Advisory Board of fifteen persons, all members
of the Communist party. Its head and chief is a man named Dserzhinsky,
a fanatical Communist whose adoration of Lenin is notorious. He is
assisted in his work, according to the Vice-President, with whom we
had an interview, by a definite staff of four thousand five hundred
persons, estimated by others who were present on this occasion at a
number enormously greater than that. These assistants consider it their
duty to arrest all whose actions appear to them to be inimical to the
welfare of the Communist State.
This great army of spies and police agents, largely the same men as
served the Czar’s régime, arrest for the most trivial offences and
on the slightest suspicion. A young man who has saved his money and
is buying his sweetheart a few expensive blossoms on her birthday is
arrested by the person standing next him in the shop on suspicion of
having received the money from some counter-revolutionary organisation.
He is kept in prison for several months. A delicate woman is kept
three days in prison for having too large a supply of white flour in
her house. She got it for a dying father and a sick sister by selling
valuable household goods. She was “denounced” by a former servant who
occupies a room in the same house though he is not now in their service.
This Extraordinary Commission has its agents everywhere, in every
organisation and at every public gathering; and nobody can be sure
of his neighbour or even of his friend. It has its own soldiers, who
enjoy better rations than the men at the front, its own prisons and
its “secret police.” It formerly had the power of life and death, and
has executed thousands of persons without trial. Though nominally that
power has been taken from it and handed over to the Revolutionary
Tribunals, it is by no means clear that the power does not actually
remain. In any case, the Revolutionary Tribunals work in complete
sympathy with the Commission, so there is no real change.
The Extraordinary Commission works independently of the Government
and is so strong, thanks to the fear created by the war, that it is
regarded as the Government in everything that matters. It was said that
there is nobody in Russia who does not go in fear of it except Lenin. I
have no means of testing this, of course; but I know that everybody I
met in Russia outside the Communist party goes in terror of his liberty
or his life. The pervading fear worked terribly on the subconscious
selves of some of us, and we lived hourly in a spirit of hot hate of
the cruelties and tyrannies which met us at every turn.
The fair young English girl who came to beg us to help her and her baby
to her friends in England, told us calmly but pathetically that her
husband had been shot in prison.
“I do not know why,” she said. “He was not political. He never
talked politics to me. He translated for the Russians in the army of
Judenitch. But he was sent there by the Government.”
Poor thing. Her husband was possibly guilty. But he had had no trial.
She had lost him by violence. And she herself was threatened with
starvation and was refused permission to leave the country.
Two hundred and forty-one anarchists we heard were shot out of hand in
Petrograd, the new order against capital punishment being kept back
until this had been done.
We were very glad of an opportunity of meeting those who claimed
to speak authoritatively for the Commission, for the confession
of shooting without trial ten thousand persons admitted in the
Government’s organ, _Isvestia_, had been deeply distressing to us.
“Is it true,” the chairman was asked, “that the Extraordinary
Commission has shot ten thousand people without trial?”
“No, it is not true. The number is exaggerated. Only eight thousand
five hundred were shot, and not without trial. They were brought before
the Revolutionary Tribunals and examined.” This answer was said to be
quite untrue by credible persons to whom it was reported. Not only was
a much greater number than ten thousand put to death without trial, but
many were shot in their cells in circumstances of cruelty, and their
relatives were refused information about them. I met one woman whose
husband had disappeared from prison in suspicious circumstances and who
was afterwards discovered to have been shot for selling something at
a profit of a few shillings in English money. This private trading is
what is meant by “speculating.”
The chairman of the Commission had said in his opening address that
there was perfect liberty of speech and action in the country. As
I knew that a real terror existed I suggested to him that, in all
probability, the arrest of certain persons for imagined or trivial
offences was due to the exaggerated zeal of ignorant minor officials
working under the Commission. The reply was that this could not be so,
since the agents who behaved like this would be punished very severely.
I did not consider the answer conclusive, nor an explanation of the
terror.
“Why,” I asked, “have many people expressed a fear of coming to see
us? And when they come, why are they afraid to speak with perfect
confidence?”
“Because,” said this clever person, sarcastic and evasive, “English
people have been here before and have tempted our people into
counter-revolutionary activities which have got them into very serious
difficulties. They do not want to be caught again.”
I ventured to ask one more question. “Does the Extraordinary Commission
maintain spies and _agents-provacateurs_ for its work?”
To this an absolute denial was given. “But,” he continued, “every
good citizen considers himself under an obligation to report to
the Commission everything he sees which he considers to be of a
counter-revolutionary nature.”
It was denied that any conscientious objector had been shot. It was
denied that anybody had been shot without trial. It was denied that
any great tyranny was exercised. It was declared that the object of
the Extraordinary Commission was to protect perfect liberty of speech
outside of those who were fomenting armed opposition to the Republic.
The independent translator who was with us on this occasion said before
leaving the room, her eyes swimming with tears: “It is hard for me to
hear these replies and be able to say nothing.”
I left the room cold with horror and dislike, for I knew without the
implication of the interpreter’s words that much of what had been said
to us was absolutely untrue.
There had been held a few days before this a meeting of Mensheviki, or
moderate Socialists, the members of the old Social Democratic party.
The meeting was held under the auspices of the Printers’ Union, a body
numbering seventy thousand members in Russia. This meeting was attended
by some thousands of persons, including (as I was informed) about three
hundred Communists, a noisy little group in the heart of the gathering.
I was not myself present, but I give the story as I had it from one of
the members of the British Delegation, not himself in sympathy with the
Mensheviki.
The Communists had telegraphed to England that the British Delegates
had attended a public meeting at which they heard in perfect freedom
the great Menshevik, Tchernoff, make a speech. The facts of the case
are these.
An unknown man made a passionately eloquent speech which was greatly
applauded by the vast body of the meeting and frequently interrupted by
the Communists present. At the end of his speech the audience loudly
demanded his name. He hesitated. He was strongly pressed not to give
it. He then stepped forward, and in ringing tones announced: “My name
is Tchernoff.” Instantaneously the vast audience broke into tumultuous
applause, during which Tchernoff made his escape. The leading Communist
present fumed, and declared loudly he would have Tchernoff arrested. He
had come to the meeting with his pocket full of warrants!
But Tchernoff had gone. And the circumstances of his coming and going
were interesting in view of the claim of free speech. For fifteen
minutes before his speech nobody was allowed to enter the hall. For
fifteen minutes after he got away, nobody was allowed to go out. The
telephone wires had been disconnected so that no communication with the
police could be made.
Tchernoff’s wife and children were arrested as hostages, but afterwards
released. He himself lives in a garret in Moscow, and was seen by one
of the Delegates in a condition of starvation.
After the British Delegates left Russia several of those who organised
and addressed these meetings were arrested. And so it is everywhere and
all the time. The people are afraid of the police and spies, the spies
are afraid of one another. All dwell in an atmosphere of suspicion,
and the Red Terror is a terrible reality. And it is no consolation
to me to learn, as I did, that the White Terror was even worse. I am
absolutely satisfied on the evidence I have seen, that where the Red
Terror has slain its thousands the White Terror has destroyed its tens
of thousands.
Evidence which will shortly be published in great detail will establish
beyond doubt the enormous atrocities committed by Koltchak and Denikin
in their cruel marches across the country, especially against the
Jews. Men, women and children in hundreds in every district in their
respective areas were hanged, shot or tortured on the mere suspicion
of belonging to or aiding with food and clothing a member of the
Red Army or the Communist party. Innocent persons whose beliefs and
activities were never even enquired into were murdered to discourage
the population. The peasants were everywhere robbed with violence.
The neglected troops of Koltchak, themselves decimated by disease
and filth, spread typhus and small-pox amongst the unhappy people.
Instead of burning or burying the corpses, the bodies were packed into
warehouses, or left lying about; and in one district, in less than a
dozen versts, ten thousand corpses were picked up by the Red Army when
it drove back the rebels.
One more story only let me tell. It concerns the sister of one of the
People’s Commissars and that sister’s husband. She lived in a little
town in the Volga basin. During the march of Koltchak her home was
invaded, and she and her husband, with twenty others, were thrown into
prison. After a while, they were taken out into the bitterly cold night
and, without trial, shot. The White soldiers bayoneted them to be sure
the work was done, and retired.
By the most marvellous accident, the husband was not killed. His hand
had been shot away, and the bayonet had entered his side, but he was
living. He waited till all was dark and quiet. He bent over his wife,
but she was quite dead. Then he crawled softly away, and very weak,
reached his home. He found his little daughter of five sleeping, but
safe. He dared not stay longer than to have his bleeding hand bound,
for they would come at dawn and count the bodies, and his would be
missing. So he went to the mayor, and the mayor contrived his escape.
And the man is now in Moscow, as one may well imagine, a stern
supporter of the Government, and not unready for reprisals.
I am inclined to believe that much of the support of the Bolsheviki
is due to the fear that their overthrow would mean the coming of a
great White Terror that would be infinitely worse than the thing they
are enduring. The fiery threats of exiled Russians, the distressing
activities in Russia of British agents, and, I am afraid, the wicked
suggestions to certain European Governments, that a “Jewish pogrom in
Russia would bring the Bolshevik Government to the ground,” give some
justification for the fear. Not till one side or the other declines to
take revenge will the awful see-saw of horrors be discontinued, and a
normal government by consent be substituted for the systems based on
power and domination.