Convicted Tchekists as Prison Staff — The "Public Prosecutor" — A Foreign Visitor's Fate — Bela Kun's Right Hand Man — "Smolensky Sticks" — Moscow Prison Riot — The "Mother" of the Criminals — An Unpunished Peculator.
In March, 1924, a so-called "change of cabinet" took place. I will speak of this later, and continue my portraits of the ministers in the earlier combination.
Boky, Nogteff, Eichmans, Gladkoff — these were the men who had the power. They were sent to the Solovky from Moscow by Dshershinsky himself. The remainder of the personnel of the Solovetsky and Kem camps were Tchekist prisoners. There were several dozen of these at the monastery and on Popoff Island. When the corruption, fraud, violence or swinish drunkenness of Gpu officials cannot possibly be concealed from the public eye, they are brought to account for their offences without delay. Some are transferred to other places, some are sent for terms of from two to ten years to the Slon camps, where they are still employed in their "special branch."
I mention a few of the transported Tchekists who held, and still hold, important posts in the administration of the Solovetsky Islands.
Nogteff's assistant on the administrative side is one Vasko, a brutal villain. This individual is the "public prosecutor" of the Solovetsky Islands, and all the documents relating to the cases of the transported persons are in his hands. The importance of his function is due to the fact that, although all the "K.R.'s" and politicals are regarded as having been sentenced by the Gpu (always in their absence, without any kind of trial) and the term of their imprisonment is definitely fixed, in reality they are all in the position of persons whose cases are sub judice. At any moment new evidence can be discovered relating to their cases, with the result that their term of imprisonment may be extended, or they may be shot. Comrade Vasko's occupation is to search carefully for any fresh fact or allegation which may chain the prisoner to the Solovky more firmly and for a longer time; and in doing so he does not shrink from such methods as the employment of agents provocateurs, the blatant forgery of new "proofs," and so on.
The management of the technical side of the actual Solovetsky camp is in the hands of Roganoff, an engineer, sent to the Solovky for offences relating to the discharge of his functions. I do not know how he manages the affairs of the camp, but it is manifest to everyone that Mr. Roganoff, now that he has turned his coat, is in no way different from the real Tchekists, either in his behaviour towards the prisoners or in his self-indulgent manner of living. His technical assistants, both at the monastery and on Popoff Island, are engineers recruited from among the prisoners. They are people of no importance, almost as helpless against injustice and ill-treatment as all the rest of us.
The direction of the Northern Camps for Special Purposes is compelled, for reasons I will speak of later, to be self-supporting. It, therefore, concludes agreements of various kinds for the construction of roads and buildings with prisoner labour, wood-cutting, etc., with the Karelian Republic and with various economic organs of the central Government. It is also endeavouring to get the ruined factories and workshops on Solovetsky Island into working order again. Although all this, as will be shown later, results in nothing but confusion, the "Natchuslon"[15] has at his disposal something in the nature of a "juridical adviser in forced labour questions."
This, in practice, useless function is discharged Frenckell, a big Hungarian manufacturer. Frenckell came to Russia at the invitation of the Vneshtorg (Foreign Trade Office) to conclude a commercial treaty and take over certain Soviet enterprises on a lease by way of concessions. Instead of this he found himself sent to the Solovky for two years by order of the Gpu for "espionage for the benefit of the international bourgeoisie" (Clause 66 of the Criminal Code). Frenckell is sometimes ordered to Petrograd and Moscow on camp business of a commercial and juridical kind. The term of his punishment expires at the end of the present year (1925), but — by reason of the Gpu circular of August, 1924 — he will leave the Solovky not for Hungary, but for a further three years' stay, first in the Narym,[16] then in the Turukhansk[17] and finally in the Zyriansk region.
The lower administration of the Solovky consists of "starosty" (headmen), "commanders of labour regiments," and "commanders of labour companies."
Until recently the headman of the Solovetsky camp (who was also commander of a labour regiment) was a Tchekist named Michelson, a lame misshapen creature of bestial ferocity. When the Soviet power was carrying out reprisals on the defeated Crimea, at the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921, Michelson was the right hand of another wild beast, Bela Kun, the former dictator of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, whom he supported in his function of "President of the Triumvirate for the Conduct of the Red Terror in the Crimea." Michelson, like Bela Kun, became famous far beyond the frontiers of the Crimea for his executions of scores of thousands of Wrangel's officers and men and of the civil population. At last Dzerzhinsky himself, who could not possibly be suspected of humane motives, was obliged to put an end to the Crimean St. Bartholomew's Nights. Bela Kun was declared to be mentally abnormal and was recalled to Moscow (this was referred to in the Soviet papers), and Michelson was exiled to the Solovky. At the present date he is directing the activities of the Gpu in one of the "autonomous" Soviet republics.
Another personality worth noting is Marian Smolensky, a member of the Polish Communist Party, who when I arrived at the Solovky was commander of a labour company. In the middle of 1924 he was released from the Solovky and received a lucrative post in the Gpu. In the Soviet-Polish war of 1920 he was not taken prisoner, but went over to the Reds of his own accord. Proletarian "solidarity" was coupled in him with hatred of his fellow-creatures. He was a violent Polish Chauvinist, and hated the Russians so bitterly that he grew purple with rage at the very word "Russia." He was able to indulge his hatred with impunity at the expense of the prisoners, whom he beat without mercy. Smolensky's name has been perpetuated in the annals of the Solovky by the "Smolensky sticks" which he invented. These are thick curved cudgels, still used for flogging prisoners.
Another commander of a labour company, Grakholsky, must not be passed over in silence. He was shot at the Solovky in the autumn of 1924. Grakholsky declared that he had been an officer of the supply service under the Tsar, and gave the impression of being an intelligent man. He had only one eye. At the end of 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power, he was appointed commandant of Oranienbaum, on the Gulf of Finland, and there he had his right eye knocked out, either by a bullet or by a rifle butt.
Grakholsky's chief claim to celebrity was the part he took in the famous rebellion in the Butyrka prison in Moscow in the winter of 1923. The prisoners, who had been kept in prison for years without any charge being brought against them, became desperate and started a rebellion under the direction of the politicals (Social Revolutionaries). One fine day all Moscow was awakened by wild yells. The prisoners, three thousand in number, disarmed the inner guard of the prison, smashed all the windows, and demanded that their cases should be dealt with immediately by Kalinin, the president of the Vtsik, and the dismissal of the public prosecutor of the Republic, the notorious Armenian, Katanian. They hung out of the windows and yelled till all Moscow heard them, chanting: "We — want — Ka-li-ni-i-i-n! Ka-li-ni-i-i-n! We don't want Ka-ta-nian!"
The whole city flocked to the prison. The streets leading to it were packed with people, many of them cheering. Neither persuasion nor threats could stop the demonstration. The yelling went on for nearly two hours. At last the Gpu used force. Two regiments of Gpu special troops ("tchon")[18] broke down the resistance offered and forced their way into the prison. The Gpu exacted a cruel punishment for the rebellion. Its organisers were shot in the prison yard the same day; all the other prisoners were beaten with ramrods. There was no heating at all in the prison for a fortnight, although it was freezing hard and all the windows were broken; the prisoners had their blankets taken away from them and were put on "starvation rations." Some of the men, who had howled louder than the others, were sent to the Solovky for five years. Grakholsky was one of these. Vasto, however, declared, six months later, that he had not only yelled loudly, but had also been one of the instigators of the demonstration; and he was accordingly shot.
Kvitsinsky, who was sent to Moscow for trial by Feldman after the Kholmogory inquiry, is already known to the reader. He was not punished in any way for his hideous crimes and is now in the Solovky, perpetuating the glorious traditions of the "White House" and continually wielding the "Smolensky sticks."
Until the "change of cabinet" in the spring of 1924 the commandant of the Kem camp was, as I have mentioned, Gladkoff, the patron of the common criminals. They found an even more potent defender of their interests in Gladkoff's wife, a simple peasant woman from Kaluga, who had her husband completely under her thumb. Her official title was "administratrix," but the whole camp called her "Mother," the name given her by the grateful shpana. And she was in truth a mother to the criminals. She allowed them to do no work, released them from the cells, and shielded them when they robbed and maltreated the other prisoners. It was absolutely useless to complain to Gladkoff that the criminals had robbed you of your last pair of trousers. The commandant of the "Kem distributing centre" invariably gave the same answer, plus a few unprintable terms of abuse:
"I don't care if they do rob you. My shpana have got nothing, and you're bourgeois."
Under the regime of Gladkoff and "Mother" the criminals exercised a dictatorship in the camps; in fact, to this day they are a privileged caste, the aristocracy of the Solovetsky Islands.
The assistant of the Kem commandant until the "change of cabinet" was Klimoff, a Tchekist prisoner. Before he entered the service of Dzerzhinsky's institution he had been commandant of the Kremlin in Moscow, and later of Trotsky's train. On being transferred to the Gpu he displayed such brilliant capacities for receiving bribes that he soon began to take the bread out of the mouth of the president of the provincial Gpu in which he was employed, and his chief got rid of him by sending him to the Solovky for ten years.
Men of talent come to the front everywhere. At the Solovky, Klimoff continued to occupy himself with his speciality, taking bribes. The Casino-ites[19] brought large sums of money with them to the realms of the Slon and received a further supply every month from Madame Kameneff. They simply showered money on Klimoff, and in return were continually being let off work of some sort.
In 1924, instead of being brought to trial, Klimoff was transferred to the Solovetsky Monastery to take over the duties of director of the "Vokhra"[20] (internal security service). A man named Provotoroff came to Kem in his place, but soon left again to become commandant of Kond Island, close to Popoff Island.
The assistant of Gladkoff and "Mother" on the economic side was a Tchekist prisoner named Mamonoff, a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three. He had been sent to the Solovky for ten years for the virtuous actions which all Tchekists commit — taking bribes, drunkenness and maltreating arrested persons.
Despite his youth, Mamonoff was a man of experience. By flagrant thefts of State property — which he used to tell people about when he was drunk —, fraud and incompetence, he ruined the Kem camp economically and got the accounts into hopeless confusion. The Moscow Tchekist Kirilovsky, who replaced Gladkoff at the end of March, 1924, refused to take the camp over unless Mamonoff's proceedings were inquired into by a special commission. A commission of inquiry was, therefore, appointed by the central Government, and spent five months going through Mamonoff's books and accounts, day after day. An appalling picture of waste, theft and fraud was revealed. But Mamonoff received no punishment.
[15] Natchalnik Upravlenia Slona (Head of the Direction of the N.C.S.P.).
[16] In Western Siberia, on the river Obi.
[17] In North-western Siberia, near the mouth of the Yenisei.
[18] Tchasti Osobennavo Naznatchenia (Units for Special Purposes).
[19] See Part I, Chapter IV.
[20] Otriad vnutrennei okhrany.