CHAPTER X
FOREIGN PRISONERS
Espionage for Mexico! — A Cryptic Message — Gpu Tactics — Attempts to Escape Savagely Punished.
Most of the foreigners in the Solovky were sent there on the charge of "espionage for the benefit of the international bourgeoisie" (Clause 66). Sometimes a second clause is brought into action as well as Clause 66, quite groundlessly; the Tchekist "jurisprudence" is most skilful in discovering a crime where there is not the shadow of one.
Among the prisoners in the Solovky are Count Villa, Mexican Consul-General in Egypt, and his wife. It must have been, one would think, rather difficult for a man living in Cairo to direct "Mexican espionage" in Soviet Russia, especially in view of the fact that the Consul-General does not speak or understand a single word of Russian. The circumstances of his arrest were as follows.
Count Villa's wife is a Georgian lady, née Princess Karalova. In 1924 she and her husband came to the Caucasus to visit her mother, with the permission of the Soviet Government and with their passports in order. Unluckily, just at that time the Georgian rebellion broke out. The Bolsheviks shot the Countess's brother, Prince Karaloff, and sent the diplomatist and his wife to the Solovky for three years for "espionage for the benefit of Mexico." They arrived there in February, 1925.
The Consul-General is living in the Solovky by virtue of a diplomatic passport guaranteeing him personal immunity! On his arrival in the camp he tried to send to Mexico a full account of the outrage committed on him by the Soviet authorities, but the Solovetsky censorship destroyed it. Then the Count had recourse to the language of Æsop and sent his Government a telegram which began with the words:
"I am making a very interesting tour in the north of Russia."
Evidently the fact of the Mexican diplomatist's transportation to the Solovky is known abroad, for not long before I escaped some things were sent to him from London by aeroplane (he had been robbed by the Tchekists when he was arrested). He carries on an active correspondence with Tchitcherin in French, demanding his release. But Mexico is a long way off; she has no merchant fleet or money to lend the Soviets; and so the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, in its polite replies to its colleague's letters, passes over in silence the question of his liberation. The only result of Tchitcherin's letters was that the Consul-General was exempted from work in the camp. But Countess Villa, like all women "K.R.'s," scrubs hut floors and washes Tchekists' shirts.
Representatives of every nation, great as well as small, may be met with in the Solovky — Englishmen, Italians, Japanese, Frenchmen and Germans, besides natives of lesser States. The reasons for their transportation are as a rule shamelessly inadequate. Is seems as if the Gpu were deliberately frightening foreigners away, so that they shall not visit Russia, become acquainted with the country or open commercial or any other kind of relations with it. I referred in an earlier chapter to the case of the Hungarian manufacturer Frenckell, whom the Vneshtorg (Foreign Trade Office) invited to Russia and then sent to the Solovky. There have been many cases of the kind. For example, an Estonian named Motise went to Moscow to see the All-Russian Exhibition, and was sent straight from the Exhibition to the Solovky!
At a time when there was a Government crisis in Lithuania, and the struggle between the political parties had reached an abnormal degree of bitterness, a member of the defeated party fled from the country into Soviet Russia. He was an engineer officer in the Lithuanian army. He was completely strange to Soviet Russia and to the Communists, and believed that he would find in the neighbouring country asylum as a political refugee. But directly he crossed the frontier he was arrested, accused, despite his protests, of "organising a counter-revolutionary plot and espionage in the interests of Lithuania," and sent to the Solovky!
In the monastery and on Popoff Island there are a large number of persons formerly attached to the diplomatic missions of foreign States. They are mostly Poles, Estonians, Finlanders, Latvians and Lithuanians, employees of the Legations, Consulates and missions of their respective countries, who have been arrested on the charge of "espionage" and, more rarely, "speculation."
All the foreigners live in the constant hope that their Governments will exchange them for Communists. The administration treats them cruelly. They get the same rations as the "K.R.'s," and the work they are given is for the most part severe.
There have lately been several attempts to escape. The would-be fugitives have mostly been Estonians, Latvians, Finlanders and Poles. Nogteff has, therefore, given orders that prisoners of those nationalities shall not be taken to work outside the camps.
Attempts to escape — always unsuccessful — are punished first by cruel torture and then by shooting (although, according to the regulations, the maximum punishment is the prolongation of the prisoner's term of imprisonment by one year).
In March, 1925, a Finlander attempted to escape from the Solovetsky Monastery. He had gone to the latrine, accompanied by a sentry, climbed over the wall and found himself on the seashore. In these latitudes spring generally comes late, and the ice by the Kremlin was still thick enough to bear. The Finlander fled as fast as he could towards the woods, a little way along the coast. He was observed; the alarm was given and shots were fired after him. Just as he had reached the woods, where he could have hidden until he could continue his flight with better prospects of escaping recapture, he came unexpectedly to a break in the ice, and halted in indecision. The Tchekists caught him.
The Finlander was brought back to the camp. He was beaten for nearly an hour with such violence that the thick "Smolensky sticks" were broken. Then, all dripping with blood, he was shot.