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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.
[41] British Parliamentary Paper, “Russia, No. 1,” p. 56. Also “Sir C. Eliot to Lord Curzon,” March 21, 1919.
[42] The Obstchoyé Dielo, No. 56.
[43] Archives of the Revolution, III, 159.
[44] In some localities it was impossible to verify numbers of victims even when the Bolshevist forces had withdrawn. Thus the Kharkov branch of the Denikin Commission, which accompanied representatives of the Kharkov town council and trades council and working women’s union to eleven prisons in the region, and discovered in those prisons two hundred bodies, had still to estimate that the real number had been at least three times as large, since exhumation of the bodies buried in and beyond the public park was impossible.
[45] “In the Shadow of Death. Report of a Red Cross Worker on the Bolshevist Prisons in Kiev,” in Archives of the Revolution.
[46] About a hundred yards.
[47] Published by the organisation “Der Firn.”
[48] That is to say, a “prosecuting counsel” for the Che-Ka.
[49] See also Margoulies’ book, p. 279.
[50] See “Shootings in Astrakhan,” in The Che-Ka, pp. 251 and 253.
[51] The Volya Rossii, or “Will of Russia.” The issue referred to is the issue of December 7, 1921.
[52] See The Che-Ka, p. 227.
[53] See The Che-Ka, p. 102.
[54] Presumably, the Tsar.
[55] February 15, 1919.
[56] The Kremlin through Prison Bars, p. 112.
[57] Under date of August 30, 1919, the French author Cachin wrote to L’Humanité that, although the Terror, as such, had ended with the previous year, prisoners still were being sent to the front for execution. And, later, the Czech Socialist, Posenczka, rendered a like report. See the Posledniya Novosty (“The Latest News”—a foreign-published Russian journal) of June 30, 1920.
[58] Executions at the front had been taking place uninterruptedly. Madame Reissner said when writing of events in Sviashsk during the August of 1918: “Red Guards were shot there like dogs, with twenty-seven leading Communists who attempted to desert on the Whites approaching the town—shot ‘as a warning to others.’”
[59] See the Posledniya Novosty of October 20, 1919.
[60] Nevertheless, shootings ordered by the Central Che-Ka were reported, and No. 206 of the Izvestia issued a list of sixteen persons shot by that Che-Ka for having misused their ration cards. Amongst the victims were Doctor Moudrov, a Princess Shirinskaya-Shakhmatova, and others.
[61] Of February 18, 1921.
[62] In the issue of June 24, 1920.
[63] Certainly the British press, at that time, reported shootings of sufferers from the disease—of child sufferers. And see the Posledniya Novosty, No. 656.
[64] In A. P. Akselrod’s book Das Wirtschaftliche Ergebniss des Bolschewismus (“The Administrative Result of Bolshevism”) we find an account of a punitive train which was manned chiefly by Letts and sailors in order to patrol the Vologda-Cherepovetz line, and to halt at one or another station for the usual terrorist purposes.
[65] See the Izvestia of Voronezh of August 12, 1919.
[66] The Posledniya Novosty of November 8, 1920.
[67] Of March 25, 1922.
[68] See the section “Sketches of Prison Life,” in The Che-Ka, pp. 119 and 120.
[69] 1920, No. 14.
[70] The Twelve Condemned, p. 25.
[71] See No. 6 of the Revolutsionnaya Rossia.
[72] See No. 33 of the Posledniya Novosty.
[73] See No. 233 and following numbers of that journal.
[74] See Ossipov’s book, At the Cross Roads, 1917–1920, pp. 67 and 68.
[75] See the Posledniya Novosty of December 11.
[76] See the section “The Kuban Che-Ka,” in The Che-Ka, pp. 227 and 228.
[77] See No. 4 of Revolutsionnaya Rossia.
[78] Arbatov’s reminiscences in Archives of the Revolution, XII, 119.
[79] See the Posledniya Novosty of December, 1920.
[80] As reported in No. 9 of that journal.
[81] See No. 7 of the Revolutsionnaya Rossia.
[82] Before the Lausanne Tribunal the well-known writer, Ivan S. Shmelov, stated that he reckoned the slain in the Crimea to have reached 120,000.
[83] “The Helm,” a Berlin-published Russian journal. The above refers to its issue of August 3,1921. See also No. 392 of the Posledniya Novosty.
[84] This woman is said later to have been caught and put to death by the Greens, the rebel soldiers of the South.
[85] See also the Posledniya Novosty of August 10, 1921.
[86] See the Obstchoyé Dielo of July 10, 1920.
[87] Whips of horsehide.
[88] See No. 221 of the Posledniya Novosty.
[89] The Dielo of January 13, 1921.
[90] The same of November 9, 1921.
[91] No. 148 of the same, and also the Posledniya Novosty of August 16, 1921.
[92] The Dielo of December 11, and other journals.
[93] See the Roul of December 11.
[94] See the Dielo of December 8, 1920.
[95] See the Dielo of December 24, 1920.
[96] See the issue of August 31, 1921.
[97] The Bolshevists’ telegraphic agency in the Crimea.
[98] See the Dielo of August 23.
[99] See No. 81 of the Pravda.
[100] See the Posledniya Novosty of October 14.
[101] Green Book, A Record of the Peasant Movement in the Black Sea Provinces, by N. Voronovich.
[102] In this connection, see No. 11 of Revolutsionnaya Rossia.
[103] See the Posledniya Novosty, No. 572.
[104] See the Posledniya Novosty of September 18.
[105] See No. 217 of the Izvestia.
[106] See the Dielo of September 22 and October 7.
[107] See the Posledniya Novosty of December 21.
[108] See the Roul of September 30.
[109] See the Roul of December 7, and the Frankfurter Zeitung of about the same period.
[110] Of April 19, 1921.
[111] See the Posledniya Novosty of August 30.
[112] See the Dielo of February 16, 1921.
[113] At present my store of Siberian data is incomplete, but I shall hope later to complete and produce it.
[114] The Dielo of March 22.
[115] Other shootings of the kind took place earlier. In 1919 some Boy Scouts were shot in Moscow, and in 1920 the same fate (for “espionage”) was meted out to the members of a tennis club. Other cases also occurred.
[116] See the Revolutsionnaya Rossia, Nos. 12 and 13.
[117] Two other, but smaller, groups were shot later.
[118] See the Posledniya Novosty, No. 281.
[119] See No. 8 of Revolutsionnaya Rossia.
[120] See the Posledniya Novosty of May 13.
[121] See Archives of the Russian Revolution, XII, 132.
[122] Well-to-do peasants—peasant capitalists or factors.
[123] See the Segodnya (“To-day”) of April 25, 1921.
[124] In the Vestnik (“Messenger”) of March, 1923, pp. 28 and 29.
[125] There is a pun in this, since mogilev also means a tomb.
[126] See the Posledniya Novosty, No. 729.
[127] In Archives of the Russian Revolution, XII, 145.
[128] As announced by the Warsaw journal Za Svobodou (“For Freedom”), to which the deceased had been a contributor.
[129] See the Dni of March 13, 1923, and No. 5 of the Sotsialistichesky Vestnik, 1923.
[130] See the Sotsialistichesky Vestnik, No. 15.
[131] See the Izvestia of February 27.
[132] See the Izvestia of February 29.
[133] See the Dni of January 24, No. 395.
[134] See the Dni of March 4.
[135] See the Novoyé Vremya of August 3, 1923.
[136] See “Reminiscences of Sub-Lieutenant Hefter,” in Archives of the Russian Revolution, X, 118.
[137] See the Roul of August 3, 1923.
[138] In an at once lucid and accurate series of articles on Russia, published in the Edinburgh Scotsman, Professor Sarolea gives the following table of classified totals:
“Bishops, 28; ecclesiastics, 1219; professors and teachers, 6000; medical men, 9000; naval and military officers, 54,000; naval and military men of the ranks, 260,000; police officials, 70,000; intellectuals and members of the professional classes, 355,250; industrial workers, 193,290; peasants, 815,000.”
[139] See Archives of the Revolution, VII, 164.
[140] See The Twelve Condemned, p. 21.
[141] British Parliamentary Paper, Reports on Bolshevist Russia, Abridged Edition, Russia, No. 1, pp. 42 and 54.
[142] See the already quoted British Parliamentary Paper, p. 53.
[143] In a diary compiled by A. Boudberg, and included in Archives of the Russian Revolution, we find the total of slain at Blagoveschensk given as 1500.
[144] From reports and other documents contained in the State Papers of Czechoslovakia, 1919, Vol. LIII.
[145] See Archives of the Russian Revolution, IX, 190.
[146] See his book The Kremlin from behind Prison Bars, p. 177.
[147] See “For the Soviet Power” in S. M. Pougachevsky’s Diary of a Participant in the Civil War, and his Materials for a History of the Red Army, I, 406.
[148] See p. 54 of the British White Book cited.
[149] That is to say, a member of the Oprichnina, or corps of police-lifeguardsmen, which Tsar Ivan IV (“Ivan the Terrible”) maintained during the sixteenth century.
[150] A propos, a report from a local Che-Ka included the query: “What are we to do with people who would celebrate the downfall of the Peasants’ and Workers’ Power by holding thanksgiving services?” See No. 4 of the Weekly, p. 25.
[151] See the Revolutsionnaya Rossia, No. 12.
[152] The Znamya Trouda, No. 3, 1920.
[153] See a letter of June, 1920, quoted in The Kremlin from behind Prison Bars.
[154] See the Posledniya Novosty of September 21, 1921.
[155] See No. 1 of the Za Narod (“For the People”).
[156] See “Report of the Trial of some Left Social Revolutionaries on June 27 and 28, 1922,” in The Days of the Revolution, p. 296.
[157] One provincial executive committee brazenly admitted to having ordered villages of from 6,000 to 10,000 inhabitants to be burnt to the ground for tearing down official proclamations.
[158] See the Znamya Trouda, No. 3, September, 1920.
[159] Gan received this item from an eye-witness.
[160] Pp. 56–61.
[161] A slang term (literally, an “insolent jowl”) for an official such as Gogol has immortalised in his play The Inspector-General.
[162] From Steinberg’s book.
[163] From No. 15 of the Izvestia, 1919.
[164] See Margoulies’ book in this connection.
[165] See the Znamya Trouda, No. 3. Cf. also the Ekaterinodar shootings of industrial workers already described.
[166] See the Left Socialist Revolutionists’ Party’s Bulletin, No. 4.
[167] See the journal Kharkovskaya Svezda (“Star of Kharkov”), of June 7, 1919.
[168] See the Kievan Izvestia of July 24, 1919.
[169] See the Nachalo (“Principle” or “Guide”) of July 19, 1919.
[170] See the Narodnaya Vlast (“Rule of the People”) of January 24, 1919.
[171] See the Nachalo of July 24, 1919.
[172] See the Posledinaya Novosty of April 25, 1922.
[173] See the Posledniya Novosty of November 24, 1920.
[174] From data collected by the Denikin Commission.
[175] Possibly, in this execution the orgy of Bolshevist injustice reached its apogee.
[176] See the Rabochy Krai (“The Workers’ Realm”) of October 19, 1919.
[177] See the Posledniya Novosty of November 6, 1920.
[178] See the same journal of November 6.
[179] This girl of seventeen was shot ostensibly for petty theft; but there is reason to suppose that her real crime had been that she had called Steklov a “Jew.”
[180] See Vishniak’s Sovremenniya Zapisky (“Contemporary Notes), I, 227.
[181] See the Obstchoyé Dielo (“The Common Cause”), No. 126.
[182] Lane or alley.
[183] The British White Book already quoted, p. 43.
[184] The Riazanskaya Izvestia (“Riazan News”) of September 7, 1919.
[185] In the Volya Rossii, No. 4, 1922.
[186] From Six Months in Prison, p. 65.
[187] See The Che-Ka, section 108, and Chap. iv. of the Memorandum issued by the Social Revolutionary Party.
[188] See The Che-Ka, pp. 230 and 231.
[189] Report of the Denikin Commission.
[190] See No. 476 of the Dielo.
[191] In its issue of June 27, 1921.
[192] Materials collected by the Denikin Commission.
[193] See the materials collected by the Denikin Commission, and also Madame Kourakina’s reminiscences in No. 5 of the Rousskaya Lietopis “Russian Chronicle”), p. 201.
[194] See the Rabochnaya Zhizn (“Working-Class Life”) of May, 1918.
[195] Related by A. Nikolin in No. 9 of the Kazachyi Dumi (“Cossack Opinion”).
[196] These details are taken from the instalment of the Denikin materials published at Rostov-on-Don.
[197] In The Kremlin from behind Prison Bars, p. 187.
[198] He was the well-known Social Revolutionary Karelin.
[199] These details are taken from the foreign journal, Brihwa Seme. If I have quoted the title of the journal wrongly, the fact is due to my having been able to make but a hasty extract from it whilst I was still living in Moscow.
[200] From the Appeal issued by the Georgian Social Democrats on July 5, 1923, as reprinted in No. 15 of the Socialistichesky Vestnik.
[201] The then British Consul in Petrograd.
[202] The article is to be found in the Weekly of October 6, 1918.
[203] They were issued on March 3, 1919, as confirmed by P. Mayer’s reminiscences of his former service in the Commissariat of Justice.
[204] Of December 7, 1920.
[205] Of December 12, 1923.
[206] And, if I am not mistaken, rewarded with “the Order of the Red Flag.” See Digest No. 344 of the digests compiled by Denikin’s Staff.
[207] See The Che-Ka, pp. 242, 243.
[208] And published in No. 2 of the Revolutsionnoyé Dielo.
[209] See the Ponti Revolutsyi of April 9, 1922.
[210] In an issue of the Rabochy Listok or “Workers’ Sheet” we find mention of the Petrograd Che-Ka putting prisoners into fetters pending inquiry, whilst No. 5 of the Socialistichesky Vestnik tells of prisoners being sent to lunatic asylums for confinement with dangerous maniacs.
[211] In The Che-Ka of Odessa, published at Kishinev in 1920, p. 30.
[212] The pair of “gloves” in question are still to be seen in the Great Palace of the Kremlin. They figure in Edouard Herriot’s book, La Russie Nouvelle.
[213] See Averbuch’s The Che-Ka of Odessa, p. 36.
[214] Archives of the Russian Revolution, Vol. VI.
[215] See Odette Kun’s Sous Lenine, Notes d’une Femme Déportée en Russie par les Anglais, p. 179, and also No. 3 of the review Na Chouzhoi Storonyé. Odette Kun had begun by being deported from Constantinople by the British authorities, who suspected her of carrying on Communist propaganda.
[216] See this author’s My Memoirs, p. 263.
[217] See Z. U. Arbatov, in Archives of the Russian Revolution, XII, 89.
[218] Short for the slang expression “Raskhod,” equivalent to “to be killed,” or “dispatched.”
[219] Of March, 1922.
[220] In the same connection see the Posledniya Novosty of July 17, 1921.
[221] Of March 25, 1922.
[222] This was before she became Kedrov’s wife.
[223] See the Golos Rossii of January 27, 1922.
[224] See the Posledniya Novosty of March 2, 1921.
[225] Der Blutrausch des Bolschewismus, p. 19.
[226] See the section “A Year in the Butyrka” in The Che-Ka, p. 146.
[227] See the Novoyé Russkoyé Slovo (“The New Russian Word”) of New York, of February 19, 1924.
[228] See the Dni of March 7, 1924.
[229] Other instances of this kind of phraseology are given by Kartzevsky in his The Speech of Warfare and Revolution, Russ. Univ. Edition, Berlin, 1923.
[230] See Archives of the Revolution, VIII, 153.
[231] In that journal’s issue for April 1919.
[232] From the Posledinya Novosty of September 21,1920.
[233] From the same, No. 168.
[234] Medviedev’s and others’ evidence before the Commission has been published by Telburg in America, and in No. 5 of the journal The Contemporary Historian in Germany.
[235] See The Che-Ka, pp. 232, 233.
[236] No. 168 of that journal.
[237] Published in the Rousskaya Lietopis (“The Russian Chronicle”), No. 5, pp. 199 and 200.
[238] From The Che-Ka.
[239] In the tenth issue of that journal.
[240] Nos. 3 and 4.
[241] Respectively The Workman’s Gazette and Proletarian Truth.
[242] This description is quoted from Nos. 12, 13, and 43 of Revolutsionnaya Rossia.
[243] See Margoulies’ Years of Fire.
[244] These particulars are taken from the manuscript data with relation to the Crimea which the Denikin Commission collected.
[245] Many other details of the sort are to be found recorded in the “Memorandum concerning Political Prisoners in Soviet Russia,” which the Paris Congress of the Russian Constituent Assembly drew up.
[246] See No. 15 of the Socialistichesky Vestnik.
[247] See Nos. 33 and 34 (1924) of Revolutsionnaya Rossia.
[248] The British public may be reminded that the Russian pound is equivalent only to nine-tenths of the pound avoirdupois.
[249] In addition to which it may be said that in many prisons the authorities either made food parcels common property—that is to say, divided the meagre contents of the parcels amongst a large number of prisoners—or confiscated the contents themselves.
[250] This document was reproduced in the Izvestia of December 26, 1918.
[251] See the Izvestia of December 4, 1918.
[252] Peasant low shoes of bark.
[253] At times the Butyrka, though built to hold 1100 prisoners only, contained over 3000.
[254] This was, of course, in addition to thousands of others who had been deported to outlying provinces, or thrown into the prisons of Tiflis and Kukais.
[255] See the Zveno (“Link”) for 1923.
[256] So phenomenal, indeed, that even twelve doctors who ventured to criticise the Government’s starvation of prisoners policy found themselves deported.
[257] As complementary, of course, to the account already given.
[258] Some of the foregoing details are from a letter actually written from Solovetsky by a prisoner, and dated March 8, 1924.
[259] As an instance of this Che-Ka’s taste for drama it may be mentioned that one of the most terrible of all extant photographs of mutilated corpses is one of victims slain by this Che-Ka.
[260] Lenin’s dictum on the point was that “for every hundred decent members of Che-Kas there are ninety-nine rogues.” Yet the fact in no way depressed him. As early as 1905 he said: “Our party is not meant to be a boarding-school for young ladies. For the very reason that a rogue is a rogue he may prove the more useful.” Naturally, he knew what he was talking about.
[261] A Russian diminutive of the name Michael.
[262] See Margoulies’ Years of Fire, pp. 178, 179.
[263] In view of this official’s original profession, it is not without interest to note that his surname, of patronymical formation, is based upon the Russian word for “cat.”
[264] See the Obstchoyé Dielo of March 1, 1921.
[265] See the Posledniya Novosty of March 2, 1921.
[266] See the Che-Ka’s Weekly, No. 5.
[267] See the Posledniya Novosty of October 14, 1921.
[268] In the Obstchoyé Dielo of November 3, 1920.
[269] See the same journal in its issue of October 18, 1921.
[270] See No. 299 of the Volya Rossii, 1921.
[271] Published in The Times in 1923, and subsequently translated into Russian.
[272] See British Parliamentary Paper, “Russia, No. 1 (1919),” p. 36, and the materials collected by the Denikin Commission.
[273] The actual term “dreadnought” was used—transliterated, of course, into Russian characters.
[274] A leading Che-Ka official.
[275] This document was reproduced in the Golos Rossii of April 16, 1922.
[276] Since writing these words I have heard that a version already current is Gospody, Pomilouy Oumershikh! (“Lord, have mercy upon the dead!”).
[277] Of July 13, 1921.