""The report of the work of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission was read at a secret session of the Executive Committee.
But the report and the discussion of it were held behind closed doors and will not be published." ["Izvestia," October 17, 1918.]
"The kind of decisions adopted by the Moscow Bolsheviki behind closed doors and the ma.s.s terror practised in Moscow and all over Russia under the direction of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission are well ill.u.s.trated by Eugene Trupp, a prominent Socialist-Revolutionist and a member of the All-Russian Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, who wrote the following in the Socialist-Revolutionary daily, "Zemlia i Volia" (Land and Freedom) of October 3, 1918:
""After the murder of Uritzky in Petrograd, 1,500 people were arrested; 512, including 10 Socialists-Revolutionists, were shot.
At the same time 800 people were arrested in Moscow. It is unknown, however, how many of these were shot. In Nizhni-Novgorod, 41 were shot; in Yaroslavl, 13; in Astrakhan, 12 Socialists-Revolutionists; in Sarapool, a member of the Central Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, I. I. Teterkin; in Penza, about 40 officers; in Kooznetzk people are daily shot in ma.s.ses; all this is only a drop in the ocean. I have no exact information as to the number of people shot in other cities." ...
""Despite all these and other outrages, a demonstration of Red Guards took place in Moscow on September 6. Their main demands were "deeds for words" and "relentless red terror in the fight against the bourgeoisie." ...
""The last days of my stay Moscow and Soviet-Russia in general were filled with red terror. A gray, silent and dejected crowd, with pale, terrified faces and eyes full of excitement, was moving along the streets. "Such or such people have been arrested today." "This or that number has been shot." "Do not sleep at home, they are looking for you." "You are still alive?" "Why do you not go away from here?" were expressions hastily exchanged.
""No conversations were heard; only silent whispering in corners.
All were trembling. All were filled with horror of the wild terror.
Spies were all over. At the proper places you could see their familiar figures.
""These spies sneak about the stations, mingling with the crowds of Red Guards, in the trains, and in all dirty, warm corners always pushing forward. While traveling you feel that if your face or perhaps your attire, or your opinion, carelessly uttered, will not please them, you may be held up at any moment. You feel that every pa.s.senger is hiding something in himself. Keep silent; we will talk later when we have pa.s.sed the spying cordons.""
In the September 18, 1918, evening issue of the "Northern Commune,"
there is a report of a meeting of the Soviet of the First District of Petrograd. After a report made by Kharitonoff, who emphasized the necessity of suppressing the bourgeois press, and after speeches by other members, the following resolution was pa.s.sed:
"The meeting welcomes the fact that ma.s.s terror is being used against the White Guards and higher bourgeois cla.s.ses, and declares that every attempt on the life of our leaders will be answered by the proletariat by the shooting down not only of hundreds, as the case is now, but of thousands of White Guards, bankers, manufacturers, Cadets (Const.i.tutional Democrats) and Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right."
We are indebted to "Struggling Russia," March 29, 1919, for the following information as regards the Red rule of Lenine and the shooting of children:
"The following quotation from a speech of one of the most active Bolshevist leaders, Zinoviev, printed in the "Northern Commune" of September 19, 1918, fully expresses the spirit of the Bolshevist terrorism:
""To overcome our enemies we must have our own Socialist Militarism. We must win over to our side 90 millions out of the 100 millions of population of Russia under the Soviets. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be annihilated."
"The program of annihilating ten million of the opponents of Bolshevism in Russia (Mr. Zinoviev has considerably underestimated their number) began to be executed by the Bolsheviki from the first moment of their coming into power. In the beginning of March, 1918, they held ma.s.s executions in Rostov-on-the-Don, killing, among others, many youths. The Moscow "Russkiya Viedomosti" (Russian News) in its issue of March 23, 1918, reported that the president of the Rostov Munic.i.p.al Council and the Chairman of the Don Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, B. C. Vasiliev, the mayor of the city, P. Petrenko, the former Chairman of the Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of Workingmen"s and Soldiers" Delegates, P. Melnikov, and even M. Smirnov, at that time Chairman of the Council, have handed in a pet.i.tion to the Bolshevist War-Revolutionary Council asking them to shoot them "instead of the innocent children who are executed without law and justice." A group of women, horrified by what was going on, also asked that they be shot instead of the children. In their pet.i.tion they wrote as follows:
""If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and life in order to establish a Socialistic state and to create new ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and fathers, but let our children live. They have not yet had a chance to live; they are only growing and developing. Do not destroy young lives.
Take our lives and our blood as ransom....
""We, mothers, have served the country by giving our sons, husbands and brothers. Pray, take our last possession, our lives, but spare our children. Call us, one after the other, for execution, when our children are to be shot! Every one of us would gladly die in order to save the life of her children or that of other children.
""Citizens, members of the War Revolutionary Council, listen to the cries of the mothers. We cannot be kept silent!""
Charles Dumas, a French Socialist, on his return to France from Russia, wrote a book in which he warns his fellow-comrades on the dangers of Bolshevism, and among other things he says:
"Upon my arrival in Petrograd I wanted, first of all, to meet three of my old Russian friends, but soon learned that my searches were in vain. Two of the poor fellows had lost their minds and the third had cut his own throat with a razor....
"The Sebastopol horrors of March, 1918, when the sailors of the port, inflamed to a high pitch of b.e.s.t.i.a.lity by the Bolshevist press decided to kill all the inhabitants of the princ.i.p.al streets, not sparing even children above the age of five, are still so fresh in your minds that I need not remind you of them....
"On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village organized, in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St. Bartholomew night in the city of Kuklovo. About 500 bodies of the victims were found afterwards, most of them "intellectuals." All residences and stores were plundered and destroyed, the Jews being among the worst sufferers. Entire families were wiped out, and for three days the Bolsheviki would not permit the burial of the dead.
"In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible ma.s.sacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and 300 citizens were killed. The Peoples" Commissaries and the Soviets have, upon more than one occasion, made admissions that these horrors were part of their program. At the Congress of the Soviets the chairman of the Central Committee of the Soviets, Sverdlov, said: "We invoke the Soviets not to relent, but to fortify the Terror, no matter how terrible it may be and what dimensions it may a.s.sume.""
An a.s.sociated Press despatch, dated Omsk, April 5, 1919, stated that the Bolsheviki had murdered 2,000 at or near Osa:
"Indisputable evidence of the ma.s.sacre by the Bolsheviki of more than 2,000 civilians in and near the town of Osa has been obtained by Messrs. Simmonds and Emerson and Dr. Rudolph Teusler of the American Red Cross, who have just returned from reoccupied Russian territory. Approximately 500 persons were killed at Osa and 1,500 in the surrounding districts."
The same despatch shows the excessive cruelty of Lenine"s gang of blood-thirsty Reds:
"A blacksmith was shot because he could not pay 5,000 rubles. A man was shot because he lived in a brick house. All attorneys and jurists and doctors whose services were not required were killed. A woman was compelled to fetch a lamp and gaze upon her murdered sons for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the slayers.
"The Soviet called a meeting and prepared lists of those to die.
The houses prescribed were visited by squads, the doors were smashed in, the victims dragged to the edge of the town and forced to dig their own graves. A survivor testified that he had seen men thrown into a pit and buried alive. Priests were hunted unmercifully. The evidence showed that men were slain whose only offense was that they worked as s.e.xtons or caretakers of churches.
In the Perm district everything of value was stolen from the churches, the monastery was looted and several priests were murdered."
According to two more a.s.sociated Press despatches, even women and children were not excepted by the Bolsheviki who have been so much extolled by our American Socialists and recognized as their brethren:
"Stockholm, April 17, 1919.--The Bolsheviki are carrying out a rapid and systematic annihilation of all the bourgeois elements in Riga, according to reports from Libau to "Svenska Dagblast." The victims of the Bolsheviki terror are taken to the Island of Hasen, in the Dvina river, and are said to number 70,000, including women and children. No one is permitted to take food or money to the island."
"London, April 17, 1919.--Eighteen hundred persons, including 400 women, were murdered by the Bolsheviki at Ufa, according to a dispatch from Omsk, received in official quarters here."
The "Northern Commune" published the following report in which the horrors of the Bolsheviki prisons were described by the Bolsheviki themselves:
"The presiding officers of the Soviet of the Viborg district decided to send a delegation to the prisons of that district when they heard that terrible scenes were occurring there. The prisoners were starving. Many of them who had been held eight months had not yet been tried, for the Commission entrusted with the investigation of their cases had not yet been in session.
"The delegation consisted of Dr. Petropavlovsky, the Military Commissionary, Vasilyevsky, and the President of the Soviet, Frilisser. The latter handed in the following report: "Comrades, what we saw and heard in visiting the prisons of the Viborg district cannot be described....
""The cells are repulsively dirty. There is neither clean linen nor pillows. The prisoners are being punished for the least offence.
""But what is most terrible is the scene we witnessed in the prison hospital.
""Comrades! We found there no people! We found there living ghosts who had no strength to talk, for they were starving.
""When somebody dies, the corpse remains for several hours with its living neighbors, who say: "That is nothing. We shall all soon die of hunger."""
"Dyelo Naroda," in its issue of April 26, 1918, thus describes the cruelties of the barbarous Bolshevists:
"In Kirensk County the people"s tribunal ordered a woman found guilty of extracting brandy, to be enclosed in a bag and repeatedly knocked against the ground until dead.
"In the Province of Tver the people"s tribunal had sentenced a young fellow to freeze to death for theft. In a rigid frost he was led out, clad only in a shirt, and water was poured on him until he turned into a piece of ice. Out of pity somebody cut his tortures short by shooting him."
The British High Commissioner, R. H. Bruce-Lockhart, in his telegram to the British Foreign Office, November 10, 1918, thus describes one of the methods of torture and the taking of hostages as practiced by the followers of the "gentle" Lenine:
"The Bolsheviki have restored the barbarous methods of torture. The examination of prisoners frequently takes place with a revolver at the unfortunate prisoner"s head.
"The Bolsheviki have established the odious practice of taking hostages. Still worse, they have struck at their political opponents through their woman folk. When recently a long list of hostages was published in Petrograd, the Bolsheviki seized the wives of those men whom they could not find and threw them into prison until their husbands should give themselves up."
When the Bolsheviki were forced to evacuate Riga, in May, 1919, they left behind them in the [**] prisons 1,600 hostages who were found to be in a state of unspeakable misery and starvation.
An a.s.sociated Press despatch of March 22, 1919, states that "a Russian girl of 19 years, who, in December, 1918, had been charged with espionage, was tortured by being pierced thirteen times in the same wound with a bayonet. She lived, however, and made an affidavit to these details."
The same dispatch states that "an examination of dead bodies of persons alleged to have been killed by the Bolsheviki in the Perm district, shows a preponderance of bayonet wounds in the back, but in other instances mouths were slit, fingers and hands cut off, and the heads of the victims smashed."
"Struggling Russia," in its issue of April 5, 1919, informs us that "officers have come out of Petrograd prisons with their nails torn off, and that prisoners after having been fed on herrings were given nothing to drink for two or three days."