classical background for a Chief Executioner. He ranks high even among
the intelligentsia. After finishing his literary studies in a Russian
university, he took post-graduate courses in Vienna, Berlin and Zurich.
He has a temperament much like Tchicherin; shy, aloof and deeply
puritanical. One feels he can neither understand nor forgive moral
weaknesses in others, since he himself possesses that fanatical
devotion which has made it possible for him to travel the hard, bitter
road where his ideals lead. He asks nothing of life but to serve the
cause of Socialism. Ease, wealth and happiness, he puts behind him
as he would Satan. Such a man can sign away life with an unruffled
firmness that would break one of a warmer temperament. He needs only to
be convinced that his course is righteous; nothing else matters. The
individual is not considered in that “Nirvana” which is his ultimate
goal.
Dzerzhinsky adores Lenin and serves him with the abject faithfulness of
a slave; in his eyes Lenin can do no wrong. In the first days of the
terror, he brought his doubts before Lenin, doubts which had only to
do with the effect of such measures on the national and international
political situation and not with his own soul. Lenin, when all is
said, is the only man who cannot afford to be swayed by doubts. His
responsibilities are those of a field marshal during a battle; he
has no right to indecision. He reserves only the right to change his
tactics--which is quite another matter.
The terror was established in a moment when the revolution was almost
lost. The liberal government had fallen, the moderate Socialist
government had fallen. If the Bolsheviks fell, only chaos or a return
to the monarchy was possible. So it was that when Dzerzhinsky came to
the Kremlin and stood hesitating like a school-boy before his master,
it was often Lenin who for the moment became the high lord of life and
death.
I can see that scene in my mind’s eye. In his hand Dzerzhinsky would
have a list of prisoners and the evidence hastily gathered. Lenin would
look at Dzerzhinsky’s list, asking sharp, short questions in his shrewd
way. Most of the names of the counter-revolutionary conspirators were
familiar to him. He could quickly piece together the scanty evidence of
the secret trials. In his mind thoughts like these must have traveled:
“Ah, yes, there is X---- caught plotting with Y----, which, of course,
entirely accounts for the rising at B----.” Suddenly he would turn to
Dzerzhinsky and say without excitement and without raising his voice:
“It would be better to shoot these two, hold these five and release the
rest.”
In justice to Lenin it must be recorded that he was always against
capital punishment for his political rivals, or even for those who
plotted to assassinate him; he believed in the death penalty only
for those who attempted forcibly to overthrow the government. His
dictatorship of the Cheka, like his dictatorship of other government
departments, ceased with the first semblance of order. At the same
time, I do not believe for a moment that the Cheka ever got beyond his
control. Recently, when he saw it growing into a power which interfered
with the natural development of the country, he began at once to weaken
it. Dzerzhinsky will no doubt assist him in such an undertaking with
the same zeal which he brought to its creation.
A good deal of political manœuvering has always been necessary in
order to appease popular opinion about the Cheka. When time has cooled
our emotions for and against the Communist idea, we will realize that
Jacob Peters and Fedore Dzerzhinsky were just as much victims of the
revolution as were those counter-revolutionaries who came under their
stern jurisdiction.
Peters was sent away from Moscow in 1919 because he had become, however
unjustly, a symbol of terror in the public mind and life was beginning
to settle down again into more normal ways. As a matter of fact, Peters
but countersigned orders already bearing the signature of Dzerzhinsky.
It was his duty to see that the prisoners were quickly and humanely
disposed of. He performed this grim task with a dispatch and an
efficiency for which even the condemned must have been grateful, in
that nothing is more horrible than an executioner whose hand trembles
and whose heart wavers.
Pursuing the same devices, a few weeks back when Lenin forced the
Cheka to be made subservient to the Department of Interior and
Communications, the public looked upon this step as a real compromise
and a definite move toward the abolition of the secret police. Trials
again became public with employers and other unbelievers in Socialism
openly represented by lawyers, who had long ceased to regard their
profession as anything but a dead asset. Lenin never dismisses
men he can trust, so while Dzerzhinsky ceased to be head of the
once all-powerful Extraordinary Commission, he was elected in the
same moment Commissar of the Interior and Communications, although
temporarily he was sent to Siberia to expedite grain shipments for the
famine areas. Thus the history of the Cheka repeats itself.
In the first moments of elation following the March revolution when
prison doors were thrown open all over Russia and prison records
publicly burned, it seemed as if the day of the secret police was
forever passed. In those joyous days it was almost impossible to keep
one’s perspective, or to feel a premonition of the rising storm of
world opposition to the development of the revolution. When Kerensky
abolished the death penalty in the army, he sacrificed his last
shred of control to the dictates of his heart. At that time even the
Communists did not believe in capital punishment. Once Trotsky, in an
impassioned speech at Smolny, during the November days, made mention
of a guillotine. His remarks let loose the most violent opposition.
For weeks this issue was discussed everywhere; in the press, at
public gatherings, even in street cars and on railway trains. He was
vigorously denounced for holding such opinions. And he had merely said
that this was something to be considered in a national crisis.
By the summer of 1918 the Soviet government found itself surrounded
by an iron ring of death. Also, there was graft and intrigue and
dishonor in the Communist ranks. It was Peters himself, torn between
the right and wrong of re-establishing capital punishment, who said to
me in January, 1918, “If we ever have to kill, it must begin in our
own ranks.” His face was white and stern; he appeared on the verge of
collapse.
“Will it ever really come to that?” I asked.
He passed his hand across his eyes with the weary gesture of a man
who has not slept well for many nights. Before him on his desk, was
a pile of papers. He pointed to them and said, “If you could know
what evidence I have here, you would see how necessary it is if the
revolution is to continue, for the Communists to purify their own
ranks.”
It is a matter of record that the first persons put to death were
opportunists who pretended to believe in Communism and had accepted
bribes or otherwise had betrayed their own party.
The momentum of the revolution rapidly increased after the signing of
the first death warrant. It was not long before the despised secret
police once more made their appearance. They were back again protecting
now a revolutionary government as energetically as they once protected
the Tsar!
It is impossible to say how many of the old police force actually
served under the Soviets. I found, on personal investigation, that
many of the stories were largely myths. The most typical legend was
the one concerning Lapochine, once head of the Okrana and exiled by
the Tsar for telling a Social Revolutionist that Azef was a spy. The
rumor that he now holds an important post in the Cheka is not true.
His daughter was one of my intimate friends in Moscow and I went very
often to her home. Her father was holding two small clerkships which
took all his time, in order to get double rations to support himself
and his invalid wife. Lapochine was never connected with the secret
police after his exile, although he was brought back to Russia after
six years in Siberia and publicly forgiven by the Tsar. He was governor
of Esthonia at the outbreak of the revolution. However, to the ordinary
individual, all this makes little difference. A detective is simply a
detective, working in dark ways, someone to be feared and someone to be
despised. And as for the Lapochines, the last time I heard of them they
were trying to borrow money in America to start a sausage factory near
Moscow.
All the important posts in the Cheka have been and still are largely
held by Letts or Poles with unimpeachable revolutionary records. The
rank and file are Russians. There are scarcely any Jews. The reason
why the Russians hold minor positions is not exactly clear but the
general calculation is that they are more susceptible to bribery and
more easily influenced. Certainly, the Cheka has played an important
rôle in the revolution; it is no exaggeration to state that without
the vigilance of the Extraordinary Commission, the Soviets would
never have maintained themselves through numerous critical moments.
It was Peters and other Lettish secret agents who discovered such
counter-revolutionary plots as the Lockwood plan to blow up bridges and
cut off Petrograd and the government from all communications. And as
military intervention developed, the Communists were forced to consider
Russia in a state of siege and the Cheka their most necessary means of
self-protection.
In a speech before a session of the Extraordinary Delegation, Trotsky
made this statement: “The monopoly of using force and reprisals in any
normally functioning state, regardless of its external form, is an
attribute of the government.... Every state organization is in this
way fighting for its existence. It is sufficient to picture to one’s
self the society of the present day, this complicated and contradictory
co-operation in such a tremendous country as Russia, for example,
in order at once to understand that in the present condition of
affairs, torn by every social contradiction, reprisals are absolutely
inevitable.”
It is absurd to consider the Extraordinary Commission in any but
an objective way. The little border states of Finland, Lithuania,
Roumania, and even Poland, have just as elaborately developed Chekas,
searching just as diligently for Bolshevik plotters as Russia does for
anti-Bolshevik plotters. Finland, for example, has a much more cruel
revolutionary record. The division of the Red and White forces there
was more equal; therefore, the struggle was intensified and the terror
magnified accordingly. Only, in this case, it was White Terror instead
of Red.
Even we ourselves have a Cheka, but we call it a Department of Justice,
and we have a thousand little independent Chekas known as private
detective agencies. And now that America is in a happier state of
mind we like to forget how our “intelligence” departments grew into
formidable institutions during the short period of our participation
in the war. Very soon after the declaration of war we began to suspect
one another on a wholesale scale, all sorts of innocent persons were
“trailed” and otherwise humiliated. If we remember those days, we can
better understand what happens when the very life of a nation is at
stake. Ours never has been.
No one claims that the state electrician who pushes the button for the
electric chair at Sing Sing is a criminal, or that his private life
need necessarily be immoral. Yet the Sing Sing executioner is paid
something like three hundred dollars for each life taken and one might
almost imagine him having more than a routine interest in a good crop
of homicides. If Peters and Dzerzhinsky were dismissed from office
to-morrow, they would have nothing but the clothes on their backs and
broken health with which to begin new careers. I give this example for
the sake of comparison or contemplation, not as a justification for
either the American or the Russian official conscience.
The temptations of St. Anthony pale beside those of Peters and
Dzerzhinsky. They have been flattered and offered every sort of bribe.
I know of a single instance where Peters was offered what amounted to a
cool million dollars. He did not refuse it, however, until he had all
his tempters enmeshed beyond retreat.
The most romantic revolutionary story I know is the one Peters told me
himself about his return to Russia, bound up as it was with Sir Roger
Casement’s execution. Up until the day of that unhappy event he was
immersed in the life of London and almost untouched by the struggle
in Russia. He had a comfortable post in an export house, an English
wife and a baby whom he adored. Quite naturally thoughts of revolution
had grown vague and alien to his mind. So it was that, wrapped in
British complacency, on a gray morning he started happily to work and
encountered unexpectedly a little company of Irish folk bound for the
Tower of London. At first he must have looked at them as he would have
regarded any other procession. But he noticed, to his surprise, how
emotional they were. Tears ran down their faces of which they were
unashamed. He remembered then that this was the day when Sir Roger
Casement was to die. Something, he said, made him follow that crowd,
although they were going in an opposite direction from his office. Can
you imagine the punctilious Mr. Peters, so highly efficient, never a
minute late, for a reason unexplainable to himself, following a little
group of Irish mourners? Perhaps he had even grown English enough to be
a little embarrassed at his impulsiveness.
He described how he stood when the others knelt down outside the prison
and began to pray. He would never forget, he said, how he suddenly
realized what a vast, irreconcilable temperamental barrier lay between
the English and the Irish people.
By the time the bugler announced the execution, Jacob Peters was
another man. Something called conscience or national pride or
revolutionary honor awoke in him and with it came a deep homesickness
for Mother Russia. He felt himself burning with shame. It was as if
Sir Roger Casement were pointing a finger at him and saying, “See
how I am able to die, you who once called yourself a revolutionist.”
Those devout people reminded him of the Russian peasants; they had
the potency of an old tune. We have all seen men weep over some dear,
familiar melody.
Peters never went back to work. He walked the London streets all day,
wandered along the docks, watched the great ships and thought about
Russia. All the dreams of his youth returned. At night he went home and
told his wife he was going to Petrograd.
It seems almost regrettable that Sir Roger Casement could not have
known that in that multitude come to mourn his death, was a little
London clerk who, by the power of association, was somehow transformed
into one of the characters that now make Russian history.
Neither Peters nor Dzerzhinsky bear much resemblance to their
revolutionary predecessor, Marat, the venomous public prosecutor of
the French revolutionary days. Dzerzhinsky is far too reserved to be
an orator and I doubt if he understands the meaning of revenge. He
must have known all too well the horror of prison life ages before he
became head of the prisons. He spent eleven years in a Warsaw prison,
an experience which permanently wrecked his health.
Early in his confinement a spirit of religious fervor, manifested in
self-sacrifice and humbleness, was evident. He wished to abase himself
in the same way a priest does penance before God. He took upon himself
the most repulsive tasks in the prison in order to save his fellow
prisoners, such as washing floors and emptying refuse pails. His only
reply when questioned was, “It is necessary that someone should perform
the lowest tasks in order that the others may be relieved of them.” And
it was this man whose fate it was to perform the lowest and hardest
tasks for the young republic. The meek can be truly terrible in
positions of authority, as can the virtuous, since ordinary souls feel
no defense against them.
In appearance Dzerzhinsky is tall and noticeably delicate, with white
slender hands, long straight nose, a pale countenance and the drooping
eyelids of the over-bred and super-refined. I never knew anyone who was
a close friend of Dzerzhinsky’s; he has, perhaps, too secluded a nature
to permit of warm and intimate companionship. He is as distinctly
aristocratic as Peters is distinctly a man of the people.
Peters is short, snub-nosed and almost stocky in build, with bristling,
short, brown hair. He has read a good deal but is by no means a
littérateur. He is a workman risen above the mass, risen just high
enough to be an excellent interpreter. He has played in these years
since March, 1917, other important rôles than that of executioner.
As Governor of Turkestan he has shown that he can create as well as
destroy.
When Peters returned from England he went almost immediately to the
front and joined a Lettish regiment. Because of his superior knowledge
or his fervor he soon became a figure of importance among the soldiers.
He was the favorite spokesman at the soldier meetings, which at
that time were of great importance, since the soldiers were deciding
very largely for themselves whether or not they would remain in the
trenches. Even Kerensky found it necessary to take fortnightly trips to
the front to argue and plead with them.
To certain men who once served in Peters’ regiment, was some months
later entrusted the keeping of the Royal Family. Every man in that
guard was a Lett. As in other instances, had they been Russians, they
might have shown more leniency or outright sentimentalism in a crisis.
The Letts were instructed never to allow their royal prisoners to be
rescued alive and the Letts are soldiers who understand the iron rules
of military discipline.
Lenin has long put great trust in Peters. When he was in hiding during
the first two months of 1917, Peters was in charge of that seclusion.
Lenin’s famous “Letters to the Comrades,” which were sent out and
printed broadcast, and caused so much havoc with the Provisional
Government, were entrusted to Peters and his subordinates. Peters was
very proud of this trust. Once he said to me when I was living on a
little street just off Nevsky Prospect, “Lenin is not far from this
house.” Little did I comprehend what an important confidence that was!
Peters speaks English fluently. In 1917 he translated a life of
Kerensky for me and over tea cups he told me many things about the
revolution which I did not understand. I should never have believed,
in those days, that this mild-mannered and almost inspired youth would
soon have such sinister work to do.
The last time I met Peters he was living in Tashkent which is the
capital of the Province of Turkestan. He had even more sweeping
powers than an ordinary governor, since he was the most important
revolutionary official in a community not yet settled down to normal
life.
I also met the new Madame Peters. The English wife divorced him at
the time of the terror. The second Madame Peters was a very pretty,
redheaded Russian who had been a teacher and who still worked at her
profession. They lived in a single room, shared a dining room with
twenty others and were poorly dressed. When we discussed this point,
Peters bitterly denounced several Soviet officials who, he said, were
“living soft.” “A revolutionist cannot expect to force privations on
other people if he is not willing to be an example of self-sacrifice,”
he declared.
He had become known almost as a conservative among the Left-Communists
because he had refused to close the Mohammedan bazaars, saying these
people were not ready for Communism. His public trials were attended
by large crowds and proved of great educational value in a very
unenlightened community.
I found him much older. He seemed to have lived thirty years in three.
He never mentioned the terror, nor did his wife, and I could not bring
myself to. Only once did he indirectly refer to it. The three of us
were starting to a local Soviet meeting. He picked up a revolver from
his table and, for a moment, stood regarding it. Then he turned to me
and said, “Have you ever used one of these?” I said, “Of course, I know
how, but I’ve never had to.” And then he exclaimed, “I wish to God I
never had!” After all, what a story can be condensed into a single
sentence!
The Cheka was really the beginning of law and order; it marked the
beginning of the first government which showed real strength and
purpose. There was no doubt something very definitely nationalistic
about the growth of the Cheka, in spite of the fact that it was
established by Communists. It had all the hardness of purpose and the
narrowness possessed by the maximum of patriotism. Any student of
history will remember what Carlyle said of those terror-ridden days
when the guillotine ruled France. “Tigress nationale! Meddle not with
a whisker of her! Swift rending is her stroke; look what a paw she
spreads--pity has not entered her heart.” Such acts Carlyle claimed
would some day be known as the “Crimes of the Revolution,” when they
should rightly be recorded as the birth pains of the republic. Very
naturally, conduct of open and avowed suppression will always be
hated and condemned by liberals the world over, and used as campaign
ammunition by political opponents.
One of the highest officials of the Cheka said to me, “Most foreign
correspondents write about the Extraordinary Commission as if we had
no right on our side. Now I will give you two examples of the sort of
problems continually confronting us, and if you would submit them to
any American police official, he would tell you very promptly that the
Cheka had no other course than the one which it pursued.
“First, there is the case of Marie Spirodonova. She is a woman with
an honored revolutionary past. Naturally, we don’t want to have her
behind bars. But she was for years a terrorist, she killed the Governor
of Tambov and she still believes that individual acts of terror are
justified. As you know, the Communists were always against such a
policy. We believe in mass action and not individual violence.
“Marie Spirodonova is a highly-strung, sensitive person. She makes a
splendid agitator but we have gotten to the point of reconstruction, of
building, not tearing down. Russia was forced to sign the Brest-Litovsk
treaty. You may agree with me that that was a bad thing to do or you
may disagree with me, but as an American, understanding and believing
in government, you will certainly agree that we had to protect the
representatives of Germany after the peace was signed.
“When Mirbach came to Moscow, it was very bitter for any of us to
receive him. But it is another matter to go to his house and kill him
with a bomb. This was the plan of Marie Spirodonova. Now what could
we do? Were we to allow her and her associates to kill any foreign
representative who came here? How could we ever hope for relations with
other nations if we could offer their representatives no protection?
Then why are we criticized because we put Spirodonova in a sanatorium?
And we allowed her to escape. I confess that we have kept a watch over
her. The woman in whose house she stayed used to report to us. That was
merely to prevent any repetition of the Mirbach affair.
“One thing I wish the world could understand, one thing that my
experience in the Cheka has taught me, that a person capable of
starting a revolution is not necessarily capable of finishing one or
even carrying one on after it is started.”
Another time the same official gave me his version of the Anarchist
problem. “We had Bill Shatov as Chief of Police in Petrograd. He
was formerly an Anarchist but had come over to work with us. He had
quarreled with the Anarchists and he claimed that a lot of loafers and
thieves had joined their organizations just to have an excuse not to do
any work.
“Some time later there were a lot of robberies in Petrograd. One night
Bill Shatov arrested every so-called Anarchist in town. He held them
two weeks without trial. In those two weeks not a single robbery took
place in Petrograd!