THE TCHEKA'S VICTIMS: SOME STRANGE CASES
_A Wife and her Husband — Annual "Amnesty" Swindle — Boris Savinkoff's
Terrible End — Famine Relief a Crime — Dzerzhinsky in a New Light — An
Indefatigable Vermin-hunter — Aged Hostages Tortured._
The grounds for which people have been transported to the Solovky are so
various, and very often so completely baseless, that one cannot help
supposing them to be pure inventions of the Tchekist "jurisprudence."
For example, among the prisoners there is the aged Countess Frederiks.
During the war, as a Red Cross nurse, the old lady performed admirable
service in tending wounded officers and men. And now, in the camp, she
receives no parcels from the Red Cross, gives what help she can to the
sick, and lives in a state of permanent semi-starvation, ceaselessly
subjected to jeers and insults. She was transported for no other reason
than that she had the misfortune to be the sister of Count Frederiks,
who was Minister of the Imperial Court under the murdered Tsar, and was
well-known as an intimate counsellor of Nicholas II. And while she was
sent to the Solovky, the Count himself, a very old man of nearly a
hundred, was until lately living in freedom in Petrograd; only quite
recently was he given permission to leave for Finland.
In one of the cells on Solovetsky Island (the so-called Women's
Building) the wife of a prominent minister of the old regime is
perishing of under-nourishment and unaccustomed hard bodily labour. The
official note of the decision in her case ran: "Transported to the
Solovky for five years, as being the wife of a minister of Bloody
Nicholas!" The minister himself fills a conspicuous post at Moscow under
the Soviet Government!
A locksmith named Timoshenko was sent from Voronesh to the Solovky for
two years. He was a simple workman and had had nothing whatever to do
with politics. He continually endeavoured to obtain from Vasko an answer
to his question — for what offence he had been sent to a concentration
camp. Not till 1925, when his term of two years expired, was he accused
of belonging to the "Savinkoff counter-revolutionary organisation" and
sent to cool his heels for three years more in the Narym region.
At the same time other "Savinkoffists" were sent to the Solovky from
Novokhopersk, a district town in the Government of Voronesh. They were:
Vrashnikoff, former agent of Count Vorontsoff-Dashkoff's property in the
Caucasus; Savinoff, a technician; Krivjakin, the business manager of a
Soviet institution, and others. To these were added an engineer named
Novitsky, from the Government of Poltava, and a crowd of peasants from
the Government of Voronesh. Many of the peasants, when told at the
Solovky that they were charged with complicity in "Savinkoff's
conspiracy," asked doubtfully:
"Savinkoff?[25] Who's he? A general?"
When I was in the Solovky, one Epstein arrived there; he had been
sentenced to three years. When he asked why he had been transported, he
received from the examining judge the answer:
"Because you're a business man!"
Exactly the same answer was received by another criminal, a Jew tailor
named Gurieff, who kept a ready-made clothes shop. (He is now in charge
of the tailors' workshop in the Kem camp.)
Not long ago two Poles, named Minitch and Vintovsky, fled to Russia from
Poland. The frontier authorities gave a ceremonial reception to the men,
who had "escaped from cruel imprisonment by the Polish Pans," but the
Moscow Gpu sent them to the Solovky for three years. The two Poles are
now cursing the day when they decided to cross the frontier of the
"freest Government in the world!"
Every year there arrive at Kem some two thousand "K.R.'s," who are sent
on to Solovetsky Island when navigation is possible. The arrivals are
especially numerous during the months which immediately precede November
7th (October 25th, old style), the date of the Bolshevist Revolution of
1917.
Every year at this time the Vtsik — thus controverting "the malignant
lies of the international _bourgeoisie_ and the shameless _émigrés_"
about the cruelty of the Soviet power — publishes a wide amnesty to "all
enemies of the ruling proletariat." The presidents of the provincial and
district branches of the Gpu, by way of carrying out the directions of
the humane Vtsik, shoot half their prisoners a few days before the
amnesty and send the rest to the concentration camps, to which the terms
of the amnesty decree state that it is not extended.
Thus, in reality, nobody is amnestied on November 7th. The Vtsik is
satisfied, the Gpu is satisfied too; "the lies of the shameless
_bourgeoisie_" have been exposed.
I could fill several pages with the names of people who have been
"amnestied" in this manner. I will quote, as an example, a case in which
not only the individual who was stupid enough to believe in the good
faith of the Tchekists, but his relations too, were "amnestied." At the
end of 1923 a soldier of Denikin's army, a peasant from the Government
of Poltava, returned to Russia on the strength of the amnesty proclaimed
by the Soviet Government in November of that year. He was given a Soviet
passport on the frontier, and on arriving at his home went to the
provincial Gpu, was registered, was sent away again and spent several
days with his family.
Result — at the beginning of 1924 the soldier was sent to the Narym
region of Siberia for three years, while his father and father's sister
were despatched by the Gpu to the Solovky for _concealing a
counter-revolutionary_ (Clause 68 of the Criminal Code)! At the time of
my escape these peasants, the victims of this singular "amnesty," were
still in the Solovky, waiting to be sent on to the Zyriansk region.
"Amnestied" _émigrés_ are continually being sent to the Solovky. Just
before my escape a large party of _émigrés_ arrived, nine-tenths of them
private soldiers; there were a few officers, among them a cavalry
subaltern named Menuel and Saprunenko, who had been aide-de-camp to the
Ukrainian hetman Skoropadsky.
The Soviet power extends a real amnesty only to people, whether
_émigrés_ or living in Soviet Russia, whose names can be used later as a
decoy. Such gentlemen, for example, as ex-General Slastschoff and
similar renegades can live in freedom and even occupy responsible posts
so long as this suits the book of the Gpu, so long as the Gpu reckons
that it can make use of the name of one of these "signal-changers"[26]
to prove "the good faith of the Soviet power, which amnesties all
repentant _émigrés_." But as soon as the renegade in question has "done
his job," he can go away, or, to be more correct, he is sent away, to
exile or to the next world. It is sufficient to recall the fate of the
well-known Social Revolutionary Savinkoff, who was "amnestied" by the
Bolsheviks — after which the Tchekists flung him from a fifth-floor
window of his prison.
Ordinary _émigrés_ who return are immediately sent to the Solovky or the
Narym region — that is to say, if the "supreme measure of punishment"
(shooting) has not already been applied to them. The latter fate, as a
rule, awaits officers.
The Soviet Government, returning evil for good, sends to the
concentration camps people who have "besmirched themselves" by working
with organisations of which the unhappy Russian people will always
retain a grateful memory. Among the prisoners at the Solovky is a
dentist named Malivanoff, a Moscow Jew. Malivanoff gave active help to
the A.R.A. (the American relief organisation for the benefit of the
famine victims), with the result that he was sent to the Solovky for
five years. As the Criminal Code of the U.S.S.R. does not at present
provide any punishment for giving relief to famine victims, the clause
relating to "economic espionage" was applied to Malivanoff! A number of
other Russians who worked with the A.R.A. and famine relief
organisations from other countries were sent by the grateful Gpu to
Siberia, to the Narym and Petchersk regions.
Karpoff, well known as the stage manager of the Alexandrinsk Theatre in
Petrograd, and subsequently of the Great and Little Theatres in Moscow,
was sent to the Solovky in company with other artists — Jurovsky,
Georges, etc. — on the charge of "counter-revolution." During my stay
there he was sent on to another place of exile.
If the Tchekists want to transport somebody, but cannot find a handle
for doing so, Clauses 68 ("concealing a counter-revolutionary") and 72
("ecclesiastical counter-revolution") serve their purpose most
conveniently.
One of the most peculiar cases is that of a man named Witte, from
Petrograd, who was transported because he bore "a counter-revolutionary
name!"
There are Communist engineers — _e.g._, one Osipoff, who was famous
throughout the camp for the incredible quantity of lice on his body —
naval officers who had been "seksoty,"[27] jewellers, hair-dressers,
landowners, followers of Makhno (the Ukrainian guerilla leader),
"economic bandits," commanders of the Gpu troops, watchmakers — in
short, prisoners of every conceivable profession, position, rank and
designation.
The case of the brothers Myshelovin, watchmakers, was a curious one.
They were both accused of forging and uttering notes, although the
evidence given before the examining judge and the results of a
domiciliary visit showed that while one of the two brothers had actually
uttered counterfeit notes, the other was completely innocent. And what
was the decision of the Gpu? It sent the guilty brother to the Solovky
for three years — and the innocent one for ten years!! The motives of
Tchekist "courts" in pronouncing such sentences as this must always be a
mystery to us all.
A very interesting figure was the technical engineer Krasilnikoff
(Nicholas Dimitrievitch). He had been sent to the Solovky for
"ecclesiastical counter-revolution," but in reality he had had no
connection with anything of the kind. Before the Revolution he had been
well known in Petrograd as an able and vehement opponent of Socialism of
all shades. When the Bolsheviks came into power, Volodarsky sent for him
several times and tried to persuade him to stop preaching
counter-revolution. But the truculent engineer, taking advantage of his
immense authority among the workers, continued to make speeches and
publish his pamphlets. He soon migrated to Moscow and there continued
his activities, the tendency of which was, as in pre-Revolution days, to
discredit Socialism of all kinds.
Dzerzhinsky himself was interested in Krasilnikoff and sent for him. The
engineer appeared at the Gpu headquarters, and there, in the study of
the President of the Extraordinary Commission, Dzerzhinsky and
Krasilnikoff disputed for hours on end about Socialism and its Utopian
aims. It must have been almost the only time in his life that
Dzerzhinsky permitted freedom of speech — and that in the very offices
of the Gpu! Krasilnikoff — a brilliant speaker — endeavoured to persuade
the head Tchekist to abandon all hope of being able to make a reality of
such nonsense as Socialism. Dzerzhinsky would not agree, but put forward
arguments on the other side.
The night wore on. Dzerzhinsky offered the engineer a camp bed in his
study, and in the morning ordered that he should be given coffee and
allowed to go. Soon after, however, he was arrested by subordinate
Tchekists and sent to the Solovky.
In the camp, Krasilnikoff was literally eaten up by lice. I myself,
having passed through dozens of prisons on my way north, possessed the
experience of a lifetime in the matter of vermin; but never and nowhere
have I seen such multitudes of lice as on the engineer. Every morning
and every evening he used to kill vermin in incredible quantities,
remarking every time he caught one:
"Aha, got him — that's another!"
The Solovky swallow up old and young alike. In February, 1925, fifty
students and schoolboys from Theodosia, Sevastopol, Simferopol and
Yalta, in the Crimea, arrived at Popoff Island. They had all got three
years for organising a "counter-revolutionary conspiracy in complicity
with the foreign _bourgeoisie_." The latter was alleged to be directing
the conspiracy from Constantinople, but the whole thing was quite
unproved. Besides adult students, the party included some twenty pupils
of the middle and upper classes in the secondary schools, quite boys
still.
Not long before I came to the Solovky, the Gpu of the Trans-Caucasian
Soviet Republic had sent thither forty Tchetchentsy,[28] very old men.
One of them looked out of the window of a hut, which is forbidden by
some Tchekists, on which the whole party were sent to the Sekirova hill
— notorious at the Solovky as the place of torture —, put into "stone
sacks" (an operation described in a later chapter) and flogged with
"Smolensky sticks" till they fainted. One of these aged men was 110
years old.
These old Tchetchentsy had been transported as hostages for their sons,
grandsons and great-grandsons who had joined guerilla bands and were
waging a ceaseless war with the Bolsheviks — a war which is still going
on. They themselves had not committed any kind of offence.
The practice of taking hostages, and of carrying out violent reprisals
on the relations and even the acquaintances of rebels and _émigrés_, has
been developed by the Soviet power into an elaborate system of terror,
which shrinks from nothing that may help it to attain the object in view
— the submission of the entire Russian people to the will of the leaders
of the Communist Party.
[Footnote 25: Boris Savinkoff, the well-known Social Revolutionary
leader, see p. 109.]
[Footnote 26: _Smienoviekhovtsy_, "signal-changers" — a name popularly
given to people, formerly of anti-Soviet opinions, who have changed
their political course and become reconciled to the Bolshevist
Government.]
[Footnote 27: _Sekretnye sotrudniki_; secret collaborators (with the
Gpu).]
[Footnote 28: A Caucasian nationality.]