PREFACE
Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, author of this work, was born on December 25, 1879. The son of the well-known historian of the name, he is also a direct descendant of the Freemason who became prominent during the reign of Catherine the Great.
Mr. Melgounov graduated in the Historical and Philological Faculty of the University of Moscow, and then proceeded to devote his principal study to the Sectarian movements of Russia, and to write many articles on the subject which, collated into book form, appeared under the title of The Social and Religious Movements of Russia during the Nineteenth Century, and constitute a sequel to two earlier volumes on Sectarian movements during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As a young man he took to contributing to the well-known journal the Posledniya Vedomosty (“The Latest News”), and in its columns passionately opposed religious persecution, and subsequently published the articles as a volume entitled Church and State in Russia. The same researches into Sectarianism brought him into contact and association with Tolstoy (whose views, however, he did not share) and Tolstoy’s daughter, the Countess Alexandra Lvovna, with whom, at the time of the Bolshevists’ seizure of power, he was engaged in preparing for publication a new edition of her father’s works designed to include certain compositions not yet published.
Another of Mr. Melgounov’s works is a volume entitled Men and Deeds during the Alexandrian Period, an attempt both to summarise what has been accomplished in the study of that epoch and to consider certain new points in connection with it. Also, it was under Mr. Melgounov’s editorship that a group of specialists produced, collectively, The Great Reform of February 19th, 1861; The Patriotic War of, and Russian Society in, 1812; The Past and Present Outlook of Freemasonry, and A History Reader of Modern Times—the last a seven-volumed work designed to follow the Reader on similar lines, but dealing with the Middle Ages, which Sir Paul Vinogradov has edited.
In 1913 Mr. Melgounov joined Mr. V. I. Semevsky, the noted historian of the Russian peasantry as a class, in launching the historical journal Golos Minouvshago (“Voice of the Past”), as a journal for, primarily, study of the history of social movements; and this journal, with certain unavoidable breaks, Mr. Melgounov carried on, after Mr. Semevsky’s death in 1916, up to the year 1923. Earlier, in 1911, Mr. Melgounov had suggested, and taken a leading part in, organising a publishing house under the style of “Zadrouga,” as a progressive and democratic enterprise intended to act rather as a co-operative society of writers than as a purely commercial venture. And, needless to say, the Bolshevists suppressed it almost at once. Amongst its members were included the writer Korolenko and over six hundred others, whilst its output amounted to several hundreds of works, and it owned, in addition, two printing presses, all the employees of which were members of the society concerned. When the Revolution had come about “Zadrouga” also issued pamphlets by the million, for the enlightenment of the peasantry and the industrial workers. These pamphlets set forth, principally, the views of the Narodnicheskoyé Dvizheniyé, or “People’s Movement,” as views consonant with those held by Mr. Melgounov himself, since from the first he had been a chief organiser of the party known as “People’s Socialists,” a party founded by Messrs. Miakotin and Peshekhonov, and basing its ideology upon the common interests of individuals as individual personalities rather than upon class warfare, upon attainment of realities, as occasion should serve, rather than upon Utopian ideas, upon evolution rather than upon political upheavals. And though, during the hectic revolutionary period, when demagogy alone was listened to, the party could attract few fresh adherents to its standard, it had previously, through its untiring defence of the interests of State and People, added to its truly democratic outlook, drawn to itself all that was best in the Russian intelligentsia. As vice-president of the party’s central committee, Mr. Melgounov was put forward as the party candidate for the Constituent Assembly, and continued to edit the party’s organs, The People’s Word and The Popular Socialist, and the organ of the co-operative societies, The Rule of the People, even after the Bolshevists had illegally dispersed that Assembly.
The Revolution of October 1917 failed to deter Mr. Melgounov from remaining on in Russia, as he desired to combat the Bolshevist tyranny, and stood prepared to suffer for his outspokenness under the new régime even as he had suffered under the old. Eight times he was arrested; twenty-three times did he have his house and documents searched. More than once, however, he was released—thanks to the mediation of such old-established non-Bolshevist revolutionaries as Madame Vera Figner and Prince Kropotkin. In 1920 he and many other literati and public men of Moscow were arrested and tried on a charge of having participated in the activities of the association known as Vozrozhdeniyé or “Regeneration,” a political group which, drawn from all democratic parties without distinction, had for its ideal a united National front against the Bolshevists; and, though sentenced to death, he afterwards had his sentence commuted to ten years imprisonment, and, after serving a year of that sentence (mostly under the system termed “solitary confinement”), was released on the intercession of the Academy of Sciences, but re-arrested in the autumn of 1922, to serve as a witness in the trial of Social Revolutionaries of the Right, and then sentenced to be deported to Perm Province. Lastly, after being allowed to leave Russia on condition that he never returned to his native country, he was, a year later, deprived, in his absence, of civil rights, and had his archives and library confiscated and handed over to the Socialist Academy—this last move on the Bolshevists’ part being due to his articles denunciatory of the Red Terror, which he strenuously opposed from the standpoint of ethical rectitude, and as a lifelong protagonist of the deathless principles of justice and freedom.
The Translator.
To save space and labour, the translator has everywhere used the shortened expression “Che-Ka” in place of the full English title “Extraordinary Commission.” The expression Che-Ka is formed of the names of the two initial letters of the Russian title, Chrezvychainaya Komissia. Originally there was only one Che-Ka, the “All-Russian Extraordinary Commission,” or Vserossiis-Kaya Chrezvychainaya Komissia; but subsequently local and occupational branches came into existence.