BLOOD STATISTICS
Let us build the new upon the ruins of the old.
The Che-Kas were not instruments of justice: the terminology of the
Central Committee, of the organ of “prosecution without mercy,” did not
understand them as such. Nor was a Che-Ka a court of inquiry; it was
not a tribunal at all. In defining the purpose of the institution, the
head of the model Che-Ka laid it down that
We, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, are a military
organ, with, for our field of battle, the home front in a civil
contest. It is not ours to sit in judgment upon the enemy. It is
ours utterly to destroy him. Hence, never must a Che-Ka pardon,
for its exclusive business is to exterminate all who may be
standing on the other side of the barrier.
And the meaning of such “ruthless prosecution” is not difficult to
understand when we recall how to “the dead letter of the law” there
succeeded “revolutionary experience” and “the revolutionary sense.”
For a sense of any kind is a thing subjective; whilst “experience”
in such a connection never fails to lead to tyranny as a matter of
fact--in the hands of a certain class of _personnel_, to the most
appalling forms of tyranny. “We are not warring against individual
_bourgeois_,” said Latzis’ article entitled “The Red Terror,”
published on Nov. 1, 1918,
We are out to destroy the _bourgeoisie_ as a class. Hence,
whenever a _bourgeois_ is under examination the first step
should be, not to endeavour to discover material of proof that
the accused has opposed the Soviet Government, whether verbally
or actually, but to put to the witness the three questions: “To
what class does the accused belong?” “What is his origin?” and
“Describe his upbringing, education, and profession.” Solely in
accordance with the answers to these three questions should his
fate be decided. For this is what “Red Terror” means, and what
it implies.
Nevertheless Latzis’ _formula_ manufacture lacked originality,
for he was but imitating Robespierre in the latter’s address to
the Convention of France on the legality of mass terrorism. Said
Robespierre: “To execute the enemies of one’s country, one needs but to
establish the fact that they are themselves. Not their annihilation,
but their chastisement, is what is called for.” As an instruction to
the judges of a legal tribunal, the dictum needs no comment.
But, fully to grasp the meaning of the Red Terror, we must first
determine the number of its victims.
And in this connection the vast, the unprecedented, area of slaughter
covered by the Soviet itself will help us to elucidate the Red Terror’s
system of application. Not that it is easy to determine the exact death
statistics, and perhaps they never will be determined, seeing that
the facts (1) that the names of the executed were published to the
extent only of one per cent., (2) that most of the death sentences were
carried out in secret dungeons, and (3) that many of the carryings-out
were so contrived as to leave no trace behind them combine to render
precision of fixation by an historian practically impossible.
_The Year 1918_
In writing his statistical articles, Latzis said:
The man in the street knows as well as do my colleagues of the
Che-Ka that by this time the latter has brought about tens, and
even hundreds, of thousands of executions.
This is true. Not for nothing do the three capital letters which stand
for the title of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, of the
Che-Ka, stand also for the three Russian words which denote “Death
to every man.”[37] And though at first Latzis put forward only the
fantastically insignificant figure of “22” as the number of victims
slaughtered during the first half of the year 1918, he had later
to estimate that the number of persons shot in the twenty central
provinces during the second half amounted to 4500.
The only thing of which the Che-Ka can be accused is of
excessive leniency of application of capital punishment. It
cannot be accused of excessive severity in the enforcement of
executions, for our strong iron hand has never ceased to seek to
lessen its victims. True, local Che-Kas have not always borne
this maxim in mind: yet it would be fairer to accuse the Che-Ka
in this respect than the provincial institutions. As a matter of
fact, we have been too easy-going, too magnanimous, towards our
vanquished foe.
Whence it would seem that Latzis conceived even a total of 4500 victims
to be too few, although it can easily be shown that, even at that, the
Latzian statistics covered but a very limited field. The first volume
of _The Che-Ka Red Book_ (which still exists as a publication,
and is distributed to responsible Bolshevist officials) furnishes us
with an historical document without a parallel. For in that volume is
“Order No. 4,” an Order which, dated July 21, 1918, and signed by one
Lieutenant Balke, head of the German Commission which the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty established, announced to the citizens of Yaroslavl that, the
local detachment of the Northern Volunteer Army having surrendered
to the Germans, it had therefore been handed over to the Bolshevist
authorities, and 428 of its members shot. True, my card index gives the
number of persons then executed as 5004!--but then my data concerning
provincial localities reached me only casually, and in driblets, or
whenever I could succeed in getting hold of a provincial journal.[38]
Also, it must be borne in mind that formation of correct ideas as to
numbers of victims was rendered the more difficult through the fact
that officials so greatly cultivated brevity of diction. Examples are
that once the Che-Ka of the district of Klin (Province of Moscow)
announced that “several” counter-revolutionaries had been shot, and
the Che-Ka of Voronezh that “many” had been shot, and the Che-Ka of
Sestiorelsk (Petrograd) that, “after careful inquiry, some shootings
have been carried out,” whilst at all times the Bolshevist press made
it its practice to publish reports with such obviously minimised
coefficients as “one,” “three,” and the like.
Moreover, never was any statistical information whatsoever given
concerning the mass executions with which it was the rule to accompany
repressions of peasant and other risings. And the fact wholly puts out
of the question exact fixation of numbers of victims sacrificed during
the civil war phase. Therefore, my figures are valuable merely in so
far as they make clearer than ever how absolutely incomplete are the
Latzian returns.
In proportion as Soviet Russia expanded, in like proportion did the
“humane activities” of Che-Kas expand, until by the year 1920, Latzis
could come out with some fuller data, and state that from the year
1918 onwards as many as 6185 persons had been executed.[39] Yet still
there remains the question whether this figure included the thousands
of persons whom British returns reported to have been slaughtered in
North-Eastern Russia (at Perm and elsewhere) during the period stated,
for to the British returns in question there are added the words:
“Constantly are persons of all classes, but more especially peasants,
to be found resorting to this Consulate with stories of relatives
murdered, and of Bolshevist mob fury wreaked.”[40] Moreover, what of
the 2000 military officers massacred in Kiev in 1918, of the victims
who were either shot or hacked to death in the theatre whither they
had been summoned for “verification of their papers”? And what of the
naval officers slaughtered in Odessa before the arrival of the Austrian
troops (an English clergyman wrote at the time: “I have been told by a
member of the Austrian Staff that the Bolshevists have supplied him and
his colleagues with a list of over 400 officers murdered in Odessa and
the district”[41]), or of the officers slaughtered at Sebastopol, or of
the 1342 persons whom General Denikin’s Commission proved to have been
shot in Armavir during the January and the February of 1918,[42] or of
the Sebastopol hecatomb which V. M. Krasnov’s memoirs have described as
carried out in batches of 67, 97, and over?[43]
The truth is that wherever the Bolshevists made their appearance some
tens, or even hundreds, of executions followed; executions which no
trial whatsoever had preceded; executions which were carried out
merely on the strength of sentences passed by a local Che-Ka or some
other temporary tribunal. True, these massacres in no way exceeded the
other excesses of the civil war, but, for all that, they deserve to
have devoted to them a separate chapter.
_The Year 1919_
Further on in his blood statistics Latzis states that during the year
above-named the Che-Kas ordered 3456 persons to be shot. This makes a
total of 9641 for the two years, with 7068 of the victims described
as counter-revolutionaries, and the rest (this should be carefully
noted) as persons shot, not for “_bourgeois_ leanings” or
“counter-revolution,” but for such offences against the ordinary law
as “lapses in fulfilment of official duty” (632), profiteering (217),
and purely criminal acts (204).[44] All of which constitutes proof that
during the period in question the Bolshevists used capital punishment
not only for coercion of the _bourgeoisie_, but also (and to
a degree never previously attained by a presumably civilised State
similarly placed) for service as a general punitive measure.
But, to proceed. Latzis’ figures purport to show that during the
September of 1919 the Che-Kas shot only 140 persons, although for the
same month--which, be it remembered, coincided with the “liquidation”
of the famous counter-revolutionary plot with which the Socialist N. N.
Shepkin was connected--the general press of the day gave 66 persons
as shot in Moscow alone, and even the Bolshevist press admitted to a
figure exceeding 150. Also, we have reliable evidence that, during July
of that year, from 100 to 150 persons were shot in Kronstadt, even
though 19 names only were made public, and that the Ukraine (where
Latzis was raging in person) saw victims shot by the thousand, so that
a Red Cross sister sent to England (for subsequent presentation to the
International Red Cross Society at Geneva) an estimate of 3000 victims
for the city of Kiev alone.[45] And an equally staggering total of
Kievan shootings has been given by Nilostonsky, whom I have quoted
already as the author of _Der Blutrausch des Bolschewismus_, and a
writer who somehow contrived to acquire a particularly good knowledge
of the doings of Kiev’s sixteen operative Che-Kas, and has proved that
knowledge by the accuracy of his topographical description, and by the
fact that he did not confine himself to personal observations alone,
but also utilised the materials published by the Röhrberg Commission,
whose members included lawyers and doctors, and by whom exhumed corpses
were photographed. Well, Nilostonsky has declared that the subsequently
identifiable persons then shot in Kiev amounted to 4800, and that the
general total probably amounted to 12,000. For the Terror assumed such
unprecedented forms in that city, and in the Ukraine at large, that
at last the central authorities themselves felt forced to despatch a
commission to inquire into the doings of the provincial Che-Ka. And, in
passing, it is only fair to say that ex-prisoners subsequently examined
by Denikin’s organisation were unanimous in their commendation of this
Bolshevist-appointed mission.
And for a while the development of the Terror in the Ukraine halted;
but as soon as ever Denikin evacuated Kiev mass executions became
the rule again, and were continued throughout the July and the
August of 1919 on such a scale that on a single day (August 16) the
_Izvestia_ published the names of 127 persons shot. And these
victims, incidentally, were the last to have their names made known by
official command.
On the outskirts of Saratov there lies a grisly ravine. It is the scene
of a host of local executions. Let me quote the words of an eye-witness
as given in that amazing book or compilation which, issued under the
title of _The Che-Ka_, deals exclusively with Che-Ka activity, and
was given to the world by the Social Revolutionary Party in Berlin. The
exceptional value of the book lies in the fact that its materials were
obtained at first hand from prisoners actually confined within prison
walls, or from actual eye-witnesses of events, and that the text of
it was drawn up by men who had learnt through bitter experience what
they were writing about. For impressions from real life are worth all
the dead and dry paper in the world, and I knew those men personally,
and know, therefore, with what care they sifted their materials until
they had made of _The Che-Ka_ an historical document equally
graphic and reliable in its description of the Russian phase of to-day.
It was for this book’s benefit that a resident of Saratov has drawn
the following picture of the Saratov ravine. The ravine lies on the
Monastyrsky Slobodka side of the town; and in future years there will
be erected there, I hope, a memorial to Saratov’s victims of the
Revolution.
As soon as the snow melted in the ravine relatives and friends
of the dead began to make their way thither, singly or in
groups, but in every case with eyes glancing from side to
side. And though at first such pilgrims were turned back by the
authorities, in time the number of them became so great that no
one could prevent their coming. In places the spring floods had
washed away the sand, and left many of the victims of Bolshevist
tyranny uncovered, so that knots of them strewed the bed of the
ravine from the bridge to the far end, a distance of from 45
to 50 _sazheni_.[46] And how many were they? Probably no
one could say. Even the local Che-Ka does not know. All that is
known is that during the last two years (1918 and 1919) at least
1500 victims have been shot in the locality--some in accordance
with sentence passed, and some in accordance with no sentence
passed. Moreover, it was only during the summer and the autumn
seasons that the condemned were brought to this ravine to be
shot. In winter-time they were shot elsewhere.... The topmost
layer consists of bodies shot as late only as last autumn:
wherefore it is still fairly well preserved. The bodies lie clad
in shirts alone, with their arms twisted behind them, and tied
with cords. Some are thrust into sacks, and some are just as
they fell. Truly the hollow is a terrible, a ghastly scene! But
visitors do not hesitate to scan it closely. They are looking
for some distinctive marking likely to help them in identifying
a beloved one’s body. Daily the ravine grows more terrible as
daily it engulfs victims. And each fresh batch of executions
causes portions of the sides of the ravine to fall in, and to
re-bury recently uncovered bodies. Hence the hollow ever grows
wider, and ever fresh sacrifices to the Revolution are exhumed
by the spring floods.
Is this all a tissue of lies?
In 1920 an equally gruesome utterance by Averbuch was published in
Kishinev under the title of _The Che-Ka of Odessa_. It estimates
that during the three months July-September 1919--that is to say,
during the time between the official proclamation of the Terror and the
Volunteer Army’s occupation of Kharkov--the Terror took a local toll
of 2200 lives. But as a matter of fact executions began at Odessa long
before the official proclamation of the Red Terror. They began there
within a week or a fortnight of the Bolshevists’ capture of the town.
Indeed, witnesses who gave evidence before the Denikin Commission were
unanimous in saying that local mass shootings began to be carried out
as early as the April of 1919, with public announcements of twelve,
sixteen, or twenty-six executions at a time. At all events, during
that April the local _Izvestia_ wrote with the usual Bolshevist
brutality:
The carp enjoys being seethed in cream, and the _bourgeois_
being slain by a Power which is stern, and ready to kill
him.... Even though our souls may revolt from the task, let
us use strong measures, and bring the _bourgeoisie_ to
their senses, seeing that we need but shoot a few dozen of the
fools, of the wastrels, and make the rest clean the streets,
and set their womenfolk to scour out Red Guard barracks
(though even this is too great an honour for them!), for
the _bourgeoisie_ to realise that our Government is a
Government come to stay, and that it is useless to look for help
from Englishmen or Hottentots.
And, on the Volunteer Army approaching the town in June, executions
became more frequent still, and the local _Izvestia_ wrote (the
Terror had by then become “official”):
The Red Terror has been set in motion, and henceforth let
all _bourgeois_ strongholds be scoured out, and the
_bourgeois_ made to hiss, and the counter-revolutionary to
crackle, under our sanguinary blows.... Let us dislodge such
persons from their fastnesses with red-hot irons, and wreak upon
them merciless vengeance.
And wreaked that “merciless vengeance” was. And with it went long lists
of names which frequently omitted all mention of the “crime” committed,
and adduced only a statement that the individual had been shot in the
ordinary course of an officially ordained Terror. Margoulies’ book,
_Years of Fire_,[47] instances many such cases.
Almost invariably, too, our information goes to show that these lists
of twenty or thirty names represented, in reality, lists curtailed.
For example, a woman whose position enabled her to keep a particularly
close eye upon events in Odessa has stated that, on one occasion when
only eighteen names were published in the local _Izvestia_, she
herself reckoned the shot to have amounted to fifty, and that on
another occasion when only twenty-seven names were published, the list
comprised, in reality, seventy, inclusive of seven females, although
the official _communiqué_ had made no mention of women at all.
Also, an “examining member”[48] who had the misfortune to be arrested
by his colleagues afterwards deposed that during the local reign of
terror as many as sixty-eight persons were shot in a night, whilst
official statistics issued by the Denikin Commission tell us that the
number of shot in Odessa between April 1 and August 1 amounted to
1300. Lastly, from Niemann’s memoirs we learn that, taking the South
of Russia as a whole, the total of victims at that period cannot have
reached less than 13,000 or 14,000.[49]
Again, a strike which occurred in Astrakhan during March simply
drenched the district with working-people’s blood.[50] An eye-witness
has related:
As a meeting of about 10,000 labourers was peaceably discussing
the question of wages, suddenly a cordon of sailors and
machine-gunners and bombers surrounded the crowd, and, on its
not at once dispersing, poured into it a rifle volley, and
followed that up with a rattle of machine-guns and a deafening
roar of hand grenades. Through the assemblage there ran a
sort of shudder: the people seemed to fall forward upon their
faces in a short of horrible silence, for the rattling of the
machine-guns was such as to drown both the moans of the wounded
and the cries of the dying.... Next day all the town seemed
empty. Utter stillness reigned. Many had succeeded in escaping
elsewhere, and many gone into hiding; but, for all that, the
workers lost 2000 through casualties, and the first act of the
Astrakhan tragedy came to an end.
Still more tragic was the workers’ affair which began in Astrakhan
on March 12. On this occasion the Bolshevists, after winning
the “victory,” lodged a portion of their prisoners in six
_kommandaturs_, and the rest upon barges and steamers, one
of which, the _Gogol_, became particularly notorious for the
atrocities which she witnessed. Then telegrams concerning the
“rebellion” were dispatched to the centre, and Trotsky, head of the
Revolutionary War Council, wired back: “Destroy without mercy,” and by
the words sealed the fate of the imprisoned workmen. In fact, there
then ensued, afloat and ashore, a raging orgy of bloodshed. Some of
the prisoners were shot in the cellars and court-yards of the six
_kommandaturs_, and others were hurled into the Volga from the
barges and steamers, with stones tied about their necks, or with their
hands and feet shackled. One solitary worker saved himself by hiding
in an engine-room, and afterwards stated that during the first night
alone 180 persons were thrown into the water. And multitudes also were
shot in and about the _kommandaturs_: indeed, so many that it was
only with great difficulty that their corpses could be conveyed to the
cemetery, and dumped into heaps as “typhus cases.” And the local Che-Ka
likewise had to order that if any bearer should “lose” a corpse _en
route_, he himself should be executed. For days every morning dawned
upon streets strewn with half-naked, blood-soaked bodies of workmen,
and upon relatives wandering in the half light in search of their lost
ones.
Those shot on March 12 and 13, the first two days of the
repression, were exclusively members of the working classes; but
later the authorities realised that they had been foolish enough
to put themselves into the position of being unable to blame the
_bourgeoisie_ for the disturbance, and hastened to follow the
principle of “Better late than never” (and to divert the public’s
attention from their cruelty to the proletariat) by seizing any and
every _bourgeois_, and executing those of them who happened to
own any sort of immovable property, whether a house, or a shop, or
a fishery, or anything else. “At dawn on March 15 not a dwelling in
the town was not mourning a father, or a husband, or a brother. Some
families, indeed, had lost every male member of their household.” A
house-to-house visitation alone could have established the actual
number of persons shot. At first the figure 2000 was mentioned, but
this grew to 3000 as the authorities published lists of hundreds at a
time. And by the end of the month it had grown to 4000. Yet even this
did not cause the authorities to abate their punitive measures. They
seemed to have made up their minds that the workers of Astrakhan should
be compelled to pay also for the many other strikes that were taking
place as far away from Astrakhan as Toula, Briansk, and Petrograd.
For the March of 1919 saw refusals to work sweep over Russia like a
tidal wave. Only towards the close of April did the shootings begin
in any way to diminish; and by that time Astrakhan had become a truly
deplorable spectacle with its empty streets, its mourning homes, and
its “Orders” plastered on fences, shop fronts, and private windows.
Next let us consider that remote Turkhestan where, in January 1919, the
Russian section of the population rose in revolt against the Bolshevist
tyranny. The rising was quelled.
The affair began with a house-to-house visitation until the
barracks and the railway workshops all were overflowing with
prisoners. And during the single night of January 20–21 there
were so many executions that the authorities had to throw the
corpses in heaps upon the railway line. For over 2500 were
slaughtered. On the 23rd the task of repressing the rising was
transferred to a local court-martial; and to the end of the year
this court-martial continued to arrest and shoot victims.
Were _these_ victims, then, included in Latzis’ statistics? Or,
if not, why not, seeing that during the early days of the rising the
local Che-Ka was still operating in Turkhestan, and that its successor,
the court-martial, was but a repetition of that Che-Ka to its very
_personnel_?
The truth is that the question propounded by the Anarchist organisation
_Troud i Volya_ (“Labour and Freedom”) on May 20 has never
been answered, either by the _Pravda_ or by any other official
publication. For the question was based upon information published by
the Social Revolutionaries of the Left in No. 4 of their prohibited
journal,[51] and ran: “Is it true that daily during the past few months
the All-Russian Che-Ka has been executing batches of from twelve to
twenty-six victims?” Never will the question be answered, for its
very wording enshrined the truth. And it is manifest that that truth
came to strike the Bolshevists as a disconcerting verity, for shortly
afterwards an official decree transferred the right of passing death
sentences exclusively to the permanent revolutionary tribunals. None
the less, to the very eve of the promulgation of the decree we see
the All-Russian Che-Ka and the Petrograd Che-Ka publishing lists of
executed--yes, though the Che-Kas were just about to cease to be
competent to execute except in cases of overt rebellion, and not a
single such case had occurred in Moscow or Petrograd!
The data which enabled the Social Revolutionary organisation
_Narodnaya Volya_ to estimate that the number of persons executed
by the Che-Kas during the first three months of the year 1919
amounted to 13,850 are not known to me. But does that estimate seem
improbable--does its discrepancy with Latzis’ figure (3456) render it
impossible of belief? For my own part, I believe the former, or larger,
figure to be the more probable of the two.
And though an estimate of 138,000 as the number of persons shot up
to March 20 of 1919 caused the _Pravda_ to say “If this figure
were indeed correct it would be a figure truly appalling!” the figure,
“appalling” though it may have seemed to Bolshevist journalists,
understated the truth.
_The Year 1920_
For this year Latzis never published any statistics at all, and I
myself, during the same year, was unable to continue my card-index
library, for I had been flung into a Bolshevist gaol, and the Damocles’
sword of Bolshevist “justice” was hanging over my head.
On February 20 there took place another official “abolition” of capital
punishment, and Zinoviev impudently informed a meeting at Halle that
“now that the victory over Denikin is won, no more death sentences will
be pronounced in Russia!” But, as Martov pointed out, this statement
overlooked the fact that always such “abolitions” proved to be
temporary in their validity. And this happened on the present occasion,
and before long the death penalty again became so “appallingly” (the
_Pravda’s_ word) rampant that I do not hesitate to doubt whether
any cessation of executions _did_ take place. I feel the less
hesitation about it because I know so well the usual Che-Ka procedure
on such occasions. Take their manner of applying “amnesties.” I will
explain the idea of their _modus operandi_.
Amongst the terrible inscriptions which condemned prisoners have left
upon the walls of the building of the Special Branch of the All-Russian
Che-Ka in Moscow there can be seen the lines: “This night, which is
the eve of another abolition [of capital punishment], is being turned
into a night of blood.” And in the same way the eve of an “amnesty”
always meant a fresh holocaust of executions, so that the Che-Kas
might previously get rid of as many victims as possible. Yes, the
very night hours which saw the printers setting up the type for the
morrow’s proclamation would see the prisons converted into scenes
of massacre! Not an ex-prisoner but could testify to the horrors of
these “pre-amnesty” nights, and I myself shall never forget the night
during the October of 1920 when a fresh “amnesty” in honour of the
Revolution’s third anniversary was pending, and I was lying in the
Butyrka gaol. For during that night so many victims were shot that it
was only with difficulty that they could be conveyed to the Kalomikov
burial ground. In every case they were shot with a revolver through
the back of the head. And whilst all this was happening in Moscow,
similar things were happening in the provinces, and we find _The
Che-Ka_ relating that at Ekaterinodar the local Che-Ka imitated the
Che-Ka of Moscow in causing its special branch to “shoot as usual” even
after that the “amnesty” in celebration of the third anniversary had
been declared. The Bolshevist press, too, regarded the proclamation
only in so far as that it made it an excuse for publication of
impudently mendacious and fulsomely eulogistic articles concerning the
“mercifulness” and the “generosity” of a power which could grant so
many amnesties, and make them embrace its every enemy.[52]
Similarly, in 1921, when a congress of the Communist International was
about to be held, seventy persons were executed. True, the story was
that they were being executed for such ordinary criminal offences as
bribery and abuse of ration cards and theft of stores, but political
prisoners who were previously confined with the executed have since
expressed the opinion that the true object of the executions was to
make blood-sacrifice to the coming congress. Usually, at such times,
criminals of the ordinary type could rejoice, for the fact that
political prisoners who were on the list for execution began hastily
to be removed told its own tale--the tale that another “amnesty” was
toward, and the politicals must be slaughtered before the “amnesty”
would fall due and entail their release with the “ordinaries.”[53]
“This night, which is the eve of another abolition of capital
punishment, is being turned into a night of blood.” Ample proof exists:
ample proof that it was usual for the days before any “abolition”
or “mitigation” of capital punishment to be converted into days of
intensified bloodshed, until the custom practically became a law. Many
of these massacres are explainable by no other method.
On January 15, 1920, the _Izvestia_ published a notice signed
by Dzherzhinsky, head of the All-Russian Che-Ka. Addressed to the
provincial Che-Kas, it ran:
Owing to the recent annihilation of the forces of Judemich,
Kolchak, and Denikin, and to the fall of Rostov, Novocherkassk,
and Krasnoyarsk, and to the overthrow of the Supreme
Autocrat,[54] new conditions have arisen in the struggle with
counter-revolutionaries, and cumulative destruction of those
counter-revolutionaries’ organised forces has caused a radical
blow to be struck at our enemies’ hopes and calculations based
upon a possible thwarting of our Peasants’ and Workers’ Rule
by means of conspiracies, rebellions, and terrorist outbreaks.
Yet there are counter-revolutionaries in Russia who still
cherish hopes of the kind, and the State must be defended
from such persons, and from the counter-revolutionary efforts
which the Entente also is launching against the Peasants’ and
Workers’ Government, and from the espionage and disruptive and
subversive activities which, in company with the agents of
the Entente, ex-Tsarist generals in the service of the same
are carrying on in support of our enemies. At the same time,
though counter-revolution, within and without the country, lies
practically crushed, and has had its extensive organisations
for effecting overt counter-strokes and delivering guerilla
attacks exterminated, whilst in proportion soviet power has
increased, and we find ourselves able at last to dispense
with the supreme punitive measure, with the penalty hitherto
applicable to opposers of our authority, and though also it is
satisfactory for us to be able to report that the taking of
Rostov and the capture of Kolchak have enabled the proletariat
and its Government conditionally to lay aside the weapon of
terrorism, the proletariat and its Government desire it to be
remembered that, should the Entente again attempt to employ
armed intervention with or without the assistance of mutinous
ex-Tsarist generals, and so to disturb the established position
of our soviet power, and the peaceful labours of our peasants
and workers towards the construction of a new Socialist State,
it will be necessary for us to restore terrorist methods, and
to lay the responsibility for the soviet power being forced to
resume those methods upon the Governments and the governing
classes of the Entente, and upon those Russian capitalists
who sympathise with them. Meanwhile, let our extraordinary
commissions turn their attention to the task of combating the
foes represented by economic disorganisation, by speculation,
and by negligence in official duty, so that when those foes
have been overcome the extraordinary commissions aforesaid may
devote their whole efforts to reconstructing our industrial
life, and surmounting the obstacles born of sabotage, lack
of discipline, and ill-will. In sum, we, the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission, now decree (1) that from the date
of the publication of this decree there be discontinued all
applications of the supreme punitive measure, whether in
accordance with sentence passed by ourselves, by the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission, or in accordance with sentence
passed by a local branch of Ourselves, and (2) that Comrade
Dzherzhinsky be authorised to lay before both the Council of
People’s Commissaries and the All-Russian Executive Committee
proposals pertinent to the due abolition of capital punishment,
whether by sentence passed by an extraordinary commission,
or by sentence passed by an urban or a district tribunal, or
by sentence passed by Ourselves, the Supreme Tribunal of the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Let this decree at once
be circulated by telegraph.
Those of us, however, who were still prisoners in Moscow, indulged
in no rejoicing, for we remembered a decree of a year ago, a decree
announcing in an exactly similar manner an end to Red terrorism. The
following is taken from an article by Norov in the _Vecherniya
Izvestia_ (“Evening News”) of Moscow,[55] as written _à propos_
of the fact that the seventeen Che-Kas of the writer’s locality had
just been deprived of their right to make independent pronouncement of
death sentences:
At length the Russian proletariat has won the victory, and there
is no longer need for terrorism, for the sharp, but perilous,
weapon which ever tends to harm its wielder by alienating and
intimidating elements otherwise inclined to join in the work of
a revolution. Let the proletariat renounce further use of that
weapon and, instead, take unto itself legality and right.
Already I have mentioned that in January, 1919, the Soviet of Kiev
solemnly pronounced that “capital punishment is herewith abolished
within the limits of our jurisdiction.” And though the observer of the
day might have been led by this to suppose that the Che-Ka in question
had derived its inspiration for “abolition of capital punishment” from
the Central Che-Ka itself, we know that the case was otherwise--that
the Central Che-Ka in no way favoured the new measure, the “abolition,”
but, on the contrary, empowered Dzherzhinsky to assume the initiative
only when the “abolition” had irrevocably been decided upon. And so
in January the Che-Ka made its usual anticipatory haste to destroy
its victims, and to shoot (according to my information) over 300
persons in Moscow alone. Madame Ismailovich, a well-known Left Social
Revolutionary who was a prisoner at the time, has stated:
During the night before the promulgation of the decree of
abolition of capital punishment, the Che-Ka took from this
one gaol (not to speak of others) 120 souls.... And though
previously, on the condemned hearing that the decree was going
to be issued, they had assembled in the ward and, on the
strength of the impending measure, implored a reprieve, both
those offering resistance and those who were too weak to do so
were butchered like cattle. One day, however, their obituaries
will be written on the scroll of history.[56]
And in _The Che-Ka_ another ex-inmate of a Muscovite prison has
written:
Although the Soviet Council duly passed the decree and published
it on January I (O.S.), the 160 persons who still remained in
the Che-Ka building, and in the local cellars and dungeons
and concentration camps, were all taken out and shot. They
were exclusively persons whom the Che-Ka feared might prove
troublesome if left alone, and amongst them were some who had
already half completed terms of confinement in one or another
concentration camp--an instance being a man named Khvalyusky
who, involved in the Lockhart affair (the affair which became so
notorious because of the severity of the consequent sentences),
had been given five years’ imprisonment. All throughout the 13th
and the 14th (N.S.) people were shot. And in the course of the
morning of the 13th the Che-Ka forwarded to our prison hospital
a man so badly wounded in the jaw and tongue that it was only
by signs that he could explain to us that he had duly been
“executed,” but not killed outright, and then remitted to the
surgical ward. And whilst making the signs his face was radiant,
and his glance beaming. Clearly he was finding it difficult to
credit his good fortune. And though to this day I do not know
his name, nor what the affair in which he had become involved, I
do know that on the next night he was taken away (his bandages
still upon him), and shot a second time.
Similarly in Petrograd the eve of the “abolition of capital punishment”
was celebrated with shootings--with 400 of them, so that the slaughter
lasted all night. And in Saratov too (according to a private letter)
were fifty-two persons shot. And the same, as a matter of fact,
everywhere else.
Hence the doing away with the death penalty meant no more than that
the Che-Kas continued, unchanged, their high-handed proceedings.
Yet one difference there was, and it lay in a certain cunning
mental reservation. I will explain. On February 5 of that year the
_Izvestia_ reported that the provincial Che-Ka of Kiev had
received a telegram from the head of the All-Russian Che-Ka, and
that the telegram had explained that the decree concerning capital
punishment had never been meant _to apply to places at the front_,
and that the revolutionary tribunals at “places at the front” still
might pass death sentences. “That front,” the telegraphic explanation
had added, “includes both Kiev and its province.” And this piece of
unexampled, unblushing effrontery the Special Branch of the Central
Che-Ka clinched with a circular that:
In view of the abolition of the death penalty, it is suggested
that persons whose crimes would otherwise have rendered them
liable to the supreme punitive measure _do now be dispatched
to the zone of military operations, where the decree concerning
capital punishment has no force_!
I myself remember an “examining justice” telling one of my comrades (a
man who had been arrested for “counter-revolution” during the February
of 1920) that, “although we cannot shoot you here, we _can_ send
you to the front for the purpose.” And that “front” (it needs hardly to
be added) was by no means limited to the regions where civil war was in
actual progress.[57] But in time this subterfuge, “the front,” came to
be thought unnecessary. And possibly some of the Che-Kas never resorted
to it, seeing that at all times Che-Ka work could be done in secret.
Or, if they resorted to it, they did so only in exceptional cases. At
times even the _Izvestia_ forgot the “abolition,” and once had
the inadvertence to come out with a list of 521 persons shot actually
between the “abolition” and the following May--176 of them put to death
by one or another provincial tribunal, and the rest by the Muscovite
Che-Ka itself! However, on May 24 capital punishment became officially
re-established, on the plea that that course had been rendered
necessary by the events of the Russo-Polish War. Which re-establishment
has never since been repealed.
Peculiarly interesting is an Order issued by Trotsky on June 16; and
the more so if it be compared with the appeal of 1917. The Order said:
(1) Scoundrels advocating retreat must be looked upon as
defaulters, as having refused to carry out a military command,
and be shot. (2) Soldiers voluntarily leaving the front shall
be shot. (3) Soldiers throwing away rifles, or selling their
equipment, shall be shot.
This after that the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had said: “The
capital penalty which Kerensky established at the front is herewith
abolished”![58]
Hence both at the front and everywhere else the re-establishment of
capital punishment brought in a new orgy of executions. To begin with,
in September 1919, a mutiny of the garrison in Smolensk was ruthlessly
suppressed with the shooting not only of 1200 soldiers, but also of
a large number of civilian participators in the _émeute_.[59]
And though the Central Che-Ka ordered metropolitan journals to cease
reporting shootings when they were ordered by the Che-Ka itself,
those journals still published information concerning executions
when they were ordered by the military-revolutionary tribunals of
the provinces.[60] In which connection the official figures given
were truly terrible, for, according to them, 600 persons had been
shot between May 22 and June 22, and 898 during the following month,
and 1183 during the next, and 1206 during the next. But invariably
information of the kind was held up until at least a month after
the event--the fate of the 1206 victims shot during September, for
example, being reported by the _Izvestia_ only on _October
17_, with names and “crimes” appended. The “crimes” in question
read all the more curiously when we recall how Red terrorism usually
is justified. For the return says that shot for espionage were 3
persons, for treason 185, for refusal to carry out military orders 14,
for mutiny 65, for counter-revolutionary activity 59, for desertion
467, for looting and brigandage 160, for concealment of arms 23, for
drunkenness and insubordination 20, and for lapses in official duty
181. Whence it is no wonder that we can only with difficulty trace
method in the dispensation of Bolshevist “justice”! Next, on November
12, 1920, the _Izvestia_ reported, as shot between February and
September, 283 persons sentenced merely by order of the revolutionary
tribunals attached to the _Vokhra_ or “Home Service Army” (the
Che-Ka’s real instrument of operation): and as I myself possess a copy
of such a sentence, I can see that it was published in the Muscovite
_Izvestia_ of November 18, and relates to Trounov, an engineer,
to one S. S. Mikhno, ex-head of a minor administrative department, and
to one N. S. Mikhno, ex-head of the artillery supply branch of the
T.A.O.N.A.--all sentenced to death for “abuse of official functions” by
the _Vokhra’s_ head military-revolutionary tribunal. And, adds the
document: “This award is final, and cannot be appealed from to a higher
court.”
In short, in the maze of blood statistics one could easily lose one’s
way. For blood flowed wherever Soviet Russia encountered the smallest
check in life. Thus, during the summer of 1920 twenty doctors of Moscow
were arraigned on a charge of having connived at exemptions from
military service, and shot; whilst later 500 others of the provinces
were arraigned and shot in the same manner, and to the official press
publication of their names there was appended an intimation that
probably their patients would experience a similar fate. “Up to the
very last moment,” says a prisoner who lived with these doctors for
a time in the Butyrka gaol, “they did not, could not, believe that
they were going to be put to death.” Moreover, unofficial sources
have given their number as larger even than was given by the official
return. And when, during the autumn of 1920, disturbances broke out
amongst the Moscow garrison, and the inhabitants heard no more than
vague rumours that soldiers were being shot in the Che-Ka building,
the foreign-published Russian journal _Volya Rossii_ (“The Will
of Russia,” a Social Revolutionary organ) published (under date of
November 21) a definite list of those shot, which showed them to have
amounted to between 200 and 300, whilst to this the _Posledniya
Novosty_[61] appended 900 for October, and 118 for December. Again,
a correspondent of the _Volya Rossii_ estimated the number of
persons shot in Petrograd during that autumn to have reached 5000,
largely because, at the time, the various “risings” and “conspiracies”
in connection with General Judenich’s advance were being “liquidated.”
And we read in the _Posledniya Novosty_[62] of the summer an
_émigré’s_ story of the rounding up, medical inspection, and
shooting of a number of syphilitic subjects--“with a view to combating
prostitution”! And I, too, heard of such an occurrence, though I could
not verify it, nor yet some persistent rumours concerning a shooting of
Muscovite sufferers from glanders.[63] Yet there can be no doubt that
things just as monstrous, just as incredible, did come to be facts,
and were not evolved from the imagination, under this unprecedented
_régime_.
_The North_
Many sources are to hand shedding light upon the conduct of the civil
war in Northern Russia. Even in Moscow we used to hear terrible
stories concerning the punitive expeditions which the Special Branch
of the All-Russian Che-Ka periodically dispatched to Vologda and other
northern localities under a man called Kedrov. These expeditions
were a sort of circuit assize, a new tribunal of the Che-Ka’s own
invention.[64] Kedrov has since, I believe, been certified to be
a lunatic, and confined as such; but at the time of which I am
speaking he had become renowned for his cruelty, and we gain but a
very faint idea of his punitive expeditions from the fragmentary
reports published in the local press. True, occasionally that press
did state that some hundreds of persons had been imprisoned, and
dozens of other persons shot, after an “administrative-operative” (or
a “revolutionary-military”) tour of inspection; but more often it
gave vaguer news altogether--an example being that it scarcely made
any mention at all of an expedition when Kedrov “re-examined” 1000
officers, and despatched to the centre of Russia a veritable multitude
of hostages.[65]
Kedrov’s conduct when leading an expedition to the extreme North never
failed to be consistent: so that, compared with him, the Eydouk who
shot officers with his own hand was a man sheerly humane. Periodically
would the _Izvestia_ of Archangel publish lists of persons to
whom the Kedrov Commission had applied “the supreme punitive measure,”
and such a list lies before me now--a list of thirty-six names which
is dated November 2, and includes peasants, co-operative employees,
and a citizen who, an ex-member of the _Duma_, was a well-known
inhabitant of Vyborg. And in another such list I find thirty-four
names of persons shot for “active counter-revolution” during the
Chaikovsky-Miller _régime_, and, in a third, twenty-two names,
inclusive of the mayor of Archangel, of the editor of the _Severnoyé
Slovo_ or “Northern Word,” of the local postmaster, of a theatrical
manager, of a shop assistant, and of several others. And elsewhere
has a correspondent of the _Posledniya Novosty_ testified to
“shootings of boys and girls of twelve, sixteen, and so forth,”[66]
so that Archangel came to be known as “The City of the Dead.” And we
have it from a correspondent of the _Golos Rossii_ (“The Voice of
Russia”),[67] from a correspondent able to provide first-hand evidence
through having been resident in the town throughout the April of 1920,
that:
Before the British troops had long been gone there was held
a mock procession of empty red coffins, and then reprisals
began.... All through that summer the town fairly groaned under
the terrorist scourge; and though I lack figures to check the
exact number of persons slaughtered there, at least I know that
800 ex-officers were put to death--officers whom the late Miller
administration had authorised to proceed to London by way of
the Mourmansk railway whilst the members of the administration
crossed to Mourmansk on icebreakers. All of them were seized by
the Bolshevists _en route_, and shot.
But it was in the Kholmogory district that the greatest number
of executions of all took place. Said a correspondent in the
_Revolutsionnaya Rossia_:
Last September, when a “day of Red vengeance” was held,
over 2000 people were shot. Mostly they were peasants and
other Cossacks from the South. For it is not often now that
intellectuals are executed. Probably this is because very few of
them remain to be executed.
But what is the meaning of that phrase “peasants and other Cossacks
from the South”? The meaning of it is that a host of persons had been
brought to Northern Russia from the South, for internment in the
northern concentration camps, since that was the Southern Che-Kas’
favourite resource with their victims; they sent them to the northern
camps, especially to the camp at Archangel, as one would send a person
to certain death. And when we come to consider those “abodes of terror”
(whence the condemned wretches seldom or never departed alive--they
departed thence only after that they had been executed) we shall
see that to be sent to such places practically _was_ capital
punishment.[68]
And similar methods were the rule in the Don and the Kuban regions,
in Turkhestan, and in the Crimea, where the procedure was that
suddenly there would be issued orders for a “registration” or a
“re-registration” of ex-White officers and men, and that as soon as
the loyalists concerned had reached the place indicated (they never
seemed to think that anything untoward could be pending) they would be
seized, bundled into railway trucks, and, just in the clothes in which
they happened to be standing up, dispatched to Archangel, where the
fact that they were wearing garments suitable enough for the climate
of Kuban and of the Crimea, but not for the atmospheric conditions of
the remoter north, would join with the circumstance that the lack of
washing facilities inevitably converted their bodies into masses of
vermin to bring about, surely and speedily, the desired end--and the
more so because the chance of obtaining warmer clothing from their
relatives at home was as negligible as was the chance of being able to
let those relatives know where the sufferers were.
The same procedure, too, was adopted in Petrograd towards that section
of the Baltic Fleet’s officers and men who had failed either to
emigrate, or to go into hiding, or to join the forces of Judenich or
Kolchak or Denikin. Presumably these men had served the Soviet Power
loyally, for but few arrests amongst them had taken place during the
four years of the Bolshevists’ administration: wherefore when, on
August 22, 1921, a “re-registration” was ordained, the men thought
nothing of it as they left their ships, and went ashore, to go through
a process to which they had become so well accustomed. But, arrived
ashore, they were conducted, one by one, into a room, and there told
to wait. And they waited for two days. And then, under a strong
escort, they were marched to the railway station, bundled into luggage
vans, and forwarded (with no explanation given) to prisons at Orel
and Vologda and Yaroslavl and elsewhere. No one ever discovered the
subsequent whereabouts of those men. All that official lists said of
them was that they had been “sent northward,” though from private
conversations with Che-Ka employees it was gathered, in addition, that
their chance of long remaining alive was a slender one.
Of Kedrov’s northern exploits we obtain a glimpse when we read in
the _Volya Rossii_[69]: “In Archangel, once, he mustered 1200
officers, took them over to Kholmogory, loaded them on to barges, and
riddled them with machine-gun fire. Fully half of them were killed.”
Perhaps such a senseless, vile proceeding seems incredible. Yet it is
but a typical example of the fate which befell the vast majority of
those who were sent to the Kholmogory camp. First pitched, in May 1921,
in a spot some ten versts from Kholmogory, this settlement never ceased
thenceforth to witness shootings in batches of from 10 to 100. Indeed,
when matters reached the pass that an official investigator had to be
sent northward he was told by the local inhabitants that the number of
persons who had been disposed of to date could not have reached less
than 8000. Not but that in the long run even such cruelty as this may
not have proved to be kindness, seeing that in any case the Kholmogory
camp, the “camp of death,” saw to it that prisoners perished, slowly
and surely, of ill-treatment and neglect.
And though it may be difficult for the moral sense to realise that
drownings of people by barge-loads could ever have existed as a Russian
official institution, seeing that such a system in the twentieth
century recalls the worst doings of the eighteenth-century French
Revolution, the barges in question are no fiction; and I can add to
the two recent cases already cited a third one, more recent still, to
show that the practice, once started, went on unchanged. The case is
to be found related in Vladimir Voitinsky’s preface to his work _The
Twelve Condemned_, a work which turns upon the great trial of Social
Revolutionaries in Moscow. We read:
In 1921 the Bolshevists took 600 persons from different prisons
of Petrograd, dispatched them to Kronstadt, loaded them on to a
barge, and scuttled the vessel at a particularly deep spot. All
but one were drowned. And he only escaped because he was able to
swim to the Finnish shore.[70]
_After Denikin’s Departure._
Nevertheless, all these horrors pale, numerically at least, before
the happenings in the South after the close of the civil war and the
collapse of the Denikin Government. For it is then that we see coming
into being a new Government, and that Government entering upon its
functions amid a sea of blood, and wreaking both private and official
vengeance through terrorism, and replacing civil war with a policy
of complete annihilation of the surviving enemy, and of preventive
intimidation of the civilian population. As soon as ever, in 1920, the
Bolshevists had made their third entry into Odessa, daily executions of
100 or more persons became the rule, and motor-lorries had to cart away
the dead in heaps.[71]
“Life here is like living upon a volcano,” said a private letter
to the editor of the _Posledniya Novosty_.[72] “Daily mass
arrests of counter-revolutionaries take place in every quarter
of the town, and individual arrests and domiciliary searches.
It is sufficient for anyone to inform the authorities that such
and such a family has a relative serving in the Volunteer army
for a plundering of that family’s house to be carried through
forthwith, and the family itself to be made prisoners. Unlike
last year, however, the Bolshevists now execute their victims
very quickly, and publish no slaughter lists.”
Again, we find a Constantinople correspondent of the _Obstchoyé
Delo_,[73] a man who knew well what was happening in Odessa, sending
his journal a heart-rending series of accounts of life in that city,
and saying that official information showed the number of persons who
had been shot to date to amount to 7000, since at least 30 or 40 had
been executed nightly, and sometimes as many as 200--even as 300.
Machine-guns did the work: the victims were too numerous for
individual execution. Nor was any publication made of the names
of the shot; the prisoners were just taken from the gaol by a
wardful at a time, and exterminated.
An exaggeration? Possibly. But at least an exaggeration resembling
known facts, seeing that there stands on record the massacre of the
ex-officers captured on the Roumanian frontier when attempting to
escape to the forces of General Bredov. The attempt failed because
the Roumanian Government refused to accord the fugitives licence of
passage across the river Dnieper, and subsequently the 1200 officers
were dispatched to concentration camps, and executed there. And as
regards their execution on May 5, I agree that one can scarcely
believe the story that, owing to the _Izvestia_ having published
an announcement of the hecatomb, certain persons tolled the local
church bells overnight, and the local ecclesiastics were subsequently
arraigned and allotted sentences of from five to ten years.
To about the same period there may be assigned the execution of
a number of Galicians who had played the Bolshevists false. The
ex-Galician garrison of Tiraspol was shot to the last man, and,
by orders from Odessa, the rest were sentenced to be punished for
their “treason” with deportation. But no sooner had these Galicians,
with their wives and children, assembled at the goods station than
machine-gun fire was poured into them _en masse_, and such of
the “traitors to the proletariat” (to quote the _Izvestia_) as
were not killed thereby were done to death by a goaded-on Bolshevist
mob.[74]
Like shootings took place when the Crimea had been seized. “All
persons of the region to whom I spoke,” says a correspondent, “were
unanimous in declaring that they had seen a list of 119 persons as
shot on December 24.” And, of course, the real number was, quite
justifiably, rumoured to have amounted to 300. The shot on this
occasion had been persons accused of participation in the so-called
“Polish counter-revolutionary organisation.” As a matter of fact
that organisation had been engineered by _agents-provocateurs_
in the employ of the local Che-Ka, and the _agents_ had been
given the job for the same reason as was the case when the “Wrangel
conspiracy” caused sixty employees of the Shipping and Trading Company,
and thirty-one other persons, to be shot for “espionage”: namely,
that the _agents_ might at least have their energies devoted to
_something_.[75]
And the same informant tells us that “when the Bolshevists were in
Ekaterinodar every prison there was overcrowded with inmates, most of
whom were destined to be shot.” To which a local citizen has added that
between the August of 1920 and the February of 1921 the prisons of the
town saw 300 victims slaughtered.[76]
Most of the shootings of that year, however, took place in August,
when, on Wrangel’s forces reaching the Kuban region, the head of the
Kuban Che-Ka ordered that “all persons now lying in the cells of
the Che-Ka building be shot,” and answered a Che-Ka employee named
Kossolapov, who had protested against the order on the ground of many
of the prisoners not having been so much as examined, and others having
been arrested merely for an infringement of the regulation prohibiting
departure from a dwelling-house after eight o’clock at night, with the
instruction: “Then separate those eight o’clock prisoners from their
companions, and shoot the rest.” This was duly carried out, and a local
citizen named Rakitzansky, who was one of the seized, has described how
it was done. His account says:
We were led forth from the cells in batches of ten, but were
quite calm, for, on the first batch being removed elsewhere, we
were told that the reason for their removal was that they might
be questioned only. But when the second batch was removed we
realised that the purpose of the removal was _execution_,
and sure enough, those who were taken away were butchered like
cattle.
With which the informant relates how he himself escaped death. He did
so only through the fact that, as the Bolshevists happened at the time
to be preparing to evacuate the town, the Che-Ka’s documents lay ready
packed up, and therefore the executions were taking place without the
usual preliminary formalities--merely with a putting to each prisoner,
when summoned to slaughter, of the question, “Of what crime do you
stand accused?” And since Rakitzansky noticed that any prisoner who
stood accused only of having infringed the curfew order was set aside
from the rest, he too said, when his turn came, that he had been
arrested for having been found out of doors after nightfall, though in
reality he had been arrested as an ex-officer--and so saved his life.
[Illustration: Male and female executioners and torturers
active in Eupatoria during 1918.
[_See page 72._]
These executions were carried out by the Che-Ka’s entire staff,
and on the prison premises. Artabekov, the chief, himself gave
the word to fire on each occasion, and the firings went on for
twenty-four hours, during which time the neighbouring dwellers
must have sat benumbed with terror. Two thousand persons were
shot, but their names and their “crimes” still remain unknown,
and probably always will remain unknown. Not even the
Che-Ka’s employees could throw light upon the point, for such
men have come to look upon shootings as a trade, as an outlet
for their sadistic tendencies, as a resource which calls neither
for ceremony nor for any established procedure.
Again, in Ekaterinodar, on October 30, 84 persons were shot; during
November, 100; on December 22, 184; on January 24, 210; and on February
5, 94. And there can be no doubt about these items, for, although the
local Che-Ka believed itself to have destroyed all its documents, we
have it from an eye-witness that subsequently “whole bundles of papers,
inscribed ‘To be shot,’ were discovered in some earth closets.”
Take another picture of life in Ekaterinodar at this period:
Between August 17 and August 20 the tenour of our existence
was disturbed by troops of Wrangel’s landing near
Primorsko-Aktarskaya Stanitza, and proceeding to attack
the town. A panic ensued, and Artabekov, our “Special
Representative,” ordered all persons who had been arrested
by the local Che-Ka, or by its special branch, to be shot
forthwith. At the time the provincial Che-Ka and the special
branch had on their premises 1600 persons, and these were
taken across the Kuban in batches of 100, and slaughtered with
machine-gun fire. And a like course was pursued in the prison
itself; save that there the inmates were shot against a wall.
Lastly, public announcement of the affair was made, and lists
of the executed published in columns headed “Retribution.” Yet
the number of names published was a good deal smaller than the
reality. Also, when the Bolshevists were setting about their
disorderly flight, they told the workers that if they (the
workers) did not come with them they (the Bolshevists) would,
on their return, hang every worker who had remained behind to a
telegraph pole.[77]
Similar events befell when Wrangel came to menace Ekaterinoslav,
and the town was evacuated.[78] Indeed, everywhere such events
befell, and when the Bolshevist forces were retreating from Vinitza
and Kamenetz-Podolsk the Kharkov _Izvestia_ (the organ of the
All-Ukrainian Che-Ka) published lists of hostages shot to the number
of 217, with names of peasants, thirteen teachers, several doctors
and engineers, a rabbi, and a number of landowners and ex-officers
included. The same, again, whenever the Bolshevist forces were on the
_advance_. For example, no sooner was Kamenetz-Podolsk retaken
than eighty Ukrainians were shot, and 164 seized and dispatched to the
central provinces.[79] Also, a correspondent of the _Revolutsionnaya
Rossia_[80] gives us the following description of Rostov-on-Don
doings during the first few months of the new Government’s rule: