The doctor who accompanied me around the prison had been in the State prison service for twenty years, and officiated under more than one régime. Amongst other things, he told me that the deaths from inanition had been very numerous of late, and that daily typhus and influenza were reaping their toll.... In every corridor, and in every cell, of the “solitary confinement” portion did I see the same filth, the same emaciated countenances, the same hungry and imploring eyes, the same thin hands stretched out to us through the bars. For in that place there were over a thousand victims moaning, and begging to be released, and crying out that they had been in prison for two or three months without inquiry made, or even for a year.... That visit has haunted me ever since like a nightmare: and, now that I have adduced the facts, let those of my fellowmen who still have left to them a shred of sympathy and understanding try to imagine for themselves what mental and physical tortures are implied by such an abode of horror. For even the worst crime conceivable would be purged if a person had to spend a month within those massive walls, and behind those iron bars: whereas within those massive walls and behind those iron bars there are persons guiltless of any crime at all. Once more I ask, what worse, what more absolute, torture could be imagined than to be thrown into a cage for months, and deprived of warmth and air and rest and ability to move about, and fed only at rare intervals, and, until death at length gives release, undergo a living death through vermin? Frankly, such a system is a disgrace to our Communist Republic, an infamy no longer to be tolerated. Governors, justices, commissaries, officials, Communists of the ranks, do you hear what I say? Then hasten to repair the evil, and do not wait until further bloody tragedies have resulted. Yes, I say! Open up those graves in which still living human beings lie buried. Or, if official routine cannot be hastened otherwise, let a general amnesty be declared. For not even the release of prisoners by the hundred would injure us as the existence of the dungeons which I have described is doing daily. Communism and the Revolution need no bolstering up with creation of “houses of the dead.” Other means of defending the Revolution exist.

We, the Political Branch of the Red Cross, consider it our duty to draw the attention of the Praesidium to the aggravation of the position of political prisoners in Russia which is purposely being effected. Beyond doubt the conditions of such prisoners’ confinement are approximating once more to those which obtained during the early and the most acute days of the civil conflict.

It was late at night when we reached the transport prison at Vologda, and the staff met us with obscene abuse before stripping us of most of our belongings, down to the few spoons and cups which seemed to us so precious in our desperate, helpless flight. For myself, I felt so indignant that I protested. But of course this proved useless. And when we were herded to the cells, and I reached the door of the female ward, I fairly gasped, for there are no words really capable of describing the horrors of a place where, in almost total darkness, thirty-five or forty half-dead and half-alive creatures were crawling about over a mass of filthy, disgusting mud between walls all plastered over with excretions and other nastinesses. And morning brought yet another horror in the shape of the food, when we prisoners had served to us some fish in a state of putrefaction, and nothing else—not even gruel was issued, since the authorities appropriated all cereals for themselves. You see, this prison of Vologda was a central prison, and therefore exiles passed through it in a continuous stream, and from every quarter of Russia. Hence the confusion was incredible, and no one made it his business to see what went on in the kitchens, where the utensils were never washed, and the dirt and the food all were cooked together, and worms allowed to choke up the boilers and their foul, greasy, permanently simmering mess of “soup.” And, after Vologda, Viatka, where conditions struck me as a little better than in the former place, for the cells were a trifle larger, and perhaps a trifle less filthy. Yet when I asked whether I could wash myself my companions simply pointed towards the general ward, and said that I “had better go and see.” In that ward I found about forty women. Yet amongst them all I was the only political internee. Nine collapsible bunks, the bare wood of which was destitute of mattresses or pillows, had stretched upon them some corpse-like female figures. And other such figures were scattered about the floor—all in mere tatters of garments, if not practically nude. And I scarcely needed to be told that the prison’s cement floors were seldom washed. In fact, never have I spent a night of horror to equal that first night of mine at Viatka, for, in addition, the room swarmed with vermin, and constantly my companions kept moaning and tossing in their sleep, or begging for water, since the majority of them were sickening for fever. And, sure enough, when morning arrived seventeen of them were found to have developed typhus. Yet, when the rest of us asked that they should be removed to hospital, our petition proved useless. And at eight o’clock our breakfast of “soup” was brought. Nor have I ever seen anything to resemble it, since it consisted of putrid chunks of horse head, some scraps of horsehair and hide, some rags, and morsels of a sort of jelly-like substance, all floating about together in a dark-coloured, evil-smelling liquid. And with it went some unpeeled potatoes. Yet upon this horrible concoction the women threw themselves with a perfectly animal avidity, and, gulping it down, proceeded to fight even for the potato skins before, within a few minutes, in not a few cases, vomiting. And so the day dragged on, and in time was replaced with the horrors of the night.

Amongst the ninety-six persons who were taken from the camp were persons of sixty and seventy, and invalids at that; yet their appeals to be left behind proved useless. Many, indeed most of us, had no warm clothing, and though the weather had hitherto been comparatively warm, it happened, as luck would have it, that that day had brought us the first big snow-fall of the season. Moreover, many had merely lapti[252] for footwear, and no private stock of provisions for the journey, whilst, finally, we had to do our packing so hurriedly as to leave behind not a few of our most cherished possessions. The affair began at about eight, or half-past eight, o’clock in the evening, when we were told to go into an ice-cold, glass-covered gallery and wait. We waited for over an hour. Then, everything that we were taking with us having been carefully inspected, we were led into a courtyard where the roll was called several times over, and so, under a strong escort of “Home Defence Force” men, to the Northern Railway goods station—the guards constantly abusing us en route, and telling us to mend our pace, despite that many of us were elderly, and carrying baggage at that. Past midnight it was when we reached the station, but no train was ready, nor any responsible authority to receive and dispatch the prisoners. So in that windswept spot, and exposed to from ten to fifteen degrees of frost and a snowstorm, we waited for three and a half hours. Meanwhile, at about one o’clock in the morning, or a little later, we were joined by about thirty other prisoners from the Andronievsky camp: and as soon as they halted near us we were surprised to recognise amongst them men who had only a few weeks ago been transferred from our own camp to the Andronievsky, on the strength of a tale that they were going to be sent home again! Moreover, even in our own contingent of ninety-six there were from thirty to thirty-five Poles who ought, of course, to have been treated as prisoners of war rather than as they were being treated now. However, at about half-past three the entraining did begin. Yet, seeing that it was not until nine or ten o’clock that the train started, why should we have been compelled so to hurry our packing overnight, and then to wait on the cold railway line for so many hours? The rolling-stock consisted of sixty compartments, for it was not only we ourselves (the prisoners from the Ivanovsky and the Andronievsky camps) that were travelling, but also a hundred prisoners from the camp at Ordin, some scores from the camps at Novo-Peskovsk and Pokrovsk, five hundred students for the “political course for Red commanders” (these were ex-White officers from Kolchak’s and Denikin’s armies), and four hundred and fifty candidates for the same course. In fact, the total train load amounted to 1400 or 1500 souls. And en route, and when we had reached Ekaterinburg, we learnt the following concerning the students and the candidates. The former, we learnt, were ex-White officers who had already been theoretically admitted to posts in the Red Army, but had first to be put through a short term of “political study,” lasting six weeks, and including lectures from leading members of the Communist Party on the tenets of Soviet rule and Communism. And since the students now being sent with us to Ekaterinburg had almost completed their course, they would, within a few days, be given positions in the Soviet forces. Hitherto they had not been treated as prisoners, but allowed to live together in the old Alexandrovskoyé Military School at Moscow, and then, on the 18th—rather, during the early hours of the 19th—of the month, transferred, without reason given, to the Kozhukhovsky camp (which stood twelve or fifteen versts from Moscow), and now, during the night of the 20th, were travelling with ourselves to Ekaterinburg. And as for the candidates, they had been summoned to Moscow, for the course, from various provincial camps, and, whilst in Moscow, awaiting their turn for the curriculum (which turn would arrive only when the full students had completed theirs), had had no restriction placed upon their movements, but had been living, some of them in different Muscovite hostels, and the rest in private houses, with merely a common obligation to answer a daily roll-call. But on the night of which I am speaking (October 20) the section living in private houses had no sooner presented itself for roll-call than, just as it was, and without any warm clothes, and without even permission to go and bid farewell to its comrades in the hostels, it had been dispatched en route for the railway station, and there, as we have seen, entrained for Ekaterinburg.... The train in which we travelled lacked any heating apparatus; nor was the food issued to us prisoners out of keeping with that and the journey’s many other lackings.

In 1921 the relatives of four hundred persons whom the Secret Branch arrested during the night of April 14 were unable, for three weeks, to find out where their kinsfolk were. Consequently they could not supply them with necessaries and food.

But perhaps we shall be asked why so many innocent persons were detained at all? The reason is that if a whole institution, if a whole unit becomes involved in a conspiracy, the only way to prevent the guilty few from escaping is to arrest the institution or the unit as a whole. Then, when one has made careful enquiry, and sifted the innocent from the guilty, one can, with prudence, liberate the former.

The decree issued by the Praesidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on February 1, 1919, that invariably any prosecuting counsel of the All-Russian Che-Ka should complete his investigations within a month of those investigations’ inception, is not being carried out.

In this camp, which is centred around an old monastery that is rapidly falling into decay, there is neither cooking nor heating apparatus, and scarcely any drinking water. Also, the food is insufficient, and no system of medical attendance existent. Lastly, twice a year the roads leading to the place become flooded, and meanwhile the camp is, for long, weary weeks, cut off from the outer world, and the exiles deprived of touch with their fellows.

One desiatina (2·7 acres) of land is all that is allotted to the prisoners, and they are never allowed to leave it; the guards have orders to shoot without challenge any person attempting to do so. And as soon as navigation ceases the island becomes completely cut off from everywhere. And in this place the cruelty which universally distinguishes Communist rule has created conditions under which prisoners have to live condemned to a fate, physical and moral, which has not its equal in history—no, not even in the tragic history of the mines of Siberia.

One main thing which distinguishes this place of exile from the mines of Siberia of Tsarist days lies in the fact that every official in the place, from the highest to the lowest (the commander alone excepted), is an ex-criminal of the ordinary type, himself engaged in serving a term of detention. And this choice body of officials consists mostly of Che-Ka employees who have been convicted of peculation or extortion or assault or some other offence against the ordinary penal code. But, removed from all social and legal control as they are here, these “trusted workers of the State” can do what they like, and hold at their mercy the entire establishment. For the prisoners have no power of complaint—they have, as a matter of fact, no right of complaint, but must walk hungry and naked and barefooted at their guardians’ will, and work for fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, and be punished (even for the most trivial offences) with the cudgel or the lash, and thrust into cells known as “stone pockets,” and exposed, without food or shelter, to attacks of mosquitoes in the open.... And at the further end of the island lies the Savatievsky Hermitage, where the Socialists are imprisoned, and which, like the Solovetsky camp, occupies about a desiatina of land and the corner of a lake. All around it is barbed wire. An edifice normally made to accommodate at the most seventy persons, it has living in it two hundred Socialists of all shades of opinion, and a few Anarchists. The only privilege possessed by its inmates is that, so long as they keep to their compound, they can do what they like in it—they can starve in it, they can fall ill in it, they can die or go mad in it, without the least obstacle being placed in their way by the administration, which would not for a moment think of interfering with matters so purely personal and private. And whenever they seek an interview with the commandant he replies to them with sheer effrontery.... What affects the prisoners most is not the actual conditions of the place, but the knowledge that always, for eight months of the year, life will have to be dragged out in complete isolation from the rest of the world.... Prisoners falling dangerously ill, or losing their reason, are given no medical attendance, but must go on living with the rest in the cramped, noisy cells.... Seldom is it that letters dispatched from the island reach their destination....

At six o’clock on the evening of December 19, there occurred in the compound of the Savatievsky Hermitage (which forms part of the Solovetsky camp) a most regrettable incident, in that a number of prisoners came into collision with the Red Guard detachment which has charge of the establishment.

In addition to the concentration camp for Socialists, there exists, on Solovetsky, a special prison called “the Kremlin” which stands away from where the Socialists are confined, and is a world to itself, since it has congregated in it, firstly, felons pure and simple, men saturated with the old habits and morals of the criminal sphere; secondly, “economists,” or men convicted of financial offences, acceptance of bribes, peculation, and the like; and thirdly, a few political prisoners, consisting mostly of ecclesiastics and convicted “counter-revolutionaries.” And there is no describing the horrors of the Kremlin’s régime. True, the cells stand always unlocked, but merciless floggings take place there, for prisoners are beaten even for the slightest mistake in a task (the warders and the foreman of working parties alike walk about with sticks), and altogether punished in ways which are worthy only of the Inquisition. For example, in summer prisoners are stripped naked, and left exposed in the open until their bodies have become half-devoured with mosquitoes. Or else they are thrown, for seven days at a time, into pitch-dark dungeons too cramped to admit of their inmates lying down. And in winter time they are thrown into a tower whose inner walls are permanently coated with ice. And always the food is horrible, for the officials filch the prisoners’ rations. And the women prisoners’ position is worse still; they are still more helpless than the men, and can win respect neither by origin, nor by upbringing, nor by habits, but lie completely in the power of the authorities, and at any time may have their “services” demanded, and made to barter away their virtue for a bread ration: so that in only too many cases they become infected with one or another form of venereal disease. And at all times they are liable to tuberculosis and scurvy. Thus the camp is a community of slaves in the worst sense of the term, for it lacks all vestige of prisoners’ rights, and has to live under conditions all tending to a detestable system of starvation, torture, outrage, and assault. In fact, it is a system which would disgrace the Bolshevists even if they were applying it to the worst of criminals: whereas those to whom they are applying it are merely worsted political foes, but no more. Hence, to compel victims like these to drag out their lives under such conditions constitutes an iniquity which no words can adequately brand.

The so-called Russian Terror ... never began, and has never, to my French mind, been a Terror at all. Hence I laugh when I hear the Che-Ka called “horrible,” for I myself have had opportunities of observing its discretion and leniency—almost its good-nature!