Transcriber Note
Text emphasis denoted by _Italics_. Punctuation has been retained as
published in the original publication.
AN ISLAND HELL:
A SOVIET PRISON
IN THE FAR NORTH
An Island Hell:
A Soviet Prison in the Far North
By S. A. MALSAGOFF Translated by F. H. LYON
LONDON: A. M. PHILPOT LTD.
69, GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C.1
1926
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
CONTENTS
Part I. (_Introductory_). — FROM BATOUM TO
THE SOLOVETSKY ISLANDS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A White Guard in the Caucasus 13
II. A Famous "Amnesty" 19
III. Horrors of Tiflis Prison 27
IV. Bound for the "Solovky" 33
Part II. — THE SOLOVETSKY ISLANDS.
I. The Forerunners of the "Solovky" 43
II. From Monastery to Prison Camp 52
III. A Gallery of Tchekists 61
IV. Popoff Island Camp 74
V. The Tyranny of the Criminals 83
VI. "Counter-Revolutionaries" 94
VII. Victims of the Tcheka: Some
Strange Cases 102
VIII. "Politicals": A Favoured Class 117
IX. The Women's Fate 132
X. Foreign Prisoners 139
XI. A "Change of Cabinet" 146
XII. Daily Life, Work, and Food 151
XIII. Hospital Horrors 162
XIV. How "Useful Citizens" are Made 169
XV. How the Tchekists Live 176
Part III. — OUR ESCAPE.
I. The Only Way Out 183
II. Laying our Plans 188
III. Our Flight: The First Stage 195
IV. A Terrible March 204
V. Freedom 213
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I and my four companions left the Solovetsky Islands (called in this
narrative the "Solovky," the name by which they are commonly known) on
May 18th, 1925, and crossed the frontier between Russia and Finland on
June 15th. But it was not until eight days later that we reached Kuusamo
and ascertained positively that we were in Finland, so that our journey
lasted thirty-six days.
As I had supposed, I found that outside Soviet Russia the whole
circumstances in which those transported to the Solovetsky Islands are
compelled to live (or, it would be more correct to say, to die) — the
whole life, regime, conditions of labour, food, and the other internal
and external characteristics of the Solovky, were absolutely unknown.
The secrecy which enwraps the Solovky is quite comprehensible. The
Soviet papers, concealing the grim truth from Russian readers, pass the
Solovky by in complete silence. Foreign newspaper correspondents are not
allowed to go there. There had not been, till we got away, a single case
in which a prisoner had succeeded in escaping across the frontier,
whereby the public opinion of Europe could have learnt the truth about
the Solovky.
Providence thought fit to rescue me, by a miracle, from this place of
torment. And I count it my most sacred duty to tell the world what I
saw, heard and went through there.
These notes, of course, make no claim either to literary qualities and
beauty of style or to exhaustive completeness. I look upon them as the
testimony of a fair witness who speaks the truth and only the truth. And
if my testimony is recognised as worthy of consideration, and is
accepted as a part of that gigantic indictment which the Russian nation,
the whole of humanity, history and God will without doubt bring forward
against the Soviet power, I shall consider that my duty has been
discharged.
In confirmation of my claim to have been, to the best of my power,
impartial in my exposition of the facts, I may say that when I showed
these notes to my comrades who escaped with me they were of opinion
that, in my description of the regime in the Solovetsky Islands, I had
in many cases been too moderate.
PART I (_Introductory_)
FROM BATOUM TO THE SOLOVETSKY ISLANDS
CHAPTER I
A WHITE GUARD IN THE CAUCASUS
_Denikin's Failure — Guerilla Warfare — An Unexpected Blow — The Elusive
Tchelokaeff — A Treaty that is Observed._
Before proceeding to my main task — an account of the conditions in the
Soviet prisons in the Solovetsky Islands — I should like to dwell
briefly on the period of my life which immediately preceded my
transportation to that place. I think that this period is of more than
merely personal interest. As far as I know, the punitive activities of
the Soviet power in the Caucasus after the crushing of the armed
anti-Bolshevist rebellion there have not found a place in any book of
memoirs.
At the time of the final retreat of General Denikin's forces I was in
the ranks of the Caucasian Army (on the Tsaritsin front). The disaster
to the Volunteer Army compelled us all to take refuge in the mountains.
Keeping touch all the time with the attacking enemy, our cavalry brigade
reached the river Terek, where it was dissolved. The most reliable
elements of it crossed the frontier of Georgia, at that time still an
independent State.
In Georgia, the members of the brigade who were fit for service were
incorporated by Keletch Sultan Hire in a cavalry regiment. Its duties
were to execute raids on the Soviet rear and throw it into confusion, to
destroy roads and excite rebellion against the Bolsheviks.
The raid into the Kuban planned in the summer of 1920 by the staff of
General Wrangel, who was then in the Crimea with his army, gave Sultan
Hire the idea of sending us also to the Kuban in the hope of inciting
the Cossacks to rebellion. In the Kuban, we took part in the retirement
of the invading troops to the Crimea, the raid having considerably
outgrown its original dimensions. The bold plan of bringing about a
rising did not succeed. We were dissolved once more.
[Illustration: Map of the Caucasus]
In exceptionally difficult conditions, surrounded by troops of the Red
Army, we formed a new detachment under the command of Colonel X (I
cannot give the colonel's name; he is still carrying on guerilla warfare
with the Soviet power in the Caucasus). Our detachment, despite its
small numbers, waged warfare of a kind with success, and we were
beginning to think of operations on a larger scale, when we unexpectedly
lost the support on which we absolutely depended and counted; the famous
"national rebellion" took place in Georgia. In reality the country was
occupied, almost without resistance, by regular troops of the Red Army.
Our detachment retired fighting through the wild mountains to Batoum.
Here part of it was broken up and turned into larger or smaller bodies
of insurgents, part left for Anatolia.
I made my way to Ajaristan. Thence communication was established with
Trebizond, where Y lived; his name, too, I cannot give in full for the
reason stated above. Until the autumn of 1922 we and Y organised
frequent raids on the Soviet Russian frontier.
Then, as now, the unofficial direction of the whole insurgent movement
in the Caucasus was in the hands of the well-known Colonel Tchelokaeff.
Thanks to extensive help from the population, which sympathises with the
"Whites," and to his own bravery and skill, the Bolsheviks have found
Tchelokaeff quite uncatchable.
I know for a fact that the "Gruztcheka" (Georgian Tcheka) and
"Zaktcheka" (Trans-Caucasian Tcheka)[1] have repeatedly attempted to buy
him; they have repeatedly offered him huge sums in gold simply to leave
the Caucasus. They even offered him a villa in any country in Europe he
liked to name. The elusive colonel, however, rejected these proposals
with disgust, and is still carrying out surprise attacks on one or
another stronghold of the Soviet power in the Caucasus.
Between Tchelokaeff and the Communist authorities of the Caucasus a
peculiar treaty exists. The colonel's family has for several years been
confined in the Metekh[2] at Tiflis, a prison notorious for the
cruelties practised there. The Bolsheviks, of course, would have shot
them long ago, had not Tchelokaeff captured and hidden in a remote spot,
as hostages, several of the most prominent representatives of the Soviet
power.
When the colonel heard that his family had been arrested, he sent the
following letter to the presidential body of the Georgian Tcheka:
"I shall send forty Communists' heads in a sack for each member of my
family murdered by you. — Colonel Tchelokaeff."
So the Tchelokaeff family and the Communist hostages are still alive.
[Footnote 1: i.e., _Gruzinskaya_ (Georgian) and _Zakavkazkaya_
(Trans-Caucasian) Tcheka.]
[Footnote 2: The former palace of the Georgian kings, used as a prison
for many years past.]
CHAPTER II
A FAMOUS "AMNESTY"
_My Foolish Credulity — A Boy Tchekist — Taken Out to be Shot — Mutual
Reprisals — A Gallant Mountaineer — Identified by an Imbecile._
In November, 1922, in honour of the anniversary of the October
Revolution in 1917, the Council of People's Commissaries of the
R.S.F.S.R.[3] (Russia then still lived under that pseudonym) extended a
full amnesty to all opponents of the Soviet power. This amnesty, which
was signed by the flower of the Communist Party, formally promised
complete oblivion of every manner of offence committed by White Guards
of all ranks and categories.
I cannot say how I, who knew better than anyone the value of Bolshevist
promises, who had waged a life-and-death struggle with the Soviet power
for so many years, could have believed in the good faith of people who
always lie. I paid for my unpardonable stupidity by my sufferings in the
Solovetsky prison. May my fate serve as a warning to other credulous
people!
On April, 1923, I presented myself at the Tcheka offices at Batoum. I
was interrogated by an examining judge remarkable for his youth — an
impudent lad of seventeen. The detective service in Soviet Russia is
brilliantly staffed! When he had totted up my "offences" in detail, the
boy Tchekist concluded his interrogation with the jeering cry:
"Ha, we don't use kid gloves with fellows like you!"
Nor did they. When I referred to the formal phrases of the amnesty, the
examining judge roared with laughter.
"Take him to the cells. They'll show him the amnesty there."
They did.
I will not describe in detail my moral and physical sufferings, the
blows, the insults, the attempts to extract information from me by
_provocateur_ methods, which I endured while in the custody of the
Batoum Tcheka. Suffice it to say that I was finally taken to be examined
at two o'clock in the morning. They again went through my biography for
the last few years with the greatest exactitude, and proposed that I
should confess everything and name my principal accomplices, ten in
number (the number was given quite correctly). Persuasion was exchanged
for abuse, and abuse for revolver shots over my head to intimidate me.
I denied my guilt, and refused to name any accomplices. I and three
other men were taken into the yard to be shot. They killed one prisoner
two paces from me. The second likewise was shot dead. The third fell,
covered with blood. They yelled at me:
"Now it's your turn!"
I stood beside the bodies of my companions in imprisonment. Almost
touching my head with the muzzles of their revolvers, the Tchekists
exclaimed:
"Now confess!"
I was silent. For some reason they did not kill me. Probably my life was
still useful to them in some way.
I spent a few days in the prison of the Batoum Tcheka. Then they took me
to the Trans-Caucasian Tcheka at Tiflis; its headquarters were in the
Sololaki quarter, in the centre of the town. As regards cruelty, there
was no difference between the regime there and that at Batoum. The
president and omnipotent master of the Trans-Caucasian Tcheka was at
that time the well-known Tchekist Mogilevsky,[4] who was killed not long
ago in an aeroplane accident.
Blood was flowing in streams in the Caucasus. The Communists were taking
a triple vengeance on their prisoners for the murder of Vorovsky in
Switzerland, the insurrection in Georgia and Lord Curzon's ultimatum. In
the countless prisons of the Caucasus thousands of people were being
slaughtered daily.
The Caucasus has not yet been finally pacified by the Communists, and at
the time of which I write the whole country was ablaze with civil war.
Insurgent bands burst into the towns and hanged all the Bolsheviks. The
latter replied by intensifying their already merciless reign of terror.
One day the rebels descended on the "Kursk settlement," close to
Vladikavkaz, and, among other things, drove off the herds belonging to
the Soviet. A pursuit was set on foot, headed by the celebrated
executioner, the Lett Shtybe, President of the Gpu[5] of the Mountain
Republic. The rebel band went into hiding in the mountains, taking the
cattle along with it, and could not be traced. The Tchekists succeeded
in discovering and surrounding in the mountains only one rebel leader.
The mountaineer, with a precipitous wall of rock behind him and plenty
of cartridges in his pocket, withstood an attack from several squadrons
of Communists for several hours. One of his well-aimed shots killed
Shtybe himself. Although several times wounded, he killed eleven more
Communists. At last he fell mortally wounded. In his rifle, which his
cold fingers held close to his face, not one cartridge was found; he had
fought to the last. He was tied to a horse's tail and dragged to
Vladikavkaz.
The executioner Shtybe was buried with pomp and ceremony in the Pushkin
Square at Tiflis. The death of this rascal was made a pretext for
reprisals against the prisoners.
The cowherd in charge of the beasts which the insurgents had driven off
into the mountains was a boy, deaf and dumb from birth, and clearly
half-witted. This imbecile creature was ordered by the Tchekists to
identify, from among all the prisoners in the gaols of the Caucasus,
"those concerned in the murder of that unforgettable champion of the
happiness of the proletariat, Comrade Shtybe."
The presidential body of the "Gortcheka" (Tcheka of the Mountain
Republic)[6] did not trouble to ask itself how we, who had been in a
Tcheka prison at the time of Shtybe's death and long before it, could
have been concerned in his "murder." We were drawn up in two ranks. If
the cowherd stopped in front of a man, uttered an inarticulate sound, or
simply smiled foolishly, it was considered sufficient proof that the man
who had attracted the half-witted boy's attention had "murdered the
unforgettable Comrade Shtybe." He immediately received the order, "Two
paces to the front!" and a bullet was put through his head.
Several dozen men were killed in this manner before my eyes. Then,
walking along the second rank, the cowherd stopped before me. Death
seemed inevitable. But, apparently, the public prosecutor of the
Mountain Republic, Toguzoff, who was walking behind the cowherd, and who
had interrogated me only the night before and knew perfectly well that I
had absolutely nothing to do with Shtybe's death, felt a momentary prick
of conscience, and led the cowherd on just as he was distorting his
countenance in an idiotic grimace before me.
This public prosecutor is a characteristic figure. Kazbek Toguzoff, an
ex-officer, in 1917 carried on a desperate struggle in the Caucasus in
support of the Provisional Government, demanding the dissolution of all
the Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils by armed force and the immediate
hanging of all Bolsheviks. By unascertainable methods he entered the
Communist Party, and to-day he is still hanging men — but now
anti-Bolsheviks!
[Footnote 3: "Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic." The present
official designation of Soviet Russia is "Union of Socialist Soviet
Republics" (U.S.S.R.).]
[Footnote 4: Mogilevsky was Mrs. Stan Harding's examining judge during
her imprisonment in Moscow in 1920; see her book "The Underworld of
State" (Allen & Unwin).]
[Footnote 5: Gpu (_Gosudarstvennoe Polititcheskoe Upravlenie_), the
present official designation of the Tcheka. The sham "abolition" of the
Tcheka in 1922 and its "replacement" by the Gpu are ironically described
by Mr. George Popoff in his book "The Tcheka." The synonymous terms
"Gpu" and "Tcheka" are used indifferently by the author.]
[Footnote 6: In Russian _Gorskaya Respublika_, hence the
portmanteau-words "Gortcheka" and "Gor-Gpu."]
CHAPTER III
HORRORS OF TIFLIS PRISON
_Prince Mukhransky's Resolve — The Metekh — In the Hands of Sadists — A
Shunned Locality — "Shooting Nights" — A Biter Bit._
Among the thousands of persons imprisoned in the gaols of the
Trans-Caucasian Tcheka at the same time as myself were fifteen officers,
among them General Tsulukudze, Prince Khimshieff, and Prince Mukhransky,
whose brother was married to the daughter of the Grand Duke Constantine
Constantinovitch. They were all charged with organising a mythical
counter-revolutionary plot and being concerned in the Georgian rebellion
of 1923, and after prolonged, torturing examinations were sentenced to
be shot.
Prince Mukhransky resolved not to sell his life cheaply. He succeeded in
getting hold of a large nail, found in the room. When, on the night
appointed for the execution, the door opened and a party of Tchekists
headed by Schulman, Commandant of the Trans-Caucasian Tcheka, known as
the "Death Commandant," entered to fetch away the condemned officers,
Mukhransky flung the nail as hard as he could into Schulman's face,
aiming at his eyes. The heavy nail broke the executioner's nose.
Schulman groaned with pain. At once an incredible noise arose. The whole
prison was awakened by cries and shots. The room was filled with smoke.
All the fifteen officers were killed on the spot by the escort. The
prisoners in other rooms were ordered to wash away the streams of blood.
The executioner Zlieff, plenipotentiary extraordinary in Ossetia of the
Gpu of the Mountain Republic, used to force the muzzle of a revolver
into the mouth of the prisoner he was examining and turn it about so
that it crushed the gums and knocked out teeth. My cell companion in the
prison of the "Gor-Gpu" was subjected to this torture. He was an old
Ossetian, who was accused of the following offence (to quote from the
indictment itself):
"The accused once walked past Tchelokaeff's[7] door."
* * * * * * *
After a few weeks I was transferred to the chief prison in the Caucasus
— the Metekh[8] at Tiflis. As at the present day, the Metekh was used in
1923 as a place of detention for political prisoners only; ordinary
criminals were lodged in the Government prison. There were in the castle
2,600 "White Guards," including a large number of Georgian Mensheviks.
Inhuman reprisals were carried out methodically on these defenceless
people — I saw many old men, women and children. Once a week — on
Tuesdays — a special commission, consisting alternately of members of
the Trans-Caucasian Tcheka and the Georgian Tcheka, sat in the
commandant's office in the prison and drew up a list of victims, paying
no more regard to the degree to which, in each case, proof of guilt
existed than to the voice of humanity. The whole personnel of the
castle, the "Zaktcheka" and the "Gruztcheka," was filled with sadists.
Every week, on Tuesday nights, from sixty to three hundred persons were
shot in the prison. That night was veritable hell for the whole Metekh.
We did not know who was marked down to be shot, so everyone expected to
be shot. Nobody could get a wink of sleep till morning. The ceaseless
bloodshed was a torture not only to the prisoners, but to people living
in freedom outside. All the streets round the Metekh had long been
uninhabited; the population of this quarter had abandoned their houses,
unable any longer to listen to the shots of the executioners, the
shrieks and groans of the victims.
The Tchekists in the Metekh were always drunk. They were regular
butchers. Their resemblance to butchers was heightened by their habit of
rolling up their sleeves to the elbow and walking through the corridors
and cells, sometimes tumbling to the floor, drunk with wine and with
human blood.
On "shooting nights" from five to ten men were taken from each room. The
procedure of reading out the list of those doomed to die was drawn out
by the Tchekists to an average minimum of a quarter of an hour in each
room. There was a long pause before each name was read, during which the
whole room shivered with terror. Even people with strong nerves could
not withstand such torture. On Tuesday nights half the prisoners in the
castle sobbed till morning came. Next day no one could eat a morsel of
food; the prison dinner was left untouched. This happened _every_ week.
And prisoners from the Mountain Republic who came to the Solovky in 1925
told us that it was still happening then. Many people could not endure
the prolonged nightmare and became insane. Many committed suicide, in
every conceivable manner.
While I was in the castle a well-known Tiflis Tchekist, Zozulia, a
Cossack from the Kuban, was placed among the prisoners to act as an
_agent provocateur_. This executioner, in a comparatively short space of
time, had shot over six hundred persons with his own hand — a fact which
he did not deny. At last he was recognised and killed by the prisoners.
* * * * * * *
I spent four months and a half in the Metekh, and prepared myself for
death every Tuesday.
Then began an endless series of journeys and fresh prisons. From the
Metekh I was transferred to the Government prison at Tiflis, thence to
the "Timakhika" prison at Baku, where I spent a fortnight, then to the
Tcheka prison at Petrovsk (three weeks), thence to Grozny, and from
Grozny in "Stolypin trucks," specially constructed for prisoners, to
Vladikavkaz. Everywhere was the same total suppression of human
personality, the same torture by nocturnal interrogations, starvation
and blows, the same lawless, indiscriminate shootings.
[Footnote 7: See Chapter I.]
[Footnote 8: See Chapter I.]
CHAPTER IV
BOUND FOR THE "SOLOVKY"
_Finally "Amnestied!" — The "Shpana" — A Lucky Escape — Classification
of Prisoners — Madame Kameneff's Protegees._
At last, on November 30th, 1923, i.e., seven months after I had been
"amnestied" by the Batoum Tcheka, the examining judge of the Vladikavkaz
Tcheka finally "amnestied" me in the following terms:
"By order of the administrative exile commission of the People's
Commissariat for Home Affairs, Citizen S. A. Malsagoff, having been
found guilty of offences against the State of the nature contemplated by
Clauses 64 and 66 of the Criminal Code of the R.S.F.S.R. — Clause 64,
'organisation of terrorist acts in co-operation with persons outside
Russia,' and Clause 66, 'espionage for the benefit of the international
_bourgeoisie_' — is exiled to the concentration camp in the Solovetsky
Islands for a term of three years."
I and several others who had been "amnestied" were sent north by easy
stages. The first halting-place was Rostoff. Here I first met face to
face the so-called _shpana_ — the ordinary criminals who play so
singular a _rôle_ in all the Russian prisons, camps and places of exile.
Robbers on a large and a small scale, burglars, murderers,
horse-thieves, coiners, vagabonds — are flung in whole divisions from
one prison to another, serve their term or escape by bribing their
guards, but soon get into gaol again. Almost all are completely
destitute of clothing, always starving, and covered with lice. The
guards beat them over the head with their rifle butts, they murder one
another with bricks wrenched out of the prison walls. Completely
bestialised, wherever they go they gamble away their modest _payok_
(food ration) and their last pair of trousers at cards. This loss they
make good by robbing newly-arrived prisoners belonging to the political
categories. The stolen things are sold through the overseers of the
prisons and camps, and the money obtained for them is spent on drink.
On entering the room allotted to us in Rostoff prison, I was struck dumb
with consternation; we were met by nearly a hundred _shpana_ with
deafening yells and menacing cries. In a corner sat five men of the
educated classes, including a colonel on the General Staff; the _shpana_
had stripped them naked in one night.
Luckily there were men among us who had been through every imaginable
experience. One of them drew a chalk line on the floor, dividing the
room into two spheres of influence, political and criminal, and shouted
to the _shpana_:
"If one of you crosses this line, I'll kill him!"
He was a man of gigantic stature; the _shpana_ were intimidated. When
night came, we posted sentries on the frontier of our sphere of
influence. But for events taking this turn, the money and other things
which our relations had managed to send us when on the way to Rostoff —
by means of substantial bribes to the guards — would have been stolen
from us.
From Rostoff we were sent to the Taganka in Moscow.
In the Taganka prison a noticeable degree of system prevails. There are
separate rooms for "criminals" of different categories. In Moscow we
made the acquaintance of the curious division of all "criminals" by the
Soviet authorities not into two classes, "counter-revolutionaries" and
"_shpana_," as in the Caucasus and Southern Russia, but into three.
The first group, called "K.R.", comprises persons suspected of acts or
propaganda of a Monarchist or, in general, a _bourgeois_, anti-Socialist
tendency. In this comprehensive group you may meet an ex-Minister and an
ex-doorkeeper, a young non-commissioned officer and a general, a big
manufacturer and an assistant in a small shop, an ex-princess and her
cook. The Soviet authorities allot to the "K.R." group the whole clergy
_en masse_, without distinction of Church, the whole of the educated and
semi-educated classes, all merchants and all officers.
To the second group, the so-called "politicals and party men," belong
prisoners from the remnants of the pre-Revolution Socialist parties —
Social Revolutionaries, Social Democrats, Anarchists, etc. — which have
not yet been merged with the Communists.
The third category comprises the criminals proper, the so-called
_shpana_.
The Soviet authorities maintain this same distinction in the Solovky and
all the other concentration camps and places of exile or settlement.
In the Taganka we were placed in a room packed full of clerics. There
were the Vladika Peter (Sokoloff), the Archbishop of Saratoff, the monks
of the Kazan monastery, etc. Almost all were accused of concealing
church treasures at the time when the Bolsheviks were robbing the
churches to satisfy the needs of the Komintern.[9] These bishops,
priests and monks, like us, were sent to the Solovky.
In Petrograd, where we arrived at the beginning of January, 1924, a
group of twenty men, so-called "Casino-ites," were placed in the same
room as ourselves in the "second passing-through prison," occupied
exclusively by prisoners going on to some other place.
Not long before a fashionable gambling hell in Moscow for highly-placed
Communists, called the Casino, had been shut on the ground of too high
play, drunken orgies, immorality and debauchery. The unofficial head of
this honourable institution was Madame Kameneff, wife of the President
of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Government.[10] The Moscow Gpu,
when closing the Casino, did not dare to arrest the spouse of the
Communist Governor-General of Moscow, but the whole staff of the
gambling hell, headed by the croupier Petroff, was sent to the Solovky
for three years.
These fellows were also our companions on our journey to Kem.
Subsequently the "Casino-ites," at the instance of Madame Kameneff, were
sent from the Solovky to a voluntary settlement in the Petchersk region.
Before our flight from the concentration camp I heard that Petroff and
Co. were back in Moscow.
Convoys of prisoners are now sent north from Petrograd once a week, on
Thursdays. On one of these Thursdays — January 14th, 1924 — I and a
large number of other "K.R.'s," "politicals and party men," and
_shpana_, left for the Solovky in prisoners' trucks.
[Footnote 9: The Third, or Communist, International.]
[Footnote 10: i.e. Province.]
PART II
THE SOLOVETSKY ISLANDS
CHAPTER I
THE FORERUNNERS OF THE "SOLOVKY"
_Conditions in Earlier Camps — The "White House" — 100,000 Shot — Mass
Drownings — A Commission of Inquiry — Survivors Removed to Solovetsky
Islands._
Until late in 1922, Kholmogory[11] and Portaminsk performed the function
now discharged by the Solovky. When I reached the Solovky at the
beginning of 1924, I met a number of men, the survivors of the "K.R."
prisoners in the concentration camps at these places. They had been
transferred to the Solovky in August, 1922. I should like to state
briefly what these men, who had remained alive by a miracle, told me.
The concentration camps at Kholmogory and Portaminsk were established by
the Soviet Government at the end of 1919. The people sent to them from
every part of Russia had to live in hastily-run-up hutments. These were
_never_ heated, even at the height of winter, when in these far northern
latitudes the thermometer often falls to -50° or -60° Celsius (90 to 110
degrees of frost Fahrenheit).
The prisoners were given the following ration: one potato for breakfast,
potato peelings cooked in hot water for dinner, and one potato for
supper. Not a morsel of bread, not an ounce of sugar, not to speak of
meat or butter. And these people, driven by the pangs of hunger to eat
the bark of trees, unable to stand from exhaustion, were compelled by
tortures and shootings to perform hard labour — digging up tree-stumps,
working in the stone-quarries, floating timber.
They were absolutely forbidden to correspond with their families in any
way or to receive from them parcels of clothes or food. All letters were
destroyed, food and other things sent were consumed or used by the camp
guards.
After the defeat of the armies of General Denikin and General Wrangel,
at the end of 1919 and 1920 respectively, captured White officers and
men and civilian inhabitants of the territories wrested from the White
armies — men, women and children — were sent to Kholmogory, convoy after
convoy. And after the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in April,
1921, all the sailors taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks, about 2,000 in
number, were sent there. The remnants of Koltchak's army, various
Siberian and Ukrainian chieftains, peasants from the Tamboff Government
who had belonged to Antonoff's bands, tens of thousands of members of
the _intelligentsia_ of all nationalities and religions, Kuban and Don
Cossacks, etc. — all flowed in a broad stream to Kholmogory and
Portaminsk.
The higher administration of these camps was appointed by Moscow and
carried out the instructions received thence. The middle and lower
_personnel_ consisted of imprisoned Tchekists, who had been transported
for too open robbery, taking of bribes, drunkenness and other breaches
of duty. These fellows, having no one else on whom to avenge their
removal from their lucrative duties in the Extraordinary Commissions of
Central Russia, treated the prisoners in the camps with indescribable
cruelty.
The assistant commandant of the Kholmogory camp, a Pole named
Kvitsinsky, was particularly ferocious. This sadist-executioner has on
his conscience the horrors of the so-called "White House," in the
neighbourhood of Kholmogory. The "White House" was an estate abandoned
by its owners, containing a white-painted building. Here for two years
(1920-22) shootings took place daily at the direction of Kvitsinsky. The
terrible reputation of the "White House" was doubled by the fact that
the bodies of those executed were not taken away. At the end of 1922 all
the rooms of the "White House" were filled with corpses right up to the
ceiling. Two thousand sailors from Kronstadt were shot there in three
days. The smell of the decomposed bodies poisoned the air for miles
round. The stench, which never abated by night or day, stifled the
prisoners in the camps and even made them faint. Three-quarters of the
inhabitants of the town of Kholmogory were finally unable to endure it
any longer and abandoned their homes.
Without the slightest doubt the Soviet Government knew of the horrors
perpetrated at Kholmogory and Portaminsk; it could not help knowing.
But, having an interest in the pitiless extermination of their
opponents, real and supposed, the leaders of the Communist Party
confined themselves to washing their hands of the whole business.
Executions were carried out at other places besides the "White House."
The Tchekists used to come into the prisoners' enclosure and, having
marked down the destined victims, point to one or another of the
prisoners with the words: "One — two — three. . . . One — two — three. .
. . "One" meant that the prisoner was to be shot the same day, "two"
that he was to be shot to-morrow, and "three" the day after to-morrow.
This was usually done when a fresh large party had arrived, and room had
to be made in the camp for the newcomers.
According to the evidence of eye-witnesses, about 100,000 persons in all
were shot at Kholmogory and Portaminsk. There is nothing astonishing in
this figure, terrible as it is. For three years on end these camps
constituted the chief prison of all Soviet Russia. To them, in addition
to the large convoys, were sent, from every place in European and
Asiatic Russia, all those whom it was for any reason undesirable or
inconvenient to kill on the spot — for example, all those who had been
"amnestied" by local Soviet authorities.
The executioners of Kholmogory and Portaminsk used another method of
destroying their prisoners: they drowned them. Of a whole series of
cases known to me I will mention only those which follow.
In 1921 four thousand former officers and soldiers of Wrangel's army
were ordered to embark on board a barge, and the vessel was sunk at the
mouth of the Dvina. The men who were able to keep themselves on the
surface by swimming were shot.
In 1922 several barges were loaded with prisoners. The Tchekists sank
some of them in the Dvina in sight of everyone. The unfortunate
passengers on board the other barges, among whom were many women, were
landed on one of the small islands near Kholmogory and shot down with
machine-guns from the barges. Mass murders were carried out on this
island very frequently. Like the "White House," it was heaped with
bodies.
Those who escaped being shot the Tchekists hounded to death by
compelling them to do work beyond their strength. The prisoners in
receipt of the above-mentioned ration, among them old men and women,
worked all round the clock. It was counted a piece of luck to find a
rotten potato in the fields; it was greedily eaten on the spot, raw.
When the Tchekists noticed that the inhabitants of the region — Lapps,
Zyrians and Samoyedes — were throwing bread to the crowd of prisoners as
they passed their huts, they began to take them to their work by another
route, through thick forest and marshes.
If a newly arrived prisoner was decently dressed, they shot him at once,
in order to get his clothes sooner.
Early in the summer of 1922 a Kronstadt sailor who, by chance, had
remained alive escaped from the Kholmogory camp. He succeeded in making
his way to Moscow, where he used his former connections to obtain an
audience of the "Vtsik"[12] (All-Russian Central Executive Committee),
and said to Kalinin:
"Do what you like with me, but turn your attention to the horrors in the
northern camps!"
At this time 90 per cent, of the prisoners had already been done to
death. Communist humanity had been sufficiently proved, and the Vtsik,
exchanging anger for clemency, lent a gracious ear to the escaped
sailor's prayer. At the end of July, 1922, a commission started from
Moscow for Kholmogory to inspect the Kholmogory and Portaminsk camps.
Its president was one Feldman.
Feldman himself could not conceal his horror at what he saw and heard at
these places. He had the camp commandants shot, and sent their
assistants and the rest of the _personnel_ to Moscow, nominally to be
tried. All the Tchekists, however, were pardoned and placed in positions
of responsibility in Gpu offices in Southern Russia. Fully understanding
that the "White House" and its scores of thousands of corpses were a
burden on the conscience of Moscow, Feldman determined to wipe out the
traces of all that had happened there. He therefore ordered the place to
be burned down.
Feldman's commission had been empowered by the Vtsik to amnesty the
prisoners in both camps. Only the ordinary criminals, the _shpana_,
however, received their liberty. None of the "counter-revolutionaries"
were amnestied.
In August, 1922, the remaining "K.R.'s" were sent under a reliable guard
from Kholmogory and Portaminsk to the Solovetsky Islands, _via_ Kem.
[Footnote 11: On the Dvina, 46 miles S.E. of Archangel.]
[Footnote 12: Vserossisky Tsentralnyi Ispolnitelnyi Komitet.]