IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE
Above the gray mist of Petrograd in winter, the “terror” and the
“guillotine” hung like threatening swords.
Organized punishment was no part of the revolutionary scheme, but every
group of revolutionists who took power discovered, to their distress,
that it was easier to will people into a line of conduct than to make
them follow it.
The People’s Commissaries were beset by enemies on every side. There
were traitors within the ranks, and honest and dishonest enemies
without. There were the usual number of weak or unscrupulous men in
uniform who find their way into every army and navy. All were engaged,
one way or another, in trying to keep the poor, battered social machine
from running.
All the courts that refused to recognize the authority of the Soviet
were promptly closed. The few remaining open were required to
operate according to the decree of the People’s Commissaries. The
decree provided that the court should decide all cases, in the name
of the Russian Republic. It permitted the judges to be guided in
their decisions by the old laws “to the extent in which they did
not contradict the revolutionary conscience and the revolutionary
conception of right.”
When the decree abolishing the old courts was passed, a Military
Revolutionary Tribunal became the chief judicial body. I was present
at Smolney Institute to witness its birth in one of the stormiest
of the stormy sittings of the Central Executive Committee. In the
words of the decree, it was organized “to conduct a campaign against
counter-revolutionary forces, and in order to settle cases emanating
from campaigns against marauders, speculators, sabotagers, and other
such merchants, officials, etc.”
Petrograd greeted the day of its first sitting with apprehension, and
pronounced it “the beginning of the terror.” On that day press and
populace discussed little besides the guillotine.
It was a crisp, cold winter Sunday, and as I crossed the great
Dvortsovaya Bridge that spans the Neva, and crunched through the heavy
snow to the palace of the Grand Duke Nicolai Nicolaievitch, I kept
telling myself again and again that there could be no guillotine; that
the world must have moved forward a little bit in that century and more
which stretched between this Revolution and that of France.
Countess Panina was the first prisoner at the bar. As Minister of
Public Welfare in the Kerensky Cabinet, she was the first woman to
be lifted to a place of official honor in Russia. When the Bolshevik
Revolution overturned the government, Countess Panina had in her
possession about ninety thousand rubles belonging to the Ministry of
Education. Being a liberal and not a radical Socialist, she refused to
recognize the authority of the People’s Commissaries, and declined to
turn the money over to Bolshevist representatives.
No woman of the liberal group was so highly esteemed as she. For years
she had devoted her life to the improvement of social conditions for
the workers. The Narodny Dom, the People’s House at Petrograd, where
many of the revolutionary meetings were held, was the result of her
labor. The people were torn with conflicting emotions when she was
brought to trial.
The music-room in the Grand Duke’s palace, where the favorites of
other days entertained their royal patrons, had been chosen as the
scene of the trial. It was a big, square auditorium, paneled in rarest
wood and roofed with delicately tinted glass--all simple, beautiful,
and subdued. Into this setting the revolutionists had introduced a
semicircular table covered with shiny red leather and skirted with a
flouncing of turkey red cloth. The electric lights had gone out, and
the room was lit by two garish red glass lamps with green shades.
The tribunal consisted of seven men--two peasants, two soldiers,
two workmen, and the president, Jukoff. Most of them sat stiffly on
the edges of green-brocaded silk chairs, and looked as thoroughly
uncomfortable as if they were prisoners instead of the judges.
They were taking the job with desperate seriousness. Jukoff alone
seemed undisturbed by the surroundings. He was a lean, clean-cut,
intelligent-looking man. His eyes were deep set beneath the roof of a
high forehead. He wore a neat sack-suit and a white collar.
The room was packed with a crowd of Countess Panina’s friends. They
cast hostile glances in the direction of the tribunal, and the
atmosphere was charged with the tensity of their feeling. A red-headed
camera-man with a journalistic sense had established himself at a point
of vantage. On a bench against the wall sat the prisoner, a soldier,
looking very uncomfortable in a new and shiny uniform of padded khaki
and high hat of sheepskin, standing on each side of her. The Countess
might have been a social worker in any American city. She had a
pleasant, round, well-bred face, and a pair of kindly eyes. She wore a
severe black tailored suit and a small close-fitting turban.
Jukoff opened the proceedings with a reference to the part played
by military revolutionary courts during the French Revolution, and
declared that in Russia also the tribunals would “defend with severity
the rights and traditions of the revolutionary peoples.”
The charge was briefly stated. The prisoner pleaded “not guilty.” The
documentary evidence, a letter of Countess Panina’s, was introduced.
There were no lawyers. Prosecutors and defenders both came from the
crowd. An intellectual, J. Gurevitch, made a statement denying the
guilt of the prisoner. When he finished, a young workman, Ivanoff,
took his place before the judges. He was from the artillery factory. A
straw-colored Russian shirt, buttoned on one side, was as much a part
of him as his fair hair and blue eyes. He spoke simply and earnestly:
“If I have seen some light in my life, it is only because she came into
it,” he said. “She has given me the possibility of thinking. It was in
her Narodny Dom I learned to read. She is not a countess here. This is
no time for distinctions. She is only a citizen who has given so much
to her people. I ask you to give her freedom, because I would not want
the world to hear that the Russian people are without gratitude.”
As he walked to his chair, a professional man, one of Countess Panina’s
friends, stepped forward and shook his hand, and the crowd arose to pay
him tribute.
Naumoff, the prosecutor, arose. He was a boy too, slightly younger
than the other, and a factory worker also. His dark brown hair was
closely cropped, and he wore a brown sateen shirt matching a pair of
snapping brown eyes. As he began his attack, a murmur of dissent ran
through the crowd, and an old man in a gray peasant’s blouse rose from
his chair. His face and the top of his bald head flaming scarlet, his
long white beard shaking, both his hands waving in the air, he shouted:
“I can’t stand it--I can’t stand it!” He was an old journalist from
a provincial paper to whom the Countess had long been an idol. Two
gray-haired women caught his arms and led him from the court-room,
protesting violently as he went.
Naumoff continued:
“We should not look at it from the sentimental point of view,” he said.
“I admit that citizeness Panina is a noble woman, but the time has
come to struggle for the things that are the rights of the people. The
people must learn to read, because they have the right to know how to
read, not through the kindness of any one person.”
So I had come from ordered America, not to see the trial of the
sweet-faced woman against the wall. It was the trial of an idea--the
sure basis of human right against dependence on the benevolent whim
of the individual. It was the order of the radical against the order
of the liberal. Charity and justice, privilege and right, were having
their day in court.
Two other speakers from the crowd followed the factory boys. Then the
Countess Panina was asked to make a statement. Her breast rose and
fell. Finally she spoke, her words coming faintly at first.
“I had taken the post, and I could not relinquish it except on order of
the Master,” she said. “The Constituent Assembly is the only power that
I shall recognize. The money is in an institution of credit, and I will
turn it over when the Master speaks.”
She choked, stood silent a moment, and sat down.
The court went out to deliberate. In a moment the room was in an
uproar. Every one was talking at once. Half an hour later, the judges
filed back to their seats, looking as uncomfortable as when they had
filed out. A Russian-American, a man named Krameroff, who had been the
head of the Russian branch of the Socialist party in San Francisco,
arose to protest. The president of the court motioned to him to be
seated. He paid no attention. Jukoff ordered two soldier guards to
place him under arrest. Krameroff still protested, then locked arms
with the soldiers and walked smilingly out between them.
A sudden hush fell upon the court-room. The friends of Panina held
their breath in expectation of the verdict.
Jukoff did not keep them long waiting. He arose and began reading:
“The Military Revolutionary Tribunal, in the name of the revolutionary
nation, having examined the case with regard to the removal by
Citizeness Panina of a sum of about 93,000 rubles from the funds of the
Ministry of Popular Education, decides (1) that Citizeness Panina shall
remain under arrest until she returns to the Commissary of Popular
Education the national money taken by her and (2) the Revolutionary
Tribunal regards Citizeness Panina as guilty of acting in opposition to
the national authority, but, in view of the accused’s past, confines
itself to holding Citizeness Panina up to the reprehension of society.”
The reprehension of society! The scorn of the people! It was a typical
Russian revolutionary decision, probable in no other land under the
sun. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief. No one quite knew how to take
it. The Countess Panina’s status remained practically the same. Here
and there some one started to clap. Others quickly hissed them into
silence. Again the threatened “terror” had passed.
It was a far cry from this exhibition of revolutionary justice to the
guillotine--almost as far as it was from that system of organized
injustice of the Tsars that kept the endless procession of men and
women marching toward exile and death.
A few days after the trial, friends of Countess Panina paid the money
to the Department of Education, and the prisoner was allowed to go free.
She held no grudge against the Bolsheviki; for, though she differed
from them, she understood their philosophy and the sincerity of their
belief. She had felt, from the first, the difficulty of reconciling war
and revolution, but believed, whatever the price Russia must pay, she
must never go back again to the old order.
The intricacies of law played no part in subsequent sittings of
the Military Revolutionary Tribunal. There were no convenient
technicalities either for the innocent or the guilty. Every case
was judged simply on its merits as workmen, soldiers, and peasants
interpreted right and wrong.
There were thirty-six members of the full tribune, divided into
groups of six, each group sitting for a week at a time. Commercial
and political offenders were tried by separate groups, and the cases
ranged from that of a boy who had stolen a bundle of papers, to
that of Puriskavitch, who was taken with a machine-gun and other
counter-revolutionary paraphernalia in his possession.
Both were handled with equal seriousness. The boy’s peculations
amounted to something like a ruble and sixty kopecs, and his victim
was an old woman who sold papers on the street. He insisted that he
didn’t have anything, and that all people who sold papers were really
property-owners, and when their papers were gone they could always get
more papers. At this, the old woman became very indignant, denied that
she had anything to do with the bourgeoisie, and insisted that she was
just a poor workingwoman.
The court asked the boy what he did with the money. He gave an
accounting. The most important item was fifty kopecs for a ticket to
the opera at the Narodny Dom. He explained that he was miserable and
depressed, and he thought if he could go to the theater the world might
not seem such a gloomy place. The judges listened with sympathy, and
one of them asked gravely:
“Did you feel better after you went to the theater?”
The boy nodded.
There was nothing incongruous to the jury about the need for music. The
Russian accepts it as an extenuating circumstance quite as readily as
he would physical hunger.
The tribunal offered no censure, but decided that the old woman must
be reimbursed for the loss of her papers. The boy had no money, so the
court ordered that he sell something. He said he had nothing to sell.
They looked him over, and decided that his rubbers were the only
things with which he could part. Rubbers, in Petrograd, were precious
possessions. The lad gave them up reluctantly. Then, remembering the
Narodny Dom, his face broke into a satisfied smile.
“It was worth it,” he said.
The most severe sentence I heard was that passed upon General
Boldireff, commander of the fifth army, who was sentenced to three
years’ imprisonment. General Boldireff had refused to answer the
summons of the Bolsheviki commander-in-chief of the army, Krylenko,
to attend a council. When he was arrested, he said he was acting in
accordance with the resolution of the Army Committee not to recognize
the authority of any party. The Army Committee later reversed its
decision, and resolved to obey the orders of Krylenko; but the General
claimed not to have known this until his arrest by soldiers of his
army. Jukoff asked the General how he would have behaved toward
Krylenko if he had known that the Army Committee had recognized him as
supreme commander-in-chief.
“At the present time,” said the General, “I am a citizen of free
Russia, and obey only the will of the nation as it will be expressed
by the Constituent Assembly.
“I wished to preserve the army under my command from the struggle of
parties, which would disorganize it,” he said. “I am myself a son
of the people, and honorably guarded the interests of the sons of
the nation that had been intrusted to me. Those soldiers with whom I
have shared hunger and cold, the mud and dirt of the trenches, the
bitterness of defeat and the inspiration of victory, will admit this. I
stood at my post like a sentinel, until I was removed from it by force.”
The soldiers who had arrested Boldireff accused him of sabotage tending
to disorganize the army, and called on the tribunal to punish him
severely. Other soldiers under his command protested against the trial
and pleaded in his defense.
In pronouncing sentence, President Jukoff said:
“In the name of the revolutionary people, the Revolutionary Tribunal
finds General Boldireff guilty of disobedience to the chief, Krylenko;
but, in view of the circumstance that he was not aware that the Army
Committee had altered its former resolution and had decided to
recognize Krylenko as commander-in-chief, resolves to sentence General
Boldireff to three years’ imprisonment.”
In a second the place was in an uproar. Cries of “Shame! Shame!”
“Despots!” swept the court.
Jukoff ordered the room cleared, and the next day warned the spectators
against a recurrence of any such protests.
A lawyer, Charykoff, was put on trial for accusing one of the members
of the Inquiry Committee of belonging to the Black Hundred. The
offender apologized, and the punishment was again nothing worse than
“public reprehension.”
Despite the mildness of the revolutionary judgments, the talk of the
guillotine continued. One afternoon, when it was at its height, I
dropped in to the office of Jacob Peters--if one could describe as
“dropping in” the intricate process of finding one’s way through the
labyrinth of corridors and up the many steps that lay between him and
the sidewalk. He was on the top floor of the old police station on the
Corokhovaya, where the Anti-Counter-Revolutionary Committee, successor
to the Military Revolutionary Committee that had organized the
Bolshevist Revolution, had its headquarters.
Peters was pale, tired, and disillusioned. Human nature, viewed from
the dubious vantage of the police station, left much to be desired.
As I passed through the outer office I noticed a woman sitting there.
Her plain face was pale, and an occasional tear trickled from her
frightened eyes.
Peters sighed when I asked about her. “She’s the secretary of the cadet
party,” he said. “I have to question her to find out what she knows
about Counter-Revolutionary plots, and I hate to do it. I wasn’t made
for this work: I detest jails so that I can’t bear to put any one into
them.”
“What about the guillotine?” I asked. “Surely the Russian Revolution
will never resort to that. It’s been over a hundred years since the
French Revolution, and I would like to think the world had moved a
little since then.”
Peters shook his head. “No,” he said; “we will never restore the death
sentence in Russia--not unless”--he hesitated a moment--“not unless we
have to use it for men who are traitors in our own ranks. What else
can you do with a man who betrays his own cause.
“There are so few of us to do the work,” said Peters. “We have to take
every one who offers, and it is impossible to know who are our true
friends and who are our foes. It is physically impossible for me even
to read thoroughly every paper that I am asked to sign during the day.
I have to trust to others, and it is getting so that I do not know who
to believe.”
With that, he opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a
revolver. He laid it down, then took out three sealed packages of
paper money. The first one contained a thousand rubles. It was a bribe
demanded by Peters’s predecessor in this very office, a handsome,
debonair young person who rattled off French as rapidly as he did
Russian. I had met him only a few days before, when he proudly
announced that his name would go down in history. Now he was reposing
in jail, and waiting for the Military Revolutionary Tribunal to get
around to his case. The chance to become rich as well as famous
had proved too much for him. He called one night at a vaudeville
theater which produced clever satires on current politics, and
ordered the place closed on the ground that one of the playlets was
counter-revolutionary. Later, through an agent, he made it known to the
manager that the payment of a thousand rubles would suffice to keep the
place open. The Bolsheviki discovered what he was doing, dismissed him
from office, and placed him under arrest.
The second envelop contained fifteen thousand rubles which had been
taken the night before from a food speculator, caught in the act of
trying to ship a large consignment of flour through Finland to Germany.
He offered a bribe of a thousand rubles to a soldier at the Finlyansky
Station. The soldier hurried to Smolney with the money and the news.
He could not write, so he made his mark upon the complaint to which he
swore. A detail of half a dozen soldiers and Red Guardsmen was sent to
help him. The man was arrested, and evidence secured that unearthed a
whole nest of speculators.
There was no longer a secret police in Russia. The _Okhranka_ had gone
with the Tsar into oblivion. But the people themselves were on the
watch for evidences of anything that might threaten the power of the
Commissaries. There was little that went on in the city that did not
soon reach the ears of Jacob Peters’s Committee.
A servant girl was sent to the Fortress of Peter and Paul with a cake
for her master imprisoned there. Wrapped in a parcel, lying on the
table near the cake, was a bundle of papers that had been carefully
collected to be put out of the way of prying Bolshevist eyes. The
servant apparently inadvertently took the wrong package to the prison,
where it fell into the hands of the prison authorities. That the
servant was not as inadvertent as she seemed was indicated a few days
later, when she reported that Stephenovitch, whom the Bolsheviki
were trying to find, would sleep that night in such a place, at such
an hour. When the Red Guard was sent to search, it was as she had
predicted.
When the Military Revolutionary Tribunal began its sittings, more than
a hundred speculators were waiting to be put on trial. Peters told me
that one day he was riding on a street-car, when the man sitting beside
him engaged him in conversation. He offered to sell him twelve hundred
bags of flour at two hundred and fifty rubles each, six thousand
pounds of sugar, and some butter. Peters got him to write down his name
and address, and within the hour he had been arrested and his supplies
had been seized.
One large consignment of flour was found hidden beneath the birch-wood
logs in a barge on the Moika Canal supposed to contain nothing but wood.
Despite all efforts to unearth the offenders, a few men waxed hideously
rich upon the hunger of the many. All provocation notwithstanding,
the guillotine remained simply a name. Wherever the death penalty was
inflicted, it was done by mobs having no official sanction--by mobs
aroused to an uncontrolled fury, and momentarily conscious of no other
passion than that of reprisal. Considering the unsettled condition
of government, such instances of violence were not so frequent as to
change the character of the Revolution into that of a Reign of Terror.