EXILE AND IMPRISONMENT
We have seen to a certain extent how some of the prisons and
concentration camps of Soviet Russia became filled to overflowing
with hostages and others. And the life-conditions in those places
were the same as the life-conditions in other like establishments
for confinement. “We were not treated like this even in the mines of
Siberia under the Tsarist _régime_,” wrote Madame Spiridonova.
For example, it was quite a common thing for commandants of prisons
and concentration camps to specialise in contrivance of humiliations
for their victims--male prisoners being compelled to bury executed
comrades, and female prisoners to wash cells clear of the blood after
executions, and to scrape plasterings of human brain--including,
sometimes, brain dashed from the heads of their own beloved ones--from
cell walls. And universally prisoners were outraged by being made to
empty lavatories _with their bare hands_--some ladies of Odessa,
in particular, being allotted lavatory work of the kind, and, when
nausea overcame them, beaten with rifle butts, whilst even General
Roussky was not spared the indignity. Also, political prisoners were
lodged in contagious disease cantonments, and, in Theodosia, male
members of the _bourgeoisie_ made to sweep the streets in silk
hats specially requisitioned for the purpose, and, in Piatigorsk, made
to sweep the streets, and then given the command, “Back, now, to your
kennels, you dirty dogs!”[245]
Another practice was unexpectedly to carry out nocturnal searchings of,
or nocturnal musterings of, prisoners, and to transfer the latter from
upper to basement cells, and keep them there for a day or so before
transferring them back again. These transferences were frequent in
Moscow, as I myself had reason to know; and in Odessa they were more
frequent still. In all cases they constituted a peculiarly futile,
senseless expedient for breaking down prisoners’ _morale_.
But concentration camps were _par excellence_ Bolshevist
establishments designed for (to quote a protest addressed to the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee by a group of Social
Revolutionary internees) “the wreaking of a barbarous vengeance, and
the breeding of epidemics likely, it is hoped, to remove victims
wholesale.” Already I have cited statistics of mortality relating to
the Kholmogory camp. At Archangel, in 1922, out of 5000 Kronstadt
rebels, 1500 alone survived the year.
Certain Bolshevist prisons bear the inscription “Soviet House of
_Detention_.” “Detention”! Why, detention in those establishments
is worse than incarceration in the old Tsarist penal institutions.
For at least the latter maintained no rules against exercise and
reading; neither had they iron shutters so masking the windows as to
make absolute darkness a permanent condition within them. Indeed, the
cells of the Che-Ka prison in Gorokhovaya Street (Petrograd) have been
described as “wooden coffins,” for they were absolutely windowless, and
measured only 7 feet by 3½ feet, and were made to hold eighty-four
souls in thirteen of their number on a ground space formerly occupied
only by three.[246]
[Illustration: Fuchs, a “public prosecutor” for the Che-Ka of
Kharkov.
[_See page 222._]
At Kiev there was a cell made out of a converted wall cranny which,
according to our Sisters of Mercy, was nevertheless made to hold
three prisoners--an old man, his daughter, and the daughter’s officer
husband. And in 1922 a woman member of the Social Revolutionary Party
(Madame Samorodova) had to spend a month in a vault, a subterranean
dungeon, which had no window at all, and in which day and night were
the same. And some comrades of hers were made to await their trial in
Baku in “odoriferous, windowless, lightless caverns where industrial
workers lay crowded with professional men,” and near which a lad of
sixteen had to spend twenty-four hours in a cell heaped with naphtha
refuse, and strewn with nails and splinters of glass.[247]
Also, whereas the Tsarist penal establishments allowed prisoners
adequate food, what is the case now? In 1918 it was the custom for
prisoners in Moscow to receive, for their daily ration, an eighth of
a pound of bread[248] only, and a little rotten potato and cabbage.
And though, later, the ration became increased to half a pound of
bread, a peasant prisoner still is found writing: “All that we receive
is a pound of bread to last us three days, with cabbage soup that
is not soup at all, but slop, and destitute of salt.” And in the
_Revolutsionnoyé Dielo_ of February 1922 we read, _à propos_
of some 2000 peasants from Tambov (including women and children):
“Wandering about this prison [the Vyborg Prison at Petrograd] are
horrible shadows rather than human beings. All day long the place
resounds with moans of people dying of hunger at the rate of many
daily.” Nor for months at a time were prisoners allowed to receive
food parcels from their relatives, as a form of punishment universally
employed for extorting additional evidence.[249] And the result of all
this was such a mortality from malnutrition that 75 per cent. of the
total of prison hospital deaths can be ascribed to this cause, and even
an _official_ document reproduced by the Bolshevist press had to
admit that the governor of the Taganka Prison had declared 40 per cent.
of the mortality in his establishment to have come of the malnutrition
factor.[250] At the same time, we must concede that these revelations,
added to certain personal enquiries, did succeed in making a temporary
impression upon the more “sentimental” members of the Bolshevist Party.
In particular, a certain Diakonov contributed to the _Izvestia_ an
article which, headed “A Cemetery of Still Living Bodies,” described
some of the cells attached to the inquisitorial department of the
Taganka Gaol, and declared these cells to be choked with fever patients
with temperatures ranging from 38° to 40° C., and with influenza and
typhus sufferers as well. And the poor wretches, the article said,
had in many cases been ill for a week or more without anyone so much
as thinking of seeing to their removal to hospital; whilst, though
the temperature in the cells stood as low as 7° or 5°, or even 3° C.,
all that patients had for covering was a thin blanket--nor even that
in some instances, but only a few wisps of clothing. Nor were sheets
or pillows provided: the patients just were lying on the dirty floor,
or else on what looked like empty mattress covers.[251] And not for
months past, at least two months, could the prisoners’ linen have been
washed, whilst the prisoners themselves had emaciated features, almost
transparent frames, and eyes like the eyes of people at death’s door.
If, said the article, even a single attendant had been present to wait
upon the invalids (who numbered about a hundred), things might have
been different; whereas no orderly at all was present.
The doctor who accompanied me around the prison had been in the
State prison service for twenty years, and officiated under more
than one _régime_. Amongst other things, he told me that
the deaths from inanition had been very numerous of late, and
that daily typhus and influenza were reaping their toll.... In
every corridor, and in every cell, of the “solitary confinement”
portion did I see the same filth, the same emaciated
countenances, the same hungry and imploring eyes, the same thin
hands stretched out to us through the bars. For in that place
there were over a thousand victims moaning, and begging to be
released, and crying out that they had been in prison for two or
three months without inquiry made, or even for a year.... That
visit has haunted me ever since like a nightmare: and, now that
I have adduced the facts, let those of my fellowmen who still
have left to them a shred of sympathy and understanding try to
imagine for themselves what mental and physical tortures are
implied by such an abode of horror. For even the worst crime
conceivable would be purged if a person had to spend a month
within those massive walls, and behind those iron bars: whereas
within those massive walls and behind those iron bars there
are persons _guiltless of any crime at all_. Once more I
ask, what worse, what more absolute, torture could be imagined
than to be thrown into a cage for months, and deprived of
warmth and air and rest and ability to move about, and fed only
at rare intervals, and, until death at length gives release,
undergo a living death through vermin? Frankly, such a system
is a disgrace to our Communist Republic, an infamy no longer
to be tolerated. Governors, justices, commissaries, officials,
Communists of the ranks, do you hear what I say? Then hasten to
repair the evil, and do not wait until further bloody tragedies
have resulted. Yes, I say! Open up those graves in which still
living human beings lie buried. Or, if official routine cannot
be hastened otherwise, let a general amnesty be declared. For
not even the release of prisoners by the hundred would injure us
as the existence of the dungeons which I have described is doing
daily. Communism and the Revolution need no bolstering up with
creation of “houses of the dead.” Other means of defending the
Revolution exist.
In the Crimea, in 1921, a well-known man of letters, a man advanced
in years, was thrown into a dungeon for six days in company with so
many prisoners, male and female, that none of them could ever lie
down. Yet one day still more prisoners arrived; after which even
_standing room_ became impossible until a certain proportion of
the inmates had been removed and shot. And during the first few days
of the captives’ confinement they were given not a scrap of food--the
supposition being, apparently, that all were due for execution. Only
cold water was issued, and that but once a day. Nor, later, were any
food parcels allowed, and any relatives who arrived with them were
dispersed with blank volley-firing.
Before me lies a memorandum addressed by the Political Branch of the
Red Cross to the Praesidium of the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee in 1922. It begins with the words:
We, the Political Branch of the Red Cross, consider it our duty
to draw the attention of the Praesidium to the aggravation of
the position of political prisoners in Russia which is purposely
being effected. Beyond doubt the conditions of such prisoners’
confinement are approximating once more to those which obtained
during the early and the most acute days of the civil conflict.
Below, also, follows a description of what exile could be like from the
pen of a Madame R. M. Youdovicha, a Muscovite lady who was banished
to the Northern Dvinsk region during the autumn of 1921. Relating her
journeyings from local prison to local prison, she says:
It was late at night when we reached the transport prison
at Vologda, and the staff met us with obscene abuse before
stripping us of most of our belongings, down to the few spoons
and cups which seemed to us so precious in our desperate,
helpless flight. For myself, I felt so indignant that I
protested. But of course this proved useless. And when we
were herded to the cells, and I reached the door of the
female ward, I fairly gasped, for there are no words really
capable of describing the horrors of a place where, in almost
total darkness, thirty-five or forty half-dead and half-alive
creatures were crawling about over a mass of filthy, disgusting
mud between walls all plastered over with excretions and
other nastinesses. And morning brought yet another horror in
the shape of the food, when we prisoners had served to us
some fish in a state of putrefaction, and nothing else--not
even gruel was issued, since the authorities appropriated all
cereals for themselves. You see, this prison of Vologda was a
central prison, and therefore exiles passed through it in a
continuous stream, and from every quarter of Russia. Hence the
confusion was incredible, and no one made it his business to
see what went on in the kitchens, where the utensils were never
washed, and the dirt and the food all were cooked together, and
worms allowed to choke up the boilers and their foul, greasy,
permanently simmering mess of “soup.” And, after Vologda,
Viatka, where conditions struck me as a little better than
in the former place, for the cells were a trifle larger, and
perhaps a trifle less filthy. Yet when I asked whether I could
wash myself my companions simply pointed towards the general
ward, and said that I “had better go and see.” In that ward I
found about forty women. Yet amongst them all I was the only
political internee. Nine collapsible bunks, the bare wood of
which was destitute of mattresses or pillows, had stretched
upon them some corpse-like female figures. And other such
figures were scattered about the floor--all in mere tatters
of garments, if not practically nude. And I scarcely needed to
be told that the prison’s cement floors were seldom washed. In
fact, never have I spent a night of horror to equal that first
night of mine at Viatka, for, in addition, the room swarmed with
vermin, and constantly my companions kept moaning and tossing
in their sleep, or begging for water, since the majority of
them were sickening for fever. And, sure enough, when morning
arrived seventeen of them were found to have developed typhus.
Yet, when the rest of us asked that they should be removed to
hospital, our petition proved useless. And at eight o’clock our
breakfast of “soup” was brought. Nor have I ever seen anything
to resemble it, since it consisted of putrid chunks of horse
head, some scraps of horsehair and hide, some rags, and morsels
of a sort of jelly-like substance, all floating about together
in a dark-coloured, evil-smelling liquid. And with it went some
unpeeled potatoes. Yet upon this horrible concoction the women
threw themselves with a perfectly animal avidity, and, gulping
it down, proceeded to fight even for the potato skins before,
within a few minutes, in not a few cases, vomiting. And so the
day dragged on, and in time was replaced with the horrors of the
night.
The same writer mentions that, as she had begun to feel ill just
before she left Moscow, she had notified the authorities to that
effect, and added: “Seeing, also, that I have been deprived of my
clothes, I am less than ever in a condition to proceed northward,” but
that it had been replied: “Nevertheless you will proceed as bidden.”
Indeed, such deportation without warning, without any time to collect
effects, became the general rule and use for the special humiliation
of political exiles. Thus, on the night of October 19, 1920, a party
of _bourgeois_ who had been seized and allotted hard labour
were haled from the Ivanovsky camp near Moscow, and dispatched for
Ekaterinburg. The consignment included certain Socialists known to
every educated soul in Russia, and I will cite a few details of the
journey as jotted down by one of those who had to make it:
Amongst the ninety-six persons who were taken from the camp
were persons of sixty and seventy, and invalids at that; yet
their appeals to be left behind proved useless. Many, indeed
most of us, had no warm clothing, and though the weather had
hitherto been comparatively warm, it happened, as luck would
have it, that that day had brought us the first big snow-fall
of the season. Moreover, many had merely _lapti_[252] for
footwear, and no private stock of provisions for the journey,
whilst, finally, we had to do our packing so hurriedly as to
leave behind not a few of our most cherished possessions. The
affair began at about eight, or half-past eight, o’clock in the
evening, when we were told to go into an ice-cold, glass-covered
gallery and wait. We waited for over an hour. Then, everything
that we were taking with us having been carefully inspected,
we were led into a courtyard where the roll was called several
times over, and so, under a strong escort of “Home Defence
Force” men, to the Northern Railway goods station--the guards
constantly abusing us _en route_, and telling us to mend
our pace, despite that many of us were elderly, and carrying
baggage at that. Past midnight it was when we reached the
station, but no train was ready, nor any responsible authority
to receive and dispatch the prisoners. So in that windswept
spot, and exposed to from ten to fifteen degrees of frost and
a snowstorm, we waited for three and a half hours. Meanwhile,
at about one o’clock in the morning, or a little later, we were
joined by about thirty other prisoners from the Andronievsky
camp: and as soon as they halted near us we were surprised to
recognise amongst them men who had only a few weeks ago been
transferred from our own camp to the Andronievsky, on the
strength of a tale that they were going to be sent home again!
Moreover, even in our own contingent of ninety-six there were
from thirty to thirty-five Poles who ought, of course, to have
been treated as prisoners of war rather than as they were being
treated now. However, at about half-past three the entraining
did begin. Yet, seeing that it was not until nine or ten o’clock
that the train started, why should we have been compelled so
to hurry our packing overnight, and then to wait on the cold
railway line for so many hours? The rolling-stock consisted
of sixty compartments, for it was not only we ourselves (the
prisoners from the Ivanovsky and the Andronievsky camps) that
were travelling, but also a hundred prisoners from the camp
at Ordin, some scores from the camps at Novo-Peskovsk and
Pokrovsk, five hundred students for the “political course for
Red commanders” (these were ex-White officers from Kolchak’s
and Denikin’s armies), and four hundred and fifty candidates
for the same course. In fact, the total train load amounted to
1400 or 1500 souls. And _en route_, and when we had reached
Ekaterinburg, we learnt the following concerning the students
and the candidates. The former, we learnt, were ex-White
officers who had already been theoretically admitted to posts
in the Red Army, but had first to be put through a short term
of “political study,” lasting six weeks, and including lectures
from leading members of the Communist Party on the tenets of
Soviet rule and Communism. And since the students now being
sent with us to Ekaterinburg had almost completed their course,
they would, within a few days, be given positions in the Soviet
forces. Hitherto they had not been treated as prisoners, but
allowed to live together in the old Alexandrovskoyé Military
School at Moscow, and then, on the 18th--rather, during the
early hours of the 19th--of the month, transferred, without
reason given, to the Kozhukhovsky camp (which stood twelve or
fifteen versts from Moscow), and now, during the night of the
20th, were travelling with ourselves to Ekaterinburg. And as
for the candidates, they had been summoned to Moscow, for the
course, from various provincial camps, and, whilst in Moscow,
awaiting their turn for the curriculum (which turn would arrive
only when the full students had completed theirs), had had no
restriction placed upon their movements, but had been living,
some of them in different Muscovite hostels, and the rest in
private houses, with merely a common obligation to answer
a daily roll-call. But on the night of which I am speaking
(October 20) the section living in private houses had no sooner
presented itself for roll-call than, just as it was, and without
any warm clothes, and without even permission to go and bid
farewell to its comrades in the hostels, it had been dispatched
_en route_ for the railway station, and there, as we have
seen, entrained for Ekaterinburg.... The train in which we
travelled lacked any heating apparatus; nor was the food issued
to us prisoners out of keeping with that and the journey’s many
other lackings.
Probably no one who is not familiar with political life in Russia
to-day would easily believe that Bolshevists could imprison
three-year-old children and folk of over ninety. Yet I remember an
eighty-year-old “spy” being set to share my captivity in the Butyrka,
and men, women, and children being taken from their homes _en
masse_. And it is not only that the prisons of contemporary Russia
are made places of horror for their inmates. They are made places of
horror also for those inmates’ relatives. For it is only by chance
that those relatives ever hear of their beloved ones’ fate, or parents
come to know whether their sons are alive or dead. In fact, relatives
are not allowed even the last consolation of all. They are not allowed
to accord their dear ones decent burial. Again, I can adduce a case
in Moscow in 1920 where the Che-Ka informed the parents of a lad of
sixteen that their son had been arrested and tried in company with
other members of a tennis club, and shot on _December 4_--whereas
subsequently it transpired that the lad had not been shot until _the
22nd_; the false information being given to the parents merely to
prevent any possibility of their being able to present an appeal for
their son, and so, according to Latzis, to waste the Che-Ka’s time. And
in the already quoted memorandum issued by the Political Branch of the
Red Cross we read:
In 1921 the relatives of four hundred persons whom the Secret
Branch arrested during the night of April 14 were unable, for
three weeks, to find out where their kinsfolk were. Consequently
they could not supply them with necessaries and food.
In Latzis’ statistical articles he cites, as a proof of the “humane
procedure of the Soviet Power,” the fact that during the years 1918 and
1919 the Central Che-Ka “arrested only 128,000 persons throughout the
vast area of Soviet Russia,” and adds: “Is _that_ the ‘unbridled
tyranny’ to which certain of our citizens never lose a chance of
referring?” Well, if we remember that, according to official statements
published for the year 1918, the then holding capacity of Russia’s
prisons amounted only to 36,000, Latzis’ figures will seem to us
sufficiently large![253]
Also, Latzis stated in his articles that “during the years 1918 and
1919 over half the detained regained their liberty.”
But perhaps we shall be asked why so many innocent persons were
detained at all? The reason is that if a whole institution,
if a whole unit becomes involved in a conspiracy, the only
way to prevent the guilty few from escaping is to arrest the
institution or the unit as a whole. Then, when one has made
careful enquiry, and sifted the innocent from the guilty, one
can, with prudence, liberate the former.
What a Bolshevist method of detecting the guilty! And inviolability of
the person? Well, to a Bolshevist inviolability of the person is “so
much _bourgeois_ prejudice.”
Rakovsky also once declared that people were arrested in Soviet Russia
only if they had committed a crime. But the facts belie him. And so did
the Red Cross memorandum which I have quoted:
The decree issued by the Praesidium of the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee on February 1, 1919, that invariably any
prosecuting counsel of the All-Russian Che-Ka should complete
his investigations within a month of those investigations’
inception, is not being carried out.
And so it has always been. On October 29, 1919, Peters declared that,
of the 2000 persons arrested to date, every one had been examined,
whereas, as a matter of fact, these persons had been lying in prison
for months without any investigation--the Che-Ka having altogether
failed to unravel its own prison-administrative tangle. And what
obtained in 1919 was obtaining as late as in 1922, after the Che-Kas
had taken on the guise of the State Political Department, and is
obtaining now, even though an official decree of the All-Russian
Central Executive Committee has ordained that all prisoners be
questioned within forty-eight hours of their arrest, and informed of
the accusation preferred against them within a fortnight, and have
their examination complete within two months--after which they must
either be released or brought to trial; and that, for a prisoner to
be detained for over two months, a special petition must be presented
to the Supreme Judicial Authority. As though anyone would believe in
such a “Habeas Corpus Act”! “Let no exceptions be made to this decree.”
Well, none possibly could be made!
Recently the tenth Congress of Soviets was furnished by the
Commissariats of the Interior and Justice with figures representing
that on December 1, 1922, the number of political offenders dwelling
in exile was 10,638, and of political offenders dwelling in prisons
48,819. And those figures applied to Central Russia alone!
On July 1, 1923, there were prisoners in gaol, said the registers
of the State Political Department, to the number of 72,685, with
two-thirds of them political prisoners.[254]
Also, comparing these returns with the statistics of prison deaths for
1918 already cited, the social composition of the Soviet’s captives
seems to have altered little in five years, for we see that peasants
and industrial workers still form some forty per cent. of the total,
with the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal itself giving the social
proportions for 1923 as “Intellectuals 34 per cent., peasants 29,
_bourgeois_ 26, and industrial workers 11.”[255] In fact, never
has it been the case that the Red Terror was directed exclusively
against one class alone, since in Russia, as everywhere else, terrorism
has to fight all classes with the one weapon of tyranny.
As regards exile, a phenomenal number of persons have been deported
since 1921,[256] and every one of the old _régime’s_ destinations
for exiles has been restored for the purpose--Turkhestan, the Roumanian
frontier, Solovetsky Island, and the rest. “In the remote North, in
famine-stricken Turkhestan, and in dreary villages and townships in
the centre there are living persons who have been wrested from their
dear ones, and are without food, without the rudimentary amenities
of civilisation, and under the shadow of death.” The words are from
the “Appeal” issued by the Berlin Society for the Aid of Political
Prisoners and Exiles in Russia.
[Illustration: Corpses. Che-Ka of Zhitomir, 1919.
[_See page 248._]
Already I have spoken of the Portaminsk camp on the shores of the
Arctic Ocean as a place whither exiles have been in process of being
dispatched from Moscow since the close of last year (1922). And _à
propos_, I may quote the following concerning the camp’s life
conditions[257]:
In this camp, which is centred around an old monastery that is
rapidly falling into decay, there is neither cooking nor heating
apparatus, and scarcely any drinking water. Also, the food is
insufficient, and no system of medical attendance existent.
Lastly, twice a year the roads leading to the place become
flooded, and meanwhile the camp is, for long, weary weeks, cut
off from the outer world, and the exiles deprived of touch with
their fellows.
But apparently the horrors of Portaminsk have not proved sufficient for
the authorities, for during the past year Solovetsky also has become a
principal place of banishment. The spot where, at this moment, over 200
prisoners are living in abject misery has been pictured as follows:
One _desiatina_ (2·7 acres) of land is all that is allotted
to the prisoners, and they are never allowed to leave it;
the guards have orders to shoot without challenge any person
attempting to do so. And as soon as navigation ceases the
island becomes completely cut off from everywhere. And in this
place the cruelty which universally distinguishes Communist
rule has created conditions under which prisoners have to live
condemned to a fate, physical and moral, which has not its equal
in history--no, not even in the tragic history of the mines of
Siberia.
Further details concerning Solovetsky are given by the writer of a
letter published in No. 31 of _Revolutsionnaya Rossia_. The letter
runs:
One main thing which distinguishes this place of exile from the
mines of Siberia of Tsarist days lies in the fact that every
official in the place, from the highest to the lowest (the
commander alone excepted), is an ex-criminal of the ordinary
type, himself engaged in serving a term of detention. And this
choice body of officials consists mostly of Che-Ka employees
who have been convicted of peculation or extortion or assault
or some other offence against the ordinary penal code. But,
removed from all social and legal control as they are here,
these “trusted workers of the State” can do what they like,
and hold at their mercy the entire establishment. For the
prisoners have no power of complaint--they have, as a matter
of fact, no right of complaint, but must walk hungry and naked
and barefooted at their guardians’ will, and work for fourteen
hours out of the twenty-four, and be punished (even for the
most trivial offences) with the cudgel or the lash, and thrust
into cells known as “stone pockets,” and exposed, without food
or shelter, to attacks of mosquitoes in the open.... And at the
further end of the island lies the Savatievsky Hermitage, where
the Socialists are imprisoned, and which, like the Solovetsky
camp, occupies about a _desiatina_ of land and the corner
of a lake. All around it is barbed wire. An edifice normally
made to accommodate at the most seventy persons, it has living
in it two hundred Socialists of all shades of opinion, and a
few Anarchists. The only privilege possessed by its inmates is
that, so long as they keep to their compound, they can do what
they like in it--they can starve in it, they can fall ill in it,
they can die or go mad in it, without the least obstacle being
placed in their way by the administration, which would not for a
moment think of interfering with matters so purely personal and
private. And whenever they seek an interview with the commandant
he replies to them with sheer effrontery.... What affects the
prisoners most is not the actual conditions of the place, but
the knowledge that always, for eight months of the year, life
will have to be dragged out in complete isolation from the rest
of the world.... Prisoners falling dangerously ill, or losing
their reason, are given no medical attendance, but must go on
living with the rest in the cramped, noisy cells.... Seldom
is it that letters dispatched from the island reach their
destination....
Six weeks only have passed since the book from which this quotation
is taken was published; yet already the horrors which it describes
are coming to be known in the world--already we keep hearing of
cases of suicide on the island, and learning even from official
_communiqués_ of mass floggings which not infrequently end
in death. Only on February 10 of the present year (1924) did the
thirty-fourth issue of the _Izvestia_ print a “Report on Recent
Events in Solovetsky,” which included the following:
At six o’clock on the evening of December 19, there occurred
in the compound of the Savatievsky Hermitage (which forms part
of the Solovetsky camp) a most regrettable incident, in that
a number of prisoners came into collision with the Red Guard
detachment which has charge of the establishment.
This has been the fate of the Socialists on the island. So what of
the other political prisoners there? We receive the answer from a
correspondent of the _Socialistichesky Vestnik_:
In addition to the concentration camp for Socialists, there
exists, on Solovetsky, a special prison called “the Kremlin”
which stands away from where the Socialists are confined, and
is a world to itself, since it has congregated in it, firstly,
felons pure and simple, men saturated with the old habits and
morals of the criminal sphere; secondly, “economists,” or
men convicted of financial offences, acceptance of bribes,
peculation, and the like; and thirdly, a few political
prisoners, consisting mostly of ecclesiastics and convicted
“counter-revolutionaries.” And there is no describing the
horrors of the Kremlin’s _régime_. True, the cells stand
always unlocked, but merciless floggings take place there, for
prisoners are beaten even for the slightest mistake in a task
(the warders and the foreman of working parties alike walk
about with sticks), and altogether punished in ways which are
worthy only of the Inquisition. For example, in summer prisoners
are stripped naked, and left exposed in the open until their
bodies have become half-devoured with mosquitoes. Or else they
are thrown, for seven days at a time, into pitch-dark dungeons
too cramped to admit of their inmates lying down. And in
winter time they are thrown into a tower whose inner walls are
permanently coated with ice. And always the food is horrible,
for the officials filch the prisoners’ rations. And the women
prisoners’ position is worse still; they are still more helpless
than the men, and can win respect neither by origin, nor by
upbringing, nor by habits, but lie completely in the power of
the authorities, and at any time may have their “services”
demanded, and made to barter away their virtue for a bread
ration: so that in only too many cases they become infected
with one or another form of venereal disease. And at all times
they are liable to tuberculosis and scurvy. Thus the camp is
a community of slaves in the worst sense of the term, for it
lacks all vestige of prisoners’ rights, and has to live under
conditions all tending to a detestable system of starvation,
torture, outrage, and assault. In fact, it is a system which
would disgrace the Bolshevists even if they were applying it to
the worst of criminals: whereas those to whom they are applying
it are merely worsted political foes, but no more. Hence, to
compel victims like these to drag out their lives under such
conditions constitutes an iniquity which no words can adequately
brand.
Yet Che-Kas have had the impudence to affect to censure Tsarist
officialdom for its ill-treatment of political prisoners, though they
themselves are a hundred times worse!
At Solovetsky, again, we meet with the “stone pockets,” or dens which
are said to have been contrived during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
Into these dens prisoners would be thrown for a week or a fortnight
at a time, although the cavities were wholly unlighted, and of such a
shape as to compel their occupants to remain permanently in a crawling
position.[258] Facts of the sort compare badly even with some of the
features of the Turkish atrocities of 1876. Yet Pascal, the French
Communist, could write in a pamphlet:
The so-called Russian Terror ... never began, and has never,
to my French mind, been a Terror at all. Hence I laugh when
I hear the Che-Ka called “horrible,” for I myself have had
opportunities of observing its discretion and leniency--almost
its good-nature!