Chapter VIII: “the Pride and the Joy of the Communist Party” (1)

How naturally instinct leads the dregs of all political parties
and all shades of political opinion to gravitate to, and hang
about, the Tuileries!--HERZEN, 1850.

Once Zinoviev said: “The Che-Ka is the pride and the joy of the Communist Party”: but though commendation is a matter of personal opinion, I myself believe that Latzis came nearer to the truth when he said: “The Che-Ka is at least the best that Soviet institutions can evolve,”--and thereby pronounced the death warrant of Sovietism.

One of the prime causes of the degeneration of Che-Ka activity into tyranny and violence was the quality of the Che-Ka _personnel_. Political fanaticism alone will not explain the horrors which I have described. It is only sadists and madmen, it is only social elements which life has rejected, and greed of gain and lust of power have attracted, that can engage in bloodshed on such a colossal scale. Yet the mentality even of a healthy-minded individual would have broken down amid the atmosphere of orgy which has prevailed in Russia for five years past: and therefore a type study of the sort of functionary who figured on, and was employed by, Che-Kas is bound to offer both the alienist and the historian a most interesting field of investigation. Yes, only a sadist could find pleasure in such bloody work, or in singing the praises of such work as once the author of some doggerel verses called “The Che-Ka’s Smile” sang them in Tiflis when he declared that:

“No richer joy, no sweeter sound, exists
Than sound of life cut short, and bones a-crack.
My eyes grow dim, my heart cries breathlessly:
‘Away! Against the wall! And shoot!’”

For we all know how cruelty may mate with sensuality, and an Eidouk show himself equally capable of writing hysterical rubbish and of slaying his fellows for a “revolutionary cause.” And we know that from the first the Che-Kas were forced to draw their staffs mainly from the criminal population, and that Dzherzhinsky’s memorandum of February 17, 1922, saying that “the punitive apparatus of a revolutionary authority should be constituted of an institute of revolutionary judges and prosecutors chosen by the people, and vested with an integrity of crystal spotlessness (seeing that they are the functionaries in whose hands the supreme authority is to repose),” was setting forth, in this connection, things as they ought to have been rather than things as they were. Yet the memorandum continues:

In point of fact, the _personnel_ of our Che-Kas is a
_personnel_ chosen with great care from amongst tested
members of the Communist Party. Hence that _personnel_
consists of individuals incorruptible of idea, and
irreproachable of antecedent. Only by employing such persons
could our Che-Kas hope to perform the duties which the
revolutionary proletariat has entrusted to their charge.

Well, even if we take it as a fact that there was a single word of truth in this, the atmosphere of tyranny which soon spread over the country would still have ended by demoralising not only any “institute of judges” of the kind mentioned, but also every decent element amongst the population. Nay, Latzis, the Che-Ka’s own statistician, himself had to admit that constant changes of Che-Ka employees were found necessary.

However honest a Che-Ka employee may be, and however
crystal-pure his heart, the conditions of Che-Ka work are such
as in time to affect his nervous system, and to atrophise his
ethical sense. Indeed, many a young Communist has thereby been
prevented from forming his character, and set upon the road of
moral deterioration.

One such young Communist, an ex-plumber in the employ of the Che-Ka of Yaroslav as a “people’s prosecutor,” began his work well, but, later, took to liquor. And he had a friend who played the accordion, and the pair would drink in company. And it was mostly when he was drunk that he did his questioning of prisoners, whilst his accordion-playing friend sat by him to keep up his spirits. Yet so illiterate was this ex-plumber “people’s prosecutor” that he could not even inscribe his sentences of death, but had to scrawl across the paper, “To be put out as a White.”

The All-Russian Che-Ka held its sessions in Moscow, and constituted a state within a state, and could requisition blocks (indeed, scores of blocks) of buildings for its exclusive use, and maintain its own tailor’s establishment, laundry, restaurant, toilet saloon, boot-maker’s shop, locksmith’s forge, larders, and cellars--the latter, of course, well stocked with the best of “confiscated” food and wine. And it was not only actual members of the Che-Ka that could make use of these amenities without incurring an obligation to render account. The Che-Ka’s employees could do the same. Hence, when everyone else was going hungry the Che-Ka member or employee would be receiving his ration of sugar and butter and flour and the rest, whilst every theatre in the place had to send the Che-Ka free tickets for every performance. And practically the same obtained in the provinces, where everywhere we see the local Che-Ka occupying the most desirable premises. When a body of that sort was instituted at Sebastopol it, as a matter of course, took possession of Kist’s Hotel, whilst, as regards Odessa, the local Che-Ka built a whole settlement for its own benefit, and speedily caused to spring up there every species of establishment likely to conduce to the comfort of a “citizen,” from a barber’s shop to a cinema palace. The Che-Ka of Zhitomir, again, had its own dramatic society.[259] And though a correspondent wrote to the _Obstchoyé Dielo_ that “the drunken sailor and the small boy with belt and huge revolver, our two hitherto types of Che-Ka employee, are becoming things of the past, and replaced with people’s prosecutors of urbane address and legal, or budding legal, origin,” the change seemed the more revolting, so terribly did the sleek, flashy aspect of the fellows who now held power of life and death over their fellow men clash with the universal popular impoverishment.

“The name of our Che-Ka must not only become famous. It must also become, and remain, innocent of spot.” How was this going to be achieved when Moscow alone contained twenty thousand Che-Ka agents drawing special rations, and organised into a host of cliques? As early as the year 1919 the All-Russian Che-Ka had come to have 2000 persons on its personal staff, with three-fourths of them natives of Latvia. Indeed, Letts, from the beginning, obtained, and retained, a special position in this regard, and would be engaged by Che-Kas in batches of whole families, and render those Che-Kas faithful service. Thus our modern Letts might be likened to the ancient mercenaries. So much was this the case that the Muscovite Che-Ka came to be known as “the Lettish Colony.” _A propos_ of the attraction which the institutions of Moscow had for Latvia’s population, the _Bulletin_ of the Left Social Revolutionary Party remarked: “Letts flock to the Extraordinary Commission of Moscow as folk emigrate to America, and for the same reason--to make their fortunes.” And the fact that very few Letts knew a single word of Russian was in no way held to disqualify those immigrants from being entrusted with inquisitions and domiciliary searches, or even with the filling in of returns. Whence arose amusing anecdotes not wholly amusing to the victims.

The truth is that, on the Bolshevists sending out a call for “idealists,” there looked up to them mostly the scum of the population, until Krylenko himself had to admit that “into the Che-Kas there have crept criminal elements.” For that matter, could it reasonably be expected that an ex-circus clown and an ex-brothel keeper should remain the only officiants of their kind?[260] And though it may not have been the invariable rule that Che-Ka employees were criminals (for example, Douzirev, the Grand Duke Vladimir’s ex-coachman, who took service under the Che-Ka of Odessa, may conceivably have been an otherwise respectable man) the fact remains that, as time went on, persons of the thief-murderer-swindler type insinuated themselves in large numbers into the best posts, and there exist scores of instances to that effect. Some of these instances are to be found in _The Che-Ka_. For example, once it was found that the headquarters of a gang of burglars which had been operating in the town of Ekaterinodar was the residence of the local “people’s prosecutor,” and that a certain Albert who had been in the employ of the local Che-Ka’s detective department, and sent to the University of Kuban at the expense of the League of Communist Youth, had been the gang’s principal leader. And there are instances of the same kind in the materials collected by the Denikin Commission, so that they constitute a perfect picture gallery of past and present malefactors. Nay, it fell to the lot of the Muscovite Che-Ka itself to discover that certain of its principals were not unconnected with cases of “banditism” which occurred; whilst in 1919 an employee of the Odessan Che-Ka revealed the fact that “criminals amongst us have been forging orders for carrying out domiciliary searches, and extracting money from victims, and robbing them,” whilst the victims in question had actually been employees of the Che-Ka’s own “operative department”! In fact (partially, perhaps, owing to the southerliness of its climate) Odessa furnished more instances of “banditism” on the part of Soviet-commissioned officials than any other locality in Russia; and once a local lawyer, when questioned on the point by Denikin’s Commission, replied:

In this part of the world it has never taken long for our
criminal elements to become adapted to Soviet rule, for they
seem to have a natural affinity for it. Recently there arose
a rumour that “Comrade Michael,” the secretary of our Che-Ka,
was none other than the notorious thief known as “Mishka[261]
the little Japanese”; and though the authorities straightway
published an official _démenti_ of the rumour (they did
so in No. 47 of the _Izvestia_), to say that “Mishka, the
little Japanese” had no connection whatsoever with the Che-Ka’s
secretary, no more than a few days had passed before there
was published in the papers (the _Communist_, I think,
was one of them) a letter from Michael Vinitsky (“Mishka the
Little Japanese”) himself, to say that, whatever else he might
have been in the past, he had been a lifelong protagonist of
Communist ideals, and _robbed only the bourgeois_. And
with that “Comrade Michael” (Vinitsky) launched himself upon
a Communistic career in earnest, and transformed his band of
ex-thieves and burglars into a “Fifty-Fourth Soviet Regiment,”
and created himself the regiment’s commanding officer, and,
when the general mobilisation of local Communists took place,
co-opted to the post of the regiment’s political commissary the
“Comrade Feldmann” who, throughout, had been the life and soul
of the Che-Ka’s executive committee.[262]

Again, an ex-burglar of Odessa, one Kotovsky,[263] was appointed to the command of a Red Division.[264] Yet at least this fellow displayed a certain amount of decency in his new post, whereas, as a rule, his kind soon harked back to their original bestiality, and, sometimes, to their original job. Thus a certain Ossip Letny acted for a while as administrative chief at Tsaritsin, but left that post in order again to head a band which carried out countless robberies and murders. And in January 1921 one Khadzhi-Elias, president of a revolutionary tribunal, had to be shot for having taken part in an organisation for perpetrating extortion and theft under cover of the phrase “Warfare against Counter-Revolution,” even though up to the time of his detection he had been allowed to conduct trials solely according to his “revolutionary sense,” and to pass sentences of death on his own responsibility, and to carry them out with his own hand. The number of killings which he is said thus to have perpetrated is truly appalling.[265]

On one occasion the Che-Ka’s _Weekly_ asserted that “the late _bourgeois_ dispensation had for its principal adjuncts corruption and forgery.” Would the journal repeat the statement, now that the Soviet Government has had actually to organise “weeks for combating bribery”?

Then, to touch briefly upon the trial of a man called Kossarev. This man had been a member of the Committee of Inspection and Control, a body formed to review the “legality” or otherwise of decrees issued by the provincial Che-Kas. Yet now, when arraigned before the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal on a charge of having substituted a car-load of firewood for a car-load of frozen meat, he was found to have served a previous sentence of ten years in the Siberian mines for having robbed and murdered an old woman! And in 1922, when the Revolutionary Tribunal of Moscow tried a certain Taraboukin, an ex-bandit, and the president of one of the provincial tribunals, for extortion, it found that he and a friend had once murdered a jeweller, and stolen twenty million roubles-worth of stock!

Thus the Bolshevists could be ruthless towards their own agents: but they were so only when those agents had been _too_ brazen in their robbing or accepting of bribes. Wherefore cases of the sort formed the exception rather than the rule. As a rule, an official could commit an offence with impunity, for always it was found that, though appeals might be presented for “extinction of the rascals who are wrecking our Soviet system” (an appeal of the sort being presented by, in particular, Zachs, whilst serving as Dzherzhinsky’s temporary substitute on the Muscovite Che-Ka),[266] it had to be realised that those “rascals” had become indispensable to the system. Indeed, I could cite many cases where officials were charged with offences, sentenced to death, released, and given superior posts.

The Head of the Petrograd Che-Ka once proudly told a meeting of Che-Kas of the Northern Region that was held during the October of 1918 that “My Che-ka looks with disapproval upon the methods of the old Secret Police, and particularly disapproves of the employment of _agents-provocateurs_”: whereas the truth is that, beginning with the case of the Mr. Lockhart whom Peters invited to attend a fictitious meeting of a fictitious “Committee of White Guards” (later even the _Pravda_ admitted that it had been a fictitious committee), the working of the Che-Ka’s “punitive apparatus” was carried on exclusively by means of an officially (and clumsily) organised and sanctioned and operated system of _provocation_. Thus, the fifth paragraph of a secret Order issued by the Special Branch over Dzherzhinsky’s signature on December 5, 1920, recommended that, “for the detection of foreign agencies in our territories, there be organised pretended White Guard associations.” And this circular would seem to have been present to Latzis’ mind when he inspired a special Kievan piece of political _provocation_ which was worked by pseudo “Chilean” and “Brazilian” “Consuls” (who, in reality, of course, were employees of the provincial Che-Ka), and adopted for its plan of operations offers to help refugees to escape abroad, and those refugees’ subsequent betrayal as “counter-revolutionaries.” The upshot was that in due course the _Krasny Mech_, or “Red Sword” (the organ of the Political Department of the All-Ukrainian Che-Ka) published (on August 18, 1918) a statement that a huge counter-revolutionary conspiracy had been brought to light under “Count Albert Petrovich Pirro, Brazilian Minister to the Ukrainian Soviet Government,” and that this “Count Pirro” and four confederates had been shot, and that investigations with regard to certain others connected with the affair were now in progress. Well, certainly a lady of the name of Poplavskaya _was_ shot at that period, for having “prepared to travel to France and warn M. Clemenceau of an impending visit of Communists for secret propaganda”; but we know that no “Count Pirro,” as such, can have been put to death, for the reason that the “Count” was none other than an _agent provocateur_ employed by the Che-Ka--though to this day the precise identity of the Che-Ka employee who impersonated the pseudo-diplomatist has been kept a secret.

Again, in 1920 some foreign-published Russian journals issued accounts of Odessan doings of a “Baroness Stern,” who resembled “Count Pirro” in so far as that her proceedings at least smacked of Bolshevist _provocation_. For no sooner had she landed at Odessa from Constantinople than local Bolshevist leaders hastened to fête her as a zealous Communist, and to cause her every utterance to be quoted in the press, even in the _Izvestia_ itself. Then she disclosed to the German Consular Agent her “real mission.” She had come from Germany, she said, on behalf of the International Red Cross, and was charged to help any German subjects in Russia towards repatriation if they wished, _and to supply any Russian subjects who might desire to join the party with false passports_. _Only_, the lady said, those Russian subjects must first hand over to her their valuables, lest those valuables should be confiscated, _en route_, by the Bolshevists. And, for the rest, the day for departure having been appointed, the Che-Ka stepped in, and arrested all those who had accepted the fictitious offers of help.

And another counterpart of our “Count Pirro” was a “Representative of the Danish and Swedish Red Crosses” who took such an interest in White Guard activities as a hobby that he tried to get into communication with certain persons known to myself, and did succeed in doing so as regards such of them as were simple enough to let themselves be landed in the gentleman’s toils.

Also a trial of refugees at Anapa was engineered by _agents-provocateurs_ in the employment of the Che-Ka of Vladikavkaz. First that Che-Ka induced refugees to attempt to escape from Anapa to Batoum; and then it caused them to be arrested and shot by the district Che-Ka of Ter. The procedure was the usual one. The first party of refugees (twelve of them) was taken in hand by a “Colonel Baron Zussermann,” and accorded, in the half-way town of Vladikavkaz, a hospitable official welcome, with good quarters and entertainment, and, after supper, a visit to the town’s theatres and cinema palaces. The only unfortunate circumstance was that the refugees were unaware that the address of “Colonel Baron Zussermann” was also the address of the head of the local Che-Ka. And when a still larger party (of about a hundred) was organised the tragi-comedy ended in the usual shootings.[267]

In the _Posledniya Novosty_ of February 7, 1922, we find a description of the method by which, in 1921, certain places near the Bessarabian frontier caught _bourgeois_ and White Guards when trying to escape abroad. The affair would begin by certain “relatives” of the fugitive sending him a “trustworthy person” with a commission to see to the fugitive’s safe-conduct out of Russia; but always it would come about that, whether by accident or otherwise, both the “trustworthy person” and the “letter of recommendation” fell, _en route_, into the hands of the Roumanian Che-Ka; whereupon that Che-Ka would send another “trustworthy person” with another “letter of recommendation,” and that person would call upon the refugee concerned, and, after arranging for his journey, and obtaining sufficient evidence against him, carry out the usual arrest.

It has been stated,[268] too, that the commissary attached to the medical mission that was tried in Moscow during the summer of 1920, and shot under heart-rending circumstances, was not a commissary at all, but an _agent-provocateur_. And certainly the so-called Evstafievskaya Street conspiracy of Odessa in 1921 was organised by the keeper of the local Che-Ka prison,[269] and the Tagantsev trial in Petrograd by a sailor named Pankov. And beyond a doubt _provocation_ was employed in the affair of the Petrograd co-operative employees, and again in the huge pro-Polish conspiracy that was unearthed in Smolensk in 1921, when over 1500 persons were arrested. Also, eye-witnesses have stated in connection with the rising in the Ishona region in 1921 that _agents-provocateurs_ figured in officers’ uniforms at the sessions of the Omsk Che-Ka, and that a similar ruse was used to foment the Saratov rising of Social Revolutionaries and Menshevists in March of the same year.[270] In this regard, a peculiarly instructive case is the case of the Anarchists Lev Cherny, Fanny Baron, and others, who, in 1921, were shot for alleged forgings of Soviet notes. In their pamphlet concerning the trial the Anarchists of Berlin wrote:

There can be no doubt that our murdered comrades had no
connection whatsoever with the criminal offence whose imputation
brought about their execution. Nor can there be any doubt that
the idea of issuing the forged notes emanated from the Muscovite
Che-Ka itself. In fact, the method of working the affair was
that two agents of the Che-Ka (Steiner, _alias_ Kamenny, and a
chauffeur) first attached themselves to a group of _genuine_
forgers, and then scraped acquaintance with our Anarchist
comrades in order that, to betray them, they might see to the
forging of the notes, and to the notes’ utterance--the whole
being done with the knowledge of, and by the instructions of,
the Che-Ka of Moscow.

To realise how likely this hypothesis is we need only recall the telegram with regard to Anarchists sent to Rakovsky.

And a correspondent wrote to the _Obstchoyé Dielo_:

Here, in Odessa, the provincial Che-Ka has formed a new
department, a statistical branch acting for the Commissariat
of Public Health, the real purpose of which is to organise
espionage abroad, and to suppress “military counter-revolution”
at home. The new departure has been officially inaugurated
in Konelsky’s old villa in Fontannaya Street, and has had
placed at its head the notorious Zakovsky--a Lett, a member
of the All-Russian Che-Ka, and a member of the praesidium of
the provincial Che-Ka; whilst the highly responsible post of
Ukrainian Resident on behalf of Bessarabia and Galicia and
Poland has been given to Mikhailovsky, an employee whom the
Muscovite Che-Ka dispatched to Odessa to act as local “Special
Agent” in company with his mistress, Ksenia Vladimirovna
Mikhailovskaya (_née_ von Gerngross), a colonel’s daughter,
and rejoicing also in the nicknames of “Lialka” and “Adochka.”
And, with her paramour, this woman (as “Assistant Ukrainian
Resident on behalf of etc., etc.,” and “Member of the Military
Espionage Section in the All-Russian Registration Department”)
controls a whole network of secret service, a network covering
both Bessarabia and the Polish frontier region, and (like her
_souteneur_ and her employees) lives well, denies herself
nothing, and justifies her existence by instigating occasional
“conspiracies against the Soviet Government.” Lately, for
example, she and hers professed to have discovered a “White
Guard espionage system.” But they themselves had organised the
system, for “Adochka” is pretty enough to be able to scrape
acquaintanceships with officers, and to tell them (quite
innocently) that an “officers’ association” exists for their
benefit, and to prove her assertion by letting her victims read
a forged “secret appeal for a combination of forces against
Bolshevism, to the end that that tottering and detested Power
may fall,” and to back up that “appeal” with a reference to
Wrangel’s advance from Roumania. It need hardly be said that the
place where the “appeal” is typed is the new statistical branch
of the Commissariat of Public Health. However, if any officer
persists in being stupid enough to distrust such “proof,”
“Adochka” then tenders him a sum of money purporting to emanate
from a mysterious “organisation for assisting officers in
distress”--which may or may not induce him to set his remaining
doubts at rest, and to depart and tell his friends about the
equally illegal and fictitious “organisation” referred to, and
to form a group of persons willing to join that “organisation,”
or at least to further its aims. Well, if the officer does that,
then the desired end has been achieved, and, for its completion,
the detestable piece of treachery needs but the appearance of
employees sent by the Che-Ka, some arrests, and some shootings.

For a while, also, the All-Russian Che-Ka maintained a staff of prostitutes for _provocation_ purposes. And in the same connection it utilised even children of from twelve to fourteen years of age, and rewarded them with money and presents and sweets. Again, it would permit prisoners (hundreds of cases of this occurred) to purchase their lives by entering the Che-Ka’s secret service. The tragedies that resulted from this practice! Once a young lady who accepted service of the kind, to save her father from being shot, fell a prey to such consequent remorse as to burn herself alive. And one of a famous series of essays, entitled “Russia of To-Day,” which appeared in the London _Times_ tells of the self-hanging of a woman who had laid false information.[271] Particularly extensive was the _provocation_ directed against the lower strata of the population; wherefore the “Workers’ Opposition” within the Communist Party spoke no more than the truth when it said that to Russia’s labouring classes Communist _nuclei_ were known as “Communist bloodhound-kennels.” “Brood hens,” _agents-provocateurs_, swarmed also in the prisons, where they procured countless trials for accepting bribes, and for forgery and theft, and countless death sentences--for which last they were paid at a percentage rate, whilst, should the case happen to include peculation, the “people’s prosecutor” concerned received 10 per cent. of the sum alleged, as a reward for his share in having “discovered” the crime. I myself had personal knowledge of such a “discovery.” In the instance referred to, two “people’s prosecutors” attended an entertainment given by a Mr. R. and his wife, and induced them to become confidential. Then they arrested them. And when the wife sent word of the occurrence to a lawyer friend of her husband’s, and the lawyer approached the praesidium of the Che-Ka, he, to his surprise, found himself added as a third prisoner, on the charge that he had dared to address the Che-Ka without previously obtaining permission. In the end he was exiled to Novospassk.

And, according to _The Che-Ka_, it was quite a common thing for Che-Ka employees purposely to carry out domiciliary searches, and mass arrests and ambushes, as a means of supplying themselves with additional stocks of the amenities of life: so that on December 9, 1919, the Soviet of Moscow itself had to admit in its press that “it has been found that houses used by our agents for organising ambushes never fail to be left stripped to the basement.” For, as I have already shown, these Che-Ka staffs were, for the most part, mere gangs of thieves. Yet whenever gangs of the sort were seen to be in danger of exposure they found powerful defenders in the real instigators of the crimes, in the leading officials of the local Che-Ka. On September 22, 1918, Peters wrote in No. 2 of the _Weekly_: “Recently certain enemies of the Soviet Government have been spreading tales that Communists are guilty of bribes-taking, corruption, and false witness. But do not let this depress us. True, a few cases of abuse in this way may have occurred; yet all that that means is that the New Man has not yet had time to acquire the legal sense.” Then Peters added: “Besides, we may rest assured that all such calumnies are but slanderous lies of _bourgeois_ production.” And this a lesser light capped with the self-satisfied words: “Charges of the sort are only a proof of our strength, for we are both clever and practical, and have no need to grease the palms of persons weaker than ourselves.” Yet why should Mr. Alston have written to Lord Curzon: “Frequently arrested persons have to bail themselves out several times over, under a threat of death,” or the Che-Kas of Kuban and Odessa have organised a regular industry of throwing persons into gaol, and reaping a monetary harvest from their release?[272] Nor did Moscow form any exception to the rule of corruption, and the Che-Ka of Tiraspol systematically smuggled refugees across the frontier, and the same was done by other Che-Kas conveniently near the boundary line. In this connection the _Posledniya Novosty_ of February 7, 1922, declared the Roumanian Che-Ka to be taking the lead in such doings, and went on:

In every small town and village on the Dnieper a swarm of
“bookers” exist who, for a fee, will convey fugitives over to
Bessarabia “as safely as though on a dreadnought”....[273] And,
for the most part, the employees of the local Che-Ka do their
own touting work, and do it very well.... The next event is
that, just when the refugee is about to start for the river
landing-stage, there materialises an unexpected hold-up, and he
finds himself and his property under duress. And, inasmuch as
that property is usually made up of gold and foreign currency,
it can be made to furnish circumstantial evidence of “a
contemplated act of treason,” and so to furnish also a ground
for bargaining. Then, at long last, the victim is allowed to
proceed upon his way.... In fact, every Ukrainian town of any
size has its own small frontier place whence passage abroad can
be effected as from a private “window upon Europe.”

But sometimes that “window” would be closed for a while. Early in 1920 the small frontier towns of Podolia were very popular resorts for Odessa and Kiev; but when spring arrived the whole population of the Dnieperian region was shocked to hear that eighty decomposed bodies had been found in a cave near Kamenka, one of the small Podolian towns concerned, which proved to be bodies of refugees who, supposedly, had long ago reached Bessarabia in safety. However, in localities where Che-Kas were chronically poor, and, therefore, chronically desirous of obtaining rich clients, the journey to foreign climes presented no difficulties at all; though in winter-time the Che-Ka of Tiraspol would control the traffic by nocturnal holdings-up of persons who attempted to cross the river on the ice without first having paid the Che-Ka its prescribed fee of from 4000 to 5000 Romanov roubles. And any refugee so caught was then led naked through the streets, and beaten with sticks and whips, to “harden him against freezing on the ice when next he crossed.” And in Tiraspol also _provocation_ flourished.

On February 16, 1923, the _Posledniya Novosty_ reported that a leading member of a commission which had been appointed to enquire into the working of the O.G.P.U. had committed suicide on the Nikitsky Boulevard, and left for discovery on his body a letter addressed to the Praesidium of the Central Committee. The letter said:

My comrades, although the State Political Department was
designed as our principal institution for safeguarding what the
working classes have won, and Comrade Unschicht has shown it to
need greatly strengthening if its position is ever to become
consolidated, merely a glance at the manner of its working has,
joined with a brief perusal of the documents concerned, forced
me to the conclusion that forthwith I must rid myself of the
horrors and the iniquities which, practised in the name of the
great principles of Communism, have involuntarily been connived
at by myself as a responsible member of the Communist Party,
and that only my death can atone for the mistake which I have
committed. But first I would send you a request that you recover
your senses before it is too late, and cease to disgrace our
great teacher Marx, and to alienate the Russian people from
Socialism.

And there had been yet earlier cases of prickings of Bolshevist conscience, especially before the mentality of the Bolshevist _intelligentsia_ had wholly assimilated the brutality of Che-Ka work, and whilst yet persons “with weak nerves and effeminate bodies” (to quote Peters) were finding the sense of moral responsibility for the bloodshed perpetrated under the auspices of the Communist Party, and under those of the proletariat as a whole, too heavy a burden. At all events, up to the beginning of 1919 letters to that effect kept reaching the official press, and we find Petrovsky himself admitting that if Che-Kas persisted in their policy of converting themselves into independent State units, the end could only be a “demoralisation of the State’s constructive labours.”

And when the Grand Dukes Nicholas, George, Dmitry, and Paul were shot argumentation as to the advisability, or otherwise, of curbing the Che-Kas broke out with greater virulence than ever in the Bolshevist press. Yet though, eventually, _theoretical_ reforms were introduced, the Terror continued its way unchecked, and we need but recall the words of Moroz,[274] that “there is not a sphere of life which the Che-Ka does not watch,” to realise that the moral and mental conditions of Bolshevist Russia have never changed.

Take, for example, the type of _agent-provocateur_ or “Government worker” whom Dzerzhinsky’s circular encouraged, and largely enabled, to make good his footing in the State. “Life here is terrible,” wrote a Pskov correspondent to the _Roussky Courier_ in May 1921:

Spies swarm like ants; they are to be found in every house and
every tenement and every street. Not a dwelling does not harbour
Communists engaged in watching the occupants. It is as though
we were living in a prison. Each man is afraid of the other,
and brother looks askance at brother. The place is an accursed
hotbed of espionage.

And in 1922 an official document entitled “Duties of Secret Agents for January” enjoined that during that month:

All agents shall (1) keep under observation managements of
factories, and educated workers in the same, and make sure of
those persons’ political opinions, and report any agitation
or propaganda against the Soviet Power in which such persons
may engage; (2) investigate any gathering purporting to have
been organised for amusement (card-playing and the like) only,
but in reality for other ends, and, if possible, join in such
gathering, and report to the authorities its real purpose and
aims, and the names and surnames and addresses of all present;
(3) keep under surveillance all educated employees of Soviet
institutions, and note their conversation, and discover their
political views, and where they spend their leisure, and, in
short, communicate to the authorities any suspicious details;
(4) attend all intimate or family gatherings of an educated
class, discover their trend of opinion, and learn who have been
their organisers, and why they have been organised at all; (5)
watch for the holding of any communication between educated
persons and the _intelligentsia_ of a given district and
persons at home or abroad, and report upon the same, accurately
and fully.[275]

On the sixth anniversary of the Che-Ka’s sanguinary inception Zinoviev wrote:

When the People entrusted the sword to the All-Russia
Extraordinary Commission, it was to worthy hands that the People
entrusted that weapon. And now the letters O.G.P.U. have become
as terrifying to our enemies as were once the letters V.C.K.
They are known all the world over.

And certainly this last is true.

When, in Tsarist times, the old “Third Department” was renamed “The Department of State Police,” the act of renaming it was declared to be an insult to the intelligence of the Russian community. Yet what else can be said of a “reform” which has done no more than convert the letters “V.C.K.” into the letters “O.G.P.U.,” and achieved results brilliant to none save those who possess the mentality of a Zinoviev? Long ago the Russian masses translated the initials “V.C.K.” into the phrase “_Vsiem Cheloviekam Konetz!_” (“An End to All Men!”): and though yet it remains to be seen how popular humour will interpret the initials “O.G.P.U.,”[276] for the present the rest of the world regards them as standing for an institution alien to democracy, and in no way sanctioning the dictum of Anatole France that “revolutions are bound to demand an irrational toll of victims.”

Once the Muscovite _Pravda_[277] quoted a promise on Trotsky’s part that “if we are forced to depart hence, we shall make the whole world hear it when we slam the door behind us, and leave to our successors only ruins and the silence of a cemetery.”

That silence is reigning in Russia now. And in “The Ship of Death” we find written:

Reason totters with the effort to understand; eyes grow dim as
they gaze upon things which the scores of generations before us
never saw or knew, and the generations after us will scarcely
be able to imagine even with the aid of history books. For
death, once so mysterious to us, once altogether beyond our
understanding, has now lost its terrors, and become, rather,
life. No longer the pungent odour of human blood, saturating
the air with its heavy vapour, unnerves us. We have ceased to
tremble on beholding endless strings of human beings being led
to execution, now that we have seen infants shot and writhing
in our streets, and cold, mutilated corpses of men and women,
victims of an insane terrorism, lying piled in heaps. Moreover,
not once, but many times, have we ourselves stood on the
Dividing Line. Hence we know those spectacles as a native knows
the footways of his familiar town, and listen to the sound of
shots as we would to human voices. Yet, just because triumphant
Death is for ever facing us is the land become silent, and
its crushed soul sending forth not even the elemental cry of
anguish and despair. Physically that land has lived through
never-to-be-forgotten years of civil strife, but spiritually
it is worn-out, fettered, and extinct--a mere dumb Russia of
tortures and executions.

Yet though the living may be dumb, it is not so with the dead. They are crying aloud to us from the ravine of Saratov, from the dungeons of Kharkov and Khuban, and from the “camp of death” at Kholmogory.

For never can the dead be put to silence!

THE END

BIBLIOGRAPHY

_Of Works used by the Author up to March 1924_

I. PUBLISHED IN SOVIET RUSSIA

1. M. Y. LATZIS. _Two Years of Warfare Conducted upon the
Inner Front._ (A Survey of the activities of the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission during two years of its struggle with
counter-revolution.) The State Publishing Dept. Moscow. 1920.

2. “THE RED BOOK” OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION.
Moscow. 1919.

3. “THE WEEKLY” OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION.
Nos. 1–6. Moscow. 1918.

4. “THE RED SWORD.” The official organ of the Ukrainian
Extraordinary Commission. Kieff. 1918.

5. THE OFFICIAL ORGANS OF THE SOVIET AUTHORITIES. The _Izvestia_
of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Moscow); the
provincial _Izvestia_ (Kharkoff, Kieff, Odessa, Tambov,
Voronezh, Riazan, Stavropol, Saratov, etc.).

6. COMMUNIST NEWSPAPERS. _Pravda_ (Moscow and Petrograd), _The
Red Newspaper_ (Petrograd), _The Northern Commune_ (Petrograd),
and others.

7. “CIVIL WAR.” Materials for a history of the Red Army.
Published by the Supreme Military Council. Moscow. 1923.

8. “THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION.” A historical review dealing
with the history of the Communist Party.

9. TROTZKI. _Terrorism and Communism._ Moscow. 1920.

10. “THE NEW LIFE.” Journal edited by M. Gorki. Petrograd. 1918.

11. “BULLETINS OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE PARTY OF LEFT
SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARIES (INTERNATIONALISTS).” Published illicitly
in Moscow in 1919.

12. “THE INFORMATION SHEET.” Illicit publication of the Union of
Regeneration. Moscow. 1918.

13. “THE BANNER OF LABOUR.” Illicit publication of the Party of
Left Social Revolutionaries. Moscow. 1920.

14. “THE REVOLUTIONARY CAUSE.” Illicit publication of the Party
of Social Revolutionaries. Petrograd. 1922.

15. PROCLAMATIONS. Issued by the Social Revolutionary and Social
Democratic Parties; by the Anarchists and by the so-called
“Labour Opposition” within the Communist Party, 1919–1923.

II. PUBLISHED ABROAD

16. SUMMARY OF MATERIALS COLLECTED BY THE SPECIAL COMMISSION OF
INQUIRY INTO THE OUTRAGES COMMITTED BY THE BOLSHEVISTS. This
Commission was attached to the Supreme Commander of the Armed
Forces of the South of Russia. Vols. I.-III. Rostov-on-Don. 1919.

17. A. LOCKERMANN. _74 Days of Soviet Rule._ Published by the
Don Committee of the Party of Social Democrats. Rostov-on-Don.
1918.

18. AVERBUCH. _The Extraordinary Commission of Odessa._
Kishinev. 1920.

19. “THE CHE-KA.” Materials dealing with the activities of the
Extraordinary Commission. Published by the Central Bureau of the
Social Revolutionary Party. Berlin. 1922.

20. “THE KREMLIN BEHIND PRISON BARS.” Published by the Party of
Left Social Revolutionaries. “Skify,” Berlin. 1922.

21. “THE PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS IN SOVIET RUSSIA.” Published
by a group of Russian Anarchists in Germany. Berlin. 1922.

22. O. CHERNOVA-KOLBASSINA. _Reminiscences of Soviet Prisons._
Published by the Social Revolutionaries in Paris. 1921.

23. N. DAVYDOVA. _Six Months in Prison._ Berlin. 1923.

24. “THE 12 CONDEMNED TO DEATH.” (The trial of the Social
Revolutionaries in Moscow.) Berlin. 1922.

25. V. AICH. _The City which was Wiped Out._ (The tragedy of
Novo-Nikolaevsk on the Amur.) Vladivostok. 1920.

26. VL. MARGOULIES. _Years of Fire._ Berlin. 1923.

27. T. VAISHER. _Things Seen and Suffered in Soviet Russia._
Berlin. 1923.

28. I. OSSIPOV. _The Drive._ Przemysl. 1922.

29. M. S. MARGOULIES. _A Year of Intervention._ Vol. II.
Published by Grzebina. Berlin. 1922.

30. MARTOV. _Down with Capital Punishment._ Published by the
_Socialistichesky Vestnik_. Berlin. 1923.

31. N. VORONOVICH. _The Green Book._ (A history of the peasant
movement in the Black Sea Province.) Prague. 1921.

32. STEINBERG. _The Moral Aspect of the Revolution._ Berlin.
1923.

33. M. GORKI. _About the Russian Peasantry._ Published by
Ladyzhnikov. Berlin. 1922.

34. A. PESHEKHONOV. _The Reason why I did not Emigrate._
Published by the _Obelisk_. Berlin. 1923.

35. VISHNIAK. _The Black Year._ Published by Povolotzki. Paris.
1922.

36. VL. KOROLENKO. _Letters to Lunacharsky._ Published by
“Zadruga,” Berlin. 1922.

37. DENIKIN, A. I. _Essays upon the Russian Revolution._ Vol.
III. “Slovo,” Berlin. 1924.

38. MASLOV, O. _Russia after Four Years of Revolution._
Published by the “Russian Press,” Paris. 1922.

39. USTONOV. _Memoirs of a Chief of the Anti-Bolshevist
Intelligence Department, 1915–1920._ Published by Maier, Berlin.
1923.

40. “MEMORANDUM DES PRISONS SOVIETIQUES.” Comité Executif de la
Conférence des Membres de l’Assemblée Constit. de Russie. Paris.
1921.

41. “MEMORANDUM PRESENTÉ PAR LES DÉLÉGATS DU PARTI
SOCIALISTES-RÉVOLUTION AU CONGRÈS DES TROIS UNIONS INTERNAT.”
Berlin. 1922.

42. “CONFERENCE DES MEMBRES DE L’ASSEMBLÉE CONSTIT. DE RUSSIE.”
Paris. 1921.

43. “CHRONIK DER VERFOLGUNGEN IN SOWJET RUSSLAND.” (Ein
unperiodisches Bulletin der Hilfsvereins für politische
Gefargene und Verbannte in Russland.) Berlin. 1923.

44. ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN RUSSIAN JOURNALS ABROAD:

(_a_) _Archives of the Russian Revolution._ (Edited by
Essen.) Berlin.

(_b_) _In Strange Lands._ (Edited by Melgunov and
Miakotin.) Berlin-Prague.

(_c_) _Contemporary Notes._ (Edited by Avksentieff and
Rudnef and others.) Paris.

(_d_) _Russian Thought._ (Edited by Struve.) Prague.

(_e_) _Russian History_ (the organ of Monarchists in
Paris).

(_f_) _The Historian and Contemporary._ Berlin.

(_g_) _The Ways of the Revolution_ (organ of the Left
Social Revolutionaries). “Skify,” Berlin.

(_i_) _The Will of Russia._ (Lebedeff and others.) Prague.

(_k_) _The Dawn_ (organ of the Social Democrats). Berlin.

(_l_) _The News of the Russian National Committee._ Paris.

(_m_) _The Kossack’s Thoughts._ Sofia.

(_n_) _The Socialist News_ (organ of the Social
Democrats). Berlin.

(_o_) _Revolutionary Russia_ (organ of the Social
Revolutionary Party). Prague.

(_p_) _The Banner of Strife_ (organ of the Left Social
Revolutionaries). Berlin.

(_q_) _The Anarchist News._

(_r_) _Peasant Russia._ (Argunoff.) Berlin and Prague.

45. ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN NEWSPAPERS:

(_a_) _The Latest News._ (Professor Miliukoff.) Paris.

(_b_) _The Helm._ (Gessen.) Berlin.

(_c_) _To-day._ Riga.

(_d_) _Freedom._ (Philosophov and Artzibanstiev.) Warsaw.

(_e_) _Days._ (Kerensky.) Berlin.

(_f_) _The New Russian Word._ New York.

(_g_) _The Common Cause, 1920–1922._ (Burtzeff.) Paris.

(_i_) _La Cause Commune._ (Burtzeff.) Paris.

(_k_) _New Times._ (Suvorin.) Belgrade.

(_l_) _The Voice of Russia, 1920–1922_ (the organ of
Social Revolutionaries). Berlin.

(_m_) _The Ukrainian Tribune._ 1923. Warsaw.

(_n_) _Russia To-day._ (_The Times._)

III. FOREIGN SOURCES

46. “A COLLECTION OF REPORTS ON BOLSHEVISM IN RUSSIA.” (Abridged
Edition of Parliamentary Paper, Russia, No. 1.) 1919.

47. “INTERIM REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE TO COLLECT INFORMATION ON
RUSSIA.” 1920.

48. “REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE TO COLLECT INFORMATION ON RUSSIA.”
1921.

49. NILOSTONSKY. _Der Blutrausch des Bolschewismus._ Neudeutsch.
Verlag, Berlin. 1920.

50. A. NIEMANN. _Fünf Monate Obrigkeit von Unten._ _Der Firn_,
Berlin. 1920.

51. MINK. _Rote Russland Not._ Verlag Gesellschaft, Berlin. 1920.

52. STRATZ. _Drei Monate als Geisel für Radek._ Berlin. 1920.

53. A. AXELROD. _Das Wirtschaftliche Erzebuiss des Bolschewismus
in Russland._ Zürich. 1920.

54. E. KÖHRER. _Das Wahre Gesicht des Bolschewismus_ (Bilder aus
den Baltischen Provinzen, 1918–1919). Berlin.

55. E. KÖHRER. _Unter der Herrschaft des Bolschewismus._ _Der
Firn_, Berlin. 1920.

56. K. KAUTSKY. _Terrorism and Communism._ Ladyzhnikoff, Berlin.
1920.

57. E. HERRIOT. _La Russie Nouvelle._ Paris. 1923.

58. O. KEUN. _Sous Lenine._ Paris. 1922.

59. S. VOLSKY. _Dans le Royaume de la famine et de la haine._
Paris. 1920.

60. A. MAZON. _Prisons Russes._ Paris. 1919.

61. ARTICLES published in _Vorwaerts_, _Humanité_, _Le Peuple_,
_Pravo Lidu_; Professor Sarolea’s articles in the _Scotsman_.

IV. UNPUBLISHED WORKS

62. “ARCHIVES OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY INTO THE
OUTRAGES COMMITTED BY THE BOLSHEVISTS.” (Protocols of meetings
of the Extraordinary Commission; statements made by victims;
descriptions of places where shootings had taken place, and of
prisons; instructions to counsel for the prosecution, etc.)

63. “STATEMENTS MADE BY MESSRS. SHMELOV, LOWKIN, AND OTHERS
DURING THE LAUSANNE TRIAL.”

64. “MATERIALS OF THE POLITICAL RED CROSS IN RUSSIA.”

65. “MATERIALS COLLECTED BY THE AUTHOR IN RUSSIA,” and taken to
a place of safety abroad in 1922. (Letters, appeals, documents
of the Extraordinary Commission, etc.)

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the remarkable letter which, in 1906, Sagonov sent to his parents from the Butyrka Prison, where he was lying for the assassination of Plehve, the writer said: “I have committed the most terrible of all acts. I have killed two human beings, and stained my hands with blood. But it was only owing to the horrible struggle and suffering, only owing to our confrontment with the sad realities of life, that I had to take up the sword.... And, even so, we were not the first to take it up.... Ah, I could not refuse to assume my cross! Try to understand this, and to forgive me. Let people speak of me and my comrades--of those who have been executed, and of those who are still alive--as my counsel spoke. Said he: ‘The bomb which this man threw was not a bomb filled with dynamite, but a bomb charged with the pain and tears of a whole people. By hurling missiles at its rulers, that people hoped at least to dissipate the terrible burden of nightmare from its breast.’”

[2] _A Collection of Reports on Russian Bolshevism_, Abridged Edition. British Parliamentary Paper, “Russia, No. 1,” p. 69.

[3] The same, pp. 25 and 26.

[4] The _Outro Moskvy_ (“Morning Post of Moscow”), No. 21, November 4, 1918.

[5] The number of names originally given was fifteen.

[6] Giving evidence before The Lausanne Tribunal, P. Artibashev estimated the number at 500.

[7] See the section “In the Days of the Red Terror,” in the compilation known as _The Che-Ka_.

[8] In Tsarist days this room had been a disinfecting place for newly-arrived convicts.

[9] From the section “The Hungry Guillotine” in _The Che-Ka_, pp. 49 and 50.

[10] See the _Severnaya Communa_ (“Northern Commune”) of September 18, 1918.

[11] See the _Izvestia_ of Moscow: also the _Severny Kavkaz_ (“Northern Caucasus”), No. 138.

[12] See the materials collected by the Denikin Commission.

[13] The almost incredible horrors of this massacre are described on a later page.

[14] Still earlier than this, namely, on the previous March 1, Dzherzhinsky had written in the Kievan edition of the _Izvestia_: “It would be well if all Social Revolutionaries now in custody were converted into hostages, and made to serve as guarantees for the good behaviour of their respective wings of the Social Revolutionary Party.”

[15] See the _Izvestia_ of Saratov, October 2, 1919.

[16] In the section “A Year in the Butyrka Prison” in _The Che-Ka_, p. 144.

[17] He did so in No. 3 of the author’s Berlin-published (Russian) review, _Na Chouzhoi Storonyé_ (“In Foreign Parts”).

[18] The _Izvestia_ of Khakov, No. 126, May 13, 1919.

[19] In No. 345 of that journal.

[20] See British Parliamentary Paper, “Russia, No. 1 (1919),” p. 15.

[21] See the _Rousskaya Zhizn_ (“Russian Life”), of March 11.

[22] As a result of this disconcerting statement, Madame Zoubevich was exiled to Orenburg.

[23] The organ of the All-Ukrainian Che-Ka. See its No. 134 of the year 1918.

[24] See the journal _Revolutsionnaya Rossia_ (“Revolutionary Russia”), Nos. 14 and 15.

[25] I have heard that this man is now in a lunatic asylum.

[26] Only recently the Che-Ka of Georgia seized a large number of Menshevist (Social Democrat) hostages.

[27] A notice to that effect was published in No. 1 of the _Gazeta Vremennago Rabochago i Krestianskago Pravitelstva_ (“Gazette of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Temporary Government”).

[28] The _Izvestia_, No. 27.

[29] The Kievan _Izvestia_ of May 17, 1919.

[30] “The New Life.”

[31] The _Weekly_, No. 6.

[32] See Margoulies’ work, _A Year of Intervention_, vol. ii., p. 77.

[33] Published in No. 192 of the _Izvestia_, 1918.

[34] The Commissary of Justice at the time was Steinberg.

[35] Meetings in support of a Red Terror were largely held in Moscow, and addressed by Kamenev, Bukharin, Sverdlov, Lounacharsky, and Krylenko.

[36] On October 18, 1919.

[37] That is to say, the three Russian characters which usually are transliterated as “V,” “Ch,” and “K” begin both the title of the _Vserossiiskaya Chrezvychainaya Komissia_ (“All-Russian Extraordinary Commission”) and the words _Vsiakomou chelovekou kapout!_ “Death to every man!”).

[38] For example, I failed to receive information as to twelve Social Revolutionaries whom Nos. 16 and 18 of the journal _Revolutsionnaya Rossia_ reported to have been shot at Astrakhan on September 5, 1918.

[39] See the _Izvestia_ for February 8.

[40] British White Book, 1920. Also British White Book, 1921.