The Red Terror in Russia

CHAPTER I. Hostages

HOSTAGES

Terrorism is needless cruelty practised by terrified men. --ENGELS.

Uritsky, People’s Commissary of the Northern Commune, and a leading spirit of the Che-Ka of Petrograd, was assassinated on August 17, 1918, by a Socialist ex-student named Kannegiesser, who during the war had been a military cadet. In the official report of the assassination it was said:

Leonid Kannegiesser asserts that he killed Uritsky solely of his own free will, in revenge for the arrest of certain army officers, and for the execution of his friend Peretzweig, but in no case in obedience to orders from any political party or association.

On August 28 another Socialist--in this instance a Madame Kaplan--attempted similarly to assassinate Lenin. And how did the Soviet Government respond to these terrorist acts? A semi-official communiqué published in the issue of the Che-Ka’s Weekly of October 20 reported that, by a decree of the Che-Ka, 500 hostages had been shot! Nor yet is the true number of these victims known. And probably it never will be known. And the same with regard to the victims’ names. Nevertheless, it can at least be asserted that the real figure greatly exceeded the figure given in the semi-official communiqué, and that the original of the report was never published at all.

On the following March 23 the Rev. B. S. Lombard, a British military chaplain, wrote to Lord Curzon:

In August last two barge-loads of Russian officers were scuttled in the Gulf of Finland, and some of the officers’ bodies washed up on the shores of a property belonging to a friend of mine--lashed together with barbed wire in twos and threes.

Will this be deemed an exaggeration? Yet Moscow and Petrograd still contain numbers of persons who could confirm the facts, whilst another source tells us that as late as the year 1921 the Bolshevists were disposing of their political opponents in the same barbarous manner.

From another eye-witness of events in Petrograd of the period we have the following details:

As regards Petrograd, it is usual to place the number of executions for the year 1918 at 1300. True, the Bolshevists admit to 500 only, but that is because they take care not to include in the estimate the hundreds of officers and ex-civil servants and private individuals who were shot in Kronstadt and the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul--shot not by actual order of the central authorities, but by order of local soviets. Kronstadt alone saw 400 shot in a night after being posted before three huge graves dug in the courtyard of the fortress.

Interviewed by a newspaper correspondent at this period, Peters, one of the chiefs of the All-Russian Che-Ka, described the Terror as “a terror simply of hysteria.” Then he went on:

“In spite of popular rumour, I am not as bloodthirsty as I am represented to be. All that has happened is that a few over-excitable revolutionaries lost their heads, and showed too much zeal. As regards Petrograd, no shootings at all took place before Uritsky’s murder, though there have been many since, and sometimes the shooting was indiscriminate; and as regards Moscow, its only response to the attempt upon Lenin has been the execution of a few ex-monarchical Ministers.” “But,“ added the “merciful” Peters meaningly, “I should like to say that every endeavour on the part of the Russian bourgeoisie to raise its head again will be met with such a rebuff, with such a chastisement, as will throw even the Red Terror into the shade.”

For the moment let us pass over the mendacious statement that no cases of capital punishment occurred in Petrograd before Uritsky’s assassination, and not comment upon the fact that Moscow shot a whole batch of ex-monarchical Ministers because one solitary Socialist--and a woman at that!--had made an attempt upon Lenin. Not at all did it deter Peters that scarcely a week had elapsed since there had been published, in No. 6 of the Weekly, an abridged list of the persons shot in reprisal for the act. Ten months later a further list (of ninety names) was published, and included ex-Crown Ministers, military officers, co-operative society employees, lawyers, students, and clergy. And even so, we do not really know how many were shot, since nothing further was published. All that we know is that during the same period Moscow, for its part, shot over three hundred persons.

Those of us who were lying in the Butyrka Prison at that terrible time, in the prison into which persons were thrown by the thousand without distinction of social status, will never forget the soul-racking experience. Life there at that period has been aptly described by an eye-witness as “a bacchanalia of Red madness and terrorism.” Especially horrible, especially heart-rending, was the necessity nightly of hearing, and sometimes of seeing, prisoners removed for execution. Every moment motor-cars would arrive to fetch them away. Not a prisoner in the building could sleep. He could only lie and tremble at every blast of a motor-horn. Every now and then some warders would enter a cell, and shout to one or another of its inmates to follow them and “bring your belongings with you.” And so they would go to the “Chamber of Souls,” to the place where the condemned were to be lashed together with barbed wire before actual execution. The horror of it all! For I myself was a prisoner in the Butyrka, and had to go through that appalling succession of nightmares.

From another eye-witness we have the following:

For the most part I have forgotten the names of those who shared my captivity at the time of the Lenin attempt, and went forth to be shot; but at least are those harrowing pictures still before me--never will they fade from my memory. See that group of five officers, arrested during one of the round-ups which were carried out after the shot at Lenin. Hitherto they have supposed that they would not be put to death, but given merely a term of imprisonment: yet now their summons to the “Chamber of Souls” has arrived, and there is being shouted at them: “Across the yard to the Chamber of Souls--you and your belongings.” The officers turn as pale as sheets. Mechanically they fall to collecting their few possessions. Then stay! One of the five cannot be found--he fails to reply when his name is called! A warder leaves the room, and returns with the wing superintendent and some Che-Ka officials, and the roll is called again, and the fifth officer is found hiding under a bunk. Dragged thence by the heels, his frenzied cries fill the cell as he struggles to break free, and shouts again and again: “Why should I go? I do not want to die!” But he is overpowered; he is hustled from the ward, and all disappear. When we see them again in the yard outside no sound is coming from the fifth officer, for by this time he has been gagged.

A sub-lieutenant named Semenov was thrown into the Butyrka merely because, whilst watching the flames consume some trucks at the Koursk railway station, he had been heard to remark that, as likely as not, the Bolshevists had fired the trucks themselves in order to cover up their lootings thence. And his father and brother were arrested with him. Three months later he was examined by a “people’s prosecutor,” and informed that he was going to be set at liberty again. Yet to him, as to so many others, came the summons, “Across the yard, you and your belongings!” And a few days later, again, his name was figuring on a list of shot. Only when another month had gone by, and the deceased’s father was being examined, did the “people’s prosecutor” tardily admit that, “owing to the great mass of condemned, your son has been shot in error!”

Again, once it happened that a lad of about eighteen, who had been arrested during mass seizures carried out near the church of Christ the Saviour in July 1918, was removed from our corridor unexpectedly, and as unexpectedly restored to us again. On his return he told us that, awakened from sleep a few nights after his examination before the Che-Ka, he had been thrust into a motor-car, as though for removal to execution (at that period prisoners still were being shot outside the city--it was only later that they were put to death in the basement of the Butyrka), and driven away. En route, however, the official in charge had happened to remark that his orders for the night were to shoot, not the lad, but a middle-aged man of the same name; whereupon, on enquiries being made, it had been found that there were two prisoners possessed of the same Christian name and surname, though of different patronymics, and that the man appointed to be shot was aged forty-two, whereas the lad was only eighteen. To what a small accident, therefore, did that lad owe his life!

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