A PRISONER OF THE REDS
[Illustration: THE TSARINA AND TSAREVICH. _Frontispiece._]
A PRISONER OF THE REDS
THE STORY OF A BRITISH OFFICER
CAPTURED IN SIBERIA
BY FRANCIS McCULLAGH
CAPTAIN, ROYAL IRISH FUSILIERS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
“Wer den Feind will verstehn muss in Feindes Lande gehn”
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1
1921
_All rights reserved_
DEDICATED TO
MY COMRADES
THE BRITISH OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS CAPTURED
WITH ME AT KRASNOYARSK, SIBERIA,
JANUARY 6, 1920
PREFACE
I attempt in the following pages to give some account of my experiences
among the Bolsheviks from January to April of the year 1920. My story is
neither Propaganda for Bolshevism nor Propaganda against it. I simply
give all the facts, whether they tell against Communism or in its favour;
and, if I indulge in deductions from those facts, my readers are at
liberty to draw whatever other deductions they like. The main thing is
that all the facts be placed before them; and that I have tried my best
to do. The result may possibly be that this book will displease not
only the Bolsheviks, but also those equally fanatical anti-Bolsheviks
who believe that Lenin and Trotsky lead lives of phenomenal debauchery,
that cannibalism is common in Moscow, that all Russian women have been
nationalized, that the Red Army is composed of Letts and Chinese who
have to be driven into action by means of whips and machine-guns, and
that anyone who disputes these facts is a Bolshevik himself. I really
hate Bolshevism as much as these people do, but I also hate Propaganda
in so far as that word means the selection of all the facts supporting
a certain theory, and the deliberate suppression of all the facts which
tell against that theory, or _vice versa_. Even during the Great War
Propaganda probably did more harm than good to every nation which made
use of it. Laughed at by the soldiers, distrusted by the general public,
regarded with unspeakable contempt by independent journalists, it was
too often used merely for the purpose of screening Governments which had
miscalculated and Generals who had blundered. The only good Propaganda
is propaganda of the truth; it is amazing that none of the belligerent
Governments ever recognized the tremendous advantages such a form of
Propaganda possesses over the other kind. Of that other kind my own
experiences as a combatant at the Front during the war showed me the
futility and even danger. I will briefly narrate two of these experiences.
A raid was once made on German trenches in Serbia with the object of
ascertaining if the Germans were still there or had been replaced by
Bulgarians. It was a successful raid, so successful in fact that, instead
of withdrawing the raiding-party from the German trenches, G.H.Q. left
them there some twelve hours while it tried to think out a scheme for
pushing on still further, with the result that they were subjected to
a murderous bombardment and finally driven out with heavy loss by a
counter-attack. An English newspaper correspondent on the spot wrote a
perfectly correct description of this operation, giving well-deserved
praise to the brave Welsh and Lancashire battalions which had carried it
out, but also telling, quite simply, how they had been forced to retire.
As all the second part of his description was eliminated by the Censor,
nothing appeared in the British Press but a one-sided report conveying
the impression that the British had established themselves permanently
in the German trenches. The effect of this report on the survivors of
the raid and on the whole Salonika Army was bad; it seriously shook the
confidence of our troops in the optimistic official reports from all the
other Fronts, more especially as the German account of this particular
operation, which was published in the English newspapers, was absolutely
accurate.
My second instance is from Kolchak’s Army. In June, 1919, a Russian
Colonel who had escaped from the Bolsheviks delivered a lecture on
Bolshevism at Omsk, under the auspices of Admiral Kolchak. It was an
able, restrained, and crushing condemnation of the Soviet Government, but
the speaker admitted, what is quite true, that the Reds work extremely
hard. This admission infuriated one of the audience, an old “dug-out”
Tsarist General, who forthwith jumped to his feet and interrupted the
lecturer by loud and violent protestations that he had not come there to
hear the Bolsheviks praised. He finally left the hall in a terrible rage,
and five months later he was running for his life from Omsk owing to the
fact that Kolchak’s whole army had crumbled to pieces, because most of
its leaders had made no attempt during the year they ruled Siberia to
emulate the tireless industry of the Reds.
The Bolshevik Government would not now be in existence were it not for
two facts: (1) Intervention, which united all Russians and led to the
creation of the Red Army; (2) injudicious and exaggerated anti-Bolshevik
Propaganda, which created among the working-classes a certain sympathy
for the Reds, and finally paralyzed intervention. Every London editor
and every British politician knows that unduly violent attacks even on
a criminal tend, in this country, to cause a reaction in his favour,
especially if some of the charges are found to be false; and I have
often wished, most fervently, after reading descriptions of Muscovite
cannibalism, that there was an _advocatus diaboli_ at every editor’s
elbow. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, would
inflict far greater injury on Bolshevism than the most appalling
exaggerations and diatribes. Had it not been for these exaggerations
and diatribes, and the suspicion that they were partly due to the
preponderance of the aristocratic and capitalist interests in our Press,
all British workmen would have realized long ago that, instead of being
the underdog, the Reds are merely a gang of adventurers who have deprived
the Russian Proletariat of all liberty and brought discredit on the cause
of democracy in every part of the world. They would have seen that the
things which they admire in Bolshevism are not Bolshevik at all, but
are borrowed without acknowledgment from Tsarist times and from Russian
Liberal parties. Ten years ago there were in the principal towns of
Russia free theatres for the people and many splendid orphanages, but the
Reds now point out these theatres and orphanages to visitors as if they
had founded them. The very name Soviet is not Bolshevik, and the Soviet
system dates from a period long anterior to 1917. As Prince Kropotkin
points out in his letter to the Western Democracies published last July
in the British Press, the Bolsheviks have been bitter opponents of the
Soviet system, which they have in fact destroyed. The craze for education
and the breaking down of class barriers for which the Reds take all
the credit are due to the Russian Liberals who ruled Russia after the
abdication of the Tsar. Lenin has, in fact, stolen the thunder of the
Revolution, but this must not lead us to describe that particular thunder
as the voice of the Devil, when it is really the voice at the great
Russian people. It was this mistake which ruined Kolchak and Denikin.
There is plenty of pure Bolshevik thunder let loose from the Kremlin, and
that we can all denounce as much as we like, for it is directed not only
against Christianity, but also against democracy.
There are in Bolshevism noble phrases and splendid schemes which are not
especially Bolshevik at all, but are borrowed from the movement that
overthrew the Tsar and all he stood for. Had the Reds never appeared on
the scene, those phrases would have been lived up to and those theories
carried into practice, and the majority of people in England would
have applauded. Now that the Reds have taken possession of them, we in
England are too much inclined to regard them as typically Bolshevik, and
to condemn them wholesale. One out of the combination of forces which
hurled Kolchak from Omsk and Denikin from Ekaterinodar was the same force
that had hurled Nicholas the Second from his throne, and, though it is
harnessed at present to the war-chariot of Bolshevism, it should be our
aim not to keep it there permanently, but to unharness it, remove its
apprehensions, and make it understand that we sympathize fully with its
fierce hatred of autocracy and militarism and with all its legitimate
aspirations. So far, unfortunately, we have done exactly the opposite.
That there are publications in this country which omit everything that
tells against the Bolsheviks is unhappily true; and things have, in
fact, come to such a pass that it would be easier and more profitable to
publish a book giving either side of the question than to publish a book
giving both sides. On the one hand, there are British organizations which
would buy whole editions of books which were from beginning to end one
long tirade against Bolshevism, and Russian organizations which would
promise very dazzling rewards, at a period which cannot now be remote,
to the authors of such books. On the other hand, there is—well, an
organization which gives away jewelry; and, between the two of them, poor
John Bull is in a position which really excites my pity.
If any reader is kind enough to remark that an author who, under these
circumstances, caters for neither of these extreme parties deserves
credit, I would at once assure him that practically all the credit is
due to the publisher who accepts such an author’s book, especially at a
time like the present, when the publishing trade has to contend with such
great and unprecedented difficulties.
I have stated above that intervention and anti-Bolshevik Propaganda
helped the Bolsheviks rather than injured them. Had it not been for
intervention there would be no sympathy for the Reds in this country,
and there would be no Red Army in Russia. The Bolsheviks are Pacifists
and anti-Militarists who were enabled to seize the reins of power
through their denunciation of war, and they could never have induced a
single soldier to fight for them if they had not been attacked from the
outside. Their military helplessness in 1918 was ludicrous. Sometimes a
dozen armed Czechs captured towns with a population of 50,000. The Czech
conquest of Siberia was like the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Had the
Bolsheviks been let alone they would have been overthrown a year ago by
some movement originating inside Russia. Russian Communism is like a top
kept spinning by external propulsion. Once the external action ceases,
the top will fall. Bolshevism is contrary to human nature. It can no more
persist in time of peace than a cone at rest can stand on its apex.
Several of my most sensational experiences I have had to omit, as even
the most discreet account of them would compromise people who are still
in Russia; but I have made a full report of these experiences to the
proper authorities in this country. Other experiences I can never publish
so long as there is a Bolshevik Government in Russia.
I might add that the publication of this book has been delayed by the
continued detention of my fellow-prisoners in Siberia. I felt that it
would be inadvisable for me to publish it until they had all crossed the
frontier—firstly, because the fact that they had helped me to escape
might have brought down on them the vengeance of the Bolsheviks; and,
secondly, because a message received from them last February indicated
that somebody who had joined them after my departure was impersonating
me, with the intention apparently of leaving Russia under my name. As I
explain in the text, I had been registered at Krasnoyarsk both as an
officer and as a civilian. When the civilian went to Moscow, my comrades
had apparently got somebody to play the part of the officer; and it was
very good for me that they did so, as the prisoners had to report once a
week, and as, if my absence had been discovered, my peregrinations as an
alleged journalist would soon have been cut short.
I have not had time, since my return from Russia, to read any of the
numerous accounts which have been written about the present condition
of that country, so that the picture which I here draw has this merit
at least, that it is taken direct from nature and not copied from other
drawings. In fact, most of the book was written by me in shorthand during
my journey from Krasnoyarsk, and my stay in Ekaterinburg and Moscow. I
can also claim, I think, to be the only foreigner who has circulated
freely in Red Siberia and Red Russia without having had a Bolshevik
“guide” attached to him or Bolshevik preparations made to receive him. In
Krasnoyarsk, Ekaterinburg, and for some time in Moscow, the Bolsheviks
completely lost track of me, and, in my Siberian fur cap and dilapidated
sheepskin coat, I wandered wherever I liked. The best testimonial I
ever received to the perfection of my “make-up” was the undisguised
incredulity with which that excellent clergyman, the Rev. Frank North,
received me in Moscow. “You mean to tell _me_ that _you_ are a British
officer!” he cried three times, each time in a so much louder tone of
voice, and with such increased emphasis on the personal pronouns, that
his final shout might almost be described as a roar of indignation.
Several of the following chapters have already appeared in various
periodicals, especially the _Nineteenth Century_ and the _Fortnightly
Review_; and I thank the various editors in question for their permission
to reprint those contributions. I must also thank my friend Professor
Francis de Zulueta, of All Souls College, Oxford, for his invaluable
assistance in seeing this book through the press during my absence from
England.
FRANCIS MCCULLAGH.
LONDON, _October, 1920._
CONTENTS
PAGES
PREFACE vii
CHAPTER I.—THE FLIGHT FROM OMSK
By train to Novo-Nikolaevsk—Congested railway lines—Questions of
precedence—Train-jumping—“Bad joss”—A broken coupling—Successful
bribery 1-11
CHAPTER II.—WE TAKE TO SLEIGHS
At Bolotnaya—We board ammunition-sleighs—Stripping the
dead—Hospital ghouls—Drinking motor spirit—Sufferings and
patience of the peasants—I nearly get lost—Colonel Ivantsev—I
reach Taiga 12-20
CHAPTER III.—CAPTURED
To Krasnoyarsk by train—The mysterious Three—The Whites
disarmed—Polite captors—We are disarmed by the Reds—Red
fanaticism—“We never kill prisoners”—Drunk with words—A
confused situation—Russian Christmas Eve, January 6, 1920 21-26
CHAPTER IV.—SOME HORRORS OF THE RETREAT
Fear of the Reds—And of Siberia—Russian
barbarity—Typhus-hospitals at Novo-Nikolaevsk—And at
Taiga—Mortality on the Retreat—Collapse of morality—Families
scattered—Fate of young girls 27-40
CHAPTER V.—FACE TO FACE WITH BOLSHEVISM
We are ignored—Impracticable schemes for escape—Krasnoyarsk—A
topsy-turvy world—Bolshevik ignorance of England—An interview
with the Red Governor—Class-warfare—We are kept as hostages 41-46
CHAPTER VI.—WE LEAVE OUR TRAIN
Impersonality of Bolshevik government—Our Omsk money becomes
valueless—We are helped by Mr. Yates—Captain Horrocks—Housing
difficulties—Militarist methods—Crowded quarters—Helpless
refugees—Compulsory registration—My growing horror of
Bolshevism—Captain Martel—English indiscretion—“The French
Uncle” 47-55
CHAPTER VII.—I BECOME A CIVILIAN
Difficulties with the Commissars—“You can work or fight for the
Communists”—Threatened with the Concentration Camp—I register
as a journalist—We sell British equipment—Captain Horrocks
gets us all registered—I acquire a dual personality—We give
lessons—An accomplished sergeant—New men, new manners—“No
Hand-shaking”—Old-fashioned Russian generosity—Bolshevik
leaders and manual labour 56-63
CHAPTER VIII.—IN RED KRASNOYARSK
Red rejoicings—Abandoned horses—Statistics—Reds in British
uniform—Mistakes that resulted—B.R.C. supplies—An unsatisfactory
barter 64-69
CHAPTER IX.—I ESCAPE
I leave my comrades—A murdered White officer—Agents with false
passports—My credentials—My exertions on behalf of my comrades—I
get permission to go to Ekaterinburg—A hurried start—49° below
zero 70-75
CHAPTER X.—THE JOURNEY TO EKATERINBURG
Russian railway engineers—Sverdlov—Dovgolevsky—Educated
Bolsheviks’ great interest in intellectual and economic
problems—Life and work on the train—Insatiable workers—Technical
experts desire to leave Russia—Their unsatisfactory status—Car
No. 1167—Repair of bridges—Abandoned White rolling-stock—Safety
of Colonel Johnston—Rise in prices at Novo-Nikolaevsk—Von
Blücher—Terror at Omsk—The “Cheka”—Our train is searched 76-87
CHAPTER XI.—TROTSKY IN EKATERINBURG
The Army of Labour—The _Red Tocsin_—The Soviet Government
composed of journalists—Trotsky—His appetite for work—Shovelling
snow—He deals with the D.M.S.—Propaganda by poster—“Packed”
public meetings—“The Fight against Economic Ruin”—Trotsky’s
contempt for democracy—His train—His Jewish adaptability—His
oratory—Failure of the Army of Labour—Bureaucracy—Place-hunters 88-107
CHAPTER XII.—IN A “PROPAGANDA HALL”
Cartoons and posters—Crowd-psychology—“Workers of the world,
unite!”—Multiplication of Government institutions—A Bolshevik
guide—Communism in action—Private enterprise killed—A meeting
of the Provincial Soviet—Soviet eating-houses—Marketing—Passive
resistance of the peasants 108-123
CHAPTER XIII.—THE MURDER OF THE TSAR
The Ippatievsky Dom at Ekaterinburg—Metvietev—Yurovsky—Lettish
Guards—July 16, 1918—Goloshokin—Yurovsky wakes the Imperial
Family—They go down to the cellar—A pathetic procession—Faithful
servants—Yurovsky reads the order for the executions—He shoots
the Tsar—The massacre—The Grand Duchess Tatiana—The bodies thrown
on to motor-lorries—Yurovsky’s anxiety to destroy all traces
of his crime—He is shunned by the Bolsheviks—And repulsed by
Lenin—Interview with Yurovsky, March 18, 1920 124-152
CHAPTER XIV.—THE BURIAL OF THE TSAR
Kopchiki Wood—Captain Pometkovsky—Remains discovered—Crown
jewels—Use of sulphuric acid—The cremation—Return of the
lorries to Ekaterinburg—Prokofy’s tale—Metvietev has the
cellar at Ippatievsky Dom cleaned—Letters of the Tsarina—The
charwomen—False reports circulated—Evidence of Kouzma
Letemin—And of Anatoly Yakimov—Treatment and behaviour
of the Imperial Family at Ekaterinburg—Their piety—Their
courtesy—Pankratov’s account of the Imperial Family and
their suite 153-185
CHAPTER XV.—THE CITY OF DREADFUL HUNGER
By train to Moscow—A fellow-traveller—Is he Metvietev?—Derelict
rolling-stock—Civilization relapses into barbarism—A changed
city—Disillusionment of my fellow-travellers—Desolation and
famine—Contrast with pre-war conditions—Bolshevism kills
private initiative—Resulting demoralization 186-197
CHAPTER XVI.—THE MYSTERIES OF MOSCOW
Government without law—Chicherin’s assistants—Lost folk—The
last first and the first last—Clumsy White conspirators—Lenin
tolerates anarchism—“The Union of Five Oppressed”—“Russian
Friends of American Freedom”—Many Bolsheviks desire to leave
Russia—And to evangelize the British workman—Jewish Communists’
missionary zeal—Dr. Karlin imprisoned 198-205
CHAPTER XVII.—MY LIFE IN MOSCOW
In a railway carriage—Impassable streets—Food-control—Catholic
churches and priests—Bolshevik intellectuals—Their theories
of education—Libraries nationalized—Christian literature
banned—Bolshevik literature—The destruction of pre-revolutionary
records and newspapers not an unmixed evil—Classic
drama—Lunacharsky—educating the public taste 206-219
CHAPTER XVIII.—THE RED TSAR AND HIS GUESTS
I am moved to a Soviet “guest-house”—The underworld
of the Third International—Intrigues with Korea and
Japan—Captain Sadul—Professor Barrakatula—Pan-Mahommedan
Congress, April, 1920—Intrigues in India, Central Asia,
and Turkey—Lenin—His appearance—His frugality—Germans in
Moscow—Concession-hunters—Financiers—Diplomats—A Bolshevik
“atmosphere” 220-232
CHAPTER XIX.—THE BOLSHEVIK F.O. AND THE FOREIGN PRESS
Foreign journalists enter Russia by underground
methods—Unscrupulous editors—Correspondents used as instruments
of Bolshevik propaganda—Their false position—The guests of the
Soviet—No free intercourse allowed them—They are shepherded
by skilfully selected interpreters—Independent and honest
journalism impossible—Litvinov—The People’s Commissariat of
Foreign Affairs—Rosenberg and Feinberger—The censorship—Its
intolerance—Chicherin—Burke quoted—Feeling of impermanence—A
tea-party 233-251
CHAPTER XX.—THE BOLSHEVIK NEWS AGENCY
I get into the Kremlin—The Rosta—An exhibition—Nationalization
of the Press—A poetic schoolmaster—“Talent
charts”—Kerzhentsev—Communist propaganda in the
provinces—Manufacturing public opinion—The wireless
service—Propaganda overreaches itself 252-261
CHAPTER XXI.—AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PATRIARCH
Patriarch Tikhon—His views on Church and State—Strangulation
of the Church by State control of communications—future of
religion in Russia—the Catholic Church—Polish clergy—Communist
schools—The Jews—The Freemasons 262-268
CHAPTER XXII.—IN THE DUNGEONS OF THE EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION
I am arrested—And searched—The offices of the Vecheka—The police
station—Youthful policemen—I am searched again—The Governor of
the jail—Solitary confinement—My cell—Female prisoners—Mental
effects of isolation—“Who had given me away?”—Consolations—Bad
diet—Xenofontov and Mogilevsky—I am interrogated—And released 269-285
CHAPTER XXIII.—LENINISM: THE DESIGN OF THE BOLSHEVIKS
Theory of Bolshevism—The Proletariat and the
Parasites—Anti-nationalism of the Bolsheviks—But they
foment nationalist movements abroad—Their political
dishonesty—Lenin—His fanaticism—Landau-Aldanov quoted—Lenin
the prophet of “internationalism”—Radek’s “Bolshevik
Party”—The peace with Esthonia—Bolshevik accomplices and
sympathizers abroad—“The Government of the Poor and of the
Oppressed”—Lunacharsky—Bolshevik emblems—Historical parallels
afforded by the Reformation and the French Revolution—The
spread of communistic and revolutionary ideas abroad is
necessary for the continued existence of Bolshevism in
Russia—Relations of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs with the
Third International—Commissar Feinberg—Forging passports and
foreign paper money—Historical and political comparisons with
Japan—Bolshevik misgivings—“Illusions, myths, and ghosts” 286-301
CHAPTER XXIV.—ABOARD THE GOOD SHIP “DONGOLA”
Failure of Bolshevism to suppress militarism and
capitalism—Foreign capitalists—Corruption and
profiteering—Bureaucracy—The Bolshevik oligarchy—Probable
reaction—I leave Russia under the Litvinov-O’Grady
agreement—I decline Bolshevik offers of employment as a
journalist—Marriage-bells—Helsingfors Harbour 302-310
APPENDIX
KOLCHAK’S GOLD TRAIN (_Chapter I., p. 6_) 311
BURNING OF A RED CROSS TRAIN (_Chapter I., p. 6_) 311
WRITINGS ON STATION WALLS (_Chapter IV., p. 38_) 312
THE PROPAGANDA HALL AT EKATERINBURG (_Chapter XII., p. 109_) 312
BOLSHEVIK JOURNALISM (_Chapter XX., p. 252_) 313
THE PEASANTS (_Chapter XII., p. 122_) 314
MOSCOW (_Chapter XV., p. 192_) 317
BOLSHEVIK MODERNISM 318
TYPHUS (_Chapter IV., p. 31_) 320
CONDITIONS IN EKATERINBURG (_Chapter XII., p. 123_) 323
THE RUSSIAN WHITES (_Chapter IV., p. 36_) 323
WHITE TROOPS WHO JOINED THE REDS (_Chapter VIII., p. 67_) 325
TRADE WITH CAPITALIST COUNTRIES 327
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY (_Chapter XIII., p. 134_) 328
LENIN (_Chapter XXIII., p. 289_) 329
THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT 332
MY BOLSHEVIK TRAVELLING COMPANIONS (_Chapter X., p. 76_) 333
THE RED LABOUR ARMY (_Chapter XI., p. 89_) 334
WORKMEN IN FACTORIES (_Chapter XXIV., p. 306_) 335
THE MILITARY POSITION IN SIBERIA 335
THE EDUCATION OF THE PROLETARIAT (_Chapter XI., p. 89_) 337
INDEX 341
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE TSARINA AND TSAREVICH _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE “WORKMEN’S AND SOLDIERS’ DEPUTIES” OF EKATERINBURG, JULY,
1918 xviii
AMMUNITION BEING BLOWN UP BEFORE THE EVACUATION OF EKATERINBURG
BY KOLCHAK 2
GROUP INCLUDING GENERAL SAKHAROV, GENERAL KOLCHAK, AND THE AUTHOR 4
CORPSE OF THE GRAND DUKE JOHN 82
CORPSE OF THE GRAND DUCHESS ELIZABETH 82
THE RED TOCSIN 88
IPPATIEVSKY DOM, EKATERINBURG 124
TWO SNOW SCENES ON THE FINNISH FRONTIER 310
[Illustration: THE “WORKMEN’S AND SOLDIERS’ DEPUTIES” OF EKATERINBURG,
JULY, 1918. _To face p. xvii._
THE “WORKMEN’S AND SOLDIERS’ DEPUTIES” OF EKATERINBURG WHO ALL SIGNED THE
TSAR’S DEATH WARRANT, JULY, 1918.
Central figure with cap is Comrade Sosnovsky, a prominent but mysterious
Bolshevik probably engaged to the beautiful Miss Yurovsky. On his right
is Bykov, formerly an officer. Next to him is Beloborodov, President of
the Regional Soviet of Ekaterinburg. Standing upright behind Sosnovsky is
Safarov, a powerful Bolshevik with a position on the Executive Committee
of the party. He is not an Ekaterinburg man, but came to Ekaterinburg
from Moscow nominally to occupy an unimportant post, but really to
act as the secret agent of Lenin among the Ural Bolsheviks, who,
being miners, were inclined to be headstrong and to defy even Moscow.
Safarov accompanied Lenin on his famous train journey through Germany
to Russia in a sealed carriage. At the extreme right of the first row
is Goloshokin, a Commissar who occupied somewhat the same position as
Safarov, and who worked hand in glove with him. At the extreme left of
the back row is Tuntul, formerly a subaltern in the old army. Many of
these men were neither workmen nor soldiers, but all signed the Tsar’s
death-warrant. The device on the Red Flag behind them reads “Soviet
of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Deputies.” This picture was taken before
epaulettes were abolished.]
A PRISONER OF THE REDS
CHAPTER I
THE FLIGHT FROM OMSK
At the beginning of November, 1919, I was a member of the British
Military Mission at Omsk, which was then, apparently, about to fall into
the hands of the Bolsheviks. The British Military Mission and the British
Railway Mission (which I shall hereafter designate the B.M.M. and the
B.R.M. respectively) occupied a house in the town. General Sir Alfred
Knox lived, as he had always done, in his special train, and intended
to leave about a week before the end, bringing with him all the British
civilians and all the B.M.M. officers save four. These four, of whom I
was one, were instructed to stay behind as long as possible in order to
obtain the latest information, and with us were a number of officers and
other ranks belonging to the B.R.M.
General Knox left on November 7, and the situation rapidly darkened after
his departure. The streets became filled, first with civilian refugees,
and then with the retreating soldiers of the White Army; and there was
a hopeless muddle at the railway station, which was blocked by hundreds
of trains. Finally, on November 13, when the Reds had nearly reached the
Irtysh River, on the east bank of which Omsk is situated, we transferred
ourselves to railway carriages which the B.R.M. had prepared for us and
for themselves. But even then there was some difficulty in getting away
owing to the confusion and to several ominous instances of sabotage
on the part of the Russian railwaymen. We were blocked some time, for
example, by an engine in front of us being allowed to get “cold,” which
means that the fire was allowed to die out, with the result that the
water in the pipes got frozen, and the pipes themselves were damaged
in such a way that, under the circumstances, repair was impossible. At
length, on November 14, we managed to leave just in the nick of time, for
the Reds reached the other side of the Irtysh the same day and captured
Omsk on November 15.
Then began a stern pursuit across a thousand miles of frozen steppe, a
pursuit which lasted till January 6, and which ended in our capture on
that date at Krasnoyarsk. We should never have been captured, however,
had we not been greatly handicapped by having to look after a number of
Russian ladies and aged people of good family entrusted to our care by
our own superior officers. The obstacles we encountered during that long
race were of the most varied and formidable description. In the first
place, the track soon became blocked by an interminable ribbon of trains
which moved very slowly and made prolonged and frequent halts. In the
second place, we found great difficulty in getting water and fuel for our
engine owing to the fact that there was no firewood at the stations and
that nearly all the water-towers had run dry or got frozen. Sometimes we
watered our engine from a wayside well, but this was by no means easy,
as the soldiers of other echelons were engaged in the same occupation
and were always in an even greater hurry than we were. The well always
looked like a hole made in a frozen river, for its sides were encased
in a thick, waxy coating of highly polished ice, and no stone or earth
was anywhere visible. Long lines of men always radiated from it towards
their respective engines, and passed to one another buckets which had
been lowered into the orifice by a long rope of ice, and were themselves,
apparently, fantastic creations of the same material. This work was
not only monotonous and endless, but also dangerous, for the sheets of
ice around these wells were always slippery; most of us wore hobnailed
army boots which were continually sliding from underneath us; the water
was invariably far below the surface of the ground, and, as there was
never any railing round the opening, the risk of our tumbling down was
considerable. In case we did tumble down, there was little chance of our
having a comparatively easy death by drowning, for we should be sure to
get wedged, head downwards, in the narrow part near the water, where the
overflow from the buckets had dashed against the sides and got frozen
there.
[Illustration: AMMUNITION BEING BLOWN UP BEFORE THE EVACUATION OF
EKATERINBURG BY KOLCHAK. _To face p. 2._]
But these wells were rare, and we had consequently to get up very often
thrice in the course of a single night in order to fill the boilers
with snow and the tender with wood. We were in all fifteen officers and
men, and, though we did this unaccustomed work in a thoroughly sporting
spirit, it was, nevertheless, very trying work owing to the intense cold,
the deep snow, and our own physical weakness. We had to work in our heavy
fur overcoats and fur gloves, and, so far, at least, as “snowing” the
engine went, our labour seemed almost useless, for the snow, when melted,
produced such a small quantity of water that in a few hours the engine
came to a standstill, and we had to turn out again.
We should have been in better condition for this work if we had been
able to sleep comfortably at night, but that we were unable to do owing
to the overcrowding in our carriages. In order that the Russian women
and children entrusted to our care should be more comfortable, we slept
some of us two in a bunk, others on the floor, and still others in the
corridor, and those at least who slept in the corridor were seldom
able to get a good night’s rest. I might add that, though officers and
privates necessarily mixed on terms of equality, perfect discipline
prevailed amongst us, and we all worked cheerfully and harmoniously
together. We even got up concerts, in which the star performers were our
C.O., who had an inexhaustible collection of rag-time ballads; a polyglot
Irish sergeant, who was in civil life the manager of an Opera Company;
and an English officer, who sang Spanish songs to the accompaniment of a
guitar which he had brought with him from South America.
As thefts of railway engines frequently occurred on this trip, and as
engine-drivers of Bolshevik sympathies sometimes allowed their engines
to “go cold,” we kept a British guard, sometimes composed of officers
and sometimes of men, to watch ours, day and night, during stoppages. It
had almost “gone cold” on one occasion when our sentry gave the alarm
just in time. On another occasion, when we lent it for a few hours to the
commander of a Polish echelon to manœuvre his train with, it was returned
to us with the connecting-rod broken. This accident, which could not be
made good in the repair shops, crippled our locomotive badly, without,
however, rendering it completely useless. We bound up the connecting-rod
in wooden splints, as if it were a broken arm, so that the machine
could pull us along gently on the level, though it could not ascend a
hill without the assistance of another engine, assistance which was not
easy to get. A further difficulty was the quantity of snow on the line.
Although the snowfall during the retreat was not unusually heavy, the
rails were nearly always covered owing to the fact that soldiers and
refugees in passing echelons had torn down most of the snow-sheds for
firewood. Besides, as the horses and sleighs of the retreating troops
used the railway line as well as the roads on each side of it, they
sometimes forced much hard snow on to the rails, with the result that we
all had to get out on several occasions to push our train.
[Illustration: GENERAL SAKHAROV, _Commander-in-Chief_. GENERAL KOLCHAK,
_Minister of War_. CAPT. F. MCCULLAGH, _British Intelligence Officer_.
_To face p. 4._]
While waiting in Novo-Nikolaevsk we were warned by General Sakharov that
a mutiny was expected in that town, and consequently we “stood to” for
several nights in succession. The mutiny broke out after we left, and,
during one of our many stops, the disbanded soldiers of the mutinous
regiments went past us eastwards, walking on the railway track, fully
armed. None of our party, however, save myself, had the curiosity even
to look at them, for all our English soldiers were absolutely “fed up”
by this time with shocks of every kind. Shortly before we came into one
station, Achinsk, it was wrecked by the accidental explosion of a train
full of H.E., and 3,000 people were killed or wounded. When we passed
through Achinsk, the line was strewn with dead bodies and with the
wreckage of five trains, but the incident excited little comment amongst
us. All our energies were concentrated on satisfying our locomotive’s
insatiable cravings, and once or twice we were able to water at a station
where a faint trickle still came from the pump. The struggle for water
that took place on these occasions was a nightmare, as half a dozen
engines sometimes contended for the privilege of filling their boilers
first, and as the commandants of rival echelons almost came on several
occasions to blows. These scenes were extraordinary, and I can claim
to describe them with authority, if not with skill, inasmuch as my
comrades and I had frequently to stay up all night, not only in order
to work hard, but also in order to prevent our engine being stolen. All
around stretched an illimitable waste of snow, gleaming cold beneath
the starlight, and fringed on the left by dark forests which continued
for thousands of miles to the northward, till they dwindled to stunted
shrubs, and finally disappeared altogether in the ever-frozen _tundras_
of the Polar Sea. High in the darkness loomed the tall, ice-plated
water-tower, which always reminded me of a gigantic Paschal candle with
streams of wax congealed on its sides, the candlestick being a massive,
square block of ice which had formed over a brick platform three or four
feet below. From the summit of this spectral pillar hung rigid, ice-clad
ropes which clinked together with the sound of clinking glass, and at
its foot stood a crowd of men covered to the eyes in skins and looking
like Arctic necromancers awaiting a miracle. The Jews could not have
waited with more anxiety for the living stream to gush from the rock than
those Slavs waited for the most indispensable of all liquids to trickle
from this magic tower. Meanwhile the busy and mischievous Spirits of the
Snow played every conceivable prank. They whitened young men’s beards
and eyebrows, they encased the rifles of the soldiers in glittering
hoar-frost, they made the railway station look like an Eskimo snow-hut,
they even capped the telegraph poles with snowy Phrygian bonnets several
feet in height and sometimes cocked rakishly on one side.
The six or seven engines grouped around the water-tower were perfectly
in keeping with that ghostly shape, bearing as they did as little
resemblance to a respectable locomotive such as one sees in England as a
Samoyede in winter costume bears to a London bank clerk. Snow was piled
on the buffers, and on the platform in front, and on every projection at
the sides; but the most startling item of the decoration scheme was the
row of giant icicles, some of them thick and long as a man’s leg, which
adorned the steaming flanks of the monster.
The carriages were similarly garbed in snow—fantastic wreaths of soft,
unbroken snow on the roofs, deep drifts of snow on the steps, snow on the
narrow window-sills, fluffy little balls of snow clinging pertinaciously
to every rivet. The insides of these waggons were as unusual as the
outsides, being most of them more like gipsies’ vans than anything else,
as soldiers and their families had lived in them for years, children
had been born in them, rude family portraits adorned the walls, cats
and dogs looked on them as their ancestral mansions. One train carried
the equivalent of forty-four million pounds sterling in gold roubles,
Kolchak’s entire reserve and most of what was left of the fabulous wealth
of the Tsars. Another train was laden with Kurgan butter to the value
of five million roubles. A third was crammed with typhus patients, and
was throwing out naked corpses at every stopping-place with as little
ceremony as the stoker threw out ashes.
The commandants of all these trains contended furiously all night long
in the station commandant’s office, not only for the privilege of being
watered first, but also for the privilege of being put first on the
west track, which was comparatively free. Two of those commandants were
full-blown Generals, and we nicknamed one of them the “Butter General,”
and the other the “Typhus General,” from the nature of their respective
cargoes. The “Butter General” held forth oleaginously on the importance
of his little load, and warned everybody of the stimulating effect which
butter would have on the Bolshevik pursuit. He was probably thinking,
however, of his own safety; and in the end he was captured, but without
the butter, which he had encouraged the local population to loot. The
“Typhus General” quoted Kolchak’s orders to prove that hospital trains
should always have the precedence. But poor Kolchak had ceased to count:
he might as well have cited one of the maxims of Mencius. The last we
heard of the typhus train was that it had caught fire. The Reds saved
some of the patients, but all the others had been burned to death.
The Poles maintained that at such a time everything must give way
to military echelons; and, as both the station commandants and the
military echelons were Polish, the Poles invariably had their way.
But sometimes it looked as if the contest would end in bloodshed, for
all the commanders went to these incredible conferences armed to the
teeth and accompanied by soldiers who might be described, without much
exaggeration, as walking arsenals, for, in addition to rifles, bayonets,
swords, daggers, and revolvers, some of them even carried hand-grenades.
A station-master in any other country would have gone mad if he had all
these people in his office roaring at him simultaneously and handling
their revolvers, while he was trying to converse with six people at once,
and at the same time to carry on his ordinary business. And some of
these station-masters nearly did go mad. On several occasions they flew
into a rage, and ordered everybody who had no business in the office to
leave it, but none of the intruders ever stirred a step, for they all
claimed some right to be there. Even the soldiers said that they were
in attendance on their officers; and, as it was no joke tackling men
who carried Mills bombs, the station-master invariably subsided. Not to
be out of the fashion, the British delegates at these debates were also
armed; but, as we only numbered fifteen, were most of us ridiculously
young, and had merely got rifles and revolvers, we failed somehow to
inspire terror. For the contest was like one among a crowd of desperate
men belonging to different nationalities, who had been shipwrecked on
a desert island. Naturally, and as a matter of course, the nationality
which had the most numerous and best-armed representatives took the first
place without paying attention to the size or prestige of the Empires to
which smaller groups belonged.
While the Whites palavered the Reds advanced, and we began to lose hope.
“What can we expect,” asked the wit of our party with comic resignation,
“after leaving Omsk town on the 13th of the month, and leaving Omsk
station on a Friday in a group which originally numbered thirteen
persons, among them two flagrant specimens of what the Chinese call ‘bad
joss’ in the shape of one officer who was captured at Mons, and another
officer who was twice captured in previous wars and has always brought
bad luck to the army he joined?”
The last-named officer, myself, had served during the Great War in
Gallipoli and Serbia. The Mons officer, an excellent fellow who worked
harder than any of us, used to say from time to time with mournful
humour: “It’s no bally good, boys. We shan’t get away. _I’m_ with you.
_I’m_ the Jonah, all right. We’ll all get pinched.”
Nor could we forget that our G.O.C., General Sir Alfred Knox, had been in
the habit of saying in a jocular way that _he_ began his retreat in the
year 1914 at Tannenberg, where he was military _attaché_ with Samsonov’s
Army, and had been more or less on the run ever since. But I do not think
he ever imagined, even in the worst days of Rennenkampf’s rout, that his
retreat would continue as far east as Vladivostock, and until the Year of
Grace 1920.
Several of our civilian guests seriously regarded as “bad joss” the
British flag which we had displayed in a prominent position on the
outside of our carriage, and beneath which, to make sure (for we found
that most of the Siberian peasants had never before seen the British
flag), we had painted in Russian the words “British Detachment.”
They pointed out that we were now traversing intensely hostile country
where savage repression of the insurgent peasantry had been going on
for a whole year previously, and that, as the British flag had been
indirectly associated with these repressions, the guerillas, who now
swarmed along the line for a distance of a thousand miles, would be
excited by that emblem to attack us for revenge or for loot or for
both. They added, what I do not believe to be true, that a price of
50,000 roubles had been placed on the head of every British officer.
Nevertheless, we refused to haul down our flag, and it was still flying
over our carriage when we were captured at Krasnoyarsk. But what they
said about the danger from insurgent bands was perfectly true. Those
bands had derailed very many trains, and even captured stations at a time
when Kolchak’s star was in the ascendant, and the line strongly guarded
by the troops of six foreign countries. Now that the “Supreme Ruler” was
a fugitive, and that all the foreign soldiers were gone, they could
hardly be expected to refrain from attacking Kolchak’s broken rear. We
therefore made elaborate plans for their reception.
At frequent intervals on our journey we were overtaken by officers and
other ranks of the B.R.M. who were engaged in a new form of sport which
they called “train-jumping.” When they arrived in an echelon at a station
they walked to that train at the head of the “ribbon” which was going off
first, and generally managed to persuade the commandant to give them a
“lift” to the next station, where they repeated the performance. Owing,
however, to the extreme overcrowding in all the trains, no more than two
persons could play this game simultaneously in the same echelon. All
these players eventually succeeded in escaping; and if we had imitated
them we might have escaped too, but, of course, we could not leave our
refugees. The change that had taken place in the appearance of these
train-jumpers was like the change which takes place in the appearance of
domestic animals that have gone wild. Covered with dirty furs, unshaven,
wild-eyed, and desperate, they would certainly have excited comment in
Bond Street or on the Grand Stand at Ascot.
They told us stories that would fill a book, and make most books of
adventure look tame. Three of them, for instance, had been in a train a
few stations west of us, when it was rushed one night by a band of Reds
who had come on sleighs from the north. They heard the raiders thunder
on the doors of each waggon, at the same time summoning the occupants
to come forth instantly on pain of death. The sound came closer; and
when finally it shook the door behind which they crouched, a Russian
interpreter rose in a panic to undo the fastening. But one of the British
officers pressed the cold muzzle of a revolver against his head and
warned him, in a fierce whisper, to keep still. Thinking that the waggon
was empty, the Reds passed on; and, when the sentry whom they had left
behind turned his back, the three officers slipped noiselessly from the
carriage, waded through the deep snow, and gained the shelter of the
forest. They afterwards commandeered sleighs and food at the point of
the revolver, as, unfortunately, firearms were the only arguments that
had weight in those days. Two British officers who were with Ataman
Dutov in the south got across the Chinese frontier, and turned up, long
afterwards, in Peking.
As the Reds were coming still nearer, we finally got attached to a Polish
echelon on the West track; but, as that track was now as congested
as the East track, we gained little by the transfer. Like an airship
commander making for his base in a damaged condition, with the last drop
of petrol in his tanks, and enemy aircraft in hot pursuit, the Commandant
of this Polish echelon now began to shed waggon after waggon with the
object of lightening his train. I do not know on what principle he went,
but it seemed to me that, for every verst the Reds gained on us, the
Commandant jettisoned a truck. An old Tsarist “dug-out” who had lost
the good qualities of the Pole without acquiring those of the Russian,
this Commandant showed little sympathy for us; and his officers, some
of whom, being Poles from East Prussia, had served in the German Army
until they became prisoners of war, were anything but friendly. We heard
that they objected to the weight of our carriage, and would like to get
rid of it; and, though they denied having any such intention, several
ominous circumstances seemed to indicate that they had. We discovered,
for example, that one of our couplings was broken and the other so
damaged that a slight bump would be enough to make it snap. As our
carriage was the hindmost, and as the bumps were sometimes so bad that
they swept all our crockery off the table, this was a serious matter,
for, if the coupling snapped at the top of a steep incline, we should go
rushing backwards at a speed which would soon become terrific, and should
probably get derailed or smashed to pieces against some other train. When
we drew the attention of the Poles to this matter they said that they
could not repair the coupling and had no spare ones. They may have really
wanted to get rid of our carriage, either because it was too heavy or
because it was contaminated by typhus, for one of the refugees entrusted
to us had managed to contract that disease. Or perhaps they believed,
like some of those refugees, that our Union Jack would draw the fire of
guerillas, and decided that, since we refused to haul down our flag, they
would leave it and us behind.
As we could not repair the coupling ourselves, we took turns as sentry
over it day and night. Beside the sentry were several logs of wood, which
he was to throw under the nearest wheel of our carriage immediately the
coupling gave way, so as to prevent the carriage from rushing backwards.
The result was that, every time we went up a slope, my heart was in my
mouth, as it used to be when I heard the long-drawn wail of approaching
Turkish shells in Gallipoli. Never till then had I realized that there
were so many nasty inclines on that section of the Trans-Siberian which,
when I traversed it formerly in swift and well-appointed trains, had
always seemed to me as flat as a pancake.
In the end we bribed the Poles to place our carriage next the engine;
and, when they did that, they suddenly discovered that they had couplings
after all, and hastened to screw them on. We also bribed a Russian Red
Cross doctor to take our typhus case into his hospital; and, realizing
from the success of these experiments in corruption how eloquently money
spoke, we began flinging it right and left. Our bribes must, in all,
have run into hundreds of thousands of roubles; and, though this seemed
a stupendous sum at the time, it ultimately proved as valueless to the
recipients as so many hundreds of thousands of snowballs, owing to the
subsequent action of the Soviet Government in abolishing Omsk money. In
some parts of Russia banknotes are now sold by weight like waste-paper;
in other parts, tons of notes are being thrown into pulping-machines for
conversion into newsprint.