Cornell University Library
DK 265.G78 1919a
Collection of reports on bolshevism in R
3 1924 028 404 519
A COLLECTION OF REPORTS
ON
BOLSHEVISM IN RUSSIA
Abridged Edition of Parliamentary Paper, Russia No. 1
(1919).
LONDON ■
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or from E. PONSONBY, Ltd., 116 Grafton Street, Dublin.
1919.
Price Qd. net.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
No.
Name.
—
Date.
Subject.
Page
Foreword
vii
1
Sir M. Findlay
Telegraphic
1918
Arrest of British subjects in
(Christiania)
Aug. 19
Petrograd and Moscow
1
2
Sir E. Howard
(Stockholm)
Telegraphic
19
Armed raid on British con-
sulate-general at Moscow,
and arrest of British officials
and other persons
1
3
Sir R. Paget
(Copenhagen)
Telegraphic
Sept. 3
Murder of Captain Cromie by
Soviet troops. Informs of
telegram from Petrograd . .
3
4
Telegraphic
9
Wholesale arrests and execu-
tions in Petrograd as a
result of attempts on Bol-
shevik leaders. Arrest of
Mr. Lockhart. British sub-
jects starving in prison . .
3
5
Mr. Lindley
(Archangel)
Telegraphic
6
Murder of Captain Cromie.
Tribute to services which
he rendered
4
6
Sir M. Findlay
(Christiania)
Telegraphic
17
Arrest of British subjects in
Moscow. Report by Nether-
lands Minister on their
present condition, and his
efforts to obtain their re-
lease. Funeral of Captain
Cromie. Letter appealing
for help from British sub-
jects imprisoned in Fortress
of Peter and Paul
4
7
Mr. Alston
Telegraphic
16
Report of murder of ex-Em-
(Vladivostock)
peror of Russia
8
a
Sir C. Eliot
(Ekaterinburg)
Oct. 5
Informs of events leading up
to the murder of the ex-
Emperor and other mem-
bers of the Imperial family.
Transmits letter from tutor
of Czarevitch
9
9
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
Nov. 4
Discovery of corpses in mine-
pit at Alapaevsk of members
of Imperial family. Fate
of other members
14
10
Mr. Lockhart
10
Oppression by Bolsheviks of
their opponents, including
Socialists, abolition of right
of holding public meetings,
suppression of all but Bol-
shevik press, and of all
liberty. General terrorism
14
11
Report by Mrs. L
Mr. H
Mr. G
Nov.
Peasants and the land. Indus-
trial conditions. Repression
of all non-Bolsheviks. Con-
ditions in the prisons
Conditions in factories at
Moscow. Trade conditions
generally. Anti-Bolshevik
feeling among peasantry . .
Report on the internal situa-
tion. Growing discontent
under Bolshevism
15
18
23
13
Sir C. Eliot
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
29
Murder of ex-Empress of
Russia and children sup-
posed to have been com-
mitted about the same
time as the murder of the
ex-Emperor
2(i
14
Lord Kilmarnock . .
27
Conditions in a factory in
1
(Copenhagen)
Petrograd
27
(1057) Wt. 2827/17(108) 10m 4/19 D.St.
IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
No.
15
16
18
20
21
22
23
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
33
Name.
Memorandum
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
General Poole
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
General Knox
(Omsk)
Colonel Wade
(Warsaw)
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
Lord Kilmarnock
(Copenhagen)
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
Memorandum
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
Telegraphic
35
Lord Kilmarnock . .
(Copenhagen)
Date.
1919
Jan. 2
11
14
15
19
23
21
Subject.
Feb. 1
Report of a British subject
on conditions in Moscow.
The " cold terror "
Starvation and terrorism in
Moscow. Wholesale murders
and atrocities
Details of atrocities committed
at Perm
Bolsheviks employing Chinese
to kill officers and their
families
Methods of Bolsheviks to allay
hostility abroad while cam-
paign against the social and
economic life at home con-
tinues. Treatment of
women . . v .
Torture and murder in Ural
towns. Murder of priests . .
Conditions at Perm. Russians
obliged to join Bolsheviks
to avoid starvation
Chinese and Corean bandits
increasing in Bolshevik
forces
Conditions in Perm. Bol-
sheviks a privileged class
free to commit crime against
other classes. Murder of a
bishop. Closing of churches
Bolshevik Central Committees
absorbing all power. In
Moscow and Petrograd star-
vation making the people
physically incapable of re-
sisting. Mobilisation of
peasants. Severer discipline
and continuance of execu-
tions
Murder and mutilation of a
British workman in North-
ern Urals
Terrorism at Lisva. Effici-
ency and energy of Bol-
shevik regime
Revolt of peasants against
Bolsheviks in Vyatka dis-
trict. Their subsequent
execution and execution of
their families
Interviews with two British
subjects from Moscow. Con-
ditions in Moscow schools,
factories and shops
Small percentage of pro-Bol-
sheviks among peasantry in
Ekaterinburg district. Rus-
sian working classes not
represented by Bolsheviks,
most of latter being Jews.
Murder of labourers owing
to non-support of Bol-
shevism
Bolshevik atrocities in Es-
thonia . . . . . . 39
TABLE
OF CONTENTS.
No.
Name.
—
Date.
Subject.
Page
1919
36
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
Feb. 11
Report from Acting British
Consul at Ekaterinburg as
to conditions there for past
year
42
37
Memorandum
Interviews with two British
subjects returned from
Petrograd in January. Bol-
shevik oppression of the
peasant proprietor. The
Red Army. Dissatisfaction
of workmen. Treatment of
the middle classes. Oppres-
sion of Socialist parties on
the ground of their being
" counter - revolutionary."
Bolshevik plans for world
revolution
43
38
General Knox
Telegraphic
Feb. 5
Murder of Imperial family.
(Omsk)
Further details
48
39
Mr. Alston
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
10
Bolshevik persecutions and
crimes at Ekaterinburg.
Reports evidence of wit-
nesses. Oppression of clergy
48
40
Telegraphic
13
Murder of Grand Duke Michael
at Perm. Methods adopted
by Bolsheviks against mer-
chants
49
41
Mr. Bell
(Helsingfors)
Telegraphic
12
Murder of Russian Grand
Dukes in Peter and Paul
fortress at Petrograd in
January, 1919
49
42
Consul-General Bagge
(Odessa)
Telegraphic
13
Danger of famine in the
Ukraine. Peasants beg for
assurance that their pro-
perty in land be declared
inviolable before they will
commence sowing seed
50
44
Sir C. Eliot
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
22
Details of seventy-one murders
and mutilations perpetrated
at Ekaterinburg during
1918
50
45
„
Telegraphic
24
Details of further murders in
Ekaterinburg district
51
46
"
Telegraphic
24
Appeal of Omsk Government
to Democratic parties to
unite against Bolsheviks . .
52
47
General Knox
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
Mar. 2
Report from Omsk. Condi-
tions of railway transport.
Wholesale issue of paper
money. Bolshevik disci-
pline stricter. Measures
against religion
52
48
Telegraphic
4
Ruin in Moscow : treatment
of women, atrocities and
mutilations in Eastern Rus-
sia . .
53
49
Sir C. Eliot
(Vladivostock)
Telegraphic
5
Bolshevik crimes in Perm.
Torture of women and mur-
der of priests in Omsk dis-
tricts
53
50
Telegraphic
21
All classes continue to come to
the British Consulate at
Ekaterinburg with evidence
of murders and outrages.
Reports show terrible ex-
tent of murder and pillage
55
51
Report by a British
Jan.
Bolshevik tyranny in South
Chaplain at Odessa
Russia in 1918
55
TABLE
OF CONTENTS.
No.
Name.
—
Date.
Subject.
Page
1919
52
Report by Mr. M
Jan. 12
Food conditions and prices in
Moscow
Report on Bolshevik atroci-
56
53
Lord Kilmarnock . .
Feb. 17
(Copenhagen)
ties in Esthonia. " Blood
bath in Walk "
57
54
Report by Mr. K
Conditions in towns and
country. Growing feeling
among working classes
against Bolsheviks. Reli-
gious revival
60
55
Report by Mr. J
Conditions around Moscow
and in Vladimir Govern-
ment. Disorganisation on
railways. Apathy amongst
anti-Bolshevik classes re-
sulting from their treat-
ment : their indifference
to all but food questions.
Punishment of families of
officers who refuse to join
. Bolshevik army. Disease
in Moscow. Private trading
abolished
62
56
Report by Rev. B. S.
Results of Bolshevism in
Lombard
.
Northern Russia
67
57
Memorandum
Interviews with returned
British subjects
69
58
Memorandum by
Progress of Bolshevism in
Mr. B
Jan.
Russia
78
59
,,
Mar.
Present position of Bolshevism
82
60
Memorandum
Jan.
Appreciation of the economic
situation in Russia
84
61
Report
Telegraphic
Mar.
Anti-Bolshevik outbreaks . .
95
APPENDIX.
Extracts from the Russian press, p. 97.
FOREWORD.
THE following collection of reports from His Majesty's official
representatives in Russia, from other British subjects who have recently
returned from that country, and from independent witnesses of various
nationalities, covers the period of the Bolshevik regime from the summer
of 1918 to the present date. They are issued in accordance with a
decision of the War Cabinet in January last. They are unaccompanied
by anything in the nature either of comment or introduction, since
they speak for themselves in the picture which they present of- the
principles and methods of Bolshevik rule, the appalling incidents by
which it has been accompanied, the economic consequences which have
flowed from it, and the almost incalculable misery which it has produced.
2nd [abridged) Edition.
The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://archive.org/details/cu31924028404519
A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia.
No. 1.
Sir M. Findlay to Mr. Balfour. — {Received August 20.)
(Telegraphic.) Christiania, August 19, 1918.
I HAVE received following telegram dated the 9th August from
Woodhouse and Cromie at Petrograd to General Poole : —
" British subjects have been arrested during the past two days
without any charge having been made against them, but only two have
been detained so far. We protested and asked for explanation. On
5th August all British officials at Moscow were arrested, but the majority
were subsequently released and are presumably now under house
arrest.
" Their probable evacuation was notified to us, and we were warned
to be ready to leave with them, but as yet we have no definite news from
them. Commissary threatens to intern all allied subjects. Please
inform London of above, as we are not allowed to telegraph in any
direction. Tell London also that up to the present all are well here.
In Petrograd position of Soviet power is becoming rapidly untenable,
and orders are being given for various units and places to be evacuated.
That they are in touch with Germans is quite evident. A yacht is
ready at Peterhof to take Lenin away."
No. 2.
Sir E. Howard to Mr. Balfour. — {Received August 20.)
(Telegraphic.) Stockholm, August 19, 1918.
FOLLOWING is a summary of the more important points in a
series of despatches from Mr. Wardrop, at Moscow : —
" August 5. — About 4.30 this morning a band of ten armed men
attacked consulate-general and demanded admittance. Without my
authority one of the inmates of the house opened the door, being
threatened with fire-arms. This was the fourth armed raid on the
premises.
" Guards left at 5.30 and local commissary expressed his regret
at the incident.
" During the morning I learnt of arrest of several British subjects,
including Messrs. Armitage, Whitehead, William Cazalet, Hastie (over
(1057) b
seventy years old), North (chaplain), Beringer (Reuter's agent), and Miss
H. Adams, one of my staff. In the afternoon, while Mr. Lockhart was
calling, another raid on the premises was made with warrant for arrest
of staff. I protested and declared that I only yielded to force. Office
was sealed in great detail, seals being attached to every drawer, to both
safes, and to all receptacles for papers, also to outer doors to the office
rooms. All the staff were then arrested, including Mr. Stevens, Mr.
Douglas, and lady clerks, and conveyed to Soviet's police quarters in
Tverskoi Boulevard. Mr. Lockhart, Captain Hicks and I were not
arrested, as Chicherin had promised that consuls and military missions
should not be arrested. Their staffs, however, had not been specifically
mentioned. French military attache, General Lavergne, was liberated
after short arrest. Staff were detained. Guards were stationed to
watch my premises and I was left in my private apartments there.
I do not regard failure to arrest myself and Mr. Lockhart as evidence of
intention to treat us better than our staffs, but rather the contrary.
" I do not regard Bolshevik detention of our nationals as aimed at
deterring us from vigorous action in distant places, so much as intended
to protect Bolshevik leaders on their fall. They are converting houses
in centre of the city into improvised fortresses in the belief that there
will be soon a serious rising, in which their Allied prisoners will serve
as centres. Finally, if they regard all as lost they will probably hound
populace on to massacre these prisoners.
" August 6. — Consul Stevens, Vice-Consuls Lowdon and Douglas
released about 3 a.m., also North and others, and French Consul-General
Grenard and French Consul Labonne, by efforts of Swedish colleague
who spent the night in negotiations.
" At 10 p.m. following still detained : —
" Vice-Consuls Whishaw, Greenep, and Jerram, passport officer
Webster and his assistant, Gibson senior, Tamplin and Lingner of Lock-
hart's staff, Fritz Mucukaln, and the Misses Galbally and Adams of
my staff. Prisoners so far fairly comfortably housed and fed and
allowed to associate with one another. Guards conciliatory.
" I am allowed to go in and out, and Mr. Lockhart and his remaining
staff can visit me.
" August 7. — I called at temporary prison and saw Greenep,
Whishaw, and Jerram. They are well treated by their guards who
are real Russians, unlike most of their leaders, who are either fanatics
or Jewish adventurers like Trotsky or Radek.
" All British and French women are now released. Also
Mr. Beringer and others.
" August 8. — Whishaw, Greenep, Jerram, and Webster brought
here this morning by efforts of my Swedish colleague. Whole staff
of consulate-general now at liberty.
"It is also suggested that during our stay at Petrograd we shall
be under a Bolshevik guard. Evidently Bolsheviks are trying to prolong
negotiations. City is on the whole quiet. All ex-officers under sixty
are to report themselves this morning, probably with a view to their
arrest, and there are rumours of wholesale arrest of clergy."
No. 3.
Sir R. Paget to Mr. Balfour.— (Received September 3.)
(Urgent.) ~
(Telegraphic.) Copenhagen, September 3, 1918.
FOLLOWING report from Danish Minister at Petrograd has been
communicated to me by Danish Government : —
"On 31st August the Government troops forced their way into
the British Embassy, their entry to which was resisted by British
naval attache, Captain Cromie, who, after having killed three soldiers,
was himself shot.
" The archives were sacked, and everything was destroyed.
Captain Cromie's corpse was treated in a horrible manner.
Cross of St. George was taken from the body, and subsequently worn
by one of the murderers.
" English clergyman was refused permission to repeat prayers over
the body.
" French Military Mission was forced. A man named Mazon and
a soldier and several Frenchmen were arrested.
" Bolsheviks in the press openly incite to murder British and
French.
" It is urgently necessary that prompt and energetic steps be taken."
No. 4.
Sir R. Paget to Mr. Balfour. — (Received September 10.)
(Telegraphic.) Copenhagen, September 9, 1918.
I HAVE received telegram from Petrograd as follows : —
" Wholesale arrests and decapitations have resulted from attempt
on Lenin and murder of Uritsky. Bolsheviks are arresting bourgeoisie,
men, women, and children, having no connection with the authors
of these attempts, on the plea that they are faced with conspirators.
" According to official reports, more than 500 persons have been
shot during the last three days without enquiry or sentence. Fresh
executions are being prepared, and the press is full of blood-thirsty
articles.
" Lockhart was arrested and condemned to death, but at the last
moment we succeeded in saving him ; 28 British, including British
consul, and 1 1 French have been arrested at Petrograd. In the prisons
conditions defy description. In fortress of Peter and Paul, where all
the British are confined, prisoners have absolutely no food. In order
to remedy this, we have now succeeded in forming an organisation.
Every night executions take place without trial. Terrorism continues.
Protest against these proceedings has been made verbally and in writing
by foreign representatives, including Germans. List of more than
1,000 hostages has been published by the Government, amongst whom
are four Serbian officers, who will be shot if attempt on life of a commissary
should be made."
(1057) b 2
No. 5.
Mr. Lindley to Mr. Balfour. — {Received September 11.)
(Telegraphic.) Archangel, September 6, 1918.
I HAVE just received news of murder of Captain Cromie bv
Bolsheviks, and accusations of latter against him.
Fact is that gallant officer devoted his whole time at Petrograd
to the service of his country. His first object was to prevent Baltic
fleet falling into German hands ; he then helped in evacuating valuable
stores, and latterly gave most of his attention to plans for preventing
a German advance on Vologda. These activities, carried out for
months in daily danger of his life, brought him more or less into co-
operation with Russians hostile to Bolshevik regime and therefore
claimed as reactionaries.
His plans may very well have included destruction of certain
bridges as Bolsheviks declare. In Captain Cromie, His Majesty has
lost a most gallant, capable, and devoted servant.
No. 6.
Sir M. Findlay to Mr. Balfour. — {Received September 18.)
(Telegraphic.) Christiania, September 17, 1918.
FOLLOWING is extract from a report by Netherlands Minister at
Petrograd, the 6th September, received here to-day, on the situation in
Russia, in particular as affecting British subjects and British interests
under Minister's protection : —
" Sir, — On 30th August I left for Moscow, largely in connection with
negotiations for evacuation of British subjects from Russia. The
same day Uritski Commissary at Petrograd, for combating counter-
revolution, was assassinated by a Jewish student Kanegiesser, whose
father is a wealthy engineer and holds a very good position at Petrograd.
This murder was at once attributed by the Bolshevik authorities and
Bolshevik press (only existing press in Russia) to French and English.
" That same night Consul Woodhouse and Engineer-Commander
Le Page were arrested at 1 a.m. in the street. Every effort was made
the next day (31st August) by my secretary, M. van Niftrik, to obtain
their release, and that of Consul Woodhouse was promised for the
afternoon.
" At 5 p.m. on the 31st August, when Consul Bosanquet and Acting
Vice-Consul Kimens, who had been busy the whole day with M. van
Niftrik in connection with his attempt to obtain release of the arrested
and were heading to the Embassy and were near the Embassy building,
they were warned not to approach the Embassy, told that it had been
occupied by Red Guards, and that two persons had been killed. They
at once decided to head back to find M. van Niftrik and asked him to
endeavour to secure entry into the Embassy. While driving slowly
away from Embassy their car was stopped by Red Guards in another
car, one of whom levelled a revolver at them and told them to hold up
their hands. They were searched and had to give their names and
rank, but to their great surprise were allowed to proceed. M. van
Niftrik drove with them to Gorokhovaya 2, headquarters of the Commis-
sion for Combating Counter-Revolution, to which persons arrested are
usually taken, and where Mr. Woodhouse was confined. He had a
long interview with the commandant of Petrograd, Shatov, and strongly
protested against the unheard of breach of International Law which
had taken place, and demanded to be allowed to drive immediately to
Embassy to be present at search there. Permission was refused by
Shatov, who said that Embassy was being searched because authorities
had documents proving conclusively that British Government was
implicated in Uritski's murder. When they had left and their car
was passing the Winter Palace, staff of British Consulate and of missions,
and some civilians who were at Embassy when it was invaded, were
seen walking under guard to No. 2 Gorokhovaya.
" A meeting of neutral diplomatic corps was held that night upon
the initiative of M. van Niftrik, at which the following points were
submitted : —
1. That immediate release of those arrested should be demanded.
" ' 2. That it should be insisted upon that M. van Niftrik should
be present at examination of arrested.
'3. That attention should be drawn to gross breach of inter-
national law committed by armed occupation of the Embassy,
which bore on the door a signed and sealed notice to the effect
that it was under the protection of Netherlands Legation,
and by refusal to allow M. van Niftrik to be present at the
search.'
" The meeting drew up a protest to be presented to the Soviet
authorities at Moscow.
" On the 1st September particulars were learnt as to the violation
of Embassy. The Red Guards, under the direction of several commis-
saries, had made their way into the Embassy at 5 p.m., and behaved
with the greatest brutality. Captain Cromie, who had tried to bar
their entrance, and had been threatened that he would be killed ' like
a dog,' had fired, killing two men. He had then been shot himself, and
died nearly instantaneously. The whole staff of the Consulate and
Missions and some civilians accidentally present at the Embassy, had
then been marched under escort to Gorokhovaya No. 2, where they
remained until Tuesday, the 3rd September, when (at 4 p.m.) they were
conveyed to the fortress of Peter and Paul.
" During the next few days repeated efforts were made by M. van
Niftrik, M. van der Pals, also Consul and neutral Legations to obtain
release of those arrested, but without success. M. van Niftrik
endeavoured successfully to obtain an interview with Zinoviev, President
of Northern Commune, on the 1st September ; M. de Scavenius, Danish
Minister, who expressed profound indignation at what had occurred,
saw Zinoviev at 9 p.m. on that day, and expressed himself in strongest
terms. He was promised that body of Captain Cromie should be
delivered up to him and M. van Niftrik, and on the 2nd September
they together removed the body to the English Church. The funeral
took place in the presence of the whole of the Corps Diplomatique
and the greater part of the British and French communities. The
coffin was covered with the Union Jack and was completely wreathed
with flowers. After it had been lowered into the grave I pronounced
following short address in French and English : —
" ' In the name of the British Government and in the name of the
family of Captain Cromie I thank you all, especially the
representatives of the Allied and neutral countries, for the
honour you have shown Captain Cromie.
" ' Friends, we have all known Captain Cromie, as a real friend, as a
British gentleman, as a British officer in the highest sense
of the word.
" ' Happy is the country that produces sons like Captain Cromie.
" ' Let his splendid and beautiful example lead us and inspire us
all until the end of our days. Amen.'
" The doyen of the Corps Diplomatique, M. Odier, Swiss Minister,
gave expression to his deep sympathy and admiration for the late
Captain Cromie, who had died for his country.
" In the evening of the 3rd September, no impression having yet
been made on the Communal authorities, another meeting of the Corps
Diplomatique was held. This meeting was attended by neutral diplo-
matic representatives, and M. van der Pals, representing the Netherlands
Legation. Unexpected feature of the meeting was the appearance of
German and Austrian consuls-general. The whole of the body met
together at 9 p.m. and proceeded to Zinoviev's lesidence, where they
with difficulty succeeded in obtaining an interview with him. M. Odier
strongly protested, in the name of the neutral legations, at action taken
by Communal authorities against foreign subjects. He emphasised
the fact that for acts of violence committed against foreign subjects
in Russia the Soviet officials would be held personally responsible.
He demanded that permission should be granted for a neutral repre-
sentative to be present at the examination of the accused. Zinoviev
said that he must consult his colleagues on the matter. M. van der
Pals afterwards again laid stress on his point. M. Odier was followed by
German consul-general, who made a forcible protest in the name of
humanity against the terrorism now entered upon by Bolsheviks.
He referred in strong terms to ' sanguinary ' speech of the other day by
M. Zinoviev, and said that even though French and English arrested
belonged to nations at war with Germany, yet it was impossible not
to unite with neutral representatives in a strong protest against course
now adopted by Bolsheviks.
" I returned to Petrograd yesterday, as I had received a telegram
from my secretary urging my return, and could not therefore take
responsibility of remaining longer absent from Petrograd, where position,
I gathered, must be very bad. Up to to-day situation here has in no
way improved. Besides British arrests, numerous arrests of French
citizens have taken place, including that of the commercial attache
to French Embassy, though French consular officers have not so far
been touched. Thousands of Russians, belonging to officer and wealthy
classes, not excluding merchants and shopkeepers, are being arrested
daily, and, according to an official communication, 500 of them have
already been shot ; amongst arrested there are a large number of women.
For last four days no further British arrests have been made.
" Position of British subjects in prison is most precarious, and
during last few days constant reports have reached Legation that
question whether to shoot or release them has not vet been decided.
There seems to be also a strong tendency to regard those arrested as
hostages. Those belonging to military and naval missions are probably
in most danger, and in present rabid temper of Bolsheviks anything is
possible, but there is some hope that consular staff and civilians may be
released before matters become still more serious. With regard to
members of missions, hope of release seems very small.
" Conditions under which Englishmen at Peter and Paul fortress
are kept are most miserable. I was informed yesterday by M. D'Arcy,
commercial attache to French Embassy, just released, that they are
crowded together with other prisoners, some twenty in a cell, twenty by
ten feet. In each cell there is only one bed, rest must sleep on a stone
floor. No food whatever is supplied by prison authorities, and they
depend entirely on arrangements which this Legation had made and
food furnished by friends and relatives. Rugs, pillows, medicines,
warm clothing, and other comforts are being sent from time to time,
but great difficulties are experienced in getting these articles delivered.
From the 31st August to morning of the 2nd September no food at all
was accepted for prisoners. Since then they have received some supplied
from outside, but it still remains to be seen whether it will reach them
regularly at fortress, though I shall leave no stone unturned to secure
its proper distribution. Russian prisoners in fortress appear to be
absolutely starving, and this will make question of supply of British
subjects even more difficult than it would otherwise be, owing to
presence in their cells of famished Russians.
Following is copy of letter received from British prisoners in the
Fortress of Peter and Paul at Petrograd, dated 5th September, 1918 : —
" Your Excellency,
" We are not allowed to write letters. We will write to you daily,
since the chance of our letters getting through are very remote. Our
life here is even worse than in Gorokhovaya 2, and in a sense we are
being treated exactly like Russian officers and bourgeois, who are being
slowly starved to death here. Our only hope lies in parcels, but
delivery of parcels has been stopped for the moment. Those due on
Monday last have not yet been delivered. It all depends on the caprice
of some one in authority, and he seems very capricious. Surely we
are entitled to be treated like prisoners of war and to be inspected by
neutrals, to have the right of buying food, of getting news, of sending
letters, of exercise, of getting clean linen, &c. Apart from the question
of food, that of clothing and medical attention are most important.
All the prisoners here have a chronic diarrhoea ; most of us have now
got it. Requests for a doctor, or medicine, or complaints to the
commandant, all receive no attention. In short, our treatment is
absolutely inhuman.
" Following is a short account of our treatment since Saturday
last. We were never told why we were arrested, and from the first
all requests, &c, to see you have been contemptuously and rudely
refused. We reached Gorokhovaya at 6 p.m. on Saturday, and, after
questioning of an aimless sort, we were put, at 8 p.m. in a room about
25 feet by 15 feet, where there were already about fifty arrested Russians
— murderers, speculants (sic), &c. All beds were already occupied,
and we spent the night between the three odd chairs, the floor, and
walking about. By morning we were all in the first stages of verminosity,
very dirty, tired, and hungry. The first food came at 1 p.m., small
bowls of bad fish, soup, and one-eighth of a pound of bread. At 6 p.m.
we got another one-eighth pound of bread. We received the same
food on Monday also. On Sunday night the room was less full, and
we got some sleep. By that time we were also getting used to the
journey (sic). Parcels arrived on Monday and eased the food situation
On Tuesday at 4 p.m. we were marched through the streets under escort
here. The consul's request for a vehicle for our kit was most rudely
refused. Here we were distributed in different cells, size about 20 feet
by 10 feet, in order to make up the number twenty. In our cell are
thirteen Russians, four of whom are slowly starving to death. They
have had no food for three da3 T s. After we had been here thirty-three
hours, soup came in at 3 a.m., and one-eighth pound of bread. We
could not eat the soup ; wood, leather, stones, mixed with cabbage and
paper, were its main ingredients. So we, too, will sooner or later starve
to death. Our immediate need is parcels, but it is essential for you to
send some one here on Saturday to see if they have been delivered and
to obtain our receipts. Otherwise they will not be delivered.
" Next is medical comforts : (1) for diarrhoea ; (2) aspirin. We
can get none. Third is some money.
" We will write again to-morrow. We are not allowed to leave
our cells. The door is never opened. The w.c. periodically refuses to
work, and the atmosphere is appalling.
" Need I say more, save that I hope you will lay the substance of
this report before His Majesty's Government.
" With many apologies for giving you this trouble. — (Signed)
From British Subjects detained in Peter and Paul."
No. 7.
Mr. Alston to Mr. Balfour. — (Received September 18.)
(Telegraphic.) Yladivostock, September 16, 1918.
HIS Majesty's consul at Ekaterinburg, Mr. Preston, who left
that place on the 1st September, has just arrived here, and has given
following information as to fate of Russian Imperial family . —
Ex-Emperor of Russia and Grand Duchess Tatiana were brought
from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg by Bolsheviks on the 1st May, 1918.
Emperor was given suitable quarters near British consulate. 'Rest of
Imperial family, including ex-Empress, other three daughters, and
Czarevitch arrived a few days later. Members of suite, including
Prince Dolgorouki, as well as British and French tutors who came
with Imperial family from Tobolsk, were not allowed to remain with
Emperor at Ekaterinburg, and returned to Tobolsk. Prince Dolgorouki
was kept in prison, where he either eventually died or was killed.
- ^ Prince Dolgorouki frequently asked me, as doyen of Consular
Corps, at least to try and obtain better conditions of living for Imperial
family. It was impossible for me, however, to do anything, and when
I interceded for the Princess, whom I said I was protecting as a Serbian
ally, I was threatened with arrest. When the Czech advance on
Chehabinsk commenced, the Ekaterinburg Bolshevik Government, who
already had considerable friction with Central Bolshevik Government
on money matters, began to use threats against the Imperial family
as a means of extorting funds from Central Government. When
Bolsheviks knew they would have to evacuate Ekaterinburg owing
to the approach of the Czechs, they asked the People's Commissaries
at Moscow what they should do with the Emperor. The reply they
received was : " Do whatever you think fit." At a meeting of the
Ural Soldiers' and Workmen's delegates held on 16th July, a decision
was come to that the Emperor should be shot, and this decision was
communicated to him, and sentence carried out by Lettish soldiers
same night. However, no trace has ever been found of the body.
The rest of members of Imperial family were taken away to an
unknown destination immediately after this. It is said that they were
burnt alive, as various articles of jewellery have been identified as
belonging to them by their old servants, and their charred remains
are said to have been found in a house burnt to the ground. It is
still thought possible that the Bolsheviks took them north when they
retreated to Verhotoury The following grand dukes were in captivity
near Ekaterinburg, at Alapaevsk, besides the ex-Emperor, George
Constantino vitch, Ivan Constantinovitch, and Serge Michailovitch.
Princess Helene of Serbia, the wife of the Grand Duke Ivan
Constantinovitch, was frequently at the British consulate, where
everything possible was done for her, but in spite of my energetic
protests, the Bolsheviks took the Princess with them when they
evacuated the town.
With the help of local White Guards, the three above-mentioned
grand dukes managed to escape from their captivity, but it is not
known where they are at present.
Xo. S.
Sir C. Eliot to Mr. Balfour.— (Received January 2, 1919.)
Sir, Ekaterinburg, October 5, 1918.
I HAVE the honour to submit the following report of what is
known respecting the fate of the Russian Imperial family, as well as
a short narrative written at my request by Mr. Sidney Gibbes, formerly
tutor to His Imperial Highness the Czarevitch. Mr. Gibbes accom-
panied the Imperial children from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg on 23rd May,
but was not allowed to live in the house where they were confined
with their parents in the latter town.
The Bolsheviks of Ekaterinburg stated in speeches and pro-
clamations that the Czar was shot on the night of 16th July, but many
of the best-informed Russians believe that he is still alive and in
German custody. I dare not, however, indulge the hope that this is
true, unless some more adequate explanation than those current can
be given of the supposed action of the Bolsheviks.
The official in charge of the enquiry at the time of my visit showed
me over the house where the Imperial family resided. He dismissed
as pure inventions the stories commonly believed in Siberia, such as
that the corpse had been discovered, or that a member of the firing
party had made a confession. On the other hand, he said that all
10
the narratives of persons who thought they had seen the Emperoi
after 16th July had proved to be entirely without foundation. In
his own opinion, the chances were four to three that the murder had
been perpetrated. The house stands on the side of a hill, and the
entrance leads into the first floor, where the Imperial family lived ;
the ground floor, in which the guard was quartered, consisting of offices
and kitchens. The latter, however, were not used for cooking, the
only food allowed being military rations brought in from outside, and
some special dishes for the Tsarevitch which were supplied by the
nuns of a neighbouring convent. A high wooden palisade hid the
windows of the upper storey, which were also whitewashed inside
and kept closed even in the heat of summer.
The Imperial family had to endure considerable hardships and
insolence while they lived in this house. They were allowed only one
walk of fifteen minutes in the garden every day, but the Czar found
distraction in doing carpentering work in an open shed. At meals
the soldiers sometimes came in and took pait of the meat off the table,
saying that there was too much, and the Imperial family were not
allowed decent privacy.
The rooms when I saw them presented a melancholy and dirty
appearance, because the Bolsheviks had burnt a great quantity of
objects in the stoves, and the ashes were subsequently taken out by
the police and spread on the tables and floor with the object of dis-
covering if they contained anything interesting.
There appears to be no evidence whatever to corroborate the
popular story that on the night of the 16th July the Czar was taken
out of the house and shot by a firing party in the manner usual at
Bolshevik executions, but there is some evidence that sounds of uproar
and shooting were heard in the house that night, and that no traffic
was allowed in the streets near it. The murder is believed to have
taken place in a room on the ground floor, which was sealed up, but
kindly opened for my inspection. It was quite empty ; the floor
was of plain wood, and the walls of wood coated with plaster. Doggerel
verses and indecent figures were scrawled on them. On the wall
opposite the door, and on the floor, were the marks of seventeen bullets,
or, to be more accurate, marks showing where pieces of the wall and
floor had been cut out in order to remove the bullet holes, the officials
charged with the investigation having thought fit to take them away
for examination elsewhere. They stated that Browning revolver
bullets were found in all the holes, and that some of them were stained
with blood. Otherwise no traces of blood were visible, but there
were some signs that the wall had been scraped and washed. The
position of the bullets indicated that the victims had been shot when
kneeling, and that other shots had been fired into them when they
had fallen on the floor. Mr. Gibbes thought that for religious reasons
the Czar and Dr. Botkin would be sure to kneel when facing death.
There is no real evidence as to who or how many the victims were,
but it is supposed that they were five, namely, the Czar, Dr. Botkin!
the Empress's maid, and two lackeys. No corpses were discovered'
nor any trace of their having been disposed of by burning or otherwise!
but it was stated that a finger bearing a ring, believed to have belonged
to Dr. Botkin, was found in a well.
11
On the 17th July a train with the blinds down left Ekaterinburg
for an unknown destination, and it is believed that the surviving
members of the Imperial family Mere in it.
It will be seen from the above account that the statement of the
Bolsheviks is the only evidence for the death of the Czar, and it is an
easy task for ingenious and sanguine minds to invent narratives giving
a plausible account of His Imperial Majesty's escape. It must indeed
be admitted that since the Empress and her children, who are believed
to be still alive, have totally disappeared, there is nothing unreasonable
in supposing the Czar to be in the same case. The marks in the room
at Ekaterinburg prove at most that some persons unknown were
shot there, and might even be explained as the result of a drunken
brawl.
But I fear that another train of thought is nearer to the truth.
It seems to me eminently probable that the Bolsheviks of Moscow, or
a section of them, wished to hand over the Czar to the Germans. With
this object a commissioner went to Tobolsk and removed Their Imperial
Majesties in a summary, but not unkindly, manner, probably intending
to take them to Moscow. He evidently knew that the temper of the
Siberian Bolsheviks was doubtful, for he stopped the train outside
Omsk and, finding that the local authorities intended to arrest the Czar,
he ordered the train to leave for Ekaterinburg, that is, to take the
only other route to Moscow. But when the train reached Ekaterinburg
it was stopped by the local authorities and all the occupants removed.
Subsequently the Imperial children were brought to Ekaterinburg from
Tobolsk and placed in custody with their parents. The treatment of
the Imperial family at Ekaterinburg shows an animus which was entirely
wanting at Tobolsk, and the Bolsheviks became more hostile and more
suspicious, as they felt that their own reign was coming to an end,
and that they must leave the city. There is some evidence that they
were much alarmed by an aeroplane flying over the garden of the house,
and I fear it is comprehensible that in a fit of rage and panic they made
away with His Imperial Majesty.
It is the general opinion in Ekaterinburg that the Empress, her
son, and four daughters were not murdered, but were despatched on
the 17th July to the north or west. The story that they wer.e burnt
in a house seems to be an exaggeration of the fact that in a wood outside
the town was found a heap of ashes, apparently the result of burning a
considerable quantity of clothing. At the bottom of the ashes was a
diamond, and, as one of the Grand Duchesses is said to have sewn a
diamond into the lining of her cloak, it is supposed that the clothes of
the Imperial family were burnt here. Also hair, identified as belonging
to one of the Grand Duchesses, was found in the house. It therefore
seems probable that the Imperial family were disguised before their
removal. At Ekaterinburg I did not hear even a rumour as to their
fate, but subsequent stories about the murder of various Grand Dukes
and Grand Duchesses cannot but inspire apprehension.
I have, &c,
C. ELIOT.
12
Enclosure in No. 8.
Memorandum Written by Mr. Sidney Gibbes, formerly Tutor oj the
Tsarevitch, and given to me {High Commissioner) on October o, at
Ekaterinburg.
THE Emperor had no great cause to complain of his treatment
while living in Tobolsk, and physically he greatly improved in health.
He seemed to feel that he had absolved himself of a wearisome business
and thrown the responsibility on other shoulders. The enforced leisure
gave him more time to devote to what was undoubtedly dearest to him
in the world — his wife and family. The Empress suffered more, but
bore bravely up under all hardship.
The Grand Duchesses were always happy and contented, and
seemed satisfied with the simple life to which thej' were reduced, although
they pined for more exercise in the open air, the yard being a poor
substitute for the parks. This indeed seemed generally to be their
greatest hardship.
The Grand Duke enjoyed fairly good health most of the time,
and suffered most from lack of youthful society, although the doctor's
son was sometimes allowed to enter and play with him.
This simple family life went on till the beginning of April (o.s.),
when the first important Bolshevik Commissar, Yakovlef, arrived from
Moscow. He was received by the Emperor, who showed him the rooms
in which they lived, including the Grand Duke's room, where he was
then lying ill in bed. At the end of the visit he asked to be taken a
second time to see the Grand Duke.
After lunch on the 12th of April, Yakovlef announced to the
Emperor and Empress that he was instructed to remove the Emperor,
and hoped that he would consent and not oblige him to use force. The
Empress was greatly distressed, and at her desire was allowed tc
accompany the Emperor and take with her her third daughter, the
Grand Duchess Marie. Hasty preparations were made for their departure.
The Imperial family dined alone, but at eleven o'clock invited all who
were accustomed to dine with them to tea in the drawing-room. Tea
was served at a large round table carried into the room, and was a verv
sad meal. The departure was fixed for 3 a.m., and shortly before that
time carts and carriages entered the yard. The Emperor drove witr
Yakovlef, and the Empress and Grand Duchess Marie in a half-coverec
tarantass. They were accompanied by Prince Dolgorouki, Dr. Botkin
the Empress's maid (Demidova), the Emperor's man (Chemidorof)
and one lackey (Saidnef). The carriages were strewn with hay, or
which they sat, or rather reclined. The roads were in a fearful condition
the thaws having already begun, and at one point they were obliged tc
cross the river on foot, the ice being already unsafe. On the seconc
night, they spent a few hours in a hut, and arrived on the following da"*
at Tumen, where a train was in waiting which took them in the directioi
of Omsk. Some versts outside that town Yakovlef left the train anc
13
went by motor car to the telegraph station to communicate with
Moscow, and, finding that preparations were being made in Omsk to
arrest the Imperial family, he returned to the train, which then left
in the opposite direction, and returned the way it came. However,
on arrival at Ekaterinburg, the train was stopped and everybody
removed : Prince Dolgorouki to prison and the others to a private
house in the centre of the town that had hastily been prepared for
their reception. A high wooden fence of rough boards was hastily put
up outside the house, and the windows whitened within. Here the
Emperor, Empress, and the Grand Duchess Marie lived till the 16th
July (o.s.), the rest of the children being brought from Tobolsk to join
their parents on the 23rd of May. For this journey elaborate arrange-
ments were made for its safe conduct, and the whole personal effects
of the Imperial family, as well as the furniture from the Governor's
house, were removed at the same time. The train arrived in the middle
of the night, but was kept moving in and out of the^station all night,
and at 7 a.m. the children were removed, being placed in cabs and taken
to the house. The night was cold and heavy snow fell as they left.
At tea the Countess Hendrichof, the Empress's Lady-in- Waiting,
Mile. Schneider, the Empress's reader in Russian, and General Tatischef
were taken away to the prison and have since been shot. At 11, three
lackeys, the cook, and his boy were ordered to prepare to go into the
house, and two certainly, most probably four, were afterwards shot.
The remainder of the establishment, consisting of the Baroness
Buxhoevden, Lady-in-Waiting to the Empress, the English and French
tutors, and about sixteen personal attendants and servants were set at
liberty and happily escaped.
Since the departure of the Bolsheviks, the house in which the
Imperial family lived has been thoroughly examined, and undoubted
traces of murder exist, but the number of shots are not sufficient to
warrant the supposition that all the persons there confined were murdered.
Part were murdered and part were taken away, and as the Grand
Duchesses' hair had been found, it is supposed that the Imperial
children were taken away disguised. Garments having been burnt in
a forest outside the town also strengthens this supposition. The
Bolsheviks announced after this date at a public meeting held in the
theatre and by bills posted on the walls that the Emperor had been
shot and the Imperial family removed to a safe place, and to the present
there is no evidence to prove the statement false, while the evidence of
the hair would prove that at least the part of the statement concerning
the children was true. But since that date nearly three months have
passed.
Other members of the Imperial family confined at Alapaevsk,
a small town 100 versts from Ekaterinburg, included the Grand Duke
Serge Michaelovitch, Prince John Constantinovitch, Prince Igor Constan-
tinovitch, and Count Vladimir Pavlovitch Pale, all of whom there is
reason to fear have been killed. The Grand Duchess Serge, who was
also there, is reported to have been wounded and taken away. Princess
Helen Petrovna, of Serbia, who came to Ekaterinburg to be near her
husband, was arrested, as well as the two Serbian officers who came to
induce her to leave, and has been removed with the other hostages
taken from the town.
14
No. 9.
Mr. Alston to Mr. Balfour. — (Received November 5.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, November 4, 1918.
FOLLOWING from Consul at Ekaterinburg, 28th October :—
" Regret to report I am informed by Russian staff that when
Alapaevsk was taken by Russian troops on 29th September corpses,
sufficiently preserved to be recognised, of Grand Duchess Elizabeth
Feodorovna, and of three Royal Princes John, Constantin, and Igor
Constantinovitch, and also that of Grand Duke Serge Michaelovitch,
and lady-in-waiting, name yet unknown, were found in mine pit in
which they had been thrown, presumably alive, bombs being thrown
on them which did not effectually explode. All were buried with
ceremonial, large crowds attending. Princess Helene of Serbia, believed
to be at Perm, where she was taken by Bolsheviks with Serbian mission,
when Bolsheviks evacuated Ekaterinburg. Making thorough investi-
gation."
No. 10.
Mr. Lockhart to Sir G. Clerk.
Dear Sir George, November 10, 1918.
THE following points may interest Mr. Balfour : —
1. The Bolsheviks have established a rule of force and oppression
unequalled in the history of any autocracy.
2. Themselves the fiercest upholders of the right of free speech,
they have suppressed, since coming into power, every newspaper which
does not approve their policy. In this respect the Socialist press has
suffered most of all. Even the papers of the Internationalist Mensheviks
like " Martov " have been suppressed and closed down, and the unfor-
tunate editors thrown into prison or forced to flee for their lives.
3. The right of holding public meetings has been abolished. The
vote has been taken away from everyone except the workmen in the
factories and the poorer servants, and even amongst the workmen
those who dare to vote against the Bolsheviks are marked down by
the Bolshevik secret police as counter-revolutionaries, and are fortunate
if their worst fate is to be thrown into prison, of which in Russia to-day
it may truly be said, " many go in but few come out."
4. The worst crimes of the Bolsheviks have been against theii
Socialist opponents. Of the countless executions which the Bolsheviks
have carried out a large percentage has fallen on the heads of Socialists
who had waged a life-long struggle against the old regime, but who are
now denounced as counter-revolutionaries merely because they disapprove
of the manner in which the Bolsheviks have discredited socialism.
5. The Bolsheviks have abolished even the most primitive forms
of justice. Thousands of men and women have been shot withoul
even the mockery of a trial, and thousands more are left to rot in the
prisons under conditions to find a parallel to which one must turn
to the darkest annals of Indian or Chinese history.
15
6. The Bolsheviks have restored the barbarous methods of torture.
The examination of prisoners frequently takes place with a revolver at
the unfortunate prisoner's head.
7. The Bolsheviks have established the odious practice of taking
hostages. Still worse, they have struck at their political opponents
through their women, folk. When recently a long list of hostages
was published in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks seized the wives of those
men whom they could not find and threw them into prison until their
husbands should give themselves up.
8. The Bolsheviks who destroyed the Russian army, and who have
always been the avowed opponents of militarism, have forcibly mobilised
officers who do not share their political views, but whose technical
knowledge is indispensable, and by the threat of immediate execution
have forced them to fight against their fellow-countrymen in a civil
war of unparalleled horror.
9. The avowed ambition of Lenin is to create civil warfare through-
out Europe. Every speech of Lenin's is a denunciation of constitu-
tional methods, and a glorification of the doctrine of physical force.
With that object in view he is destroying systematically both by
executions and by deliberate starvation every form of opposition to
Bolshevism. This system of " terror " is aimed chiefly at the Liberals
and non-Bolshevik Socialists, whom Lenin regards as his most dangerous
opponents.
10. In order to maintain their popularity with the working men
and with their hired mercenaries, the Bolsheviks are paying their
supporters enormous wages by means of an unchecked paper issue,
until to-day money in Russia has naturally lost all value. Even
according to their own figures the Bolsheviks' expenditure exceeds
the revenue by thousands of millions of roubles per annum.
These are facts for which the Bolsheviks may seek to find an excuse,
but which they cannot deny.
Yours sincerely,
R. H. B. LOCKHART.
No. 11.
Reports on Conditions in Russia.
(1.)
Report on " Bolshevik Realities," by Mrs. L *, formerly Organiser
and Controller of a large War Hospital in Moscow, who left Russia in
October, 1918.
The Peasants and the Land. — Already under the regime of the
Provisional Government the land had been handed over to the whole
body of the peasants in each district. But it must be borne in mind
that the Russian peasant has a strongly developed sense of property
and all his hopes were centred on an ultimate dividing of the land,
which would make each one an individual proprietor and guarantee
him the secure ownership of his holding. The Bolsheviks, however,
* As some of those who have handed in reports or been interviewed have relatives
and property in Russia and contemplate returning there after the Bolshevik regime is at
an end, their names have been suppressed.
16
regarding the land as the property of the nation as a whole, ordered
the peasants to cultivate the fields for the benefit of the local commune.
The peasants, disappointed in their hopes, soon began to express their
disapproval of the new policy. This brought upon them the accusation
of disloyalty to the Soviet Government, and their antagonism was
countered by the appointment in each district of " Comiteti Bednoti '
(Committees consisting of the poorest class of peasants), who disposed
of the crop, leaving a certain amount in possession of those who had
grown it and taking the rest for themselves. This meant that the drones
got all they needed without doing any productive work, and was
equivalent to a premium on idleness. The inevitable result was a
steady decline in the crops, which will in the end prove the ruin of
agricultural Russia.
The Factory and the Workmen. — Under the Provisional Govern-
ment, Workmen's Committees were formed which dealt with such
questions as hiring of labour, deciding the scale of pensions, allowances,
and bonuses, and the whole administration of the_ factory. Selling
prices were controlled and profits were allocated in the proportion
of 95 per cent, to the State and 5 per cent, to the owner. In practice
this scheme resulted in continual reconstruction of the committees
on the ground that the bonuses were too low or pensions unfairly
awarded. The committees were never in power long enough to get
acquainted with the details of the business. At the beginning of
their regime the Bolsheviks did not alter this system, but gradually
changes leading towards nationalisation were inaugurated. In March,
1918, private trade was put an end to and a Central Board for every
industry was set up which collected the produce from various firms.
The selling prices were fixed by decree, but payment out of which wages
and expenses had to come was made by the Central Board only after
long dela}' and repeated demand.
In July all factories were nationalised and handed over to the
workmen under the direction of Central Boards which functioned in
a most despotic manner. All owners and managers were turned out
and could not re-enter the works unless elected. At the slightest
opposition or protest the workmen were thrown into prison, field guns
brought out, and the threat made to raze the factory to the ground.
Wages and Food. — The minimum wage for a workman was fixed
at 500 roubles per month, while superior artisans (i very small per-
centage of the community) received up to a maximum of 1,000 roubles
per month. This sum was fixed on the assumption that the official
rations were inadequate. In actual fact the scale was ludicrously
insufficient to maintain life. Up till September, 1916, the bread ration
was I lb. to -| lb. per day for workmen and ,1 lb. for others. The bread
was of very low standard, was full of refuse of all kinds and of the con-
sistency of putty. Even this ration was seldom to be had. True
certain things could be obtained by underhand means, as for example
black flour at 10 roubles per lb. (equivalent to 6s. to-day), butter at
39 roubles per lb., sugar at 39 roubles per lb., eggs at 27 roubles per
dozen. From this it is quite evident that the wage of 500 roubles was
inadequate for the upkeep of a family. As a result the workpeople
tried to bring supplies into the town from districts where the prices
were lower. This practice was strongly forbidden by the Government
because it upset their " rationing organisation," and strong measures
17
were taken to repress it. A train returning from one of the food areas
would be held up by a body of Red Guards, established at some point
on the line. These guards would open fire on the train and almost
invariably some of the passengers were shot. All had their provisions
confiscated, and the wretched workman returned to his home minus
money and flour and having lost two or three days' work. These food
hunting expeditions disorganised the whole of the factories, as a third
of the men were always absent. When it is remembered that clothing,
rent, and other necessaries had also to be provided out of the 500 roubles,
it will be understood how deplorable were the conditions of life.
Materials and made-up clothing were also rationed, but there was hardly
enough to supply the needs of one-tenth of the population. The result
of this struggle between the workmen and the Government, and the
inefficiency of the latter's subordinate officials, is that the Russian
factories are rapidly falling into a state of ruin. Output has decreased
in some cases 90 per cent., and as there is no available supply of fuel
or raw materials it is only a question of a few months, if the Bolsheviks
remain in power, before the factories will be forced to close down.
Repression of Democracy. — After the July Congress and the anti-
Bolshevik demonstration of the Left Social Revolutionaries, non-
Bolshevik Socialists were deprived of all political rights, hundreds of
Socialist workmen were thrown into prison and large numbers were
shot. In addition 3,000 workmen were thrown out of employment
in the tramway repairing shops in Moscow simply on the ground of
their Social Revolutionary sympathies.
The best illustration of the autocratic rule under which the workmen
now exist is the fact that all public expression of opinion has been for-
bidden. All non-Bolshevik newspapers have been suppressed, including
even " The Independent Socialist," whose editor, Martov, had a world-
wide reputation in Socialist circles. All public meetings except those
organised by the Bolsheviks are prohibited, and the Bolsheviks call
themselves " The Peasants' and Workmen's Government."
The most serious crime in the eyes of the Bolsheviks is anti-
Bolshevism, and the work of discovering and punishing offenders of
this kind is in the hands of the Extraordinary Commission — an auto-
cratic body which arrests, examines, imprisons, and executes at will.
There is no charge, no public trial, and no appeal. There are English
works-foremen in prison in Moscow to-day with nothing against them
except the fact that they happened to be in a certain street or square
at the time when the Red Guards took it into their heads to make a
general arrest. Appeals from the Red Cross and the neutral consuls
are unavailing. The Kommissar in charge of the case is away ill and
nothing can be done till his return. Crimes of street robbery, &c,
are punished in a rough and ready way ; the offender is shot on the spot
and the body left there till someone thinks good to remove it.
To describe the life inside the prisons would require the pen of
Charles Reade. Even using the greatest restraint and moderation,
any account must appear exaggerated and hysterical to English readers.
In verminous, ill-ventilated cells, starved and terrorised people are
crowded together in one room, men, women, young girls (the latter held
as hostages to force their hiding fathers or brothers to give themselves
up). At six o'clock in the evening the doors are locked and no one is
allowed out for any reason till morning, except those called out at about
(1057) c
18
3 a.m. for execution. Healthy and sick (some with cholera) are huddled
on the floor, uncertain of their fate and knowing it is out cf the power
of anyone to help them. The food consists of one quarter of a pound
of black bread and a bowl of hot water in which are floating some pieces
of cabbage and occasionally a few fish heads. Red Cross officials
noticed a rapid change in the appearance of prisoners ; they looked each
day more haggard, drawn, and hopeless.
(2.)
Report by Mr. H , Vladimir. — October 14, 1918.
Our mills continued to work under the most adverse conditions,
which grew from bad to worse during the course of the years 1917-1918,
owing to labour disorganisation, shortage of raw material, money (from
a balance of 35,000,000 roubles we now owe 25,000,000 roubles to the
State Bank), and finally of food for the workpeople. The large shell
manufacturing plant which during the course of the war we had developed
had to be closed down by orders of the Soviet. Famine and cholera
finally made their appearance, and the workpeople and their families
(especially children) commenced to die and to grow so weak as to
seriously impair their capacity for work. My co-directors and self
were powerless to do anything to help or do anything in the matter as
the Soviet had taken over everything connected with the working of the
concern, putting in utterly incapable people such as doorkeepers,
watchmen, &c, to supervise work demanding long experience, technical
and medical knowledge, even interfering with the hospital administra-
tion, where the man cook supervised the work of our doctors.
As the (mill) position grew worse and matters became impossible
I was charged with sabotage and working as an agent of England to
paralyse industry in our district. All the sales and purchases of mate-
rials and goods were made through the agency of the Soviet,who employed
dishonest persons with the result that though our goods were ostensibly
sold to various representative bodies such as other Soviet organisations,
in reality they were made the objects of speculation and theft, and sold
in some cases to known German agents and sent to Germany. This
was known to the workpeople who were greatly excited by the matter.
Shortage of food, the supply and disposal of which became a Soviet
monopoly, with the usual result of stopping all supplies, forced the
workpeople to travel to the grain districts in the South and East of
Russia and obtain supplies there themselves. The supplies, in order
to preserve the principle of Soviet monopoly, were usually confiscated
by the Red Army requisition commandoes from the unfortunate people
on their return journeys on the railways. These Red Army requisition
commandoes are charged with the duty of stopping all private tradin CT
and so-called speculation, but being in many cases utterly devoid of
any idea of honesty or duty, merely took the food and resold same,
in many cases to the people again. Eventually there was no more money
to be had, the workpeople having even exhausted their savings. In
addition, the journey undertaken to obtain food was long, costly and
arduous, and generally 50 per cent, of the people were away from their
occupation, losing their wages and so making their position still worse
19
and congesting the railways. At the same time members of the local
Soviet were continually seen in a drunken condition and were evidently
living well. Exasperation grew, and finally the workpeople, with whom
joined many of the peasants in the district, came in a body to me and
asked my aid, but I was powerless to help. In addition, I had to be
very careful as my words and actions could have been so misconstrued
to the Soviet as to cause them to think that I was interfering in their
functions. The fact of the people coming to me as of old for help
alarmed the Soviet authorities, and open threats were made against
me and arrests of workmen followed. This was at the time of the
outrage at the British Embassy at Petrograd, and on receipt of news
of same I was advised to leave by certain members of the Soviet. A
meeting was then called by order of the Moscow authorities in order
to choose the quota of members of the requisition commandoes of the
Red Army from amongst the workpeople, who answered the summons
by picking the members of the local Soviet, who were bitterly attacked
and the actions and authority of the Soviet Government repudiated.
The speakers were arrested, and on the demand of the crowd of work-
people, numbering some 20,000, to release them, the guard of the local
prison consisting of members of the Red Army opened fire, killing and
wounding, it was stated, over 100 people. In addition many were
badly hurt in the panic which ensued. On the following day all the
mills and works in the district were stopped, the workpeople striking
as a protest. I then left the district for Moscow, not wishing to be made
the centre of an anti-Soviet movement ; especially as the authorities
were accusing the British and French representatives as being the
cause of the many disturbances which weie occurring all over the
country, but which in reality were caused by their own reckless,
unscrupulous, and utterly dishonest conduct.
My house, with all contents, horses, carriages, clothing, &c, were
confiscated or " requisitioned " by the local Soviet. In addition all
my holding in the firm, including shares and loan money, were taken
over by the Central Government, and jewellery, plate and papers
placed in the safe of the library at the Anglican Church, and furs stored
in cold storage in Moscow were confiscated by the Moscow Tribunal.
Trade Conditions in Central Russia.
Xo statistics are available, but, roughly, the following can be
taken as a fairly reliable estimate in October last : —
Metal Trades.
The metal trade was practically at a standstill, due to the shortage
of fuel and raw materials, probably not more than 40 per cent, of the
plant on all branches being in operation. Labour was thoroughly
disorganised, owing to political and economic disturbances and shortage
of food products which forced the workpeople to leave their occupations
for long periods in search of food. The stocks of what little fuel, copper,
lead, &c, that remained were being gradually exhausted, and no hope
of recovery could be expected in the near future. Physically the metal
trades entail a heavy strain on the workers, whose stamina was
thoroughly exhausted by shortage of food.
20
Linen Trade.
Production was 50 per cent, of the normal and was gradual!
being reduced owing to shortage of flax (due to difficulties of transport
and fuel. Workpeople were starving and absenting themselves fror
their work searching for food.
Woollen Trade.
Production was decreased 60 per cent, owing to shortage of woe
and fuel. Similar conditions prevailed amongst the workpeople a
elsewhere in Central Russia. During the course of the summer ther
was a stoppage of from one to three months of all the mills. The woo]
producing districts, such as Simbirsk, Kazan, Saratov, and Astrakha:
were centres of great unrest, and no wool was to be obtained from thes
districts.
Cotton Trade.
Production was decreased 60 per cent, below normal. This applie
to all branches. Many mills were stopped altogether and the stock
of cotton from these mills have been requisitioned and distributed t
certain groups of mills which have been nationalised by the Governmem
Probably 30 per cent, are stopped. Stoppages of all mills took plac
during the summer from one to three months. At time of leavin
another period of stoppage of one month for all mills had been pre
claimed by the Government. Labour conditions, as in other trade:
owing to economic and food troubles, were very unsettled. Thei
was sufficient fuel to last six months. Stocks of cotton in Centn
Russia were roughly 1,500,000 poods ; the monthly requiremenl
for all mills being 1,200,000 poods. These stocks would allow c
another five weeks of work. In Central Asia it was estimated tha
there were the following stocks : 3,500,000 poods of the old 1916-191
crops and 2,500,000 poods of the new 1917-1918 crops. On the Volg
and on the Caspian Sea it was estimated that there was another 1,000,00
poods. These last stocks were, however, unavailable, as the distrid
mentioned were practically cut off from communication with Centr;
Russia. This year, 1918, it is calculated that only 30 per cent, of th
land in Central Asia is being sown with cotton.
In Central Russia the staple trades are manufacturing in all i1
branches woollen and silk. Of the raw material required during th
period of the war 70 per cent, of the cotton has been obtained froi
Central Asia and Trans-Caucasia (Erivan, Kars, and Mugan districts
and 30 per cent, from abroad. Silk has also been obtained almos
entirely from these districts with the exception of a small quantit
from Japan. With the closing of these markets to Russia the texti
industries will have entirely to close down, thus throwing out of woi
a great number of people. The Mohammedan populations in the;
districts are only too anxious to throw off the power of the Soviet
and would do so at once if they were sure of strong support on the pa:
of the Allied Governments. Several risings have taken place in tl
territories of the Emir of Bokhara and the Khan of Khiva, who then
selves are very anxious regarding the safety of their own thrones ;
there is in their dominions a party who supports the Bolsheviks.
21
Silk Trade.
The silk trade is practically dead. All supplies of silk from Italy,
Japan, Central Asia, and the Caucasus being cut off and the stocks of
silk are now exhausted.
Paper Trade.
The paper trade has greatly decreased, probably the output of
the mills being 60 per cent, of normal.
Coal Trade.
The Brown coal districts of Tula, Riazan, and Moscow are giving
60 per cent, of their full production, the shortage being caused by the
absence of the workpeople. Strong attempts are being made by the
Soviets to develop these districts since the Don Coalfields were cut off
from Russia. The results so far have not been encouraging.
Peat Industry.
The working season as a rule is from May to July. The labourers
employed are bodies of organised peat workers from the Riazan Govern-
ment, supplemented during the war by German and Austrian prisoners.
The work is heavy and requires great physical strength. The workers,
not having sufficient food, could not produce their full complement of
work. In addition many workpeople did not leave their villages,
fearing famine. In consequence production was only 60 per cent,
of the normal. Great efforts have been made by the local authorities,
especially in view of the fact that the stocks of coal and naphtha were
exhausted, to increase the production of this class of fuel. The results
were disappointing and gave no alleviation to the situation.
Timber Trade.
Tracts of forests were being cut down for the use of the railways
and industries, especially power stations, but the shortage of labour
and disorganisation of traffic prevented any serious results being
attained. The shortage of fuel has caused the authorities to close the
schools or to curtail the period of instruction.
Agriculture.
The crops in 1918 have been in every case above the average, the
Government estimate being 120 per cent. Much hitherto uncultivated
land was brought under the plough owing to the very high prices
prevailing for food products, the price for same fixed by the Government
being 20 roubles per pood for flour, which, in private hands, was being
sold at 350 to 400 roubles per pood. The price of meat was fixed at
40 roubles per pood but was being sold at 400 roubles per pood ; sugar
was being sold at 25 roubles per pood. Under these conditions the
peasantry were making much money, as, for instance, one dessetine
of land produces on an average in Central Russia 200 poods of potatoes,
the average price of which was 40 roubles per pood, thus giving 8,000
roubles per dessetine. As the average holding of the peasant is now
6 dessetines, the sum earned as an average would probably be from
40,000 to 50,000 roubles per year. These prices were inducing the
peasant to cultivate land which formerly was lying fallow. This may
even cause a real and permanent improvement in methods of cultivation
of land hitherto worked in a most primitive manner, as the peasantry are
now demanding and buying good agricultural implements.
22
The State of the Transport.
Transport both by rail and water was still disorganised, but, as
the railways had their own separate organisations, which were more
or less independent of the Central Soviet, matters were not as ba ^. a ^
in other branches of industry. There was a shortage' of fuel, which
consisted largely of timber and of lubricating oil, and there was still
an enormous amount of railway stock lying unrepaired.
The tramway services in Moscow and Petrograd had been decreased
to one-fourth of the normal service owing to want of fuel. Motor
transport, however, was being utilised without restriction, especially
by the members of the many Soviets and their various organisations.
It was stated that the stock of petrol in Moscow in August was roughly
50,000 poods. The river service on the Volga was practically suspended
during the summer owing to the river being in the war zone. This
greatly encumbered the already overworked railways.
Recent Legislation.
All lands, building, machinery, &c, were now nationalised, without
any compensation being paid to the former owners. The result has
been an utter deadlock, all private enterprise being killed. Money is
being hidden to an enormous extent, the absence of which is being
made good as quickly as ever possible by the Soviet's printing presses ;
private printing establishments being taken over for this purpose.
It is estimated that the quantity of paper currency in circulation is
now over 30,000,000,000 roubles, roughly 100 times the present gold
reserve. A great quantity of false money is also being printed and
being brought into circulation, especially the 20 and 40 rouble note
varieties. All private trading is being taken over by the Government
and the stocks are being confiscated.
Gold articles over a certain weight are confiscated, with the result
that same have disappeared, being hidden by the owners. The system
of education has been entirely altered. All religious instruction has
been abolished, and in its place a form of State Socialistic instruction
substituted. The peasantry now refuse to send their children to State
schools and they remain without education. Clothing, such as winter
overcoats, belonging to private people are being confiscated for the
benefit of the Red Army. No man is supposed to possess more than
one suit of clothes, two changes of linen, or two pairs of boots ; anything
above this is requisitioned for so-called State purposes. All furniture
is nationalised.
Political Conditions.
Throughout the districts occupied or administered by the Soviet
Government 90 per cent, of the population is against the administration,
and probably not more than 5 per cent, actively support the same.
This 5 per cent, consists of returned political refugees, mostly non-
Russian in race, members of the many committees, commissariats, and
Government's Departments, Red Army recruits, who are receiving
high wages, and a certain number of fanatics, mostly young, of both
sexes. The remaining 5 per cent, support the Soviets simply owing to
the fact that they are dependent on them for a living. Also amongst
these there are a certain number who are working for the purpose of
23
getting acquainted with the organisations. This element could be
depended upon to give valuable help in the event of a counter-
revolution. Feeling is very bitter amongst all classes of the working
population and peasantry, but these people are now so terrified, and,
in the case of the town-bred working population, so weakened physically
as to preclude any possibility of a rising against the ruling power for the
present. Regarding the form of Government which the people desired,
the majority, especially amongst the peasantry, wish a monarchy.
From carefully-noted inquiries of peasants and workpeople I found
that 90 per cent, were of this opinion.
(3.)
Report by Mr. G , who left Petrograd in November, 1918.
When we turn from the general aims of the Bolshevik policy to
the actual situation in the big cities, as Petrograd and Moscow at the
time when I left, it could be summed up in one word — famine. As
regards Petrograd, its population now has come down to 908,000, whereas
in 1916 it was estimated at 2,500,000 to 2,600,000 people. Two-thirds
of the population have been able to escape to other parts of the country,
and the one-third remaining is reduced to starvation. The prices for
food have risen to such an extent that all the principal commodities
are out of the reach of the buyer. The amount of food which is allowed
by rations is in itself absolutely insufficient to keep up life, and then it
is hardly regularly received ; sometimes bread is not received for two
days consecutively. Besides, it must not be forgotten that the Russian
population is divided into four classes, the educated and capitalist class
being put into the third and fourth category, receiving three or four
times less than the workmen and other classes, who are in the first and
respectable category. Even the workman who gets four times more
than others cannot live on his ration, and must buy bread and other
commodities in an underhand way, the open sale of them being
forbidden. In order to give an instance, I wish just to say that an egg
cost when I left, six roubles ; a bottle of milk, six or seven roubles ;
a pound of bread, fourteen to seventeen roubles. The class which is the
best fed is the Red Army and the Bolshevik officers.
The foreign press has, as I understand, published some details
about the September massacres in Petrograd, when more than one
thousand men were shot in Kronstadt and the Peter-Paul Fortress
indiscriminately, without any trial, not even the pretence of a court-
martial ; shot, or drowned, as was the case with Father Ornatsky,
the well-known priest of the Kazan Cathedral in Petrograd, who was
drowned with his two young sons, who were officers, along with many
others. Whereas the shooting in big towns has during the last months
decreased owing to Lenin's personal dislike of Red terrorism, it is
continuing in the provinces, where priests, landowners, physicians,
rich merchants, lawyers, are indiscriminately shot in cold blood, without
any trial and without any reason besides a general pretext of being
counter-revolutionists. Arrests and domestic searches are going on as
before. There are some thousands of men and women starving in the
24
prisons of Petrograd — professors of universities, eminent lawyers,
priests, generals, officers, ladies of society, bankers, &c. There are
towns and districts where all the priests who have to wear their hair
long in accordance with religious custom now have been forced to have
it cut short. In other towns churches have been desecrated and bishops
arrested or shot.
A special measure, in order to complete the humiliation' of the
bourgeoisie, is compulsorily forced labour, to which all the bourgeoisie
men and women are liable, and which consists in men from 20 to 60
being sent on all sorts of jobs, discharging of coal, cleaning water-closets
in the soldiers' barracks, digging graves in cemeteries, removing cholera
stricken patients, &c. ; and for the women being obliged to wash the
dirty linen of the barracks, or other like jobs for a month. In the case
of the women with delicate health, and of elderly men, death from
exposure or severe illness after a week or two of such labour, which is
usually conducted under the most humiliating conditions, is not seldom.
Under the conditions which I have outlined above it is not astonish-
ing that disaffection is growing, and it must be said that it is growing
in all classes of the population. It is evident that the attitude of the
educated classes against Bolshevism is one of impotent hatred. The
news given out by Bolshevik employees that the intellectual and
bourgeoisie classes have allied themselves with the Bolsheviks is a
deliberate falsehood. It is true that thousands upon thousands of these
people have been induced to work under the Bolsheviks to accept some
salaried situation with the government, but in respect to the working
classes it must be borne in mind that the industrial working man has
practically disappeared. Bolshevism has ruined Russian industry.
The great bulk of the big factories, workshops, or mills do not work for
a great many months, for want of raw materials. The workmen received
from the State full pay for some time, but afterwards had to choose
either to return to the villages or to enlist in the Red Army, and in
most cases they did the latter. .The small artisan is starving to death,
which explains his anti-Bolshevik attitude. There remains the peasant,
far away in his village, rich with paper money and bread, which he does
not want to give away, but the Bolsheviks are sending armed expeditions
to steal bread, which they want to feed the Red Army. The shooting
of peasants every day by the Red Guards coming down for bread is an
every-day feature. Revolutions have broken out, and nearly every-
where they are being quelled with blood. When we ask ourselves who
are the classes who support the Bolsheviks, the answer would be that
they consist of the people who are fed and paid by the Bolsheviks, the
Red Army, and the not less numerous army of paid Government officials.
All of them are paid more and fed better than the population amongst
whom they live, and,with the present food conditions, it is not astonishing
that they stick to the Bolsheviks. The Red Army and the numerous
army of different commissioners have also an unlimited opportunity
of plundering the peaceful population, of which they avail themselves
to an extent which, in the small provincial towns in the country, is
simply terrifying, and which brings around the Bolsheviks all the lowest
classes of the population. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten
that Bolshevism had for many years its best recruits from among the
young workmen of big factories, who, as stated above, have now enlisted
in the Red Army, and who form the Socialist nucleus of the State.
25
All political parties are declared to be outside the pale of the law,
as counter-revolutionary, and the old Socialist parties, if they try to
make public opposition to the Bolshevist tyranny, fare no better than
the Liberal parties. Especially the Socialist-Revolutionary party is
subject to the most violent and bloody persecution. Under these
circumstances, can it astonish anyone that public opinion, terrorised
by imprisonment and numberless executions, remains dumb ?
It must not be forgotten that the Bolsheviks have formed small
committees of the so-called poorest peasants in each village, who are
armed with rifles, and often machine guns, and who, being representative
of the proletariat, have to exercise the dictatorship of the people over
the village bourgeoisie, making up the majoiity of peasants. The well-
to-do peasant is thus completely excluded from any public activity, and
is kept terrorised by these committees, which in many cases are composed
of the worst elements of the village, drunkards, ex-convicts, &c. Further,
it cannot be doubted that the Russian people are worn out b} 7 the war
and by the revolution, and that the love of peace which was always
a permanent feature of its national character has been enhanced and
has developed itself into an attitude of dumb suffering.
The impartial reader of the Bolshevist press, and it must be taken
into consideration that there does not exist any press with the exception
of the official one now in Russia, can read in these official papers every
day articles and information about local revolts which happen daily in
various parts of the country, mostly villages where the peasants rise in an
entirely unorganised way against the power of the Soviet. In the second
part of November such revolts have taken place in nearly all the districts
of the Government of Moscow, and were suppressed mercilessly by the
Red Army, composed to a considerable extent of Chinese and Letts.
As regards food distribution, it is admitted even by the Bolsheviks
that in no department of Government is there so much corruption as
among the numberless officials who control the food administration.
The organisation of the food distribution is, of course, mainly governed
by the fact that there is scarcely any food to be distributed.
Russian industry is dead for the moment, and the Russian industrial
workman has ceased to exist as a class for the time being. It is an
extremely curious feature of the Russian Revolution that a movement
which has proclaimed itself as social and democratic has achieved in
the first instance total destruction of those social groups on which a
social democratic organisation is mainly based, the class of the industrial
workmen. All factories, all the important ones with a few exceptions
of those who are still engaged on munition work, are stopped, and the
industrial workman had either to return to the village with which he
had no more ties in common or to enlist in the Red Army. The younger
generation of the workmen, men of 19 to 26 years, have to a great
extent chosen the second alternative, and it is they who form the
Bolshevik nucleus of the Red Army. To speak of the growing success
of the management of industrial concerns by Soviet is an absolute
misrepresentation. It would be sufficient in order to disprove this
statement to cite the instance of the most important factories and works
in Petrograd, Moscow and Nishny, where factories which engaged
usually many thousands occupy now a few hundred men.
As regards Petrograd, the number of executions is usually taken
at 1,300, though the Bolsheviks admitted only 500, but then they do
26
not take into account many hundreds of officers, former civil servants
and private individuals, who were shot in Kronstadt, and in the Peter
and Paul Fortress in Petrograd, without any special order from tne
Central authorities, by the discretion of the local Soviet ; 400 were snot
during one night in Kronstadt alone ; three big graves were dug in tne
courtyard and the 400 placed before it, then they were shot one atter
another.
The Extraordinary Commission of Petrograd had on the orders of
the day of one of their sittings the question of the application of torture.
It is common knowledge that the unfortunate Jewish student who killed
Britozsky was tortured three or four times before his execution.
The Oboukhoff works were, in their majority, supporters of the
Social Revolutionary party, or of other moderate socialist organisations.
They summoned a meeting of the workmen at which, by an overwhelming
majority, a resolution was carried insisting upon the Bolsheviks putting
an end to the civil war, and reconstructing the Government on lines
which would .admit the participation of all socialistic parties. The
Bolsheviks answered with a general lock-out of the workmen and the
closing of the Oboukhoff works.
The population is everywhere divided into four classes for purposes
of rationing, the middle and " parasitic " classes, being in the third and
fourth divisions, getting one-quarter or one-eighth of the rations accorded
to the workmen and the clerks, but even these rations remain mostly
on paper, as there is not food enough to give them.
No. 13.
Sir C. Eliot to Mr. Balfour. — (Received November 30.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, November 29, 1918.
TELEGRAMS from vice-consul at Ekaterinburg state that officials
are now coming to the conclusion that the Empress and her children
were murdered in or near Ekaterinburg at the same time as the Emperor.
Rest of evidence does not seem strong but dates may be significant.
Emperor was murdered on the night of 16th July, and Grand Duke
Serge, together with Princes mentioned in my telegram of 4th November,*
were murdered at Alapaevsk on 18th July. It is hence supposed that
murderers went from Ekaterinburg to Alapaevsk. At Alapaevsk their
intention was clearly to exterminate Imperial family, and it is feared
they were actuated by same motive as at Ekaterinburg. At Tobolsk
the victims were driven some distance out of the town and thrown into
a pit. It is supposed that something of the same kind was done at
Ekaterinburg, and it is possible that Empress and her children were
taken a few miles by rail, which would account for idea that they were
removed elsewhere.
* See No. 9.
27
No. 14.
Lord Kilmarnock to Mr, Balfour. — [Received December 6.)
Sir, Copenhagen, November 27, 1918.
I HAVE the honour to report that Mr. D , director of a Petrograd
Manufacturing Company, who has under his charge about 4,000 Russian
workmen, and who is well acquainted with their views, called at His
Majesty's Legation and stated that the position in Petrograd was as
follows : —
In his opinion some 90 per cent, of the soldiers of the Red Guard
are disaffected, and would desert the moment a well-organised force
appeared if it were properly provided with supplies of food. The
Guard consist largely of men who have become soldiers in order to
escape starvation, and there is no revolutionary enthusiasm among
them.
When he left Petrograd on the 16th instant the situation as regards
food had improved slightly, but deaths from starvation were still a
constant occurrence, especially among the intellectuals and those placed
in unfavoured categories. The improvement was due to larger
supplies of potatoes and vegetables arriving from the country. Flour,
however, was still very scarce, only the soldiers and workmen could
get bread. Horses were being slain, partly in order to provide food,
partly because there was no fodder with which to feed them.
The transport difficulties in Petrograd were getting worse, and
it was almost impossible to move the small quantities of rye and
potatoes which reached the stations of the capital. The charge for
a cab, which used to be 60 kopecks, was now 100 roubles, and Mr.
D who used to pay 10 roubles for the transport of a load of wood
to his factory had now to pay 300 roubles. There was hardly any
benzine for automobiles. The city was still lighted, but the scarcity
of fuel was very acute.
Mr. D 's factory had not been nationalised, and owing to
the stocks of raw materials which had been accumulated, the workmen,
about 4,000, were still able to turn out about 7,000 pairs of shoes a
day. Very few other factories, however, were working owing to the
lack of raw material.
The power of the Bolsheviks has greatly diminished during the
last six months, and the peasants in the villages round Petrograd
were hostile to them, largely because their supplies were being com-
mandeered by the soldiers. Though a small force would be sufficient
to overthrow the Bolshevik rule, it would take a long time to establish
order in the country, as the authorities had either disappeared or been
killed, and the people had lost the habit of obedience.
Men were being shot every day, and the political terrorism
continued.
The Red Guard had sent a notice to the Council of Workmen
in Mr. D 's factory, which had been shown to him in confidence
by a faithful workman. It was worded as follows : —
28
" If there is anybody in the administration of the factory who
is undesirable, please inform us."
And shortly afterwards two of his secretaries were arrested and im-
prisoned. Later they were released, but one at any rate will not
recover from the hardships he endured in prison.
Three brothers named Stolyrov, who had a factory in the neigh-
bourhood, had been denounced because they had been rough with
their workmen, and had been shot.
Zinoviev (Apfelbaum) was still supreme in Petrograd, and he
still exercised a brutal reign of terror.
Mr. D thought that the Bolsheviks were not contemplating
an attack on Finland, as they were afraid of the Finnish army, but
an attack on the Baltic provinces was likely, as the Bolsheviks desired
to obtain food supplies and hoped to find supplies of potatoes, corn,
&c, in Esthonia and Lettland.
I have, &c.
KILMARNOCK.
No. 15.
Memorandum on Conditions in Moscow by a British
subject, who left Moscow on December 1.
THE economic and social conditions in^Moscow are in a state
of chaos.
All trade and commerce — except illicit trading which is still
carried on by the Jews — is at a complete standstill. The shops, even
the smallest, are either closed or on the point of being closed, and all
the places of business also.
On account of the fuel scarcity the compression of the people
in such houses as can be heated was becoming greater and greater.
I was reduced from five rooms to one room, and was threatened with
a further reduction.
Nothing was supposed to be obtainable except on the card system,
and very little on that ; clothing, boots, &c, were practically un-
obtainable, and even galoshes, so necessary in Russia, could hardly
be got. Food without cards was still procurable at fabulous prices,
but was every day getting scarcer. Milk was 5 roubles* per glass ;
sugar, 50 roubles per pound ; butter, 80 roubles per pound ; tea,
125 roubles per pound ; coffee, 100 roubles per pound ; black flour,
10 roubles per pound.
This is not because there is a serious dearth of these foodstuffs —
on the contrary, there is plenty of everything (except perhaps coffee)
in the country, but because the Bolsheviks will not allow it to be
brought into Moscow. They have divided the people into four
categories — and only the two lowest, consisting of workpeople and
1 Rouble = (nominally) 2s. If d.
29
employees of the Soviet, can get enough to live on, the other two are
meant to starve. The different centrals, like the sugar central, the
tea central, and the textile central, were in a state of helpless, hopeless
chaos. Full of employees who had little or nothing to do — only half
heated, and with huge queues of waiting people who cannot get the
information, &c, they want.
The stability of the Soviet did not appear to me to be very great.
It depended entirely on the well-paid Lettish battalions. Certainly
the mass of the workpeople and peasants was not behind it. Many of
the people working for it were only doing so to preserve themselves
from starvation.
It was estimated that the Red Army consisted of about 200,000
fighting men. Many more were being drilled — but so little dependence
was placed on them that they were not entrusted with arms. Meetings
of workmen to discuss the mobilisation order openly decided to comply
with it, because it was the easiest way of procuring food and clothing,
but to decline to fight.
Great difficulty was encountered in getting regiments to leave
Moscow for the front, and on many occasions trains intended to convey
such troops were delayed for days. It was only by means of heavy
disbursements that men were eventually induced to leave. It was
reported that Moscow was almost denuded of troops and artillery.
I was told that there were no guns for the Pskoff front, all having been
sent south.
There is no actual food famine in Russia ; on the contrary, there
are enormous stocks of foodstuffs which could be spared for the rest
of Europe. There is a famine, however, in articles of clothing and
agricultural implements. Outside of Moscow and Petrograd, and,
perhaps, some other centres, food was procurable at comparatively
moderate prices, and in exchange for textile products even at really
low prices. It is the disorganisation in the transport service, and the
shortness of goods which the peasants need, coupled with the decrees
of the Bolsheviks, which have brought about the present shortage of
foodstuffs in certain localities.
I don't know what is the signification of the terms " Red " and
" Cold " terrors.
All I can say is that the number of people who have been coldly
done to death in Moscow is enormous. Many thousands have been
shot, but lately those condemned to death were hung instead, and that
in the most brutal manner. They were taken out in batches in the
early hours of the morning to a place on the outskirts of the town,
stripped to their shirts, and then hung one by one by being drawn up
at the end of a rope until their feet were a few inches from the ground
and then left to die. The work was done by Mongolian soldiers.
Shooting was too noisy and not sure enough. Men have crawled away
after a volley, and others have been buried while still alive. I was
told in Stockholm by one of the representatives of the Esthonian
Government that 150 Russian officers who were taken prisoners at
Pskoff by the Red Guards were given over to the Mongolian soldiers,
who sawed them in pieces.
30
No. 16
Mr. Alston to Mr. Balfour. — {Received January 4.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, January 2, 1919.
I HAVE derived following information, which may be considered
authentic, with regard to position in Moscow, partly from the Vladi-
vostock press, and partly from persons having connections there :
With the exception of the Bolsheviks, the whole population is
terrorised almost to a point of physical paralysis and imbecility.
Slender supplies of even the simplest food are only to be had when the
watch of the Bolshevik guard weakens, and three-quarters of the people
are slowly starving to death. At the expense of the poor, hoarders
see their chance to realise enormous profits. Throughout the daylight
hours, long queues wait to try to get half-pound of tea, potatoes, or
a bit of fish. Tea may be anything up to 100 roubles per pound, coarse
black bread varies from 15 to 20 roubles per pound, according to the
section of the town in which it is sold, and sugar is 50 roubles a pound,
when obtainable. A second-hand suit of clothes costs anything up
to 2,000 roubles, and a pair of boots 800 roubles. Horseflesh is the
mainstay of the population at present, but even supplies of that are
fast dwindhng. Five hundred hostages were taken to Kronstadt
for reprisals, soon after attempted assassination of Lenin, and these
were subjected to most horrible tortures. The people often prefer to
starve rather than risk torture at the hands of Chinese and Lettish
hooligans who form " militia " on streets, and cower in their cellars,
numbed with cold. To avoid extermination, the " intellectuals "
have largely gone into the service of Bolsheviks. Their wages are
insignificant if compared even with the camp followers of Bolshevik
garrisons, who, at any rate, get fed fairly regularly.
All officers were ordered in July to report to Alexandrovsky school
to be registered. About 20,000 appeared, and were shut up for three
days without air, food, or sleep. Many went mad, and Lettish and
Chinese guard mercilessly bayoneted those Who attempted to escape
when they were finally let out.
Residents in area round Butirsky prison abandoned their houses
owing to the numerous executions of " counter-revolutionary in-
tellectuals."
Every day typhoid and tuberculosis are increasing, and ordinary
population are quite unable to procure medical supplies even at the
most outrageous prices.
Infants have been nationalised and become property of State
upon attaining the age of eighteen.
As Petrograd has ceased to be the Bolshevik headquarters, military
situation there is better. In spite of this, after the murder of Uritsky,
the Bolshevik commissary, the town virtually ran with blood. Owing
to there being less food even than in Moscow, the death roll from disease
is much higher. This is also due to the fact that, without being buried,
corpses of horses, dogs, and human beings lie about in the streets.
Cholera took very heavy toll in summer, as all the canals are
polluted with decomposed bodies of men and animals.
31
Things are considerably better on Viborg side, but although
Bolsheviks get food themselves, they take good care that none gets
to the bourgeoisie from Finland side.
It may be considered that whole population of Petrograd is virtually
insane, if not hunger-stricken, and, unlike the people in Moscow, who
have suffered less, it is unable to appreciate possibility of utter
extermination of educated elements. To release and provide food for
themselves and their armies, Bolsheviks will be forced ultimately to
kill off the greater portion of population. In any of big towns, as
at Petrograd, Moscow, and Kursk, a horrible massacre is possible at
any moment.
No. 18.
Mr. Alston to Mr. Balfour. — (Received January 6.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, January 5, 1919.
FOLLOWING from British consul, Ekaterinburg, of 3rd January : —
" Have just returned from Perm after taken by Siberian Army
under General Peplief. Tremendous booty was captured, including
4,000 waggons, 260 locomotives, 70 per cent, of which working condition ;
30,000 prisoners, 50 guns, 10 armoured cars, great number automobiles,
and other material not yet counted. Part of 4,000 waggons captured
full every conceivable domestic material stolen from shops and inhabi-
tants, loaded for evacuation by Bolsheviks. Bridge across Kama intact.
From interviews, local authorities and inhabitants, would appear that
Bolsheviks subjected inhabitants to horrible repressions and cruelties,
especially after attempt Lenin's life. Have examined witnesses who
found bodies of their relatives killed by bayonet wounds, faces wearing
marks boot nails ; no bullet marks found on these bodies. Instruments
used for torturing victims also found. No data available regarding
number people killed ; number educated people enquiring for missing
male relatives stated by authorities as being very great. Educated
population during last three months have been practically starving,
food allowances only being given to people employed by Bolsheviks.
Food supply of Bolsheviks, however, not great, one pound bad bread
being allowed daily for workmen. Taking of Perm has great economic
significance."
No. 20.
General Poole to War Office. — (Received January 9.)
(Telegraphic.) January 8, 1919.
THE Bolsheviks are now employing gangs of Chinese for the purpose,
of killing officers and deserters. Peasants have been killed by these
gangs for refusing to comply with requisitioning decrees, and even the
families of officers serving here have been murdered. The above is
based on authentic information.
32
No. 21.
General Poole to War Office.— {Received January 12.)
(Telegraphic.) January 11, 1919.
FROM intercepted radios and leaflets it is clear that, to allay
hostility abroad, Bolsheviks are conducting double campaign. Leaflets
are distributed among German troops, while decrees which are not
intended to be put into force, and appeals are radioed to Berlin, which
show Bolsheviks in sufficiently liberal light to bring them into line with
German Socialists. Appeals to unite and force world-wide revolution
are made at the same time to proletariats. It is manifest from numerous
deserters and refugees from Central Russia efforts to destroy social and
economic life of country have not abated. There is evidence to show
that commissariats of free love have been established in several towns,
and respectable women flogged for refusing to yield. Decree for
nationalisation of women has been put into force, and several experi-
ments made to nationalise children. I trust His Majesty's Government
will not 'allow Peace Conference to be influenced by Bolshevik
presentation of their case abroad, as their action at home is diametrically
opposed to this.
No. 22.
Mr. Alston to Mr. Balfour. — {Received January 15.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, January 14, 1919.
I HAVE received following from consul at Ekaterinburg, dated
the 13th January : —
" The number of innocent civilians brutally murdered in Ural
towns run into hundreds. Officers taken prisoners by Bolsheviks
here had their shoulder straps nailed into their shoulders, girls have
been raped, some of the civilians have been found with their eyes pierced
out, others without noses, whilst twenty-five priests were shot at Perm,
Bishop Andronick having been buried alive there.
" I have been promised the total number of killed and other details,
when available."
No. 23.
General Knox to War Office. — {Received January 16.)
(Telegraphic.) Omsk, January 15, 1919.
AN officer has just returned from a few days' visit to Perm. Before
the revolution he was employed at Perm. He states that he arrived
there on the 28th December. The town was captured by the Bolsheviks
on the 24th, and they fed no one except those in their employ. He
says he was unable to recognise his old acquaintances, as their cheeks
were sunken, their faces were yellow, and they looked like palsied old
men. The Bolsheviks have raised a battalion of 700 officers, but they
will have to be fed for several weeks before they are in a condition to
33
fight. Starvation will, he says, claim half the population of the towns
before June if Bolshevism is not stamped out in Russia. The peasants
hate the Bolsheviks owing to constant requisitions, but they are better
off. The peasants will only sow sufficient for their own needs for next
harvest. He is of opinion that Bolsheviks will not be suppressed without
the use of outside force, as anti-Bolshevik classes are too enfeebled by
hunger to make any effort. There are of course numerous murders.
There was one commissary who used to have a dozen prisoners out
every night, and before loading by ball-cartridge, made the firing
party snap their rifles at them ten or a dozen times. As the educated
workmen have been taken away by the Bolsheviks, the chances of the
factories producing anything for several months is negligible. It is
difficult to bring coal from the Ural mountains, as the bridges over
the Chasovaya, east of Perm, have been destroyed. Is it possible
that public opinion in Allied countries will allow Bolsheviks to continue
this wholesale murder ? They will, moreover, increase in strength
as Russians have to serve them or starve. This matter is not one that
only concerns Russia, as the food supply of the world is affected.
No. 25.
Colonel Wade to British Peace Conference Commission, Paris, and Foreign
Office.
(Telegraphic.) Warsaw, January 19, 1919.
NUMBER of Corean and Chinese units is reported to be increasing
by persons arriving from Ukraine and Soviet Russia. Sole object of
these units is plunder, as they are merely bandits and not a regular
army. Gravity of situation created by this new development cannot
be sufficiently emphasised.
No. 26.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon.— (Received January 25.)
(Telegraphic.) • Vladivostock, January 23, 1919.
FOLLOWING from High Commissioner : —
" Following statements respecting Bolsheviks in Perm and neigh-
bourhood are taken from reports sent by His Majesty's consul at
Ekaterinburg. The Omsk Government have similar information : —
" The Bolsheviks can no longer be described as a political party
holding extreme communistic view. They form relatively small privi-
leged class which is able to terrorise the rest of the population because
it has a monopoly both of arms and of food supplies. This class consists
chiefly of workmen and soldiers, and included a large non-Russian
element, such as Letts and Esthonians and Jews ; the latter are specially
numerous in higher posts. Members of this class are allowed complete
licence, and commit crime against other sections of society.
" The army is well disciplined, as a most strict system especially
is applied to it.
(1057) D
34
" It is generally said that officers are forced to serve because then
families are detained as hostages. The population of Perm was
rationed, and non-Bolsheviks received only \ lb. of bread a day.
" The peasantry suffered less, but were forbidden under pain oJ
death to sell food to any but Bolsheviks.
" The churches were closed, for many priests were killed, and a
bishop was buried alive.
" This and other barbarous punishments, such as dipping people
in rivers, till they were frozen to death. Those condemned to be shot
were led out several times and fired at with blank cartridges, never
knowing when the real execution would take place. Many othei
atrocities are reported.
" The Bolsheviks apparently were guilty of wholesale murder in
Perm, and it is certain that they had begun to operate a plan of
systematic extermination. On a lamp above a building were the words :
' Only those who fight shall eat.' "
No. 27.
Lord Kilmarnock to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 1.)
My Lord, Copenhagen, January 21, 1919.
I HAVE the honour to report that a reliable Danish engineer,
employed in the Ryabusinsky factory near Moscow, who has travelled
considerably in Russia lately, and who left Petrograd on the 1 1th instant,
reports that there is a growing tendency on the part of the Central
Committees to disregard the local committees and to absorb all the
power. Though the Bolshevik regime was more hated than ever,
resistance from inside was less strong, and as nearly the whole population
was suffering from starvation the people were physically incapable oi
throwing off the yoke of the oppressors. My informant stated that
recently, in connection with arranging a credit for his factory, he had
to deal with the committees, and he was surprised to find how largely
they were recruited from former officers, directors of factories, &c,
and he said that every day there were fewer people who refused to serve
the Red Guard. The hostility between the soldiers and the peasants
was less acute as the stocks of the latter were now exhausted and they
no longer feared the arbitrary requisitions of the guards. Only the
smaller peasants were admitted to the committees.
The Chinese guard in Petrograd numbered about 5,000, and discipline
in the Bolshevik army was severer than ever before and executions as
numerous. Peasants were being mobilised, but as they resisted, they
were always distributed in several regiments so that there should be
no large focus of discontent in any particular regiment.
His own factory, which had been nationalised, was still working
and 6,000 workmen were employed. Though there were still a feu
Bolsheviks among them, the majority had gradually seceded and hac
given up their belief in Bolshevism. As the factory owned a foresl
they were still able to get fuel, and shoddy goods were turned out, whicf.
were handed over to the Central, but my informant states that the}
were not sold, but weie added to the stocks of goods collected by the
Central. His factory was one of the few that were still working as
35
owing to lack of raw materials and especially of fuel, one after
another had been obliged to close down. A passenger train ran daily
between Petrograd and Moscow and a few goods trains, but owing to
lack of fuel it was stated that this service would be further curtailed.
As regards food conditions, the situation was getting worse day by
day, and in Petrograd the majority of persons were living on |lb. of
oats a day. The Red Guards were better off, as they could still obtain
small quantities of tea, sugar, and bread, but even for the highest prices
other people could not get food.
Transport difficulties increased day by day as there were hardly
any horses left in Petrograd, and innumerable formalities had to be
gone through before a parcel could be taken from a shop or a store.
All transport without a permit was prohibited.
The food question dominates all others.
I have, &c,
KILMARNOCK.
No. 28.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 3.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 1, 1919.
FOLLOWING from High Commissioner, 30th January : —
" Consul at Ekaterinburg has forwarded a report from Military
Investigation Commission at Verkhoturi in Northern Urals to following
effect : —
" British workman, Alexander Smith, was arrested and kept in
prison at Verkhoturi by Bolshevik authorities from 30th September
to 12th October, 1918, on which latter day he was shot. Order for
imprisonment contained no charge, and Commission state that they
believe that he was arrested solely because he was a British subject.
" When Government troops occupied Verkhoturi on 16th October
they found body outside the town ' in a mutilated condition,' and gave
it ceremonious burial.
" I hear that Bolsheviks killed two British subjects at Perm.
Names unknown."
No. 29.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 3.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 2, 1919.
FOLLOWING from High Commissioner 31st January : —
" Following details respecting Bolshevik regime at Lisva, a town
of 30,000 inhabitants between Ekaterinburg and Perm, were given to
me by Mr. T , a British subject, who was there until 17th December,
when the town was taken.
" Life was tolerable until July. A system of rations was in force
before Bolsheviks came into power, and was not at first abused.
" Terrorism began after attempt on Lenin in July. Considerable
number of people were shot in Lisva and other towns for no apparent
36
reason. Persons were arrested and had to bail themselves out often
several times, and often under threats of death. Orders were received
to arrest all foreigners, especially British and French. Mr. T was
able to hide, and was only under arrest for a short time.
" In the town there were 25 commissioners and 1,000 smaller
officials. They drew 6,000,000 roubles salary, occupied houses of the
upper and middle classes, and had plenty of provisions, as had also
the soldiers.
" Non-Bolsheviks had J pound of bread per day.
" He thought wholesale murder or bodily torture was the exception,
but he confirmed reports of people being led out to be shot several times.
Many people went mad under this and similar mental agony.
" Churches were not closed, but soldiers were forbidden attendance,
and bells were not rung. Only civil marriages were permitted. He
had heard nothing about nationalization of women.
" Army was well disciplined, and he believes it is still formidable.
Officers forced to serve in it did not seem to mind their position as
much as might be expected. Soldiers were allowed to loot freely.
When Lisva was evacuated 1,800 prisoners were removed to Perm.
" Considered as a machine for executing its own purposes, he thought
Bolshevik administration efficient and energetic. There was a regular
service of trains between Urals and European Russia, but only Bolshevik
officers could have passenger car, others travelling in trucks.
" Peasantry were against Bolsheviks because they were subject to
unnecessary requisitions, whereas workmen had much higher wages
and did much less work than formerly.
" Mr. T said that we ought not to treat with them as a political
party, and that he believed conditions of life in Petrograd and Moscow
were terrible, and much worse than in Eastern Russia."
No. 30.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 6.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 4, 1919.
FOLLOWING from consul at Ekaterinburg, dated 1st February : —
" According to information received from General Staff here,
prisoners returning from Germany via Vyatka report armed revolt
of peasants of Vyatka district against Bolshevik mobilisation. Not
only revolters themselves suffered death penalty for revolting, but also
their whole families."
No. 31.
Interviews with Mr. A. and Mr. B., who left Moscow on January 21, 1919.
Mr. A. and Mr. B., two British subjects who left Moscow on the
21st January, were interviewed at the Foreign Office on the 10th
February about present conditions in Moscow.
37 «
Mr. B., who was a teacher in a Moscow secondary school, the
" practical academy," gave the following information about conditions
in the school in which he taught. This school was typical of many
others.
Each class has its committee, and as a rule the most popular boy
is chosen to represent the others at the masters' meetings. The objects
of the committees are: (1) To control the masters; (2) to arrange
about the distribution of food, all the boys and girls in the school being
given a mid-day meal. This is, as a matter of fact, the only reason
that they go to school at all.
Both boys and girls are herded together, and there is no semblance
of morality. The entire absence of discipline in this connection is
having an extremely bad effect on the coming generation. In the
classes all semblance of discipline has been destroyed. The children
do exactly as they like, sometimes walking out in the middle of a lesson.
This is especially the case in the lesson before the mid-day meal, as they
are all anxious to get the first places. No punishments, no home-work
and no marks are allowed. The attendance is abominable, the children
coming and going just as they think fit. It is impossible to keep order,
and the classes are simply like a bear-garden. If a master does not
happen to be popular, the boys turn him out. Sometimes a master
may go to a class to give a lesson, only to find the boys holding a
committee meeting which must not be disturbed.
At Kolomna, between Moscow and Kazan, a boy aged 18 was
appointed commissar of the whole school, being in charge of all the
teachers. On one occasion he closed the school for a whole week because
one of the masters gave a boy a bad mark.
The universities suffer from the same lack of discipline. Any boy
of 16 years of age is entitled to enter the university without showing
any certificate, so that even if a boy is unable to read or write, he can
still enter the university.
The Bolsheviks have advertised far and wide the benefits of the
new proletarian culture. The above facts throw an interesting light
on the way it works in practice.
Mr. A., who is a Moscow man, gave the following information about :
(1) the "terror"; (2) conditions in factories with which he was
acquainted ; (3) the shops in Moscow : —
1. The " Terror."
Executions still continue in the prisons, though the ordinary people
do not hear about them. Often during the executions a regimental
band plays lively tunes. The following account of an execution was
given to Mr. A. by a member of one of the bands. On one occasion he
was playing in the band, and as usual, all the people to be executed were
brought to the edge of the grave. Their hands and feet were tied
together so that they would fall forward into the grave. They were
then shot through the neck by Lettish soldiers. When the last man
had been shot the grave was closed up, and on this particular occasion
the band-man saw the grave moving. Not being able to stand the sight
of it, he fainted, whereupon the Bolsheviks seized him, saying that he
was in sympathy with the prisoners. They were on the point of killing
% 38
him, but other members of the band explained that he was really ill,
and he was then let off. Among the prisoners shot on that occasion
was a priest, who asked permission to say a prayer before being shot,
to which the Bolsheviks replied laconically, " Ne Nado " (It is not
necessary) .
2. Conditions in Factories.
At the principal factory at Kolomna, a town on the Moscow and
Kazan Railway, there are only about 5,000 workers out of the normal
total of 25,000. The factory is run by a committee of three— one
workmen, one engineer, and one director. Here, as everywhere, all the
workman are discontented and would much prefer the old management.
The situation is intolerable. Nobody works and nobody wants to work,
while the one and only topic of conversation is food. All the people
are discontented because they have not got enough to eat.
At Domodedova, near Moscow, the fine-cloth factory was still
working before Christmas, but the output was estimated at 5 per cent,
of the normal. The factory was run by a Committee of Workmen, but
the owner used to meet the Committee occasionally to discuss the
working of the factory with them, and to give them advice. All the
workmen were discontented with the way in which the factory was run,
and most of them wanted the old managers back again. But as long as
the Bolsheviks pay the men high wages they will stay there, though
they do practically no work at all. They have to pretend to be
Bolshevik, but in reality they are not in sympathy with them at all.
3. Shops in Moscow.
No shops are open at all except the Soviet shops. The Bolsheviks
close down certain shops, take down the signs, and remove all the
material without paying for it. They then put up signs of their own
announcing the sale of clothing, which they sell at twice the price
which was charged at the shop from which they took the stuff. No
new stuff is now being made at all. What is now being sold is entirely
old stock.
No. 33.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 11.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 8, 1919.
FOLLOWING from consul at Ekaterinburg, 6th February : —
" From examination of several labourer and peasant witnesses I
have evidence to the effect that very smallest percentage of this district
were pro-Bolshevik, majority of labourers sympathising with summoning
of Constituent Assembly. Witnesses further stated that Bolshevik
leaders did not represent Russian working classes, most of them being
Jews.
" As a result of refusal of 4,000 labourers near Ekaterinburg to
support local Bolsheviks many were arrested, and twelve were suffocated
alive in slag gas-pit, their mutilated bodies being buried afterwards,
and ninety peasants taken out of Ekaterinburg prison, where they had
been thrown because they objected to Bolsheviks requisitioning their
cattle, &c, were brutally murdered.
39
No. 35.
Lord Kilmarnock to Earl Curzon. — {Received February 11.)
My Lord, Copenhagen, February 6, 1919.
I HAVE the honour to forward herewith a translation of the first
official report on the atrocities committed by the Bolsheviks in Wesen-
berg and Dorpat, which has been furnished me by the Esthonian
representative here.
I have, &c,
KILMARNOCK.
Enclosure in No. 35.
Atrocities Perpetrated by the Bolsheviks in Esthonia.
In Wesenberg.
AFTER the Esthonian troops had reconquered the town of
Wesenberg from the Bolsheviks, the graves of those murdered by the
latter during their short period of " terrorism " were opened on the
17th January, 1919. The following officials were present : Town
Governor, Aren ; President of the District Administration, Hr. Juhkam ;
Deputy Mayor, Jakobson ; Militia Commandant, Kiitt ; Assistant
Militia Commandant, Tenneberg ; Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Wiren ;
and the previous Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Utt.
The vicinity of the graves of the victims of the Red Terror showed
with what brutal roughness the Bolsheviks had executed their victims.
Everywhere was to be seen congealed blood amongst which tattered
pieces of cap, bits of clothing, brains and fragments of skull with hair
could be distinguished. In the first grave sixteen bodies were found,
which were later photographed. Among these the following were
identified : Army doctor, Dr. Reinik ; the Greek Catholic priest,
Sergei Filorenski ; ambulance soldier, Ellenberg, of Reval ; the local
merchant, Gustav Bock ; Tonis Podra, of Gut Uhtna ; a railway
official, Tonu Poiklik, of Wesenberg ; Ferdinand Tops, from the parish
of Undle ; Rudolf Rost, ambulance soldier, of Tudulinne ; Eduard
Sepp, of the Estate Welsi, and the shoemaker Kolk, of Wesenberg.
Sixteen victims were also in the other grave. The following were
recognised : Heinrich Mikker, of Kunda ; Joh. Ed. Jarw, of Gem
Kiiti ; Juri Juhkam, of the parish of Roela ; Hugo Lang, of the parish
of Kiiti ; Josep Koovits, of Kunda ; Harriette von Miihlen, of the
Tudu Estate ; Walter Pauker, the clergyman of Wesenberg ; Gustav
Sone, from the parish of Kiiti ; von Hesse, an official of Wesenberg ;
Peter Sakkar, from Kunda ; Arthur Sulto, from Kunda; Jakob Raja,
forester from the Estate of Lobu ; Hugo Rannaberg, from the parish
of Kiiti.
The third and largest of the graves was opened on the 18th January.
It was 4 metres long and 2 metres deep, and filled to the top with corpses.
Fifty bodies were found here, among whom the following were
recognised : Rudolf Peets, of Laekwere ; Carl Erde, of Haljala ; Daniel
Sellow, a merchant of Laekwere ; Jean Rebane, from the village of
40
Assanalls ; Johannes Lomberg, of Ambla ; Hindrick Roosilill, from the
Tape Estate ; Eduard Walow, of Wesenberg ; Gustav Koolmann, of
Walnupea ; Mihkel Klein, from the parish of Kiiti ; August Marton,
from Malla ; Dr. Morits Ling, from Kunda ; Siim Magi, of Malla ;
Juri Kuller, from the Inju Estate ; Johannes Marton, from Malla ;
Konrad Preisberg, of Ambla ; Ernst Klein, from the parish of Kiiti ;
Karl Paas, of Kuline ; Arthur Waan, soldier of the Militia, from the
parish of Wihula ; Juri Lemming, of Ambla ; Willen Piidermann, of
Rahkla ; Karl Knauf, proprietor of Nomkula ; Karl Pudel, from
Rahkla ; Johannes Schmitnar, tenant of the Tapa Estate ; Frau van
Rehekampf, of Wesenberg ; August Paas, of Kulina ; Lima Liimann,
of the parish of Aaspere ; Jeannette, Baroness Wrangel, of Wesenberg ;
Frau von Samson, of Wesenberg ; Leopold Aron, head of the Post
Stage of Wesenberg ; Jaan Paas, of Kulina ; railway official Older,
of St. Piissi ; Mihkel Marton, of Malla ; Juri Magi, of Inju ; Feodar
Niimm, of Osel ; Bernh. Wold Lessel, of Wesenberg ; . Masik, soldier
of the people's army from the Government of Twer ; J. Heinrich
Grauberg, of Rahkla ; Priidik Wilder, of Laekwere ; Julius Kiitsel,
of Laekwere ; Marta Afanasjewa, Sister of Mercy, of Kunda ; Marie
Kirsch, of Wesenberg.
All the bodies showed signs of the rage and revenge of the
Bolsheviks. The victims were all robbed of everything except their linen,
their boots also having been taken. The Bolsheviks had shattered the
skulls of thirty-three of the bodies, so that the heads hung like bits
of wood on the trunks. As well as being shot, most of the murdered
had been pierced with bayonets, the entrails torn out, and the bones
of the arm and leg broken.
How the victims were executed by the Bolsheviks is described
by one of these unfortunates, Proprietor A. Munstrum, who managed
to save himself by a miracle : — " On the afternoon of the 11th January,
fifty-six of us were led to the place of execution, where the grave was
already made. Half of us, including six women, were placed at the
edge of the grave. The women were to be killed first, as their cries were so
heartrending the murderers could not listen to them any longer. One
woman tried to escape, but did not get far. They fired a volley, and
she sank to the ground wounded. Then the Bolsheviks dragged her
by the feet into the grave. Five of the murderers sprang after
her, shot at her, and stamped on her body with their feet till she was
silent. Then a further volley was fired at the other victims. In the
same way they were thrown into the graves and done to death with
butt-ends and bayonets. After which the murderers once more stamped
on the bodies. . . ."
In Dorfiat.
Also in Dorpat the Bolsheviks committed the same kind of atrocities
as in Wesenberg. On Christmas evening the well-kncwn Director of
Fisheries, Zoological Student Max von zur Miihlen, was murdered.
On the 26th December the following persons were shot : Mihkel
Kiis, Alex Lepp, Alexander Aland, and Karl Soo.
On the 9th January the Bolsheviks murdered the following persons :
August Meos, Abram Schreiber, Woldemar Rasta, butcher Beer Stark,
Baron Paul yon Tiesenhausen, Woldemar and Johann Ottas, Mikhel
Kure, Friedrich Pass, Bruno von Samson-Himmelstjerna, Harald von
41
Samson-Himmelstjerna, Gustav von Samson- Himmelstjerna, goldsmith
Rudolf Kipasto.
All these persons were dragged to the Embach River and shot down.
The dead bodies were put into the river through ice-holes. Later,
when the Esthonian troops had reconquered Dorpat, sixteen of these
victims of the Red Terror were found in the Embach. As could be
ascertained from the bodies, these victims had been tortured in the
most dreadful manner. Many had arms and legs broken, the skull
knocked in, &c. It was evident that Karl Soo, who was shot on the
26th December, had suffered most of all. The Bolsheviks had put out
his eyes. On the 14th January, shortly before they were driven out by
the Esthonian troops, the Bolsheviks killed twenty of their prisoners.
After an official enquiry it was ascertained that this bloody deed took
place in the following manner : The poor unfortunates, over 200 in
number, who were kept in the Credit-system Bank and the police
station, had to stand in a row. The names of the victims were then
called out. They were robbed of their clothes, boots, and valuables, and
led to the cellar of the Credit-system Bank, where the Bolsheviks,
with hatchet blows, shattered their skulls. In this manner the above-
mentioned, approximately twenty persons, were murdered, and only
the hasty flight of the Red Guard from the Esthonian troops saved the
remaining prisoners, among whom were from sixty to eighty women.
Otherwise they would have been done to death in the same way. Among
the bodies of the murdered the following were recognised : Archbishop
Platon, Recording Clerk Michael Bleiwe, of the Unspenski Church ;
the grey-headed clergyman of the Greek Orthodox Georgs-Church ;
Priest Nikoli Beshanitzki, Professor and University clergyman Dr.
Traugott Hahn, Hermann von Samson-Himmelstjerna, of Kawershof ;
Heinrich von Krasse, owner of Rewold ; Banker Arnold von Tidebohl,
Herbert von Schrenk, Baron Konstant von Knorring, Pastor Wilhelm
Schwartz, Councillor Gustav Tensmann, Councillor Gustav Seeland,
Merchant Surman Kaplan, Master Potter Ado Luik, Merchant Harry
Vogel, Merchant Massal, and co-worker of " Postimees," Karner.
Dr. Wolfgang, of Reyher, who shortly after the murders — the
bodies were still warm — examined the above-mentioned cellar of the
Credit-system Bank, reports the following with regard to the
appearance of the room where this foul deed took place : The floor of
the whole room was covered with bodies, piled one upon the other
in most unnatural positions, which could only be attributable to a
violent death. In the middle the bodies were in three layers, wearing
only underclothing. Nearly all had shots in the head, which had been
received recently, because in a few cases the skull had been totally
shattered, and in one case the skull hung by a thread. Some bodies
showed signs of several shots. All was thick with blood, also on the
bed, and on the walls congealed masses of blood and pieces of skull
were to be seen. I counted twenty-three bodies, but it was easy to
make a mistake, as it was difficult to recognise individual bodies in
the heap. Not a bit of the floor was clear, so that I had to trample
over bodies to reach others. The search for a sign of life was in vain.
After a later examination of the bodies, it was found that Bishop
Platon had a bullet in the brain over the right eye, and death had been
instantaneous. The left side of Priest Bleiwe's face had been shattered
from the blow of an axe. The Bolshevik executioner's axe had hit
42
Priest Bjeschanitzki in the middle of his face. From these blows the
faces of both priests were so mutilated as to be almost beyond
recognition. Both the arms and the head of Vicar Schwartz were
hacked off. The Bolsheviks had nailed an officer's shoulder straps
firmly to his shoulders. All the bodies and the cellar where they lay
have been photographed.
No. 36.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 12.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 11, 1919.
I HAVE received the following statement from a British consular
official, who was at Ekaterinburg in September, 1918, regarding the
situation in that town during Bolshevik regime, from 1917 until the
end of 1918, when town was relieved by Czechs : —
Bolsheviks ruthlessly " nationalised " all property during first
four or five months, including British firms, like Contutshtim, Syssert,
&c, and they made constant demands on all moneyed merchant classes
for huge contributions, with penalty of arrest and confiscation of all
belongings unless paid promptly. Businesses of all kinds, banks, and
houses were either placed under control of labour elements or nationalised,
and to such a low level were industry and manufacture reduced that
they practically came to a standstill. Systematic searches of houses and
private individuals took place daily, and gold and silver ornaments,
and even spare clothes, were taken without compensation, and merchants
who attempted to' resist or evade constant decrees from local Soviet
were immediately arrested. Robberies and murders were frequent,
law and order were at very low ebb, and almost complete anarchy
reigned. A local consular corps was formed in March, 1918, consisting
of consuls and representatives of some dozen different nationalities
to act as an intermediary between Bolshevik Soviet and subjects of
foreign Powers, owing to the molestation of foreign subjects.
All public meetings were suppressed, and, with the exception of the
daily official organ of the Bolsheviks, no papers or printed matter could
be published.
Czech movement on Omsk began towards the end of May. We
were in a state of siege from the end of May to the 25th July, when
Bolsheviks finally evacuated the town and Czechs marched in. Bolshevik
terrorism succeeded Bolshevik despotism. Having publicly announced
their intention of making " red terror " as dreadful as possible, they
arrested hundreds of private citizens as hostages for the sole reason
that they belonged to so-called bourgeoisie and " Intelligentsia." Hotels
and private residences were requisitioned to accommodate these hostages,
as prisons were full of them ; under armed bands of Red Guards 'scores
were taken to the front to do work for " Proletariat Army," and dig
trenches. Without semblance of a trial, many of them were shot during
June and July. A placard on the walls of one of the gates which was
reprinted in Bolshevik paper the following day, was the first intimation
we had of this. This proclamation gave names of nineteen citizen
hostages who had been shot, amongst whom were the member of a
well-known engineering firm, Mr. Fadyef, and the manager of Syssert
43
Company (an English undertaking), Mr. Makronosoef. The rest were
mostly peaceful, hard-working merchants and mostly well-known
persons. Eight more were shot a few days later, amongst them being
the son of a wealthy flour-miller, Mr. Markarow. Number of bodies,
amounting, I believe, to sixty or more, were discovered after Czechs
took the town. Subsequently it was discovered that they were shot
in the most cruel manner, just like animals in woods, and some of them
were undoubtedly left to die on the ground, as no pains were taken to
discover whether their wounds were mortal or not. It was alleged by
Bolsheviks that to prevent any counter-revolutionary movement in
the town it was necessary to terrorise population in this manner.
Consular corps were informed roughly that Bolsheviks would allow no
interference, when they protested against these wholesale assassinations.
Although they vigorously denied it, Bolsheviks began to evacuate
Ekaterinburg about the middle of July. One of their leaders publicly
stated that if they were obliged to leave the town they would massacre
a thousand citizens.
Three days before they finally left Ekaterinburg, Bolsheviks
announced at a public meeting on 25th December that they had
recently shot the Emperor. Their system of espionage was very perfect,
and during whole of their regime nobody dared to utter a word that
might be construed into anti-Bolshevism, as they were liable to be
immediately arrested and shot.
In addition to the above-mentioned horrors we were always
anticipating an outbreak of typhus, cholera or other epidemic, as every-
thing was in a state of unutterable filth, no attempts being made to
clean buildings, offices, streets, railway stations or trains. i
Everybody appeared dejected and depressed, and decent and
cleanly dressed people were seldom seen in the streets.
Bolshevik evacuation was most thoroughly carried out, and it
is estimated that they took with them over 4,000,000,000 roubles
worth of platinum, gold, stores, and money. There is no doubt that
there would have been a great many more murders if they had not
been so busily engaged in this plunder, but owing to rapid advance of
Czechs, they were forced to hasten their departure.
There will be wholesale massacres of moneyed and merchant classes
if Bolsheviks succeed in retaking Ekaterinburg.
No. 37.
Notes on Interviews with Mr. C. and Mr. D., February 13, 1919.
Mr. C. and Mr. D. were interviewed this morning in the Foreign
Office. They both left Petrograd on the 17th January. Mr. C. was
manager of a big firm in Petrograd, and was in prison three and a
half months.
In the cities the cry of the Bolsheviks has been " the proletariat
against the bourgeoisie," though as most of the big capitalists got away,
it has really been the oppression of the de-bourgeoisie and the intelligent
workmen by the dregs of the population.
44
1. The Villages.
In the villages poverty committees, composed of peasants without
land and of hooligans returned from the towns, have been set against
the peasant proprietor. Local government has been handed over to
these poverty committees, and they take from the peasant proprietor
his produce, implements, and live-stock, retaining what they need
themselves and forwarding the remainder to the towns. The peasant
will not give grain to the Bolsheviks because he hates them, and hopes
by this means to destroy them eventually. He is armed and united.
It is for this reason that armed requisitioning companies are sent out
everywhere from Petrograd and Moscow to help the poverty committees
to take the grain from the peasant, and every day all over Russia such
fights for grain are fought to a finish till either the peasants or the
requisitioning party are wiped out. During my stay in prison I met
and talked to dozens of peasant proprietors arrested on the charge
of counter-revolution. In my escape across the frontier, I slept in
two peasants' cabins, and although they were living under the worst
conditions, so poor that fourteen people lived and slept in a cabin a
few yards square, they cursed the Bolsheviks with tears in their eyes.
One of the latest decrees only allows a peasant to have one cow and
one horse for " every five members of his family. The peasant pro-
prietors, who probably will one day be the strongest party in the future
Russia, are anti-Bolshevik to a man.
2. Red Army.
No more satisfied are the soldiers. In fact the only troops the
Bolsheviks can trust are the Lettish, Chinese, and a few battalions
of sailors. They give them 250 roubles a month, all found, together
with presents of gold watches and chains requisitioned from the
bourgeoisie. Newly conscripted troops are not given rifles in Petrograd,
except a few in each regiment for the purposes of instruction. They are
only handed out to them at the front. For any military offence there
is only one punishment — death. Executions are done mostly by the
Chinese. If a regiment retreats against orders machine-guns are turned
on them, and if the commissar of the regiment cannot thus hold his
men he is shot. All the soldiers I spoke to, even those acting as our
guards at the prison, cursed their fate at being compelled to serve,
the only alternative being death from hunger or execution as deserters.
Nearly all openly expressed the hope that the British would soon come
and put an end to it all.
3. Workmen
The position of the workmen is no better. At first the eight-hour
day with high minimum wages greatly pleased them, but as time went
on they found that owing to increased cost of living they were little,
if any, better off. Their wages were increased, but a vicious circle
was soon set up on which their wage increases were utterly unable to
keep up with the high cost of 'living. Reduction of output further
increased the cost. At the Petrograd wagon works the pre-Bolshevik
cost of passenger cars was 16,000 to 17,000 roubles ; it is now 100,000
to 120,000. At Government works, where the Bolsheviks would be
most likely to expect support, intense dissatisfaction exists. An official
45
warning was issued to the workmen of the Putilof works 'through the
official newspaper, stating that during a period of several weeks fires,
explosions, and break-downs had regularly occurred, which could only
be put down to traitors to the cause, who, when caught, would be shot.
4. Bourgeoisie.
The position of the bourgeoisie defies all description. All who
employ labour down to a servant girl, or an errand boy, or anyone
whose wants are provided for ahead, that is, all who do not live from
hand to mouth, are considered under Bolshevism as bourgeoisie. All
newspapers except the Bolshevik ones have been closed, and their plant
and property confiscated. New decrees by the dozen are printed daily
in the press, no other notification being given. Non-observance
of any decree means confiscation of all property. All Government
securities have been annulled and all others confiscated. Safe deposits
have been opened, and all gold and silver articles confiscated. All
plants and factories have been nationalised, as also the cinemas and
theatres. This nationalisation or municipalisation means to the
unhappy owner confiscation, since no payment is evei made. Payments
by the banks from current or deposit accounts have been stopped.
It is forbidden to sell furniture or to move it from one house to another
without permission. Persons living in houses containing more rooms
than they have members of their families have poor families billeted in
the other rooms, the furniture in these rooms remaining for the use of
the families billeted there. Hundreds of houses have been requisitioned
for official or semi-official use, and thousands of unhappy residents have
been turned out on the streets at an hour's notice with permission to
take with them only the clothes they stood in, together with one change
of linen. Houses are controlled by a poverty committee, composed
of the poorest residents of the house. These committees have the right
to take and distribute amongst themselves from the occupiers of the
flats all furniture they consider in excess. They also act as Bolshevik
agents, giving information as to movements. A special tax was levied
on all house property amounting practically to the full value of the
same. Failure to pay in fourteen days resulted in municipalisation
of property. All owners and managers of works, offices, and shops,
as well as members of the leisured classes, have been called up for
compulsory labour, first for the burial of cholera and typhus victims,
and later for cleaning the streets, &c. All goods lying at the
custom house warehouses have been seized and first mortgaged to
the Government Bank for 100,000,000 roubles. Any fortunate
owner of these goods, which were not finally confiscated, had the
possibility of obtaining them on payment of the mortgage. All fur-
niture and furs stored away have been confiscated. All hotels,
restaurants, provision shops, and most other shops, are now closed
after having had their stocks and inventories confiscated. Just before
we left a new tax was brought out, the extraordinary Revolutionary
Tax. In the Government newspapers there were printed daily lists
of people, street by street, district by district, with the amount they must
pay into the Government bank within fourteen days on pain of con-
fiscation of all property. The amounts, I noticed, ranged from 2,000
roubles to 15,000,000. It is impossible to imagine how these sums can
be paid.
46
5. Food Question.
The food question in Petrograd has gone from bad to worse.
Elaborate food cards are given out each month covering all kinds of
products, but for months past nothing has been given out on them
except bread, which has for the last few weeks consisted of unmilled
oats. There are now only three categories of food cards, the first being
for heavy workers, the second for workers, and the third for non-workers.
The last time bread was given out the daily allowance on card one was
half-a-pound, on card two quarter-pound, and on card three one-eight
pound. Hundreds of people are dying weekly from hunger, which
first causes acute swelling of the features. Many have managed to
get away, so that the present population is probably not more than
600,000. Wholesale starvation has only been prevented by the large,
illicit trade done in provisions by what are known as sack-men, who
travel by rail or road from the village with food in sacks. Butter is
now 80 roubles a pound ; beef 25 roubles ; pork 50 roubles ; black
bread 25 roubles ; and eggs 5 roubles each. Dog-meat costs 5 roubles
a pound, and horse-meat 18 roubles. Houses with central heating are
no longer heated owing to lack of coal. The amount of wood that
formerly cost 7 roubles, now costs 450, and only enough can be obtained
for one room. Restaurants have all been confiscated and turned into
communal kitchens, where the sole menu lately has been soup consisting
of water with a few potatoes in it, and a herring.
6. Oppression of Socialist Parties.
The political parties which have been most oppressed by the
Bolsheviks are the Socialists, Social Democrats, and Social Revolution-
aries. Owing to bribery and corruption — those notorious evils of the
old regime which are now multiplied under Bolshevism — capitalists
were able to get their money from the banks and their securities from
safe deposits, and managed to get away. On the other hand, many
members of Liberal and Socialist parties who have worked all their time
for the revolution, have been arrested or shot by the Bolsheviks. In
prison I met a Social Democrat who had been imprisoned for eleven
years in Schlusselberg Fortress as a political offender. Released at
the beginning of the Revolution he was within eighteen months
imprisoned by the Bolsheviks as a counter-revolutionary.
7. How do the Bolsheviks Continue to hold Power ?
They continue to hold power by a system of terrorism and tyranny
that has never before been heard of. This is centred at Gorokovaya 2,
under the title of the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-
Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage. Originally under the direction
of Uritski, it confined its operations to dealing with offences under these
headings, but after his death it came out frankly as an instrument of
the Red Terror, and since then its operations make the history of the
French Reign of Terror, or the Spanish Inquisition, appear mild by
comparison. People were arrested wholesale, not merely on individual
orders on information received from spies, but literally wholesale-
people arrested in the streets, theatres, cafes, every day in hundreds,
and conveyed to Gorokovaya 2. There their names and other details
were entered up, and next day in parties of a hundred or so marched
47
to one or another of the prisons, whilst their unhappy relations stood
for hours and days in queues endeavouring to learn what had become
of them. They were kept in prison two, three, or four months without
any examination or accusation being made. Then some were accused
and shot, fined, or all property confiscated. Others were allowed to
be ransomed by their friends, and others released without any explana-
tion. No trial was given. The accusation and examination were
made together, and the examiner was generally an ex-workman, or
even criminal. Examination was made in private. Sentence was
confirmed by a member of the Commission, and that is the only trial
anyone ever received at Gorokovaya 2. The climax was reached
after the murder of Uritski — attack on the British Embassy, and the
Lockhart affair, where hundreds of people were arrested in various,
parts of the town, mostly officers, who were shot and thrown into the
river, bound and thrown into the river, or bound, put into barges,
and the barges sunk, all without even the formality of being taken to
Gorokovaya 2. I was in prison from the 19th September to the 25th
December, and I could pretty well fill a book with my experiences,
but I will merely give a translation of an article printed in a Bolshevik
paper, the " Northern -Commune," No. 170, dated the 4th December,
1918 :—
" It is impossible to continue silent. It has constantly been
brought to the knowledge of the Viborg Soviet (Petrograd) of the
terrible state of affairs existing in the city prisons. That people
all the time are dying there of hunger ; that people are detained
six and eight months without examination, and that in many cases
it is impossible to learn why they have been arrested, owing to
officials being changed, departments closed, and documents lost.
In order to confirm, or otherwise, these rumours, the Soviet decided
to send on the 3rd November, a commission consisting of the
President of the Soviet, the district medical officer, and district
military commissar, to visit and report on the ' Kresti ' prison.
Comrades ! What they saw and what they heard from the im-
prisoned is impossible to describe. Not only were all rumours con-
firmed, but conditions were actually found much worse than had been
stated. I was pained and ashamed. I myself was imprisoned under
Tsardom in that same prison. Then all was clean, and prisoners
had clean linen twice a month. Now, not only are prisoners left
without clean linen, but many are even without blankets, and,
as in the past, for a trifling offence they are placed in solitary con-
finement in cold, dark cells. But the most terrible sights we saw were
in the sick bays. Comrades, there we saw living dead who hardly
had strength enough to whisper their complaints that they were
dying of hunger. In one word, amongst the sick a corpse had lain
for several hours, whose neighbour managed to murmur, ' Of hunger
he died, and soon of hunger we shall all die.' Comrades, amongst
them are many who are quite young, who wish to live and see the
sunshine. If we really possess a workmen's government such
things should not be."
8. Bolshevik Plans for World Revolution.
Bolshevism in Russia offers to our civilisation no less a menace
than did Prussianism, and until it is as ruthlessly destroyed we may
48
expect trouble, strikes, revolutions everywhere. The German military
party are undoubtedly working hand in hand with Russian Bolsheviks
with the idea of spreading Bolshevism ultimately to England, by which
time they hope to have got over it themselves, and to be in a position
to take advantage of our troubles. For Bolshevik propaganda unlimited
funds are available. No other country can give their secret service
such a free hand, and the result is that their agents are to be found
where least expected.
No. 38.
General Knox to War Office.
(Telegraphic.) Omsk, February 5 t 1919.
WITH regard to the murder of Imperial family at Ekaterinburg,
there is further evidence to show that there were two parties in the local
Soviet, one which was anxious to save Imperial family, and the latter,
headed by five Jews, two of whom were determined to have them
murdered. These two Jews, by name Vainen and Safarof, went with
Lenin when he made a journey across Germany. On pretext that
Russian guard had stolen 70,000 roubles, they were removed from the
house between t^he 8th and 12th. The guard were replaced by a house
guard of thirteen, consisting of ten Letts and three Jews, two of whom
were called Laipont and Yurowski, and one whose name is not
known. The guard was commanded outside the house by a criminal
called Medoyedof who had been convicted of murder and arson in 1906,
and of outraging a girl of five in 1911. The prisoners were awakened
at 2 a.m., and were told they must prepare for a journey. They were
called down to the lower room an hour later, and Yurowski read out
the sentence of the Soviet. When he had finished reading, he said,
" and so your life has come to an end." The Emperor then said, " I
am ready." An eye-witness, who has since died, said that the Empress
and the two eldest daughters made the sign of the cross. The massacre
was carried out with revolvers. The doctor, Botkine, the maid, the
valet, and the cook were murdered in this room as well as the seven
members of the Imperial family. They only spared the life of the cook's
nephew, a boy of fourteen. The murderers threw the bodies down the
shaft of a coal mine, and the same morning orders were sent to murder
the party at Alapaevsk, which was done.
No. 39.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 12.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 10, 1919.
FOLLOWING from consular officer at Ekaterinburg, 8th February :
" From examination of witnesses of various classes of population
following evidence obtained : —
" Bolsheviks persecuted all classes of population not supporting or
recognising their Government. House searches, requisitions, and
arrests were made at all times of day and night on grounds of political
necessity, resulting in wholesale pillage. Anybody possessing more
49
than 10,000 roubles was forced to dig trenches at front for Red Army,
where they are under continual menace of death for slightest offence,
and at mercy of Red Guard, very often consisting of foreigners ; many
of these persons were murdered. Eighteen peaceful citizens, including
priests, doctors, lawyers, merchants, and labourers were arrested at
Ekaterinburg as hostages, and shot without any accusations being made
against them. Sixty-five citizens from Kamishlof suffered same fate.
The widows of these people who claimed their husbands' bodies were
treated with outrageous insult and derision by Bolsheviks. Peasants
in Bolshevik district who protested against requisition of their cattle
and property were thrown into prison, and ninety murdered. Peasants
also had their houses burnt, as many as one hundred being destroyed
in one village. Bolshevik leaders in Ekaterinburg led a life of luxury
entirely in opposition to doctrine they advocated, frequently appro-
priating large sums of money and indulging in drunken orgies. Bribery,
corruption, and extortion were rife amongst both Bolshevik officials
and Red Guard men. Bolsheviks particularly oppressed Orthodox
clergy and religion. Czech soldiers witnesses give evidences that near
Khan Bolsheviks crucified father and sisters of man who served in
national army ; whole families of others in national army were shot.
There is sufficient information to hand to be able to state that Bolsheviks'
crimes in Ekaterinburg district are nothing in comparison with number
and character of atrocities committed in Perm and district."
No. 40.
Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon.
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 13, 1919.
Mr. T has just arrived here from Ekaterinburg. When at
Perm he says he lived in same hotel with Grand Duke Michael and Mr.
Johnson, his secretary, who was a Russian. At 2 A.M. on or about the
16th June he saw four of Perm " militzia " or police take them off, and
he is convinced that they were killed.
Previous reports of Bolshevik excesses at Perm are confirmed by
Mr. T , who says that usual method employed by them in the case
of merchants was to arrest them, release them, rearrest them, bail them
again — amount of bail to be paid increasing each time — and to shoot
them in the end.
No. 41.
Acting Consul Bell to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 13.)
(Telegraphic.) Helsingfors, February 12, 1919.
I LEARN on good authority that Grand Dukes Paul Alexandra vitch,
Dimitri Constantinovitch, Nickolai Michailovitch, Georges Michailovitch,
who were all confined in Petrograd in prison for preliminary investigation,
were removed on 29th January, 1919, to Peter and Paul fortress where,
on the same day, without further investigations, they were killed by
Red Guards with revolver shots.
It is said that Princess Palej, widow of the late Grand Duke Paul
Alexandrovitch, escaped from Petrograd after the murder of the Grand
Duke.
(1057) E
50
No. 42.
Consul General Bagge to Earl Curzon.— (Received February 16.)
(Telegraphic.) Odessa, February 13, 1919.
WIDESPREAD pillage by bands, murder of landowners, even of
peasants with few acres, has created very grave situation. Seed-gram
is largely lacking in consequence for spring sowing in Ukraine. As
these normally cover 70 per cent, of whole area, if measures are not
taken at once to replace supply from Kuban and elsewhere, there will
be no crop and consequently terrible famine. This state of things
applies to peasants as well as large landowners, the majority of whom
have had to flee to the coast towns.
The cardinal condition for saving Russia from famine is maintenance
of order in occupied territory or South Russia. Thousands of peasant
landowners, when they have moral and some physical support, will
be able to cope with bands of robbers under whatever names these
may act. These peasants further beg that property now existing in
land be declared inviolable until whole question shall be settled ;
without this assurance they do not care to risk expense of sowing for,
perhaps, another to reap.
The question is very urgent, for work on land in the south begins
in three to four weeks.
No. 44.
Sir C. Eliot to Earl Curzon. — (Received February 23.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 22, 1919.
FOLLOWING report of 71 Bolshevik victims received from
consular officer at Ekaterinburg, dated 19th February : —
" Nos. 1 to 18 Ekaterinburg citizens (first 3 personally known to
me) were imprisoned without any accusation being made against them,
and at four in the morning of 29th June were taken (with another,
making 19 altogether) to Ekaterinburg sewage dump, half mile from
Ekaterinburg, and ordered to stand in line alongside of newly-dug
ditch. Forty armed men in civil clothes, believed to be Communist
militia, and giving impression of semi-intelligent people, opened fire,
killing 18. The 19th, Mr. Chistoserdow, miraculously escaped in
general confusion. I, together with other consuls at Ekaterinburg,
protested to Bolsheviks against brutality, to which Bolsheviks replied,
advising us to mind our own business, stating that thev had shot these
people to avenge death of their comrade, Malishef, killed at front,
against Czechs.
" Nos. 19 and 20 are 2 of 12 labourers arrested for refusing to support
Bolshevik Government, and on 12th July thrown alive into hole into
which hot slag deposits from works at Verhisetski near Ekaterinburg.
Bodies were identified by fellow labourers.
" Nos. 21 to 26 were taken as hostages and shot at Kamishlof on
20th July.
51
" Nos. 27 to 33, accused of plotting against Bolshevik Government,
arrested 16th December at village of Troitsk, Perm Government.
Taken 17th December to station Silva, Perm Railway, and all decapi-
tated by sword. Evidence shows that victims had their necks half
cut through from behind, head of No. 29 only hanging on small piece
of skin.
" Nos. 34 to 36, taken with 8 others beginning of July from camp,
where they were undergoing trench-digging service ior Bolsheviks to
spot near Ufalei, about 80 versts from Ekaterinburg, and murdered
by Red Guards with guns and bayonets.
" Nos. 37 to 58, held in prison at Irbit as hostages, and 26th July
murdered by gun-shot, those not killed outright being finished off by
bayonet. These people were shot in small groups, and murder was
conducted by sailors and carried out by Letts, all of whom were drunk.
After murder, Bolsheviks continued to take ransom money from
relatives of victims, from whom they concealed crime.
" No. 59 was shot at village Klevenkinski, Verhotury district,
6th August, being accused of agitation against Bolsheviks.
" No. 60, after being forced to dig his own grave, was shot by
Bolsheviks at village Mercoushinski, Verhotury district, 13th July.
" No. 61 murdered middle of July at Kamenski works for allowing
church bells to be sounded contrary to Bolshevik orders ; body afterwards
found with others in hole with head half cut off.
" No. 62 arrested without accusation, 8th July, at village Ooetski,
Kamishlov district. Body afterwards found covered with straw and
dung, beard torn from face with flesh, palms of hands cut out, and
skin incised on forehead.
" No. 63 was killed after much torture (details not given), 27th July,
at station Anthracite.
" No. 67 murdered, 13th August, near village of Mironoffski.
" No. 68 shot by Bolsheviks before his church at village of
Korouffski, Kamishlov district, before eyes of villagers, his daughters
and son, date not stated.
" Nos. 69 to 71, killed at Kaslingski works near Kishtim, 4th June,
together with 27 other civilians. No. 70 had head smashed in, exposing
brains. No. 71 had head smashed in, arms and legs broken, and two
bayonet wounds.
" Dates in this telegram are 1918."
No. 45.
Sir C. Eliot to Earl Curzon. — -{Received February 25.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 24, 1919.
MY telegram of 22nd February.*
Following from consul at Ekaterinburg : —
" Nos. 72 to 103 examined, 32 civilians incarcerated as hostages
and taken away by Bolsheviks with 19 others at various dates between
9th July, 7th August, 27th July, all 51 having been declared outlaws.
Official medical examination of 52 bodies (of which 32 examined, Nos. 72
* See No. 44.
52
to 103 and 20 not identified), found in several holes ; 3 from Kamishlof
revealed that all had been killed by bayonet, sword, and bullet wounds.
Following cases being typical : No. 76 had 20 light bayonet wounds in
back ; No. 78 had 15 bayonet wounds in back, 3 in chest ; No. 80,
bayonet wounds in back, broken jaw and skull ; No. 84, face smashed
and wrist hacked ; No. 89 had 2 fingers cut off and bayonet wounds ;
No. 90, both hands cut off at wrist, upper jaw hacked, mouth slit both
sides, bayonet wound shoulder ; No. 98, little finger off left hand and
4 fingers off right hand, head smashed ; No. 99 had 12 bayonet wounds ;
No. 101 had 4 sword and 6 bayonet wounds.
" These victims are distinct from 66 Kamishlof hostage children
shot by machine guns near Ekaterinburg beginning of July, names
not obtainable."
No. 46.
Sir C. Eliot to Mr. Balfour. — (Received February 25.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, February 24, 1919.
AN appeal to all democratic parties to unite against Bolsheviks
has been published by the Omsk Government. Reasons given are
as follow : —
1. Dictatorship of one class was claimed by Bolsheviks, and people
of other classes were placed outside the law and starved.
2. Bolsheviks have deprived educated classes of their votes, as
they do not admit universal suffrage.
3. Bureaucracy has been set up in place of municipal and village
government, which has been abolished.
4. Political organisations have replaced Law Courts.
No. 47.
General Knox to War Office.
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, March 2, 1919.
FOLLOWING received from Omsk, 26th February :—
" Position of railway transport critical. Owing to absence of metals,
coal, and spare parts, workshops on railways have ceased work.
Passenger traffic continues only on Nikolaevski Railway, only military
and food trains running on other railways.
" Money being printed on colossal scale, 14,000 workmen employed
in Petrograd and Pensa day and night. 300 million notes of different
valuations are said to be daily turned out. Peasants very hostile to
Soviet's action, and riots resulted in many quarters.
" Discipline growing stricter in army. Return of shoulder straps
and saluting being considered.
" In near future the Bolsheviks intend closing all churches. Three
priests were recently drowned by Reds in Osa."
53
No. 48.
General Knox to War Office.
Vladivostock, March 4, 1919.
AN interview with an officer has appeared in a Vladivostock paper
which gives an idea of the ruin that has befallen Moscow. He had
escaped through the lines, and says that executions and arrests, to say
nothing of hunger and cold and robbery in all its forms, are part of the
daily life of the city. The streets are filthy and torn up, houses are
shell-shattered and gutted by fire. Pocket-picking has become
fashionable, and is looked on as a harmless eccentricity. Officers are
put on to the most menial forms of work, such as street cleaning, loading
bricks at railway stations, and a colonel is now a night watchman.
Whilst Kuksh was in Bolshevik occupation women from 16 to 50 were
mobilised for work, and to " satisfy the needs of the pride and flower of
the revolution." At Goroblagodatski the Red Army threw forty- four
bodies down a well. They were discovered later, and amongst them were
found the bodies of a priest, some monks, and a young girl. At
Blagoveschensk officers and soldiers from Torbolof's detachment were
found with gramophone needles thrust under their finger nails, their
eyes torn out, the marks of nails on their shoulders where shoulder
straps had been worn. Their bodies had become like frozen, statues,
and were hideous to look upon. These men had been killed by Bolsheviks
at Metzanovaya and taken thence to Blagoveschensk.
Following is text of document belonging to a Red Commissar
captured at front and quoted in local press : —
" Herewith I certify that the bearer, comrade Evdomikov, is
allowed the right of acquiring a girl for himself and no one may oppose
this in any way, he is invested with full power which I certify."
No. 49.
Sir C. Eliot to the Earl Curzon. — (Received March 7.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, March 5, 1919.
FOLLOWING from consul at Ekaterinburg, 3rd March :—
" Following is summary of Bolshevik investigation at Perm.
Commencing from February, 1918, factories were managed by Labour
Committees amongst whom criminals were to be found ; incapacity
of these committees and general demoralisation of labouring class
brought about complete standstill of production and rise in prices from
which whole population suffers.
" Bolsheviks completely disorganised school establishments- by
appointing teachers by system of voting in which students and domestic
employees of schools took part. First-year law students appointed by
Bolsheviks replaced magistrates in Law Courts.
" Bolshevik policy was characterised by persecution of all classes of
population suspected of ill-feeling towards them, especially well-to-do
class and peasants.
54
" In spite of confiscation of their property well-to-do class were
forced to pay huge contributions and many of them were arrested as
hostages on most futile pretexts, without any accusations being made
against them and frequently by caprice or personal spite of some
Bolshevist commissary.
" Those who were not shot were incarcerated under disgraceful
conditions where they were- kept under perpetual dread of being
murdered. During arrest of these people their houses were pillaged.
" In villages ' poor committees ' were organised, representatives
of which were supposed to be elected by peasants ; elections were,
however, discarded tacitly by Bolsheviks, who appoint people almost
exclusively of criminal classes. Contributions, requisitions, and other
tyrannies were imposed by Bolsheviks on peasants possessing land or
other property, which resulted in insurrections in villages, suppressed
by Bolsheviks by pillage, devastations, and massacres on large scale,
notably at Sepytchyi and Pystor in Ohansk district August, 1918.
Labourers opposing Bolsheviks were treated in same manner as peasants.
One hundred labourers were shot at Motovilyky, near Perm, December,
1918, for protesting against Bolshevik conduct. Peasants particularly
suffered when Red Army retreated, Bolsheviks taking with them cereals,
horses, and cattle available, and destroying all agricultural and other
instruments they were not able to take with them. Bolshevik persecution
of anti-Bolshevik elements reached height of its fury after attempt
on Lenin's life, although even previously it had developed into a reign
of terror.
" Commissaries consisted of unintellectual labourers from 20 to 30
years old who condemned people to death without making any accusa-
tion against them, frequently personally taking part in murder of their
victims.
" Russian authorities have only just commenced investigation of
Bolshevik crimes, and therefore it is difficult to obtain precise data as
to number of persons killed, although, as far as we can judge, it runs
into several thousands in Perm Government. Victims were usually
shot, but frequently drowned or killed by sword. Murders of groups of
30, 40, and 60 have taken place, for example at Perm and Kungur.
" Murders were frequently preceded by tortures and acts of cruelty.
Labourers at Omsk, before being shot, were flogged and beaten with
butts of rifles and pieces of iron in order to extract evidence. Victims
were frequently forced to dig their own graves. Sometimes executioners
placed them facing wall and fired several revolver shots from behind
them, near their ears, killing them after considerable interval ; persons
who survived this gave evidence.
" Girls, aged women, and women enceintes were amongst victims.
Case of Miss Bakouyeva is an example. December, 1918, this lady
(19 years old) was accused of espionage, and tortured by being slowly
pierced thirteen times in same wound by bayonet. She was afterwards
found by peasants still alive ; is now nearly cured, and has herself
related her sufferings to us.
" Bolshevists vented violent hatred on church and clergy, pillaged
monasteries (such as Bielogorod and Bielogorski) , turned churches into
meeting places and workshops, persecuted and murdered priests and
monks ; of 300 priests in liberated parts of Perm diocese, 46 were killed
by Bolshevists."
55
No. 50.
Sir C. Eliot to Earl Curzon. — (Received March 26.)
(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock, March 21, 1919.
FOLLOWING from consul at Ekaterinburg, 20th March :—
" Have now completed our report on Bolsheviks. Enclosures
comprise Russian consul's unbiassed evidence of nearly 100 witnesses,
20 photographs of atrocities committed by Bolsheviks and other
documentary evidence obtained from Russian authorities.
" Persons of all classes, especially peasants, continue to come to
this consulate, giving evidence of murder of their relatives and other
outrages that Bolsheviks in their fury have wrought, but, owing to
necessity of limiting work in order to complete report, have been
obliged to curtail taking further evidence.
" Details given in my recent telegrams may be taken as character-
istic of manner Bolsheviks murdered innocent citizens ; and, therefore,
for reasons above mentioned, unless I hear from you to contrary, shall
desist from sending you further names. From reports received, murder
and pillage committed by Bolsheviks during their retreat from this front
assumed most terrible proportions."
No. 51.
Extract from a Report by a British Chaplain.
WITH the oncoming of the Austro-German armies into South
Russia last spring, my experiences of Bolshevism entered on a new
.phase. Previously I had for many months lived in the terrorised
city of Odessa, where the cowed and despoiled population had been
bullied into abject submission to a brutal and despotic Bolshevik
tyranny. The city had been drenched with blood ; murders and
outrages in the streets as well as houses were of daily, even hourly
occurrence ; trade was paralysed, shops looted, the bourgeoisie arrested,
tortured, and done to death by hundreds under circumstances of
fiendish cruelty. The Allied consuls had left, and the majority of the
foreigners, when a general massacre of the educated population was
arranged to commence with the extermination of 108 families. This
last brutality was averted by the arrival of the armies of the Central
Powers.
Undoubtedly the rapidly accumulating horrors were deliberately
incited by the secret German Bolshevik agents in order that the advanc-
ing Austrian armies might not be met as foes but welcomed as deliverers
coming to save the people from a tyranny more brutal than anything
Russia had previously known. The scheme was entirely successful,
the Austrian troops were received as saviours.
The intrigue was cleverly managed. Nothing had been left to
chance. All possibility of effective armed opposition had been rendered
impossible by the enormous massacres of Russian officers previously
eystematically incited by the German propagandists. The march
into the Southern Ukraine was another stage in a Vienna intrigue.
56
which has been moving forward for the last forty years, the design
for expansion to the East and access to the Black Sea.
Within three days of the arrival of the Austrian army in Odessa,
the soldiers were sent into the city with orders to fraternise with the
inhabitants, to conduct themselves with marked courtesy and self-
restraint, and to meet all friendly advances with conciliatory affability.
The Russian Bolshevik troops fled at the approach of the Austnans.
The Black Sea fleet left the morning Odessa was surrendered. Some
of the ships were so heavily laden with plunder they could scarcely
make way. A large proportion of the worst Bolshevik criminals
of the district, together with the more notorious bands of assassins
and highwaymen, escaped with the fleet. Two of the crews, having
murdered their officers some time before, were unable to navigate
their vessels until help was sent from other ships. The Bolshevik
flagship took on board the entire company from the two largest houses
of ill-fame in the city together with their private orchestra. For
three days before the Austrians marched into Odessa the Bolsheviks
had divers at work from the Imperial yacht " Almas " and the cruiser
" Sinope " dragging the harbour for the weighted bodies of the murdered
officers, of whom about 400 had been done to death, the majority,
after torture with boiling steam followed by exposure to currents of
freezing air. Others were burnt alive, bound to planks which were
slowly pushed into the furnaces, a few inches at a time. In this way
perished General Chourmakof and many others of my acquaintance.
The bodies now recovered from the water were destroyed in the ships'
furnaces that no evidence might remain to be brought before the
Austro-Germans. Later a member of the Austrian Staff told me they
had been supplied with a list of names of over 400 murdered officers
from the Odessa district.
January, 1919.
No. 52.
M. M to Earl Curzon. — {Received February 8.)
Moscow, January 12, 1919.
I HAVE the honour to report that the food question in Moscow
is growing more and more acute with every day. Nominally the
population of this city has to obtain its food by the card system, cards
of three categories having been introduced and the quantity of food
available distributed in the following proportions : —
Category 1 . Those working manual work . . . . 4
2. Those working intellectual . . . . 3
3. Those having no employment . . . . 2
The difficulty, however, is that no food, except black bread, is
available for distribution, and the quantity of bread distributed at
present, namely, |-pound for the first category, f-pound for the second,
and {-pound for the third, is completely insufficient to keep one alive.
Other foodstuffs must be obtained from speculators at exorbitant
prices, the seller as well as the purchaser running the risk of a heavy
fine or imprisonment if denounced, as traffic in foodstuffs is strictly
forbidden.
57
Thousands of men and women are going daily to distant counts-
places with the object of purchasing and bringing into town some
provisions, thus disarranging the regular railway traffic.
It is, however, not an easy matter to bring provisions into Moscow,
as cordons of soldiers are searching passengers' luggage at country
stations, and will take away, at their discretion, anything they think
superfluous.
To illustrate the high cost of living at Moscow, I beg to enclose
herewith a list of the foodstuffs which are still obtainable, together
with the prices at which they are sold.
Enclosure.
Food Prices at Moscow.
Denomination from roubles to roubles per lb.
Rouble
s per lb.*
Black Bread
• • . >
. 12
to 14
White bread not obtainable .
Rye flour
. 15
, 16
Wheat flour
. 20
, 25
Meals . .
. 15
20
Rice
. 40
Potatoes
4
5
Carrots . .
. 3
4
Sugar
. 90
, 100
Butter ..
. 100
, 120
Tea
. 90
, 100
Sunflower oil .
. 40
, 45
Horse flesh
. 12
, 16
Beef
. 27
, 30
Mutton
. 30
, 35
Pork . .
40
, 45
Lard and bacon
. .
. 70
, 80
It is, however, in
lpossible to obtain alwaj
rs provi?
ions even at
these prices.
No. 53.
Lord Kilmarnock to Earl Curzon.— (Received February 24.
My Lord, Copenhagen, February 17, 1919.
I HAVE the honour to transmit, herewith, translations of two
further reports on the atrocities committed by the Bolsheviks in the
Baltic Provinces which have been furnished me by the Esthonian
Provisional Government here.
I also enclose seven photographs of the victims of the massacres
by the Bolsheviks at Wesenberg and Dorpat from the same source. f
I have, &c,
KILMARNOCK.
* 1 Rouble (nominal) = 2s. \\d. 1 Russian lb.
t Not reproduced.
144 oz.
58
Enclosure.
Bolshevik Atrocities in Esthonia.
Further Supplementary Reports.
ON the 25th December the Bolsheviks shot the steward, Kara'
the foreman, and the housekeeper, Sitau, of the Kiltsi estate. Before
death, the victims were cruelly tortured. Besides these, the author,
Woldemar Rosenstrauch, and three other persons were shot.
According to the report from the leader of an attacking squadron,
Lieutenant Jakobsen, the Bolsheviks murdered two brothers, Hendrik
and Hans Kokamal, of Piksaare, on the 26th January. They crushed
the head of the former by two blows of an axe, and shot the latter.
Besides this, they robbed the victims of their clothes and boots and tore
their linen, which, being bloodstained, was useless to them.
In Sagnitz, in the Walk district, the head forester, Hesse, and the
book-keeper, Wichmann, were shot by the Bolsheviks. As well as the
graves of these two victims, seven more were discovered at the same
place.
The Blood- Bath in Walk.
Bolshevism raged more in Walk than anywhere else, as the
Bolsheviks remained longest in power there. The number of persons
murdered by them is great, but not definitely known. At all events
they are estimated at from 350 to 450. Besides, 600 to 700 persons
were carried off by the Bolsheviks. From the report of the inhabitants
of the district, these unfortunates were murdered on the way.
The murders were committed in the same manner as elsewhere.
The unfortunates, who belonged to different classes of society, were
arrested on all sorts of pretexts, kept prisoners a few days, and then,
in groups of twenty to thirty, led out of the town to the place of execu-
tion, where graves were already prepared for them. Every night,
twenty to thirty persons were executed without examination or trial.
Before being shot, the victims were tortured in every possible way.
AH the bodies bear marks of many bayonet thrusts as well as gun
wounds. The skulls are shattered and the bones broken. Even after
death, when the bodies were stiff, the Bolsheviks hacked off the arms
and legs and broke the bones of their victims.
The Bolsheviks have instilled such terror into the hearts of the
local inhabitants, that they dare not even talk of the Bolsheviks' deeds,
and therefore it is difficult to obtain a true report of all their atrocities
in Walk.
An Esthonian soldier of cavalry was taken prisoner by the
Bolsheviks and was to be executed in Walk along with many others.
The Bolshevik bullets, which killed so many of his comrades^ did not
hit him, and he succeeded after the murder to escape from the common
burial-place. He describes one of those terrible blood-baths in the
following manner : —
" They took our caps, coats, and cloaks. Thirty-five armed
Bolsheviks surrounded us in order to prevent any attempt at escape.
Our hands were bound behind our backs. Besides this, we were fastened
in couples, and then each pair joined by a long rope, so that we marched
all attached to the one rope. Thus we were led to death. As I
59
protested against this barbaric treatment, the Bolshevik officer struck
me twice on the head with a riding- whip and said, ' Shooting is too good
for you, your eyes ought to be put out before death.' At the word of
command, the Bolsheviks fired a volley. The bound group fell to earth.
I also was pulled down by the others, though I had not been hit. The
Bolsheviks fired four rounds on the fallen. Fortunately, I again was
missed. Then the executioners fell upon us like wild animals to rob
us. Anyone who still moved was finally killed by bayonets or blows
from the butt-ends of rifles. I kept as still as possible. One of the
Bolsheviks took my boots. Another looked at my stockings. ' Good
stockings,' he murmured, and pulled them off."
It is reported from Werro : —
The rapidity with which the Esthonian troops occupied Werro
saved the lives of more than 200 people. There were 183 persons in
prison, for whom a similar fate was intended as befell those in Dorpat
on the 14th January. The lists were already made out. But the
Red Guard took flight at the approach of the Esthonian troops. Only
the warders remained behind, and they opened the prison doors.
Altogether some 100 people were to have been shot in Werro near the
Russian cemetery, Kaseritzschen lake, and Kirrumpah redoubt. On
the arrival of the rescuers many of the graves were not yet filled in, and
a number of bodies lay exposed in the snow. Several women were
also shot, and especially ghastly was the murder of Frl. Irmgard Kupffer.
The following are the names of people who are known to have been
murdered in Werro : — Barber Kuns, Solicitor R. Pihlak, House-owners
Kond and Wierland, Forester Matson from Erastwere, Pastor Sommer,
and Hr. Wreemann. The names of most of the victims are unknown,
for the greater number did not belong to Werro, but had been carried
off there from the neighbouring villages and shot. The Bolsheviks
also kept secret the number and names of their victims.
It has already been mentioned that, according to the Bolshevik
newspaper " Tooline," a number of counter-revolutionaries were
murdered in Werro on the 14th January. Now information is brought
by Merchant P., of Polwa, who was led to death with the above-
mentioned victims, but who escaped the massacre. He reports the
following : " The twenty-four men who were condemned to death were
led to a lake. There they were ordered to undress and to lun home.
The victims obeyed, but scarcely had they turned their backs when
the Bolsheviks fired a volley at them. P. saved himself by throwing
himself on the ground in good time. The Bolsheviks, thinking he was
dead like the others, went off. Then P. got up and went away. Three
or four victims saved themselves in this way, whilst the others were
fatally shot by the Bolsheviks."
A few da}fs after the retreat from Dorpat the Bolsheviks shot
three people, namely, Takk, Waltin, and Antzow.
According to later news, the following people were shot by the
Bolsheviks : Steward Hansen of the Arral estate near Odenpah, with
his son, and Herr Seen, the owner of Saarjerw, in Polwe.
It is reported from Walk that, among others, the Bolsheviks shot
Police Inspector Koch, and the former Ensign Rudolf. They carried
away the following persons : Pastors Wuhner, Uns, Janes, Michelson,
Priests Protopopow, Sirnis, and Merchant Wassili.
60
No. 54.
Summary of a Report on the Internal Situation in Russia.
THE following is a summary of a report on the internal situation
in Russia which has been received from Mr. K . a member of the
British Printers' Trade Union, who left Petrograd on the 9th January,
1919. Mr. K was also a member of the Russian Printers Trade
Union ; he travelled extensively in Russia and was received everywhere
as a working man. He had, therefore, an exceptional opportunity
of studying the conditions in Soviet Russia. Reports have been received
from various sources of the growing opposition to Bolshevik rule among
a certain section of the Russian population, and Mr. K 's account
tends to confirm these reports : —
(i.) Conditions in the towns.— Since the beginning of November.
1918, there has been an increasingly strong feeling against
the Bolsheviks among the intelligent portions of the working
classes of Petrograd, Moscow, and other centres. In the
early days of their power the Bolsheviks were enthusiasti-
cally supported by the working classes in the towns, but
latterly the more enlightened have become convinced of the
failure of the Bolsheviks' experiments at social reform.
They have, however, nominally remained Bolsheviks, as
there is no other alternative, since the Bolsheviks control
the food supplies and hold all the arms in the country.
Mr. K , in support of the foregoing, quotes views
expressed to him by members of various factory staffs, and
he cites cases of strikes in large factories, such as the
Putilov, Obukhovski, Treugolnik, of which confirmation
has been received from other sources. All factories are
controlled by the Soviet of People's Economy. The
Commissars are inexperienced, and great difficulty is
experienced in obtaining good workmen, with the result
that the output of the factories has greatly decreased, in
some cases to 10 per cent, of the original output.
Note. — Further confirmation of the reported opposition
of a section of the working population to Bolshevik rule
is found in a recent Bolshevik wireless message, which
states that 60,000 workmen are on strike in Petrograd,
demanding an end to fratricidal war and the institution of
free trade.
(ii.) Conditions in the countryside. — A similar change has occurred
in the attitude of the better-class peasants. At first
Bolshevik innovations were welcomed in the countryside,
where, also, feeling was bitter against the English, who were
accused of the desire to exploit Russia for their benefit.
This attitude, however, underwent a change when the
Poverty Committees were instituted. These committees
were composed of the worst elements of the villages rein-
forced by Bolsheviks from the towns, with the result that
village life became intolerable. Respectable peasants, to
61
remedy this state of affairs, decided to join these com-
mittees with a view to exercising their influence upon them,
and in many cases were successful. This led to a change in
the constitution of the committees, and the Soviet authorities
are now endeavouring to regain their former control in
this respect. At the same time the peasants' attitude
of hostility towards the English disappeared, and the wish
was expressed in many quarters that the latter would
come and deliver Russia from Bolshevik rule.
(iii.) Religious revival. — Another important factor in the situation
has been a strong revival of religious feeling in the towns
and countryside ; the result, apparently, of the revulsion
caused by the wholesale persecution and murder of priests
by the Bolsheviks. The change of attitude in this respect
is manifest by the great increase in church attendance,
which in the early days of Bolshevik rule was chiefly
confined to women, and by the increasing boldness of the
priests in denouncing the Bolsheviks. It is noteworthy,
in the latter respect, that the priests are acting with
increasing impunity — a fact which appears to indicate that
the Bolsheviks are afraid of antagonizing public opinion
over this question.
2. Anti-Bolshevik conspiracy. — In the above connection, and as
further evidence of the growing opposition, in the interior, to the
Bolsheviks, it is of interest to note that, according to the Bolshevik
wireless news of the 14th February, an anti-Bolshevik conspiracy on
the part of Left Social Revolutionaries has been discovered. The
headquarters of the conspiracy were at Moscow. The leaders, it is
stated, which include Mme. Spiridonova, Steinberg, Trutovski, Prota-
povitch, and Rosenblum, have been arrested, and the movement has
apparently been completely forestalled. It is stated that documentary
evidence shows that the object of these Left Social Revolutionaries was
to overthrow the Soviet Government and to establish an ail-Russian
Government. As a preliminary step, terroristic acts were to be carried
out against Soviet leaders ; these, however, were to be carried out
independently by local organizations with a view to avoid compromising
the whole movement. Steps had been taken to institute anti-Bolshevik
propaganda in the army and among the peasants, who were to be incited
to rise. The chief activities of this organization had apparently been
directed towards White Russia, where in the " Nash Put " (the Vilna
organ of the Left Social Revolutionaries) an anti-Bolshevik agitation
had already commenced. In White Russia it was apparently the aim
of this organization to seize power on the evacuation of the German
forces.
Note. — It is noteworthy that, at the same time as this reported
conspiracy has been in progress, members of the Left Social Revolutionary
Party, who formerly belonged to the Constituent Assembly at Ufa,
have been negotiating with the Soviet Government with a view to
combining with the latter. It is not clear, therefore, how far these
former members of the Constituent Assembly really represent the Left
Social Revolutionary Party.
62
No. 55.
Report by Mr. J .
IN making this report I propose to deal with conditions as they
appear to me at present existing in such parts of Russia as are known to
me, namely, the Vladimir and Moscow Government, under the following
headings : —
1. Food and price of same.
2. Wages.
3. Railways.
4. Education.
5. The press.
6. Condition and feeling of the general public.
7. Business and condition of industry.
1. Food of all kinds is difficult to obtain, and in many cases it is
necessary for journeys to be taken in order to obtain same. Prices are
abnormal, and in many cases entirely out of the reach of all classes.
A system of rationing by means of cards is in force, but the quantity
allowed per person varies according to the class of society to which such
persons belong.
The classification for bread is as follows : —
(1) Labourers performing heavy manual work, f-lb. of black bread
per day ; (2) those doing lighter work, J-lb. per day ; (3) clerical
workers, £-lb. per day, and after these, those living on capital, i-lb. per
day. The following were the prices in Moscow at the time I left, and those
who could not pay these prices had either to go without or make long
journeys into the country for the purpose of trying to obtain food at a
cheaper rate, but this is now becoming more and more difficult to do.
Black flour, from 500 to 600 roubles per pud (40 lb.). It is very
difficult to obtain ; being brought to Moscow in quantities of 2 to 3 puds
at a time by meshechniks (men who go to Southern Russia and buy the
flour there at from 60 to 100 roubles, and bring same to Moscow and sell
at the price named above).
White flour cannot possibly be obtained.
Meat is obtainable in vevf small quantities at the following prices : —
Soup meat, 25 roubles per lb.
Mutton, 30 to 40 roubles per lb.
Pork, 60 to 70 roubles per lb.
Horseflesh has now become very scarce, and very hard to obtain at
18 roubles per lb.
Dog meat. Two shops have been opened in Moscow for the sale of
this meat, the price being 6 roubles per lb.
Sugar, very difficult to obtain at 60 to 65 roubles per lb.
Tea is very scarce indeed, even at the price of 150 to 200 roubles
per lb.
Butter, when same can be obtained, costs 120 roubles per lb., but
is now practically unobtainable ; no other fats are obtainable, with the
63
exception of certain fish oil, which is the only fat available for cooking
purposes.
Potatoes are now very difficult to obtain, and then only at a cost
of 160 to 200 roubles per pud of 40 lb.
Milk is very scarce indeed.
Oats very difficult to obtain ; price, 240 roubles per pud.
The following articles cannot be obtained at any price : Coffee,
cocoa, rice, and cereals.
2. Wages have increased considerably, but, despite this fact, the
general body of workers are far worse off owing to the purchasing
value of money having decreased far more proportionately than wages
have increased.
Workers in flour mills prior to the war were paid from 20 to 40
roubles per month and at present receive from 200 to 500 roubles per
month.
Prior to the war, bread cost 1 r. 80 k. per pud and meat 15 kopeks
per lb. A comparison with the present prices given will show that workers
are at present in a far worse position than previously, and I can con-
fidently state that many of them now realise this and would gladly
revert to the old conditions if only this were possible.
3. Railways. — Through lack of material and technical knowledge
necessary to effect repairs, together with the increasing shortage of
fuel and the reduction of output on the part of the railway employes
consequent upon maladministration, disorganisation and lack of
discipline, the locomotives and rolling stock available for traffic is
rapidly decreasing, and as the number of persons desiring to travel is
increasing, all trains are very much overloaded and the passengers are
often packed so tight together as to be practically unable to move.
It has been found necessary to use heavy goods engines, through
lack of light passenger engines, for the purpose of drawing passenger
trains, and the only carriages now in use are similar to our cattle trucks.
These trucks are so packed that the decencies of life cannot be
observed, one having often to remain therein thirty-six hours or more
before it is possible, owing to the pressure of fellow-passengers, to
descend.
Under these conditions, transport by rail must eventually cease
altogether.
4. Education has practically ceased. The scholars have a president
and committee who decide all matters concerning the respective school.
In most schools dining-rooms have been opened, and the children
are given free meals, and they practically only go to school in order
to obtain food. But in many places, owing to the uncleanly and filthy
manner in which food has been served, these dining-rooms have had
to be closed. Within my own knowledge such a dining-room in a small
town in the Vladimir Government had to be closed, the children having
contracted venereal disease through the filthy condition of the utensils
used in serving the meals.
5. The Press. — Only two daily papers are issued in Moscow, i.e.,
the " Isvestia of the Soviet " and " Pravda." These papers are edited
by leading Bolsheviks, and of course contain only opinions and state-
64
ments likely to further the cause of Bolshevism, and nothing is allowed
to be published in any way antagonistic to or critical of Bolshevism.
In January last a weekly paper, issued on a Wednesday, called
" Vperiod," supposed to be owned by the " Menshevik Party," though
considered to be controUed by the Bolsheviks, was allowed to be
published. In this paper, articles were allowed to appear which were
a little more free, but the paper was stopped after the fourth number
had been issued. It is the general opinion that if the truth were allowed
to be published for a period of one week only, a great awakening of
the people would result.
6. Condition and Feeling of the People.— Suffering from malnutri-
tion, lack of fuel, and the intense cold, also having nearly given up
hope of the help of the Allied nations which they have for so long
been expecting and anxiously awaiting, the educated professional
and merchant classes are now entering upon a state of despair,
resignation, and indifference to all questions other than food. From
my own experience I can safely state that at least 80 per cent, of the
population in the district where I resided, including both the educated
working and peasant classes, are strongly opposed to the present
masters of Government and to Bolshevism.
The fact that many of these people have joined the Red Guard
is not of itself evidence of a belief in Bolshevism or in the Government,
but is in the majority of cases a step taken in desperation for the
purposes of obtaining food and other things which could not be obtained
in any other manner, or through being made to join by the present
system of compulsory mobilisation
I am personally acquainted with several officers of the old army
who have been compelled to join the Bolshevik army through fear
of the consequences which would fall upon their near and dear relations
should they refuse to do so.
Should an officer of the old army fail to present himself when called
upon to join the present Bolshevik army and evade arrest, his wife
and children, if married, or his father or mother, if single, would be
punished probably by imprisonment or worse. All these officers are
strictly watched, and any occupying important positions have con-
stantly with them a political " Komisar," to whom all orders given
must be shown and approved by him before being transmitted ; should
disloyalty be suspected the officer would immediately be shot.
Desertion both by officers and men in the front line is very great, and
is upon the increase. All these people, both officers and men, are
potential deserters to any outside force which would offer them pro-
tection and food.
Prior to my leaving Moscow, typhus had broken out, claiming
many victims, and was spreading rapidly ; and it was feared that the
spring and summer months would spread this disease to an uncon-
trollable extent. When I left all hospitals were full, patients lying
on the floors and in the corridors.
7. Business and conditions of industry. — Private trading no longer
exists, the only shops open being those of the Bolsheviks.
Raw materials are scarce and difficult to obtain, and many factories
and mills have consequently to be closed.
65
The provision of raw material for the flax mills have been placed
in the hands of the Centre Textile Committee, and no raw material
may in future be obtained direct.
Though the Committee had been in existence for several months,
no raw material had been supplied by them to my mill up to the time
of my leaving, and only two weeks' supply was then in hand, being
the balance left from a large stock.
For the past year the workers have been in control of all mills,
and as an example of the methods adopted, I state below the conditions
appertaining at the mill where I was General Manager, a mill employing
6,500 workers, two-thirds of whom were women and one-third men.
In the first instance a committee was elected from the workers by the
workers. The Committee consisted of 24 men, and from these the
following three sub-committees were formed : —
(1.) Controlling Committee, consisting of six.
(2.) Food Committee, consisting of four.
(3.) The Enlightening Committee, consisting of four.
The remaining ten formed the Presidium or Council.
The Presidium sat every day in a house in the mill-yard from
9 a.m. till 3 p.m., and the President of the Workers' Committee always
presided at the sittings of the Presidium. The duties of the Presidium
were to receive all complaints from the workers, and adjust them to
„ the workers' benefit, whether the complaint was of a reasonable nature
or otherwise. The result was a continual unnecessary and annoying
interference with the inside management of the mill. For instance,
should the spinners complain, say, that No. 14 yarn is working badly,
they would call for the man superintending the material department,
and tell him to put in higher material, without taking into consideration
the loss incidental to such piocedure. It was therefore a constant
battle to prevent the Presidium from doing this manner of injurious
actions. The duties of the Controlling Committee are to control all
buying and selling in connection with the mill. No money can be
paid for goods delivered, or for work done without their signature.
Nothing can be bought without their consent, and all articles bought
in the district must be bought by the members of the committee
themselves. Owing to this, these men, having no idea of the quality
of an article, very often buy inferior goods at higher prices than would
be given by an expert. They control every action of, and are con-
stantly interfering with the administrative staff, and so confuse and
bother the men employed on this work, until they are unable to perform
their duties, and lose all interest and initiative.
The Food Committee look after the obtaining and distribution of
foodstuffs, and are constantly travelling all over the country seeking
food, but are very unsuccessful in this purpose, and therefore have very
little to distribute.
The duties of the Enlightening Committee are rather obscure, but
appear to consist first of the propagation of Socialistic principles, and
they do this by buying literature of a Socialistic nature, of course, for
the Workers' Club, and second in providing amusements for the workers
by organising concerts, dances, &c. The great desire of the members
of all these committees seems to be to get commandeered, either by the
General Meeting or by their own committee, upon the grounds of
(1057) f
66
urgency to go to some other town or district for some reason or other,
and when they are on these expeditions they receive 50 roubles per day
for their expenses, besides their daily wage, which is paid out of the
Mill funds, and very often they have the possibility of receiving a good
round sum by way of bribes when buying something for the Mill. All
these committees, though elected in the first instance by the majority
of the workers, are now practically self-elected, as the majority of the
workers are so inert, uninterested, and tired of the whole Bolshevik
system that they do not trouble to attend for the purpose of voting.
The elections generally take place at meetings with not more than
300 or less workers present out of the 6,500, and the members of the
committee have generally pre-arranged who will be chosen, and have
their supporters who arrange matters as required.
All these committees very soon lose the trust of, and are not in
favour with those who have elected them, but are generally re-elected,
as stated before, and again the same things go on.
Tsekhovoi Committees. — Besides the committees before named, in
each department three to five workers are elected as a Department
Committee. The workers composing this committee are taken from their
usual work and have an office in their particular department. They
walk round the department keeping order and giving directions as
to what is and what is not to be done.
In the giving of these directions the manager of the department
concerned is often entirely ignored. Nothing can be done in each
respective department without the members of the committee being
informed and agreeing, and there is constant friction and misunder-
standing because of this — the manager finding it necessary to do certain
things, and the committee not allowing him, and vice versa. In the
majority of cases the administration loses heart and does not protest,
as if they go against the committee there is a general meeting of workers,
and it is decided to discharge the manager or master who has gone
against the workers, and this decision is carried out. In my own case
I prevented this taking place on several occasions with my managers
by calling the committee together and informing them that if they
discharged the manager concerned I should throw up my situation and
leave the mill ; this threat having the desired effect up to October, 1918.
I was able to adopt this attitude owing to the fact that I knew the
majority of my workers held me in high esteem and trust, as it was
known that in my twenty years of mill life in Russia I never did anything
in haste, and though very strict, tried to be just. In October, 1918,
I considered it desirable, in my own interests, to live in Moscow, and
I then only visited the mill once a month. After I did this two men were
discharged — one the manager of our turf fields and one of the head
superintendents. On January, 1919, the mill was fully nationalised,
and the workers were ordered to elect a directorate of five. I was the
first director elected by the workers, only two voting against me out
of 6,500. I mention this fact in order to show that my claim, set
out above, to the esteem and respect of my work-people is not an
unfounded one.
Below I give brief particulars of output obtained prior to and after
the revolution : —
67
Output before revolution ; mill working 18 hours a day : —
Spinning mill : 1,000 to 1,100 puds a day.
Weaving mill : 800 to 8,500 pieces of linen cloth at 55 to 60
arshines each.
Output winter of 1918-19 ; mill working 16 hours per day : —
Spinning mill : 450 to 500 puds per day.
Weaving mill : 400 pieces per day.
This production was exceptional, as at other mills in our line the
turnover was much worse.
For the last nine months the financing of the mill has been conducted
in the following manner : To obtain money for wages, &c, we prepared
invoices of finished goods and gave these into the Centre Textile, who
gave us 75 per cent, of the value of the invoice, and held the balance
until the delivery of the goods according to the instructions of the
Central Textile, when the remaining 25 per cent, was paid. When
presenting the invoice an estimate showing in detail the proposed
expenditure was also required by them. Always hoping that some
change in the control of the mills might take place, and it being
apparent that the system at present in vogue could not permanently
exist, our whole object was to retain in our warehouses as much as
possible of finished goods, in order that, if the original owner was again
allowed to take possession, goods would be available which could be
readily turned into cash, and so enabie the owner to continue working
the mill. This was the only step possible that could be taken to protect
the original owner's property. When I left the above-mentioned
mill we had in the warehouse finished cloth goods to the value of about
30,000,000 roubles.
Foreigners such as myself remained at our positions to the last
possible moment in the hope of a normal Government in Russia and
return of property to its former owners.
March 20, 1919.
No. 56.
Rev. B. S. Lombard to Earl Curzon.
Officers' Quarters, 8, Rothsay Gardens, Bedford,
My Lord, March 23, 1919.
I BEG to forward to your Lordship the following details with
reference to Bolshevism in Russia : —
I have been for ten years in Russia, and have been in Petrograd
through the whole of the revolution.
I spent six weeks in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, acted as
chaplain to His Majesty's submarines in the Baltic for four years, and
was in contact with the 9th (Russian) Army in Roumania during the
autumn of 1917 whilst visiting British Missions and hospitals, and had
ample opportunity of studying Bolshevik methods.
It originated in German propaganda, and was, and is being, carried
out by international Jews.
68
The Germans initiated disturbances in order to reduce Russia to
chaos. They printed masses of paper money to finance their schemes,
the notes of which I possess specimens can be easily recognised by a
special mark.
Their Tenets.
Radically to destroy all ideas of patriotism and nationality by
preaching the doctrine of internationalism which proved successful
amongst the uncultured masses of the labouring classes.
To obstruct by every means the creation of military power by
preaching the ideas of peace, and to foster the abolition of military
discipline.
To keep the masses under the hypnosis of false Socialistic literature.
To buy up all nationalised banks and to open up everywhere
branches of German Government banks under the names and titles of
firms that would conceal their actual standing.
To endeavour to empoverish and temporally to weaken the peasant
classes, to bring about national calamities such as epidemics (the
outbreak of cholera last summer was traced to this source), the wholesale
burning down of villages and settlements.
To preach the doctrine of the Socialistic form of managing
enterprises amongst the working classes, to encourage their efforts to
seize such enterprises, and then by means of bankruptcies to get them
into German hands.
To preach the idea of a six to eight hours' working day with higher
wages.
To crush all competition set on foot against them. All attempts
of the intellectuals or other groups to undertake any kind of indepen-
dent action, or to develop any industries to be unmercifully checked,
and in doing this to stop at nothing.
Russia to be inundated by commission agents and other German
representatives, and a close network of agencies and offices should be
created for the purpose of spreading amongst the masses such views
and teachings as may at any given time be dictated from Berlin.
The Results.
All business became paralysed, shops were closed, Jews became
possessors of most of the business houses, and horrible scenes of starva-
tion became common in the country districts. The peasants put
their children to death rather than see them starve. In a village on
the Dvina, not far from Schlusselberg, a mother hanged three of her
children.
I was conducting a funeral in a mortuary of a lunatic asylum at
Oudelnaia, near Petrograd, and saw the bodies of a mother and her
five children whose throats had been cut by the father because he
could not see them suffer.
When I left Russia last October the nationalisation of women
was regarded as an accomplished fact, though I cannot prove that
(with the exception of at Saratoff) there was any actual proclamation
issued.
The cruelty of the soldiers is unspeakable. The father of one of
the Russian clerks in the Vauxhall Motor Works was bound and laid
on a railway line and cut to pieces by a locomotive on suspicion of
69
having set fire to some of his own property. In August last "two barge-
loads of Russian officers were sunk and their bodies washed up on the
property of a friend of mine in the Gulf of Finland, many lashed together
in twos and threes with barbed wire.
While we were in prison a Red Guard was sent from the central
police station (Gorokhovaia 2) in charge of five prisoners to the fortress.
One of them, an old officer, was unable to walk ; the guard shot him
and left his body on the Troytsky Bridge. The murderer was repri-
manded and imprisoned in a cell near ours. The treatment of priests
was brutal beyond everything. Eight of them were incarcerated in
a cell in our corridor. Some of us saw an aged man knocked down
twice one morning for apparently no reason whatever, and they were
employed to perform the most degrading work and made to clean out
the filthy prison hospital. Recently life in Petrograd has become a
veritable nightmare.
In the early days of 1917 the Russians gloried in a bloodless revolu-
tion, now they simply glut themselves with killing for the most trivial
offences. In a market on the opposite side of the river to my house,
a poor woman with a starving family filched a small piece of meat from
a stall ; without any hesitation the Red Guard surrounded her and
placing her against a wall shot her dead.
The rank and file of the Red Army is full of men who are heartily
sick of the present regime, and would gladly join any really strong
force sent to the relief of the country. But unless the force were
considerable, they would hesitate.
But I imagine that the food question is the key to the situation ;
the Red Armies must be at a low ebb for provisions, and by getting
stores to Helsingfors they might be treated with.
I am, &c,
BOUSFIELD S. LOMBARD,
Chaplain to the Forces.
No. 57.
Interviews with Returned British Subjects.
Mr. A left Petrograd in November. He stated that pro-
duction was practically at a standstill, and in the most favourable
cases has decreased 50 per cent. The factories are run by Committees.
A Committee composed of Mensheviks produces a fair amount of work,
but a Committee of Bolsheviks gives a wholly unsatisfactory output.
The Committees were formerly elective, but the Bolsheviks now co-opt
their own members without consulting the workpeople, and members
who do not agree with the Bolsheviks are voted off. The Committees
are in fact entirely political, and there is a great increase of
bureaucracy.
Discipline is bad, and the men are frequently one or one and a half
hours late. The responsible members of the Committee do not under-
70
stand the needs of the mill, and the Bolsheviks object to paying technical
men.
In May, 1918, an attempt of the Committee to form their own
organisation was rigorously suppressed.
Mr. B , who has lived in Russia all his life, left Moscow on the
8th February and was interviewed at the Foreign Office on his arrival
and supplied the following information : —
Food Conditions.
The food conditions are getting worse and worse every day, and it
is now practically impossible to obtain enough to eat. People are
dying of starvation everywhere. A few months ago it was possible
for the townspeople to buy food from the peasants down in the villages,
but they are unable to do this now, as the peasants will not take money
for any food that they may have to sell. Everything is done by exchange.
Money is no use to the peasants, but clothes and instruments are valuable,
so the exchange system is used everywhere.
The following are the most recent prices of food : —
Moscow —
Roubles
1 lb. of bread
16
1 ,, potatoes . .
6
1 ,, butter
. 100-120
1 ,, lard
85-90
1 ,, oil (used ins
tead of butter)
45-55
1 pint of milk
12
1 lb. of meat
30-35
1 ,, pork
65-75
1 ,, horse meat
15-17
1 ,, dog's meat
5-7
1 cat is sold for ' . .
6
There are three food categories in Moscow now instead of four,
but even the " category " people cannot get all the food they are entitled
to receive. Certainly the first category ought to receive ^-lb. bread a
day, the second, f-lb., and the third, g-lb. ; also about ^-lb. to 1 lb. of
fish a month, which was usually not fit for consumption ; 1J to l|-lb.
of oil a month (butter substitute) ; and about |-lb. soap a month.
The above is all that could be obtained even by category people. No
fats of any description were obtainable. Mr. B himself sold a lb.
of soap for 35 roubles.
In spite of the appalling conditions prevailing everywhere, the
Kremlin is well supplied with all kinds of food. A servant of the
house where Mr. B stayed had a brother in the Kremlin, and he
told her that there was an abundance of ham, white bread, butter,
sausages, &c.
Disease.
Typhus is rampant everywhere, and is getting worse every day.
There is also a lot of typhoid fever about ; but, worse than this, glanders
is now spreading among the people. The Bolsheviks are afraid of this
71
terrible disease spreading far and wide, so they simply shoot any person
suffering from this complaint. There are no medicines there by which
they can attempt to cure the people, and there is of course a great
shortage of doctors. Mr. B thinks that there are more cases of
glanders in Moscow than anywhere else.
Fuel Shortage.
The people are suffering intensely from the cold as there is practically
no wood available. Only 3| feet of wood is allowed a month for one
flat, and even this the people have to fetch themselves from the railway
stations. The price of wood in the Nijni Novgorod is 200 roubles a
fathom (official price) ; if bought from outside (in the markets, &c.)
it is about 500 roubles. The average heat of a room is only 43 degs.
to 45 degs. Fahrenheit. The fuel question is much worse in Petrograd
than it is in Moscow. The reason for this is that most of the Petrograd
houses have central heating, and when the pipes get out of order (as
they invariably do) there is no possibility of ever having them mended.
Factories and Workmen.
All the workmen are anti-Bolshevik in reality, though many of
them have to work under the Bolsheviks in order to live. Mr. B
gave 5 to 10 per cent, as his estimate of the number of Bolsheviks out
of the whole population of Russia.
The Bolsheviks pay the workmen very well, but as the cost of
living has increased so tremendously their wages are not nearly high
enough to enable them to live comfortably, even were the food obtainable.
Roughly speaking, the workmen get fifteen to twenty times as much
as they used to, and the cost of living has gone up to anything between
300 and 1000 times as much as it was before the Revolution.
The Bolsheviks employ very high-handed methods with the
factories. If the workmen strike, the factory is closed, the leaders are
generally arrested, and sometimes they are even shot. At the
Sokolnitski works (repairing trams, &c.) in Moscow, the workmen
went on strike because the Bolsheviks said they were not turning out
the proper amount of work. As a result of this the factory was simply
closed down and the following notice was put in the paper : "In
consequence of the falling off of production in the Sokolnitski works,
it was closed down by order of the Government." All this proves that
the Workmen's Committees have no real power, as the Bolsheviks
just do what they like without even consulting the Committees.
At S , where Mr. B was working, the Bolsheviks wanted
to inaugurate a demonstration on the 25th October, 1918. In order
to get the men to attend the demonstration meeting the Bolsheviks
promised a free dinner to all who went, and looked upon those who
refused as saboteurs. This, in the end, practically amounted to forcing
the men to join the demonstration.
There are not many factories working in Russia now, most of them
have had to close down on account of the fuel shortage. The few
factories that remain only work about three days a week, but the
workmen are paid full wages. Often a factory has to be closed for
weeks at a time, owing to lack of fuel and raw material ; during this
time the workmen are paid half wages.
72
Political Questions.
The people have no interest at all in politics, the only topic of
conversation being food. Everyone would welcome Allied intervention ;
in fact, anything would be preferable to the Bolshevik regime. Mr.
B does not think that many troops would be required, as the Red
Army is of small account, and directly they got there it would go to
pieces. In fact, the only reason why the officers stay in the army is
because the Bolsheviks threaten to shoot their wives, mothers, or sisters
if they desert. Mr. B— has spoken to officers, the addresses of whose
families had been taken down by the Bolsheviks for this reason.
In Moscow the Menshevik paper, " Vperiod," was allowed to
reappear for a few days, but it was soon suppressed. It then appeared
later under the name of " Vsegda Vperiod " (" Always Forward ").
The " Izvestiya " still attacks the Mensheviks, in spite of the so-called
agreement which the Bolsheviks have made so much use of for
propaganda abroad.
General Conditions.
To take a cab to the station costs 120 roubles, and even at this
price it is very difficult to obtain a cab at all.
The " terror " is not so bad as it used to be, but this is merely
because the people's spirit is quite broken, and they do not dare to
offer opposition.
Education.
Students of the high schools do not pay any fees, and any boy or
girl of 16 years of age is allowed to enter the universities without
showing any certificates, so that if a boy is unable to read or write he
can still go to the university. This offer of education does not appeal
to the working-class very much, and it is mostly the intelligentsia who
take advantage of this opportunity.
In spite of the Bolsheviks' so-called efforts to promote education,
nothing is being accomplished, and things are going from bad to worse.
They have instituted workmen's clubs where the workmen can go and
listen to lectures, &c, but the only reason why any men attend is
because a cup of tea and a slice of bread is usually supplied sometime
during the lecture. In the same way, the only reason why children
go to school is to get the breakfast that is given there.
Journey to England.
Mr. B came to England with twelve other Englishmen, and
they had to go through some very trying ordeals before getting out
of Russia. They were packed in two cattle trucks, and it took them
sixty-eight hours instead of twelve to get from Moscow to Petrograd.
They had to do their own stoking and find their own fuel, &c, and they
also had to feed the engine driver.
During the journey one Bolshevik woman told Mr. B that all
the railway men ought to be shot as they were hostile to the Bolsheviks.
Between the big stations only two trains run a day : one in the
morning and one at night. The whole question of transport is exceed-
ingly bad.
73
Mr. C , formerly with T and Co., and then with Moscow
branch of Anglo-Russian Commission, left Russia on the 21st January.
Factories and Workmen.
All factories- nationalised ; only about half of them working.
Men all anti-Bolshevik. Very discontented with conditions of life,
and with the working of the factories. Conditions getting worse and
worse every day. Great many of the men have gone to the country,
as it is practically impossible to live in the towns.
Mr. C , after leaving Anglo-Russian Commission, went to the
factory where he used to work to seek employment, but the factory
had been nationalised and they refused to employ him, saying he was
a counter-revolutionary (because an Englishman).
At one time Mr. C lived near cotton mill belonging to L .
All the workmen there are against the Bolsheviks and very discontented,
but they have to go on working for the Bolsheviks in order to live.
Factory works about three days a weelc on a 6-hour day. Often have
to stop work for a week or two because there is no fuel or no cotton
left ; have to wait until new supply comes in. Very often about ten
factories combine and work under a common directorship : this is done
in order that one factory may exchange with another whatever is wanted.
If one of these factories is closed down, the village members of the
other factories are discharged, and the men from the old factory employed
in their 'places.
In Petrograd more attempts to strike than in' Moscow ; this is
because in Moscow the workmen are more under the power of the
Government, and they do not dare to strike. Even if they did there is
nothing to gain by it. for the Government would simply stop their
wages, discharge a good many, and probably cancel their bread cards.
Moscow.
In Moscow all shops are closed, with the exception of Soviet shops.
All hotels taken up long ago by Red Guard detachments, &c. Nothing
can be purchased from the shops without a ticket or order, and this
ticket can only be obtained by a Soviet worker, and even he has to go
from one place to another before the ticket is legal. First he has to
get a ticket from his factory, then he has to go to his trade union, and
so on, before he is entitled to buy anything. An ordinary man is
unable to purchase anything.
Fur coats, which had been requisitioned by the Soviet, were sold
at the Soviet shops for, say, two, three or four hundred roubles. The
next day the same fur coats were sold down in the thieves' market for
about 7,000 roubles.
Mr. C sold a very old suit (privately, as public selling is for-
bidden), for which he got 600 roubles.
Services are not held in the church because there is no fuel to heat
the building. As there are only a few people left to attend services,
the priest holds them in his own house.
When Red Guards are sent from Moscow to the front there is
often a row at the station, and guns are taken from them. When they
eventually arrive at front, often only half of original number present,
the rest having escaped. The Red Guards are quite content to receive
good pay, &c, but they are not anxious to fight.
74
Theatres still running very well. Actors are greatly privileged,
being placed in first category, &c.
Bookshops distribute literature free in the villages, and in Moscow
it is sold very cheap. No tickets required for books.
Between 50 and 100 Englishmen left in Moscow.
Mr. D , who has been in Russia for three or four years, left
Moscow on the 21st January.
Mr. D was giving private lessons all the time he was in,Russia,
but during the last month or so he went as a teacher of French to one
of the lower grade schools in Moscow. The reason for this was that
he found it practically impossible to live on the fourth category, and
by going to a school he was transferred to the third category.
Discipline in the school very bad indeed. The only reason why
children or teachers went to school at all was in order to get the food
supplied there.
Food Conditions were very bad indeed. No provision shops open
in Moscow. The people are ail anti-Bolshevik at heart, but they have
to work for the Bolsheviks in order to live.
Typhus is rampant, and many people are suffering from skin
diseases (Mr. D himself experienced this) caused from the want
of fats.
Only a few trams and trains running, and the former often have to
stop for a day or two on account of disputes and strikes.
The fuel question is very serious, and it is becoming more and more
acute every day. Some friends of Mr. D had no means of cooking
the little food they had, as they had no benzine, no kerosene, and no
wood. People often have to cut up chairs, tables, &c, for firewood.
Moscow is a dead city. Very few trams running, many shops
boarded up, all shop-signs removed. The whole place looks deserted.
The houses are all in bad condition, &c. But, in Mr. D 's opinion,
the streets of Moscow are much safer now than they were a year ago.
There is no street robbery, and the only danger now is being arrested
in the street.
Mr. D thinks there are still about sixty or seventy English
people left in Moscow.
Bolshevik literature impresses the people to some extent, but they
don't want to believe it.
The people are waiting and hoping for some sort of intervention
from England. The present position is intolerable, and practically
anything would be preferable to the Bolshevik rule.
Mr. E secretary of a bank, left Russia on the 24th January.
He v?ks interviewed at the Foreign Office on the 21st February, and
supplied the following information : —
Economic Conditions.
It is impossible to live in Petrograd, as the prices are outrageous.
There are only two categories now, the 1st and 2nd. The 1st category
consists of people working in the different Bolshevik works and organisa-
tions ; physical workers, their wives, and their children (up to 12
years of age) . The 2nd category consists of all those who either support
75
themselves by their own labour (either mental or physical), and do not
live by interest on accrued capital, or who do not use the fruits of other
people's labour. The Red Guards are always considered first, and
practically form a category of their own, which is higher than either
the 1st or 2nd. Officially, the 1st category ought to receive 1-lb. of
bread a day, and the 2nd J-lb., but in reality the amount varies from
day to day, according to the supplies. The 3rd and 4th categories
have been- done awaj) 1 with altogether ; consequently, there are a great
many people who are in no category at all. The Bolsheviks published
statistics showing that the 4th category was not necessary, as there
were so few members. This proves that the 4th category people have
either been exterminated or have been forced to work under the
Bolsheviks in order to live. Three months ago, a decree was issued
saying that all those about to enter the 1st category must produce a
certificate from their trade organisation. As a result of this decree,
practically all the men joined a trade organisation, and, as every trade
organisation is controlled by the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks in this
way got more men under their power.
The "category" people can only go to municipal shops (as a
matter of fact, all other shops are closed). The latest prices of goods
in Petrograd were : bread 1 r. 50 c. a lb. at a municipal shop, but
20 roubles a lb. if bought outside (from Red Guards, sackmen, &c.) ;
butter 75 roubles a lb. if bought outside — no fats of any description
sold at municipal shops ; sugar, which was only available about once
a month, 1 r. 50 c. a lb. at municipal shops, and otherwise 80 roubles.
Meat was sometimes obtainable at the market ; as a matter of fact,
it was supposed to be sold by card system, but it was generally sold
in an underhand manner at the market. Beef 23 roubles a lb. ; veal
26 roubles ; pork 45 roubles. Meat was also obtainable from the
sackmen. The Bolsheviks try to stop these sackmen, who go from
house to house selling food.
The category people do not get their supplies regularly, or the full
amount they are entitled to. The Supply Committee publishes in
the paper from day to day what food is available, and what each
category is allotted.
Financial Situation.
It is very difficult to draw any large amount of money out of a
bank. The Bolsheviks allow 1,000 roubles a month to be taken out
from an account, but even this has become more difficult lately, as
they have just issued a decree that a man must get either his House
Committee or some other Bolshevik organisation to state that he is
really in need of money. But by means of bribery, men draw out
hundreds of thousands of roubles. All the banks have been nationalised,
and now they are' centralised. A decree was published a little while
ago saying that, if a man had an account in three or four banks, he
must choose one bank, and put all his money into that. If this decree
was not obeyed, the Bolsheviks simply took all his money away. By
this means the Bolsheviks can tell exactly how much money each
man has.
If a new account was opened on the 1st January, 1918, the depositor
was allowed, in principle, to draw out his money freely ; but in practice
this was not so. When the banks were nationalised new money could
76
be taken out as desired (again only in principle). But when, about
six weeks ago, the new decree about centralising all accounts was
published, the position of affairs was altered. For example, if a man
had 5,000 roubles in his new account, and 100,000 roubles in his old
account, he could transfer his old account to his new account, so
making 105,000 roubles in all. But, according to this decree, he was
only allowed to draw to the amount of 5,000 roubles, as the old account
wa sconsidered " barred." For transferring an account from one bank
to another the commissars charged 25 per cent.
Factories.
There are frequent strikes in factories, which often have to be
put down by force. About six weeks ago there was a strike in the
Putilov Works. Trotski in a speech made a definite threat to use force
if the men did not go back. As a result of this the strike was settled
with only a few arrests taking place.
About two months ago there was an election for the Workmen's
Committee in the Putilov Works, and this resulted in a majority for
the Social Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks would not consent to
this, and there had to be another election. This shows that, in spite
of the Workmen's Committees, the Bolsheviks are really in control.
If the workmen get too independent, the Government simply closes
the factory down ; and if the Committee is troublesome the same
thing happens, unless a new Committee is appointed. All members
of the Committee have to be Communists, or in sympathy with the
Communists. Often a factory has to close down for lack of fuel or
certain machinery, but the men who are thus thrown out of work are
given an unemployment allowance.
House Committees.
Mr. E was a member of his House Committee in order to get
put into the second category. The chief duties of the House Committee
are to see that the different decrees of the Bolsheviks are carried out.
If these are not carried out the Committee is held responsible, and is
either fined or imprisoned. The Committee is forced to buy one news-
paper a day in order to follow the decrees, as the Bolsheviks only
publish their decrees in the newspaper. By this means practically
everyone has to read the papers, and as only Bolshevik papers are
allowed to be published their propaganda is seen by everyone.
General Conditions.
All the streets are deserted, and there is no life at all. The
Nevski is practically empty, and most of the shops are shut. But
perfect order .reigns in the streets ; there is no looting or robbery.
There are hardly any executions now. This is due to the fact
that the people's spirit has been broken, and that they now offer no
opposition.
All restaurants are closed, with the exception of municipal
restaurants and cafes. In an ordinary cafe a cup of tea, without
milk or sugar, costs 1 rouble, and coffee, 3 r. 50 c.
Services still continue to be held in the churches, and on the whole
they are well attended. The congregation is chiefly composed of
women, but on the Russian New Year's Eve there were many men
there. The priests, who used to be in the fourth category, are now
in no category at all.
77
Intervention.
In Mr. E 's opinion Allied intervention would be very welcome.
He thinks 50,000 troops would be ample, and that the Bolsheviks
would not be able to rouse any opposition against us. In fact, the Red
Guard officers would be among the first to join our ranks. Everybody
is hoping and praying that the Allies will intervene, and they would
be welcomed with open arms everywhere.
Finland.
Russians crossing the border from Russia into Finland are now,
in the majority of cases, sent back to Russia again, unless they have
some very strong influence in Finland itself.
Mr. F , who has returned from Vladimir, states that he had
his factory going right up to the day of his departure from M on
the 6th February.
Before the revolution the output was : —
1,100 poods (roughly 400 cwt.) yarn daily.
800 pieces cloth.
The latest figures were for January, 1919 : —
550 poods (roughly 200 cwt.) yarn daily.
500 pieces cloth.
Out of 6,500 workmen there were not 200 convinced Bolsheviks.
The majority were kept in order by pure terrorism, of which there
were many examples within a radius of 40 versts of M . When
peasants refused to supply grain and cattle, and rose to protect their
property, a Bolshevik force soon appeared in the neighbourhood, and
if any resistance was offered, the whole village was wiped out. Usually,
the peasants gave in at the first shot, a number of ringleaders would
then be shot on the spot, and a number would be taken off to Moscow
to prison.
Epidemic.
Typhus is rapidly spreading in the country and the capitals.
The average number of cases taken off trains arriving at the Kasan
Station, Moscow, is twenty per train. At the Kursk Station in Moscow,
typhus cases lie about the waiting halls. The hospitals are so full
that patients are left in the corridor.
Sanitary Conditions.
In places where people congregate, such as railway stations,
market places, &c, the sanitary conditions are terrible. With the
thawing of the snow the epidemic, which has reached enormous pro-
portions during the winter frosts, will naturally increase in violence.
Traffic.
The Kazan railway runs one passenger train each way to Kazan.
This railway used to bring 40 per cent, of the food into Moscow. It
now runs an average of three goods trains each way per day.
Red Army.
No one wants to join the Red Army now except the worst elements
of the people. If a conscript deserts in the town where he joins, his
parents or wife are treated with extreme brutality, sometimes being
78
shot. But desertion often takes place while troops are going to the
" front." Under these latter circumstances, the Bolsheviks are unable
to trace their relations, so they are not touched.
Mr. F considers one of the inducements to fight is that, if
the Red Army breaks through the enemy, it usually finds large stores
of food.
No. 58.
The Progress of Bolshevism in Russia.
Memorandum by Mr. B .
The Russian Government. — There has now been time for consider-
able organisation of the Bolshevik Government. Russia has been
divided into four Federal Republics : —
(1.) Commune of the North.
(2.) Commune of the West.
(3.) Central Commune.
(4.) Commune of the Volga.
The first is composed of the Governments of Petrograd, Archangel,
Viatka, Vologda, part of the Government of Pskov, Novgorod,
Tcherepovetz and Olonetz.
The second comprises the Governments of Vitebsk, Smolensk,
and Pskov.
The third the Governments of Moscow, Orel, Kursk, Tula, Tver,
Nijni-Novgorod, Voronij.
The fourth those of Kazan, Simbirsk, Saratov and Perm.
Each town is provided with its Council of Deputies and its Com-
mission for fighting counter-revolution, sabotage and speculation.
Each district besides has its Council of Deputies (Sovdep) and its
Extraordinary Commission. These institutions direct all local affairs,
but they are all subject to the authority of the Central Executive
Committee, which sits at Moscow. The pan-Russian Extraordinary
Commission against counter-revolution, &c, also sits at Moscow.
The members of these bodies are supposed to be elected by the
pan-Russian Congress of Workmen, Peasants, Red Guards, Sailors,
and Cossack Deputies ; foreign affairs are under the exclusive manage-
ment of George Tchitcherine. The Central Committee is composed
as follows : —
Lenin . . . . President.
Trotski . . . Military and Naval Commissary.
Chicherin . . Foreign Affairs.
Schmidt . . Commissary of Labour.
Pokrovski .. Interior (ex-Professor of History at Moscow).
Lunacharski . . Education.
Nevski . . . . Commissary of Roads and Communications.
A former engineer at the Ministry.
Ulianova . . Lenin's wife, social assistant.
Stoutchka . . Justice. Formerly a Deputy of the Petro-
grad Tribunal.
Tsiuroupa . . Minister of Food.
Bonch-Brouevich Business Manager.
79
The Red Army.— On the 25th October, 1918, the Bolshevik troops
of Petrograd and the neighbourhood numbered hardly more than two
divisions. Regimental committees have been abolished throughout
the Army, and the power was transferred to military commissaries,
who were charged with attending to the political moral. The
Bolsheviks have neglected no means for increasing the number of their
troops. Disabled soldiers of the old Army released from Germany are
concentrated on their arrival either at Petrograd or Moscow and
quartered with soldiers of the Red Guard. They are left without
clothing, with insufficient rations, and without medical attendance,
while the Red Guard with whom they are mingled, is well fed, clothed;
and amply supplied with money. When they complain the answer is :
" Enrol in the Red Guard." Refractory cases are cruelly treated. At
the head of the Red Guard is a former colonel of the staff, a Lett named
Vatatis. Each soldier receives 300 to 500 roubles a month, equipment,
food on a higher scale than all the other categories, and a promise to
support his family in the event of death ; but, in spite of their privileged"
situation, the Red Guard have not the confidence of the Government,
and, as intercepted letters show, many of them are disaffected. The
real reliance of the Government is placed in the " International Battalions
of the Army," which are formed of Letts and Chinese, who are used as
punitive companies both in the Army and in the interior. Theoretically,
the International Battalions are on an equality with the Red Guard,
but actually they are far better paid, and they can count on absolute
immunity for the excesses they commit against the wretched civil
population which is left at their mercy. There is compulsory military
instruction in the towns for all men between 17 and 40, in the form of
drills twice a week. While its cohesion lasts, the Bolshevik Army is an
incontestable force.
The Terror. — All assemblies except those organised by the
Bolsheviks are forbidden in the towns. Anti-Bolshevik meetings are
dispersed by armed force and their organisers shot. No Press exists
except the Bolshevik Press. The Bolsheviks organise Sunday reunions,
in which such subjects as, " Should one enrol in the Red Guards ? " ;
" Who will give us our daily bread ? " ; " The world revolution," &c,
are debated.
So effective is the Terror that no one dares to engage in anti-
Bolshevik propaganda. People have been arrested for a simple
telephonic conversation, in which the terms seemed ambiguous or could
be interpreted as adverse to the Bolsheviks. An arrest is the prelude
to every kind of corruption ; the rich have to pay huge exactions to
intermediaries, who are usually Jews, before they can obtain their
release.
Latterly " mass arrests " have come into fashion. It was thought
at first that these were ordered by the Extraordinary Commission
against counter-revolution, but it is now known that they are ordered
by a special Revolutionary Committee called for short " The Three,"
because it consists of three members. This committee is independent
of the Extraordinary Commission and is controlled only by the Commis-
sary of War. Persons arrested by its orders have never been seen again.
The proceedings of this committee are kept secret ; its very
composition is unknown to the public.
80
It has already been mentioned that the Red Guard is disaffected.
A letter from a sailor named Borzov, written on the eve of going to the
front, says, " The authorities seem to think that we are going to support
the interest of the Soviets, but they are greatly mistaken. All the
sailors are otherwise inclined. . . . many of them go simply to avoid
hunger. ... I think there will be an end to all this very soon ;^ the
Allies will overpower us." Another letter from Petrograd says, " We
hear that Petrograd, before any other Russian town, will be in touch
with Europe, but in' the meantime half the inhabitants there are dying
from hunger and typhoid fever." These letters and others were sent by
the Russian Censor to the Extraordinary Commission for fighting the
counter-revolution, and no doubt the writers have already been dealt
with in the usual way.
There is, of course, in Russia a public opinion quite outside the
Bolsheviks — an opinion which longs ardently for any kind of intervention
—Allied or German — which will put an end to the present state of
anarchy. So far it has expressed itself only in half-hearted insurrections,
as for example that of Yaroslav and the assassination of Mirbach, &c.
Nevertheless, in spite of the apparent stability of the Bolshevik
Government, in spite of the ineptitude of its opponents, there are signs
that the Terrorist Oligarchy is tottering. It is indeed impossible to
believe that a Government, financially bankrupt and unable to feed its
population, can survive for very long, however drastically it attempts
to govern by terror. A neutral in Petrograd said recently that hatred
towards the Government and everybody connected with it is spreading
among all classes of the population, including peasants and the working
men. The end will probably come quite suddenly as it did in the
French Terror.
The anti-Bolshevik parties are considering all sorts of devices for
discrediting the Bolsheviks. One is to flood the country with false
currency, in order to throw discredit on the Soviets ; another, to seize
the printing office, where bank notes are produced, at Petrograd ;
another, to obtain employment in Government offices for the purpose
of furnishing information to their Party, which is being conducted by
Boris Asvinkof. Even the working class of the two capitals is divided
and there is a considerable anti-Bolshevik party. The general opinion,
of the -educated classes is that a force of half a million would suffice
to overthrow the Bolsheviks with very few losses.
Bolshevik Administration. — One is startled from time to time by
hearing that some well-known man of education has joined the
Bolsheviks, such for instance as Maxim Gorki and the famous singer
Chaliapin. The fact is that there are many specious things in the
Bolshevik creed designed to capture persons of all shades of opinion.
It is not usually with the principles of a system of Government that
fault can be found, but in the application of the principles, and when
these are applied by ruffians, such as the Terrorists of the French and
the Russian Revolutions, the principles fall into ruin. Rose-coloured
accounts of the Bolshevik regime are written by persons who have only
the principles to go by. Take, for example, the housing question.
Some families have more rooms than they can live in, others have to
live in one room, others again have no room at all. The Bolshevik
Government commandeers a large house and lets it to indigent persons,
so that all have equal housing accommodation. The house is managed
81
by a committee and the only person who dislikes the arrangement is the
owner of the house. The rationing is another instance. There are
four categories. No. 1 entitles those engaged in heavy manual work to
I lb- of bread and five herrings a day, and No. 4, the lowest in the scale,
giving in fact the right to -J- lb. of bread per diem, is prescribed for those
who employ other people. No. 4 is a very cogent weapon for persuading
people to enlist in the Red Guard or other unpopular occupation.
National economy is managed by a Superior Council sitting
at Moscow, which nominally administers the industry, exports and
imports for the whole country, but, in practice, all industry and
commerce being paralysed, it has very little to do. There is food
administration in each district, partly under the control of the Food
Commissariat and partly under the Council of National Economy.
Expeditionary corps, composed of Volunteers and Red Guards, are used
to requisition corn from the peasants, who will not give it willingly
because the price is fixed at a lower rate than the cost of production.
These expeditionary corps carry away all the food on which they can
lay their hands, leaving the peasants what is strictly necessary ; it
is in fact a kind of organised brigandage. Corps of the same kind exist
in the mills and factories with not less than 1,000 employees. They
requisition the food necessary for the maintenance of themselves and
the factory hands.
Much is made among the Bolshevik sympathisers in England of
the Bolshevik system of public education, but it is easy to acquire
merit for any educational system in a country where there was
practically no elementary education before the revolution. It is also
true that the opera and the theatres are kept running but I am assured
that the opera performed to an empty house until the Government gave
orders that it was to be filled. Such methods of window dressing are
not unknown in other countries.
The following is a list of prices for foodstuffs and clothing current
on the 15th of December : —
Potatoes (mostly rotten)
Salt fish (bad condition)
Bread (bj' card, scarce)
Bread (in open market)
Pork (scarce)
Beef (scarce)
Sugar (scarce)
Tea (scarce)
Coffee (none to be had at any price)
Butter (salted)
Butter (unsalted) . .
(The Russian lb. is 2 oz. lighter
Roubles.
10
9-10
1*
18-20
50
22-23
80
100
75
80
than our lb.)
Suit of clothes (very ordinary) . . 800-900
Shoes (poor quality) . . . . 400
Cotton (only by card) (for a piece
26-in. square) 15-16
Other reports show that Bolshevism is still a potent force in Siberia
and that Bolsheviks are in close touch with those in European Russia.
(1057) G
per lb.
82
In destroying the fabric of society the Bolsheviks appear to be
adopting the methods of " skyscrapers " in New York, which is to dig
out everything to a depth of 300 ft. in order to erect a new and stable
edifice. They have said more than once that unless they can by propa-
ganda induce a sympathetic revolution in other countries their fate
must be sealed ; and the fever of propaganda which now possesses
them is really a measure of self-preservation.
It is now reported that they are abandoning propaganda by leaflets
in favour of personal and secret propaganda.
No. 59.
The Progress of Bolshevism Abroad.
Memorandum by Mr. B .
FROM a report recently received from a former Russian statesman,
it certainly appears that Bolshevism is dying at its roots. He says
that the split between the Lenin and Trotsky group has become
menacing. The few idealists that still remain among the Bolsheviks
are seeing their ideas falling to pieces one after another, while a world
revolution is still hanging fire. The leaders, who have full details of
the position of Bolshevism both in Russia and abroad, clearly foresee
their downfall, and admit their discouragement in private conversation
with their friends. The " middle " Bolsheviks, i.e., the Commissars,
Soviet staff, and officers of the Red Army, knowing nothing of the
progress of events except what they read in the Bolshevik press, are
less dismayed. They still believe in the eventual victory of Bolshevism
in Germany, and are looking forward to disturbances in England, but
many of them are already looking out for hiding places, and it is believed
that they will desert the Bolsheviks as soon as there is another revolution.
The minor Bolsheviks, Communist workmen, &c, are not concerned
with politics at all. Their sole preoccupation is the question of food.
Those who are living at the Smolny seem to be convinced of the early
downfall of the Soviet Government, owing to disorganisation in the
Red Army, revolts in the villages, and famine. Many of them are
returning to their homes and throwing off the mask of Bolshevism.
The mass of the townspeople are terrorized and incapable of any
independent action.
Under-feeding is having its effect, and the epidemics of typhus,
small-pox, and influenza are spreading rapidly. In the Obukhov
hospital, during December, the mortality amounted to 14,000. During
that month the population of Petrograd fell by 105,000. Next to disease
and famine, the absence of fuel is the worst scourge. All this presses
terribly upon the prisoners, who are now thrust eight into a cell intended
for one person, and fed upon putrid herrings and soup made from
potato peel. Typhoid, small-pox, and influenza cases are left in the
same cell with uninfected persons, and in the quarantine cells eight to
ten patients lie together.
There is complete disorganisation of transport. The Bolsheviks
are doing all they can to postpone the day of complete breakdown by
giving superior diet to the railway workers, who are very discontented.
S3
The Red Army continues to hold together, but its moral is said to
have declined. The moral of the fleet is in a dangerous state. Many
of the sailors have amassed a fortune during the past year, and they
believe that they can only retain it by bringing in a bourgeois Govern-
ment. They are now not only discontented, but anti-Bolshevik. In
the beginning of January they demanded the removal of commissars
from the ships, which was done. An attempt made by the Government
to send the sailors to the front was disastrous. They refused to go,
and refused to be disarmed. The relations between the sailors and
officers have lately improved, and the Bolshevik leaders are aware of
the danger of having in the very centre of Petrograd a compact armed
force hostile to them. All that the sailors need for taking action is a
leader.
There is no Labour question in Petrograd because there are no
capitalists, no trade, and no industry. The workmen, who used to
number hundreds of thousands, may now be counted in thousands.
Many of them have taken service under the Bolsheviks, and are employed
in various commissariats and committees. Large numbers have drifted
away into the country. On the whole, those who remain are against
the Bolsheviks. They control the water supply, the electric fire stations,
the tramways, and arsenal. They appear to entertain no ill-feeling
towards the bourgeoisie, but, on the other hand, they are quite inarticulate
as to the form of Government they would prefer.
At the Putilov Works anti-Semitism is growing, probably because
the food supply committees are entirely in the hands of Jews — and voices
can be heard sometimes calling for a " pogrom."
In the railway workshops the men are split into two parties —
Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik. The Government is carrying on a
feverish propaganda among them, but without much effect. The
womenfolk are specially counter-revolutionary, probably because they
feel the want of food more severely. The workmen are generally
opposed to the Red Army and against war of any kind.
The food supply, in which there was a temporary improvement
during January, has again become hopeless. In Petrograd there is
no reserve of food.
The peasants in the Northern governments are generally anti-
Bolshevik, but the feeling varies in the different governments, and is
most hostile where requisitions have been made. The " Committees
of the Poor " are avoided by respectable peasants. Members of those
committees — numbering sometimes 20 per cent, of the population —
do no work and live at the expense of the local peasants by requisition.
This led to revolts in January in several districts. Nearly all the
peasants are armed, some even having machine guns and a supply of
cartridges. They have ceased to take the slightest interest in politics.
What they need is cloth and iron, as well as food.
The most interesting feature in the report is the statement that,
both in the towns and villages, there is a reawakening of religion.
At Kolpin the churches are overcrowded ; the propaganda of Ivan
Chirikov is meeting with success ; Pashkovtsev's sect is growing, and
new sects are appearing. In the villages also the priests are no longer
molested and are beginning to reopen the churches.
S4
At the International Communist Conference at Moscow, according
to the Russian wireless, Kamenev declared for the doctrines of Karl
Marx and a proletarian dictatorship. Lenin spoke hopefully of the
victory of the Social Revolution being secured. " In spite." he said,
" of all the obstacles and the number of victims who may suffer in the
progress of the cause, we may live to see a universal Republic 01
Soviets." There was to be a review of the Red Army for the edification
of the foreign delegates.
The Red Army is flooded with propaganda literature, and Trotsky
is conducting a series of mass meetings. The propaganda trains are
decorated fantastically in order to make an impression on the soldiers.
Trotsky's present theme is the coming of the Socialistic State. Stoppage
of work in factories is almost universal, not only from the lack of fuel,
but fiom strikes.
The Russian wireless has issued a statement that the Government,
although not recognising the Berne Conference as representative of the
working classes, will allow the Commission to travel through Russia,
just as they would allow any bourgeois Commission to do the same,
but they enquire whether the Governments of the various countries'
representatives will allow a Bolshevik Commission to inspect their
countries.
A man named J , who has arrived in Norway from Russia,
states that he was employed as engineer at a printing works. In the
spring of 1918 the press was taken over by the Soviet Government,
and was employed in printing propaganda in many languages — " Ever}"
language," he says, " except Russian." Most of the matter printed
was in German, but there was a good deal of English too, as well as
leaflets in Asiatic languages, for which purpose type was purchased
in India. He specially remembered Sanscrit and Hindustani.
The efforts of the Bolsheviks to corrupt the Allied soldiers at
Archangel are reported to be futile. Specimens of the literature dropped
by Bolshevik aeroplanes comprised English translations of manifestoes
by Lenin and Petrov, a man who was charged in connection with the
Houndsditch murders.
There are many reports about the printing of forged notes for the
various Allied countries, and the £\ note is reported to be forged in
enormous quantities. The only forged notes now being circulated
in this country are very crude, and are quite unworthy of the style
of note printing for which the Russians used to be famous. Most of
the forgery has been badly executed by hand on inferior paper.
No. 60.
Appreciation of the Economic Situation, Compiled from Statistics
in the Possession of His Majesty's Government.
1. Bolshevik Financial Methods and Bolshevik
Currency.
(a) General.— We see throughout the area controlled by the
Bolshevik Autocracy a destruction of the industrial and commercial
system which has been based on the models of Western civilisation.
35
Bona fide commerce and industry is at a standstill, necessities
of life are scarce and obtainable only at exorbitant prices, expressed
in terms of a depreciated currency issued without regard to sound
principles of finance.
The peasants employed in agriculture and thus controlling the
essential products of the soil are less imbued with Bolshevism than the
factory hands and town dwellers. They will not sell their supplies
for a depreciated currency, but part with them only in exchange for
the necessary products of those trades and industries, mainly centred
in the towns, which Bolshevism has parahysed or destroyed.
There can be no two opinions as to the fact that the basis of national
and international trade and industry is vitally bound up with the
banking system. If, therefore, the situation created by the nationali-
sation of all Russian banks is examined, it will go far to show that the
assertion freely made that the banking system has completely broken
down is perfectly justifiable, and further that, this being so, trade
and industry in the accepted sense, when they are not at a standstill,
are at any rate not being conducted on an economically sound basis.
The paralysing effect which Bolshevik decrees have had upon trade
and industry may be thus illustrated.
(b) The Nationalisation of Bank Balances. — In effect, this is a
provision by which all current accounts become governmentally
controlled. Permits to draw on such accounts are granted up to
1,000 roubles per month, without any regard to the amount standing
to the credit balance of such accounts. As a result, no individual
commercial house, shop or business of any kind, which is not controlled
by a duly authorized Bolshevik committee, has a credit value of more
than 1,000 roubles per month. If it be taken into consideration that
the life of any such Bolshevik committee is very precarious and depends
to a great extent on the number of bayonets supporting it, it will be
clearly understood that the ordinary system of trade and industrial
credits has ceased to exist.
All securities, including Government stocks, Treasury bills, bank,
trading, and industrial stocks and shares have been nationalised. After
a rough and ready valuation, holders of such securities are credited
with a cash balance, subject, of course, to the embargo mentioned.
A few comments are illuminating evidence of Bolshevik failure : —
The " People's " Bank can hardly claim any depositors, despite
the fact that the last banking institution (Moscow Narodni Bank)
which remained outside the nationalisation decree was taken under
Government control about two months ago. In other words, the
" People's " Bank, the only remaining bank, inspires no confidence.
This lack of confidence arises from several different causes. Among
them may be numbered the absolute insecurity arising out of the
wholesale corruption prevalent throughout the Bolshevik administration,
and particularly in the bank administration.
The malversation of incredibly large sums of money is of daily
occurrence. Other causes are the" insufficiency and incompetence of
the bank staffs. In fact, the interest of 3 per cent, payable on all bank
balances is hardly ever credited. It is no exaggeration to state that
under the Bolshevik financial regulations there has been a complete
breakdown of the credit system. The cheque has fallen into disuse.
86
There are no longer any securities to enable a trade or an industr}"
to obtain credit, and loans cannot be raised.
It may be well asserted that, with production ever on the decrease
(in some industries it has fallen to 5 per cent, of the normal) and con-
sumption on a starvation basis (e.g., the population of Petrograd,
owing mainly to emigration consequent on unemployment and disease,
has dwindled from 1\ millions to about 650,000 to 700,000), the economic
system in Russia under Bolshevik influence has had the disastrous results
of completely paralysing the trade and industry of the country.
A conclusive proof of Bolshevik economic bankruptcy is afforded
by their latest budget statement for 1919, which runs as follows, in
round figures : —
Expenditure.
28 milliards of roubles.
Revenue.
Deficit to be covered by fresh issues of
paper currency . . . . . . 16 milliards of roubles.
Taxes . . . . . . . . 2
Contributions from the " Bourgeois
classes " . . . . . 10
Total 28
(c.) Ukraine. — The first Bolshevik invasion of the Ukraine destroyed,
as it did in Northern Russia, the existing trade and industrial life of
the country. It failed, as it has done in Northern Russia, to construct
trade and industry on a new basis. The occupation by Germanv of
the Ukraine reimposed the old order of things. However much the
economic life of the Ukraine must have suffered from these two violent
and rapid changes, as an illustration of the confidence restored by the
overthrow of Bolshevism, even by a foreign enemy, the reopening of
the private banks at Kiev under their old management may be quoted.
Hundreds of would-be depositors of millions of roubles besieged these
banks for days in succession. It is indeed a justifiable presumption
that should the Bolsheviks again make themselves masters of the
Ukraine, with the greater experience the}? have acquired since their
first inroad into that country, their demolition of trade and industry
will be more thorough than on the former occasion. Here as elsewhere
under the Bolshevik rule, there will then be the same absence of security
for capital and industry and the almost equal lack of security for life
itself.
(d.) Notes on Bolshevik currency. — The following observations
with regard to the Bolshevik currency situation are of interest : —
(1.) The Bolshevik Government have lost large amounts of
bullion, and have no possibility of attaining any fresh
cover to their paper issue.
(2.) An issue of two milliards of paper monthly still continues.
(3.) It appears that the Bolshevik Government have never dared
to issue paper money of their own, having relied on
fresh issues of Kerensky money, which is still accepted
by the people, and probably on illicit issues of, ostensibly,
Czar roubles.
87
In the event of the people ceasing to accept the present paper
currency, and of no organisation of barter ■ being established in its
place, disaster must finally overtake the Bolshevik regime.
2. Bolshevik Relations with the Zemstvos.
The nearest English equivalents to the Zemstvos are the Rural
District Councils and the Local Government Board.
They have proved of the greatest assistance during the war.
Without the Union of Zemstvos it is doubtful if the Quartermaster
General's department of the Russian army could have coped with the
situation, as they undertook practically the whole of the food organisa-
tion. It is stated that the late Czar credited them with political
intrigue, and wished to disband them, but this was vigorously resisted
by the Grand Duke Nicholas, then Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
army. Under Kerensky the Zemstvos were reorganised and their
power amplified. It was projected that they should form the electoral
machinery for the Constituent Assembly, but this scheme was not
in full working order at the time the Bolsheviks seized power. The
Bolsheviks, realising that they had to deal with a body practically
controlling the agricultural supplies of the country, were very careful
in their attitude at first. The Bolsheviks attacked the members of
the Zemstvos on the ground that individually they were counter-
revolutionary, but went no further until, with increasing power, they
felt strong enough to assail the executive branches and finally the
whole system. Their purpose was two-fold : —
(1.) To destroy the machinery for the election of a Constituent
Assembly.
(2.) To obtain complete domination over the peasant^, and
consequently the handling of rural produce.
Domination of the peasantry they have never really obtained,
but they sowed distrust against the Zemstvos by suggesting that these
bodies were retarding the distribution of the land. The destruction
of the authority of the Zemstvos was not replaced by confidence in
the Bolsheviks. The peasants refused to place their produce on the
markets as it was so often sequestrated. They demanded clothing,
agricultural machinery and household goods, and refused the paper
money which was of no use to them. The vicious circle was established
of complaint by the workpeople that the peasants would not supply
food, and on the peasants' side that the workpeople would not supply
the implements necessary for their toil. Result— chaos and famine.
3. Bolshevik Relations with Co-operative Societies.
These are closely allied to the Zemstvos, but have no adminis-
trative functions. The Bolsheviks were very chary of interference
with these bodies in the earlier stage, recognising that they were the
embodiment of one branch of socialist thought. The Co-operative
Societies were, and are, a body of considerable power representing
the financial interests of a large proportion of the peasant population.
The " People's " Bank in Moscow, which was practically owned by
the Co-operatives, was for a time allowed almost unrestricted freedom
of action.
88
A very large percentage of Russian raw material passes through
the hands of the Co-operatives, and the Bolsheviks realise that resump-
tion of trade relationship with other countries is in no small way
dependent on this functioning of the Co-operatives. These latter
have stoutly defended their rights, and many collisions have occurred
in the attempts of the Bolsheviks to sequestrate money and goods
belonging to them.
Should the Bolsheviks succeed in the domination of the Co-
operatives it will be another blow to the possibilities of reconstruction
of Russian economic life.
4. Nationalisation of Industry.
First attempts at the nationalisation of industry were carried out
at the Putilov (the Russian Krupps) and the Obukhov Gun Works
near Petrograd. These works, in fact, provided the nucleus of the
workmen's army under the Bolshevik regime, as they had also been
among the first insurrectionists in the earlier revolution.
The nationalisation of factories developed until it included all
the Petrograd works, and was eventually extended to Moscow.
Having ordained the nationalisation of industry, extraordinary
measures were adopted by the Bolsheviks in their endeavours to secure
apparent success for their schemes. When it was realised that factories
could not survive the removal of the brains of the industry represented
by the owners, managers, and staffs, laws were passed to " protect "
the workpeople ; among others, a regulation that no workman could
be dismissed on grounds of ill-health, incapacity, or idleness. Such
questions had to be referred to the Workmen's Committee, who
invariably sided with the employee. If a workman was called up as
a " Red Guard " he was entitled to demand from his employer full
pay during his absence on service, and in certain cases 70 per cent,
of the workpeople being absent as Red Guards, the remainder declined
to work on the ground that it was impossible to operate the factory,
but demanded none the less full pay during their idleness.
The technical staff in most cases followed the example of their
employers in declining to serve except where poverty made such a
course impossible. Attempts were made by the Soviets to enforce
the attendance of the staff, who in such cases attended, but adopted
the attitude of passive resistance. Wages increased and output
decreased. One may mention the instance of a railway wagon works
where, based on the number of men employed, the wages paid and the
work done, a completed wagon cost 180,000 roubles. Gradually the
owners, either ruined or realising the impossibility of continuing under
these conditions, have surrendered their works to their Soviet masters.
5. Mixing.
(a) General. — From 1914-1918, the mining industry passed through
four phases —
(i.) 1914. When output was normal.
(ii.) 1915-1917. Increasing output, qualified b}^ periods of decrease
owing to injudicious mobilisation of working hands.
(hi.) 1917. The revolution. Rapid decrease in output and increase
in cost of working.
89
(iv.) 1917. November to date. Increasing state of chaos.
Nationalisation. Increase of wages to such an extent
that the payment of workpeople had to be subsidised by
the State. Output negligible.
It is impossible to give in a short summary full details, but a few
figures are quoted from reliable sources concerning key mining industries.
(b) Coal. — In the Donetz basin, on which industrial Russia mainly
depends, the first revolution in 1917 resulted in a 13 per cent, decrease.
The number of pits working in November, 1918, is given as 30, com-
pared with 390 in normal times. Only the smaller pits were working,
the Bolsheviks, either purposely or through negligence, having flooded
the larger pits. As the district contains no spare plant or repairing
units, it is impossible to resume work. The Donetz normally supplied
about 1,505 million poods* per annum.
Such reconstruction and resumption of work as was possible
during Ukrainian (anti-Bolshevik) occupation has ceased in the face
of the present Bolshevik menace.
The following statistics show the terrible conditions : —
Tons.
September, 1917, output 1,358,000
October ,, ,', 1,136,000
November ,, „ 1,225,000
Bolshevik regime —
December, 1917, output .. .. 811,000
January, 1918 „ . . . . 491,000
In the Ural mountains the coal production fell from a normal
6-7 million poods monthly to 800,000-900,000 poods monthly, i.e.,
an 86 per cent, decrease.
On the 23rd January, 1919, the Council of National Economics
proposed to close down all factories, even arsenals, in order to devote
all available coal to the railways.
(c.) Iron. — The principal ironfields of Russia are in the south —
the Krivoi Rog, supplying 75 per cent., and in the Urals. The Krivoi
Rog district mined about 3,000,000 tons of ore per annum prior to
the war, employing 23,000 hands. The following extract from the
" Frankfurter Zeitung," 7th November, 1917, refers to ironworks
in the Krivoi Rog : —
At the Gdantsevski Works only 400 workmen remain.
The Nikopol Mariupol Works, which had a normal monthly
output of 500,000 poods, produced only 17,000 poods during
April, 1918, and in May, 1918, work stopped entirely.
\t the Donetz-Yurievska, work has been at a standstill since
May, 1918.
At Briansk only 2,500 workmen remain out of 6,000, the normal
number.
The Bogoslavski district in the Urals decreased in output from
250 000 poods per month to 200,000 and less. Up to 1st May, 1917,
" One pood equals 36- 11281 lb. avoirdupois.
90
sums to the amount of 195,000,000 roubles had been advanced by
the Government, but hitherto with no visible success in the restoration
of the industry.
(d.) Summary. — The same history applies to copper, oil, manganese
as has been touched on in iron and coal. The nationalisation, or
rather total allocation to the local workpeople, of the works, was
based on the firm belief that the profits shown in the past under
business organisation would be maintained in the future. The saner
elements among the workpeople and " commisars " realised that the
pace in wages, &c, could not be maintained, but the extremists
continued to agitate, and eventually the Government had to subsidise
the industry with its " paper " money in order to placate the extremist
elements among the workpeople.
After November, 1918, owing to the rupture of relations with the
Ukraine, and the Czecho-Slovak operations in the Urals, the Bolsheviks
became dependent on the coal mines in the Moscow district. During
the first six months of 1918 these mines produced 10,000,000 poods
(161,300 tons) and the northern mines produced 400,000 poods per
month, or together less than 2,000,000 poods per month, whereas
Petrograd required 14,000,000 poods per month in normal times.
6. — Agriculture.
(a.) Grain. — When we come to consider the great agricultural
resources of European Russia our attention is again directed to the
Ukraine, which area, in spite of unsatisfactory systems of land tenure
and antiquated methods of farming, produced a large proportion of
Russia's total exportable surplus of grain. It exported in 1913 some
33,000,000 tons of grain and, in addition, this region accounted for
80 per cent, of the normal production of beet sugar in Russia.
Present production is hampered to a considerable extent, not
merely by the original difficulties mentioned above, but by the unsettled
conditions of labour and life generally produced by the war and the
revolution.
The pillage of private estates and stores of grain, coupled with
the bad condition of transport, has deterred production, encouraged
waste and prevented the collection and distribution of the produce
available.
These adverse conditions have been accentuated by the deficiency
of agricultural machinery. Prior to the war, nearly two-thirds of the
agricultural machinery used in the Ukraine (and its use was then
increasing, and further increase is now urgent, having regard to the
need for improved farming) was of Russian manufacture ; the
factories having been subsequently converted to war purposes and
being now unable, through difficulties of labour and material, to
resume their former activities, the Ukrainian cultivators have for
some time past been compelled to look to outside sources for their
supplies as they will be equally compelled to do for some years to come.
The available information as to the harvest of 1918, and as to
stocks existing prior to that harvest, goes to show that production,
although much reduced, is still substantial. In February, 1918, it was
estimated that stocks of grain to the extent of some 4,000,000 tons
probably existed in the Ukraine, and that efforts to remove these
stocks to the Central Empires would meet with only a modest degree
91
of success, owing partly to the attitude of the peasants in refusing
to part with their stocks, and in concealing them, and still more to
the limited supply and poor condition of the available transport.
Subsequently information has confirmed that the Central Powers
have not obtained any considerable supplies from the Ukraine.
The total area sown in the Ukraine by the end of the 1918 spring
sowings has been officially stated to be as high as 80 per cent, of the
normal, and this statement is probably but little exaggerated.
Estimates of the yield of the 1918 harvest are somewhat variable.
On 31st August, 1918, the " Miinchener Neueste Nachrichten "
stated that the Ukraine harvest was above the average and that
1,600,000 tons would be available for export.
On 5th September, 1918, the " Vossische Zeitung " reported
that the summer wheat and rye crops range from inferior to positively
bad, while barley and oats were no better. Winter cereals, on the
other hand, were above-average, or good.
On 18th September, 1918, " Vorwarts " published an estimate,
compiled from official data, stating that the total Ukraine harvest
would show a yield of 15,040,000 tons, of which the figures for the
four principal cereals were as follow : —
Tons.
Wheat 5,000,000
3,667,000
2,840,000
1,800,000
publishing closely
Rye ...
Barley
Oats
On 2nd November, 1918, the " Pester Lloj
corresponding figures, compared them with those of 1912 (not a
particularly good year), which showed that 1918 was about 25 per
cent, worse in results. This report also stated that the exportable
surplus would be 2,600,000 tons.
On 1st January, 1919, it was reported by the British representative
at Odessa that good stocks of grain were lying in the district south
of the Dnieper, and west of a line running from Kherson to Perekop,
while a large area was sown with winter grain.
The harvest in Great Russia is stated to have been better than
was expected, while in the Northern provinces a serious shortage
exists of seed grain.
(b.) Sugar. — With regard to beet sugar, of which the Ukraine
area under cultivation in 1917 was said to be 572,000 hectares, as
compared with 750,000 in 1914, the 1918 area will certainly not have
been greater than that of 1917. The figures for production (all Russia)
are as follows : —
Cwts.
1914-15 38,788,000
1915-16 35,867,000
1916-17 26,432,000
1917-18 20,572,000
The only report available as to 1918-19 sugar production makes
it probable that this will fall far below even the poor result of 1917-18,
92
(c.) Live-stock.— With regard to the quantity of live-stock at
present held in Russia, the Soviet authorities have asserted that stocks
have actually increased under their regime, and have published
statistics purporting to establish their assertions. Low as stocks
must have been when the Bolshevik government was established,
it is not possible that they can have increased or even kept their level,
and the Soviet statistics must be regarded as fictitious or misrepresented.
The Soviet authorities give no explanation as to how any increased
stock has been, or can be fed, nor do they state how stocks have
increased in face of the urgent demand for food in the towns and the
consequent high prices to be obtained for meat.
(d.) Summary. — It thus appears that agricultural conditions in
the Ukraine are improving subject to the serious obstacles presented
by a lack of implements and machinery, insufficient and defective
conditions of transport and in spite of unsettled conditions.
That the position in the Ukraine is no worse and thus does not
approximate to that obtaining in Northern and Bolshevik Russia
must be attributed to the comparative independence from Soviet
influence which the Ukraine has succeeded in maintaining.
If, however, reports are true as to the gradual encroachment
of Bolsheviks into Ukraine territory, a repetition of the state of affairs
existent in North Russia is bound to occur. Inasmuch as under
normal conditions South Russia practically fed North Russia — the
amount of wheat sent in from Siberia being proportionately small —
disorganisation in these southern provinces would remove all hope of
immediate relief to Northern Russia, excepting such foodstuffs as might
be imported from abroad. Reliance can hardly be placed on immediate
relief from Siberian stocks, as, owing to railway disorganisation, a
considerable period must elapse even after the downfall of the Bolshevik
regime before Siberian supplies could be sent into Russia in any
quantities.
As a contrast between normal conditions and the consequences
of Bolshevik control the following comparative statistics tell their tale.
In pre-war times the grain situation was as follows : —
Tons.
Russian Empire total production . . 64,500,000
Total interior trading grain . . . . 20,000,000
Consumption in producing area . . 37,000,000
Total available for export . . . 7,500,000
Grain situation at beginning of 1918 : —
European Russia total production . . 43,500,000
Siberia Russia total production . . 8,000,000
Russian Empire . . . . 51,500,000
Consumption in producing area . . 37,000,000
Xon self-supporting districts of Northern
Russia and Finland require . . . . 18,000,000
Total available for export . . . . Nil
Deficit in Supply 4,500,000
The above is based on normal ration (Government estimates at
2 pounds per man per day).
93
The Food Ministry estimates, 1917, demanded as a minimum : —
For the Army 645,000 tons per month.
For civil population . . . . 484,000 tons per month.
Minimum total . . 1,129,000 tons per month.
The actual available supply proved in 1917 to be less than 50
per cent, of this total. It must be remembered that these supplies
were essentially dependent on Ukraine grain being available. It mav
be mentioned that the Government of Samara, which normally contri-
buted 800,000-900,000 tons of grain to Russia's requirement, itself
demanded help from outside in 1917. This was the state of affairs
a year ago ; matters are now still worse, and even the Ukraine, according
to later information, lacks seed grain for spring sowing. The only
district approaching the normal is the Kuban.
7. Transport.
(a.) General. — Without sufficient transport the existing Bolshevik
regime is doomed, and they appear to have early realised the importance
of obtaining control of the railways, although to this day they have a
hard fight to maintain their domination, as is instanced by the hostile
reception given to Radek when he attempted to address the Vologda
Executive of the Railwaymen's Union.
(b.) Rail transport. — The railway personnel have shown a greater
resistance to Bolshevism than an}* other branch of labour in Russia.
This applies in the main to the operating executive — the repair and
workshops being contaminated at an early date.
The Railwaymen's Union " Vikzhel "in the early days of Bolshevism
vigorously combated extremist policy, but the Bolsheviks, by careful
propaganda, gradually replaced the executive with men favourable
to their views.
The minor officials and men on the Nicholas Railway, Petrograd —
Ekaterinburg, are anti-Bolshevik but are obliged to conceal their views
A complete deadlock was reached in Moscow in December, 1917,
owing to the political differences between the various sub-unions of
railwaymen, causing thousands of wagons of food supplies to be left
unloaded. Order was eventually restored by a British officer taking
the matter into his own hands and appointing himself controller for
the time being. As an instance of the state the railways were in in
1917, an extraordinary commission from Petrograd decided, in view
of the food crisis in Russia, to run 20 pairs of trains per day on the
Trans-Siberian line. The actual number run was 6 pairs.
The present decay in the maintenance of rolling stock dates from
the beginning of the war. A temporary increase of efficiency was
produced by the introduction of American rolling stock, but owing
to neglect and non-execution of running repairs as much as 37 per cent,
of the American locomotives on the Siberian railway were out of action
in February, 1918.
The percentage in European Russia is probably still greater.
In the Ukraine it was computed six months ago that from 45
to 50 per cent, of the rolling stock required repair. Spare parts are
94
lacking and the workshops could not cope with the demand, their
output being diminished by the reduction of working hours, prohibition
of overtime and abolition of piece-work. One of the most serious
difficulties resulted from the scarcity of coal.
The interference of the revolutionary committees in railway adminis-
tration has not only encouraged disorder but has increased expenditure ;
on the South Western Railway alone it was reckoned that 16,000
superfluous employees were drawing pay at total annual rate of 46
million roubles, while for the whole Ukraine system the total payable
to unnecessary personnel was computed at 200 millions of roubles per
annum.
Under such disastrous conditions as is only to be expected, in spite
of enormously increased rates the railways are working at a loss, and
the deficit for 1918 on the railways of the Ukraine has been put at 800
millions of roubles.
(c.) River transport. — The waterways of Russia, especially the
Volga, were in normal times served by an efficient fleet of steamers
and barges. The economic life of Russia is in fact bound up with
the river and canal systems of the country, much of the oil and grain
and practically the whole of the timber transport being effected by
water.
Nationalisation of vessels and the extremist attitude adopted by
many of the " Artels "* of the crews, bargemen and lumberers, has
brought about a serious decrease in the volume of raw materials and
goods carried, and thus the valuable means of communication afforded
by the river and canal systems fails to be adequately utilised.
8. Economic Prospects.
From a consideration of the foregoing one is forced to the conclusion
that the measures inaugurated by the Bolsheviks, and the means
by which they are applied, can have but one end — the bankruptcy of
Government and the country.
One may be tempted to wonder that present conditions have
subsisted for so long. Though the Bolshevik regime must be approaching
a debacle, such are the resources and natural wealth of the country that
there is still scope for a continuance of present Bolshevik rule.
So long as these conditions prevail the country is deprived of the
benefits of trade and industry, and capital is destroyed. Other countries
who were the purchasers of Russian raw materials are cut off from these
sources of supply, at a time when the need for reconstructing and
revictualling great areas of Europe would have rendered the produce
of Russia of special value.
Much of Russia's actual and potential wealth remains undiminished
in value, while circumstances cause its exploitation to be impossible.
This, however, does not apply to its agriculture, and during every
month the position becomes more acute, so that eventually seed grain
will have been consumed for food, stocks of livestock exhausted, and
the difficulties of restoration and reconstruction of this great territory
will be vastly increased.
* Workmen's Associations.
95
No. 61.
Report from a reliable source, dated Petrograd, March 21.
(Telegraphic.)
STRIKES at the Putilov and other factories have been the main
events of interest during the past week.
The outbreak was economic rather than political. The cry for
" Bread " gave place to a new cry, " Down with Lenin."
Both the strikes and the rising were due in part to the instigation
of the Social Revolutionary party.
In the various workshops Bolshevism no longer keeps its hold,
though a few factory committees endeavour to keep it alive. These
committees are made up mainly of Communists, who maintain their
power by manipulating the elections, and will even introduce total
strangers in order to maintain a majority ; while they terrorise the
workmen, and compel them to vote for the Soviet candidates.
The workmen now regard the factory committees as Soviet spies,
and believe that their words are passed on by agents, who claim to
be Social Revolutionaries, and who are sent to the works in order to
report on the so-called " crime " of political opposition.
It is probable for this reason that the Social Revolutionaries had
less to do with the rising than had the actual workmen, though the
Bolsheviks would not admit this.
On the 10th March a mass meeting was held at the Putilov Works ;
10,000 men were present, and a resolution was passed, with only 22
dissentients, all of whom were complete strangers unconnected with
the works. The following extracts show the tenour of the resolution : —
" We, the workmen of the Putilov Works Wharf, declare before
the labouring classes of Russia and the world that the Bolshevik Govern-
ment has betrayed the. high ideals of the October revolution, and thus
betrayed and deceived the workmen and peasants of Russia ; that
the Bolshevik Government, acting as formerly in our names, is not
the authority of the proletariat and peasants, but an authority and
dictatorship of a central committee of the Bolshevik party, self-
governing with the aid of extraordinary commissions, Communists,
and police.
" We protest against the compulsion of workmen to remain at
factories and works, and the attempt to deprive them all of elementary
rights, freedom of the press, speech, meetings, inviolability of persons,
&c.
" We demand —
" 1. The immediate transfer of authority to a freely elected Work-
men's and Peasants' Soviet.
" 2. The immediate re-establishment of freedom of election at
factories and works, barracks, ships, railways, and every-
where.
"3. The transfer of wholesale management to released workmen
of the professional union.
96
" 4. The transfer of the food supply to Workmen's and Peasants'
Co-operative Societies.
" 5. The general arming of workmen and peasants.
" 6. The immediate release of members of the original revolutionary
peasants' party of Left Social Revolutionists.
" 7. The immediate release of Marie Spiridonova."
The carrying of the resolution was received with cries of " Down
with dictatorship ! " " Down with the Kommissars ! " "To the
Courts with the Bolshevik hangmen and murderers '.
The Government took steps to put down any further manifestations,
and anyone found in the possession of the resolution was at once
arrested. Various promises were made, and money, in the shape
of " Kerenski " notes, was distributed by the Bolsheviks, but the
workmen refused to be pacified, and incited their comrades to strike.
On the 15th of March the Baltic, Skorokhod, and Tramway works
came out on strike.
The situation was so serious that Lenin came from Moscow and
attempted to pacify the workmen by speeches and promises of an extra
bread ration. He also promised that passenger traffic between Petrograd
and Moscow should be suspended for four weeks, in order that the
transport of supplies might be facilitated.
His proposals were refused, and the workmen demanded his
resignation. Zinoviev and Lunacharsky, the only two Kommissars who
dared to address the workmen, had no better success. Zinoviev was
greeted with cries of " Down with that Jew ! " and was compelled
to escape. Lunacharsky found it almost impossible to obtain a hearing,
and eventually promised that the Bolsheviks would resign if the majority
desired their resignation.
The following couplet was placarded upon the walls of Petrograd : —
" Down with Lenin and horseflesh.
Give us the Tsar and pork."
A demand was made by the delegates of the Putilov Works
that the resolution of the 10th March should be published in the
" Northern Commune " ; but this was refused by the Kommissars.
of the Interior.
On the 16th March Torin incited Bolsheviks to kill the Social
Revolutionaries, and Zinoviev brought into Petrograd a number of
sailors and soldiers of the Red Army. The force was composed of
foreigners, mainly Letts and Germans. During the next two days
300 arrests took place in the workshops, and suspected ringleaders
and Social Revolutionaries were shot wholesale.
Though order has been partially restored, and many workmen
have been driven to work by means of threats, they are still incensed
against the Bolsheviks, and demand the freedom of the press in order
to voice their grievances.
97
APPENDIX.
EXTRACTS FROM THE RUSSIAN PRESS.
Extract from the " Kr astray a Gazeta " (Organ of Red Army), September 1,
1918.
ARTICLE, entitled " Blood for Blood," begins in the following
way:—
" We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper
in the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom. We
will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy
will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a
sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea.
Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores
of hundreds. Let them be thousands ; let them drown themselves
in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritski, Zinoviev,
and Volodarski, let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois —
more blood, as much as possible."
Extracts from Official Journal (" Izvestiya "), September, 1918.
There are only two possibilities — the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
or the dictatorship of the proletariat. . . The proletariat will
reply to the attempt on Lenin in a manner that will make the whole
bourgeoisie shudder with horror.
Assassination at Petrograd of Kommissar Uritski by Kannegisser
Jew Dvoryanin, twenty-two years of age, student, formerly Junker
of Artillery School.
" Krasnaya Gazeta " writes : " Whole bourgeoisie must answer
for this act of terror Thousands of our enemies must pay for
Uritski's death. . . . We must teach bourgeoisie a bloody lesson. . . .
Death to the bourgeoisie."
Attempt on Lenin.
Proclamation Issued by the Extraordinary Commission
and signed " Peters."
Proclamation states that " the criminal hand of a member of
the Social-Revolutionary Party, directed by the Anglo-French, has
dared to fire at the leader of the working class." This crime will be
answered by a " massive terror." Woe to those who stand on the path
of the working class. All representatives of capital will be sent to
forced labour, and their property confiscated. Counter-revolutionaries
will be exterminated and crushed beneath the heavy hammer of the
revolutionary proletariat.
Petrovski, Kommissar for Interior, issues circular telegraphic
order reproving local Soviets for their " extraordinarily insignificant
number of serious repressions and mass shootings of White Guards
and bourgeoisie." An immediate end must be put to these grand-
motherly methods. All Right Social-Revolutionaries must be imme-
(1057) H
98
diately arrested. Considerable numbers of hostages must be taken
from bourgeoisie and former officers. At the slightest attempt at
resistance, or the slightest movement in White Guard circles, mass
shootings of hostages must be immediate y employed. Indecisive and
irresolute action in this matter on the part of local Soviets will be
severely dealt with.
Terrorism.
The Council of the People's Commissaries, having considered
the report of the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission* found
that under the existing conditions it was most necessary to secure
the safety of the rear by means of terror. To strengthen the activity
of the Extraordinary Commission, and render it more systematic,
as many responsible party comrades as possible are to be sent to work
on the Commission. The Sov : et Republic must be made secure against
its class enemies by sending them to concentration camps.
All persons belonging to White Guard organisations or involved
in conspiracies and rebellions are to be shot. Their names and the
particulars of their cases are to be published.
(" Northern Commune," September 9, 1918.)
Tver, 9th September. — The Extraordinary Commission has arrested
and sent to concentration camps over 130 hostages from among the
bourgeoisie. The prisoners include members of the Cadet party,
Socialist-Revolutionaries of the Right, former officers, well-known
members of the propertied classes and policemen.
(" Northern Commune," September 10, 1918.)
Jaroslav, 9th September. — In the whole of the Jaroslav Government
a strict registration of the bourgeoisie and its partisans has been organised.
Manifestly anti-Soviet elements are being shot ; suspected persons are
interned in concentration camps ; non-working sections of the popula-
tion are subjected to compulsory labour.
(" Northern Commune," September 10, 1918.)
Atkarsk, llth September. — Yesterday martial law was proclaimed
in the town. Eight counter-revolutionaries were shot.
(" Northern Commune," September 12, 1918.)
Borisoglebsk, \Qth September. — For an attempt to organise a
movement in opposition to the Soviet power, nine local counter-
revolutionaries were shot, namely — two rich land-owners, six merchants
and the local " Corn King " Vasiliev.
(" Northern Commune," September 16, No. 106.)
Resolution passed by the Soviet of the First Urban District of Petrograd : —
" . . . . The meeting welcomes the fact that mass terror is being
used against the White Guards and higher bourgeois classes, and declares
that every attempt on the life of any of our leaders will be answered
by the proletariat by shooting down not only of hundreds, as is the
case now, but of thousands of White Guards, bankers, manufacturers,
Cadets (constitutional democrats) and Socialist-Revolutionaries of
the Right." (" Northern Commune," September 18, 1918.)
* The Extraordinary Commission are responsible for the trials and executions, and
for executions without trial. Their work is sometimes done in catnerS.
99
In Astrakhan the Extraordinary Commission has shot ten Socialist-
Revolutionaries of the Right involved in a plot against the Soviet
power. In Karamyshev a priest named Lubimov and a deacon named
Kvintil have been shot for revolutionary agitation against the decree
separating the Church from the State, and for an appeal to overthrow
the Soviet Government. In Perm, in retaliation for the assassination
of Uritzki and for the attempt on Lenin, fifty hostages from among the
bourgeois classes and the White Guards were shot (a few names are
given). In Sebesh a priest named Kirkevich was shot for counter-
revolutionary propaganda, and for having said masses for the late
Nicholas Romanov. (" Northern Commune," September 18, 1918.)
The following telegram has been received from the Cavalry Corps
Staff : — " Additional arrests have been made in connection with the
affair of former officers and Civil Service officials involved in preparing
a rising in Vologda. When the plot was discovered they fled to Arch-
angel and to Murmansk. The prisoners were caught disguised as
peasants ; all had forged papers on them. The political department
of the Corps has in its possession receipts for sums of money received
by the arrested persons from the British through Colonel Kurtenkov.
In connection with this affair fifteen have been shot, mostly military
men. Among them were General Astashov, Military Engineer Bodro-
volski, Captain Nikitin and two Socialist-Revolutionaries of the Left —
Sudotin and Tourba. Apart from these the Commander of the Expe-
ditionary Detachment, the sailor Shimanski, who was not equal to
the situation, was also shot."
(" Northern Commune," September 19, 1918.)
" 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."
(Speech by Zinoviev : reported in the " Northern Commune,"
September 19, No. 109.)
The work of the Extraordinary Commission is most responsible
and calls for the greatest restraint of their members. Do they possess
this restraint ? Unfortunately, I cannot discuss here whether and
how far all the arrests and executions carried out in various places
by the Extraordinary Commissions were really necessary. On this
point there are differences of opinion in the party The absence
of the necessary restraint makes one feel appalled at the " instruction "
issued by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to " All Provincial
Extraordinary Commissions," which says : — " The All-Russian Extra-
ordinary Commission is perfectly independent in its work, carrying
out house searches, arrests, executions, of which it afterwards reports
to the Council of the People's Commissaries and to the Central
Executive Council." Further, the Provincial and District Extra-
ordinary Commissions " are independent in their activities, and when
called upon by the local Executive Council present a report of their
work " In so far as house searches and arrests are concerned, a
report made afterwards may result in putting right irregularities
committed owing to lack of restraint. The same cannot be said of
executions It can also be seen from the " instruction " that
personal safety is to a certain extent guaranteed only to members
100
•of the Government, of the Central Executive Council and of the local
Executive Committees. With the exception of these few persons
all members of the local committees of the (Bolshevik) party, of the
Control Committees and of the Executive Committee of the party
may be shot at any time by the decision of any Extraordinary Com-
mission of a small district town if they happen to be on its territory,
and a report of that made afterwards.
(From an article by M. Alminski, " Pravda," October 8, 1918.)
Comrade Bokiv gave details of the work of the Petrograd District
Commission since the evacuation of the Ail-Russian Extraordinary
Commission to Moscow. The total number of arrested persons was
•6,220. 800 were shot.
(From a report of a meeting of the Conference of the Extraordinary
Commission, " Izvestia," October 19, 1918, No. 228.)
A riot occurred in the Kirsanov district. The rioters shouted,
" Down with the Soviets." They dissolved the Soviet and the
Committee of the Village Poor. The riot was suppressed by a
detachment of the Soviet troops. Six ringleaders were shot. The
case is under examination. (" Izvestia," November 5, 1918.)
By order of the Military Revolutionary Committee of Petrograd
several officers were shot for spreading untrue rumours that the Soviet
authority had lost the confidence of the people.
All relatives of the officers of the 86th Infantry Regiment (which
deserted to the Whites) were shot.
(" Northern Commune " (quoted from " Russian Life " (Hel-
singfors) ), March 11, 1919.)
Treatment of the Bourgeoisie.
Orel. — To-day the Orel bourgeoisie commenced compulsory work
to which it was made liable. Parties of the bourgeoisie, thus made
to work, are cleaning the streets and squares from rubbish and dirt.
(" Izvestia," October 19, No. 288.)
Chsmbar.— The bourgeoisie put to compulsory work is repairing
the pavements and the roads. (" Pravda," October 6, 1918, No. 205.)
If you come to Petrograd you will see scores of bourgeoisie laying
the pavement in the courtyard of the Smolny. . . .1 wish you
could see how well they unload coal on the Neva and clean the barracks.
(From a speech by Zinoviev, " Pravda," October 11, No. 219.)
Large forces of mobilised bourgeoisie have been sent to the front
to do trench work. (" Krasnaya Gazeta," October 16, 1918.)
A Camp for the Bourgeoisie. _
The District Extraordinary Commission (Saransk) has organised
a camp of concentration for the local bourgeoisie and kulaki (the close-
fisted).
The duties of the confined shall consist in keeping clean the town
•of Saransk.
The existence of the camp will be maintained at the expense of
the same bourgeoisie.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (The Red Gazette), Petrograd, November 6,
1918, No. 237.)
101
Desertions from the Red Army.
The Fight against Desertion.
The " Golos Krasnoarmeytza " (Voice of the Red Armyman),
of the 2nd February, issued at Yamburg by the Sixth Light Infantry
Division, contains the following announcement : —
" In view of the mass desertions of Red Army men and the
necessity of putting a stop to those citizens agitating among them
against Soviet authority, and spreading among them false rumours,
causing panic among the army and in the rear, and also concealing
deserters, persons who are in reality agents of Anglo-French capital,
such persons are subject to arrest and to delivery to trial by the Military
Revolutionary Tribunal as enemies of the workers' and peasants-
go vernment.
" All town, district, and village Soviets of the frontal zone of
the Yamburg district and of the neighbouring districts are instructed
by the military Soviet of the division and by the Yamburg district
Executive Committee to, bring to the immediate notice of the Military
Revolutionary Tribunal all cases of wandering Red Army men, to-
detain all persons spreading false rumours, to arrest private persons
as well as Red Army men detected in selling or buying military arms
and munitions, and to place on all roads barrier-guards and patrols
for the apprehension of deserters.
" The Military Revolutionary Tribunal brings to the notice of
Red Army men that the time for words and exhortation has passed,
and that the time has come demanding the conscious performance
of the tasks of the Soviet Republic.
" The concealment and the misplaced solicitude of workmen
and peasants in relation to deserters are abetting the licentiousness
and idleness in the ranks of the Red Army.-
" A deserter needs neither bread nor a refuge, but a bullet.
" Bread and a refuge are due only to the proletariat Red Army.
" (The Military Revolutionary Tribunal at the Front.)"
Bolshevism and Social Democracy.
Arrest of the Labour Conference.
An open letter of the delegates, kept in the Moscow Taganka
Prison, to all citizens : —
" We, members of the Labour Conference, representing independent
working-class organisations of various towns of Russia (Petrograd..
Moscow, Tula, Sormova, Kolomna, Kulebaki, Tver, Nijm-Novgorod,
Vologda, Bezshiza, Orel, Votkinski Zavod), arrested at our second
meeting, on the 23rd July, in the ' Co-operation Hall,' feel it our public
duty to protest before all citizens of Russia, against the false and
calumnious reports published by the Bolshevik Government press
on the 27th and 28th July. The Bolshevik Government takes advantage
of the fact that it has muzzled the whole independent press and that
we members of the Labour Conference, are locked up in prison, under
incredible conditions.
" Our Conference was not ' a secret counter-revolutionary plot
organised by well-to-do people and intellectuals,' &c, but a public
102
conference of delegates of working-class organisations, which was
beforehand known to and discussed by the whole press, including
that of the Bolsheviks.
" The delegates were sent to the Conference not by ' Mensheyik
or Socialist-Revolutionaries' groups ' as falsely stated in the ' Izvestia,
which desires to deceive workmen who have not yet deserted the
Government, but by assemblies of delegates from works and factories
who have tens of thousands of electors behind them. The adopted
general basis of representation was one delegate for 5,000 workmen.
The ' Izvestia ' goes so far as to state shamelessly that the delegates
Polikarpov and Pushkin, sent by the Tula workmen, were elected
by 60 or 160 men, whereas they were sent by the Tula assembly, which
consisted of delegates elected by the majority of Tula workmen. At
places where independent workmen's organisations could not yet
be set up, delegates to the Conference were sent by individual big
factories.
" Having calumniously described the delegates as impostors who
represent nobody, the ' Izvestia,' with the insolence characteristic of
the organs of the Tsarist regime — did not stop at giving false information
about things found on the arrested delegates in order to cast a shadow
■on their characters. Thus, it is reported that Comrade Berg was found
■to be in possession of 6,000 roubles. As a matter of fact, he had only
'590* roubles. Comrade Leikin is stated to have had 160 roubles, and
he had in fact 1 rouble 65 kopecks. The ' Izvestia ' further states that
on Leikin the following things were found : a ring, diamonds, and a
.gold watch, whereas all his ' jewellery ' consisted of an ordinary gun-
metal watch, which it did not occur even to the prison warders to take
away.
" The Bolshevik Government has to resort to stupid, shameless
lies to justify the preposterous arrests of the workmen's delegates who
dared to show some independent organising initiative.
" The conference of workmen's delegates was convened to make
arrangements for the convocation of an All-Russian Labour Congress,
and had held two meetings. The agenda of the Conference included the
following items : — Measures against the disintegration of the working-
class movement ; what can be done to effect a concentration of its forces
and its proper organisation ; arrangements for the All-Russian Labour
Conference. But the Communist Government, just as its Tsarist
predecessors, do not tolerate any symptoms of an independent working-
class movement, because it is this movement which constitutes a
menace to their power. In this movement they see a reflection of the
food crisis, and, incapable of solving the State problems which they
have before them, they resort to repressive measures directed against
the leaders of the working-class movement. Workmen's organisations
are subjected to unheard-of repressions.
" Long live the working-class organisations !
" Long live their independence, their revolutionary and organising
initiative !
" (' Signed ') — A. N. Smirnov, workman of the Cartridge Factory,
delegate from Petrograd ; N. N. Gliebov, workman of Putilov
* At present equal to about 15/.
103
Works ; J. S. Leikin, delegate of the Assembly of Delegates
of the Nijni and Vladimir districts. Workmen : D. V
Zakharov, secretary of a trade union ; D. I. Zakharov.
Sormovo ; V. I. Matveev, Sormovo ; A. A. Vezkalin,
carpenter, member of the Executive Committee of the Lettish
Social Democratic Party ; I. G. Volkov, turner, member of
the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Union of Metal
Workers ; A. A. Chinenkov, Nijni ; S. P. Polikarpov, Tula ;
N. K. Borisenko, Petrograd Tube Works ; V. G. Chirkin,
turner, member of the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions ;
Berg, Electrical Works ; D. Smirnov, Arsenal, Petrograd ;
Victor Alter, delegate of the Executive Committee of the
' Bund ' (Jewish Socialist Party) ; Pushkin, workman of the
Tula Small Arms Factory, &c."
(" Workers' International " : (organ of the Petrograd Committee
of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party), August 7, 1918.)
The imaginary dictatorship of the proletariat has definitely turned
into the dictatorship of the Bolshevik partv, which attracted all sorts
of adventurers and suspicious characters and is supported only by the
naked force of hired bayonets. Their sham socialism resulted in the
complete destruction of Russian industry, in the country's enslavement
to foreign capital, in the destruction of all class organisations of the
proletariat, in the suppression of all democratic liberty and of all
■organs of democratic State life, thus preparing the ground for a bourgeois
■counter-revolution of the worst and most brutal kind.
The Bolsheviks are unable to solve the food problem, and their
attempt to bribe the proletariat by organising expeditions into the
-villages in order to seize supplies of bread drives the peasantry into
the arms of the counter-revolution and threatens to rouse its hatred
towards the town in general, and the proletariat in particular, for a
long time to come. . . .
In continuing the struggle against the Bolshevik tyranny which
■dishonours the Russian revolution, social democracy pursues the
following aims : (1) To make it impossible for the working class to have
to shed its blood for the sake of maintaining the sham dictatorship
of the toiling masses or of the sham socialistic order, both of which
are bound to perish and are meanwhile killing the soul and body of the
proletariat ; (2) To organise the working class into a force which, in
union with other democratic forces of the country, will be able to
throw off the yoke of the Bolshevik regime, to defend the democratic
-conquests of the revolution and to oppose any reactionary force which
would attempt to hang a millstone around the neck of the Russian
democracy. .
Forty delegates elected by workmen of various towns, to a con-
ference, for the purpose of making arrangements for the convocation
■of a Labour Congress, have been arrested and committed for trial by
the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, created to pass death sentences
-without the ordinary guarantees of a fair trial. They are falsely and
calumniously accused of organising a counter-revolutionary plot.
Among the arrested are the most prominent workers of the Social
Democratic Labour movement, as, for instance, Abramovitch, member
104
of the Central Executive Committees of the Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party and of the " Bund," who is personally well»known to
many foreign comrades ; Alter, member of the Executive Committee
of the " Bund " ; Smirnov, member of last year's Soviet Delegation
to the Western Countries ; Vezkalin, member of the Executive Com-
mittee of the Lettish Social Democratic Party ; Volkov, chairman of
the Petrograd Union of Workmen's Co-operative Societies ; Zakharov,
secretary of the Petrograd Union of Workmen of Chemical Factories ;
and other prominent workers of the trade union and co-operative
movement.
We demand immediate intervention of all Socialist parties to avert
the shameful and criminal proceeding.
(Protest of the Social Democratic Labour Party and of the Jewish
Socialist Party sent to the Executive Committees of all Socialist
Parties of Europe and America, August, 1918.)
The Extraordinary Commission of the Union of Northern Ccm-
munes at a meeting of October 22nd, considered the legal cases
connected with the sailors' mutiny of October 14th. It was found on
examination that the movement was organised by the Petrograd
Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries of the left, the resolution
passed by the sailors of the 2nd Baltic Squadron having been framed
with the assistance of members of .the above Committee, approved of
by the Conference of the party, which sent its greetings to the sailors.
Apart from this, the resolution was printed on a cyclostyle in the
premises of the above Committee, which delegated, their party agitators.
to the sailors' meeting. At the head of the organisation were thirteen
persons. Two escaped. All the others were sentenced by the
Extraordinary Commission to be shot.
(" Izvestia," October 31, 1918.)
By the decision of the Extraordinary Commission the Socialist-
Revolutionary, Firsov, has been shot. Firsov was executed for writing:
and distributing leaflets in which the Socialist-Revolutionaries invited
workmen to give allegiance to the Archangel Government.
(" Northern Commune," September 18, 1918.)
The Extraordinary Commission of the Province has arrested the
leading members of the local organisation of Left and Right Social
Revolutionaries for the spreading of proclamations. In connection with
the discovery of the plot, some Left Social Revolutionaries have been
arrested in Moscow. An agitation has been conducted in the Red
Army for the overthrow of Soviet authority. Proclamations were
distributed calling for a struggle against Soviet authority, for the
immediate organisation of committees and for the encouragement,,
through chosen commanders, of a campaign of terror against Trots ki
and other prominent leaders of the Communist party. The agitation
and the proclamations were without success. The responsible worker
of the Kaluga Provisions Commissariat, the Left Social Revolutionary,
Prigalin, was arrested. A rough draft of a proclamation, in the name
of the party, calling for the overthrow of the Bolsheviks and the
establishment of a coalition without the Bolsheviks, was found on him.
(Russian Wireless, February 22, 1919.)
105
The Tribunal dealing with Mme. Spiridonova (the leader of the
Social Revolutionary party, who was recently arrested on a charge of
conspiracy against the Soviet authority) has decided, in view of the
abnormal state of mind of the accused, to isolate her from all political
and social activity for the duration of a year.
Mme. Spiridonova is to be detained in a sanatorium, where she
will be allowed facilities for recreation and intellectual work.
(Russian Wireless, February 26, 1919.)
Don't be like the " Old Masters."
In one of the Sunday numbers of the " Krasnaya Gazeta " there
was an article by comrade Kuznetzov under the title " The Eleventh."
In this article he recalled how arrogantly, how appallingly, the old
masters conducted themselves toward working-men.
Yes, comrade Kuznetzov, it is unpleasant and humiliating to recall
this gentry, but it is even more unpleasant and humiliating to meet the
same kind of " old masters " at the present time. I know very many
comrades who occupy various responsible posts in unions and com-
mittees, and when you happen to turn to them with some enquiry or
request for co-operation, they are no better than the masters of the old
regime : they answer either rudely and arrogantly, or they do not
answer at all.
It is humiliating to see this at the present time. And I say to such
comrades : " Don't be, if I may so express myself, like the ' old masters/
Go to meet the oppressed and the poor. Train yourselves in this spirit,
and only then call yourselves Communists and protectors of the working-
man. Hands off, all those who do not act as they speak ! "
([Letter from a Working-man. J " Krasnaya Gazeta " (The Red
Gazette), Petrograd, October 29, 1918, No. 230.)
The Bolsheviks and the Press.
The Suppression of the Paper " Mir " (Peace). — In accordance
with the decision published in the " Izvestia " on the 27th July, No. 159,
the Press Department granted permits to issue periodical publications
which accepted the Soviet platform. When granting permissions, the
Press Department took into consideration the available supplies of
paper, whether the population was in need of the proposed periodical
publication, and also the necessity of providing employment for printers
and pressmen. Thus, permission was granted to issue the paper
" Mir," especially in view of the publisher's declaration that the paper
was intended to propagate pacifist ideas. At the present moment the
requirements of the population of the Federal Socialist Republic for
means of daily information are adequately met by the Soviet publi-
cations ; employment for those engaged in journalistic work is secured
in the Soviet papers ; a paper crisis is approaching. The Press
Department, therefore, considers it impossible to permit the further
publication of the " Mir," .... and has decided to suppress this
paper for ever. (<< Izvestia," October 17, 1918, No. 226.)
106
The Central Executive Committee has confirmed the decision to
close the newspaper, " Vsegda Vperiod," as its appeals for the cessation
of civil war appear to be a betrayal of the working-class.
(Russian Wireless, February 26, 1919.)
Compulsory Purchase of Newspapers.
To the Notice of the House Committees of Poverty.
On 20th July of the present year there was published obligatory
regulation No. 27, to the following effect : —
" Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns,
included in the Union of Communes of the Northern region, is under
obligation to subscribe, paying for same, one copy of the newspaper,
the " Northern Commune," the official organ of the Soviets of the
Northern region.
" The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house on
the first demand.
" Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region,
Gr. Zinoviev.
" Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin."
However, until now the majority of houses, inhabited pre-eminently
by the bourgeoisie, do not fulfil the above-expressed obligatory regula-
tion, and the working population of such houses is deprived of the
possibility of receiving the " Northern Commune " in its house
committees.
Therefore, the publishing office of the " Northern Commune "
brings to the notice of all house committees that it has undertaken,
through the medium of especial emissaries, the control of the fulfilment
by house committees of the obligatory regulation No. 27, and all house
committees which cannot show a receipt for a subscription to
the newspaper, the " Northern Commune," will be immediately
called to the most severe account for the breaking of the obligatory
regulation.
Subscriptions will be received in the main office and branches of
the " Northern Commune " daily, except Sundays and holidays, from
10 to 4.
(" Severnaya Kommuna," Petrograd, November 10, 1918, No. 150.)
Freedom of Speech.
At the People's Court at Moscow was heard the case of Priest
Filimonov, accused of circulating the book, " Who Governs Us?"
In his book the author defamed the Soviet Government. The
Court sentenced the reverend father (" batiushka ") to ten years of
public work.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (The Red Gazette), Petrograd, October 10,
1918, No. 214.)
107
Decree as to Freedom of Association and Public Meetings.
1. All societies, unions, and associations — political, economic,
artistic, religious, &c. — formed on the territory of the Union of the
Commune of the Northern Region must be registered at the corre-
sponding Soviets or Committees of the village poor.
2. The constitution of the union or society, a list of founders and
members of the committee, with names and addresses, and a list of all
members, with their names and addresses, must be submitted at
registration.
3. All books, minutes, &c, must always be kept at the disposal of
representatives of the Soviet power for purposes of revision.
4. Three days' notice must be given to the Soviet, or to the
Committee of the village poor, of all public and private meetings.
5. All meetings must be open to the representatives of the Soviet
power, viz., the representatives of the Central and District Soviet, the
Committee of the Poor, and the Kommandatur of the Revolutionary
Secret Police Force (Okhrana).
6. Unions and societies which do not comply with those regulations
will be regarded as counter-revolutionary organisations, and prosecuted.
(" Northern Commune," September 13, 1918, No. 103.)
Economic Conditions.
(a.) Wages.
The Rise in Wages.
In the last number of the " Narodnoye Khoziaystvo " (National
Economy) are given the figures of the progress of wages in Russia during
the decade of 1908-1918.
In general, wages have risen during the ten years from 1200 to
1300 per cent.
The highest rise has taken place in the textile industry, in which it
has reached 1736 per cent. In the leather trade the wages have gone
up in the same time 1501 per cent., in the colour printing industry 1440
per cent., in the writing paper industry 1434 per cent., in the metal
and woodwork industries 1004 per cent., in the chemical industry 1069
per cent., and in the food products industry 1286 per cent.
It is necessary to remark that the greatest changes have occurred
in those branches of industry which received smaller wages in previous
years, as, for example, the textile industry. In this connection the
wages of the women workers have risen relatively far in excess of those
■of the men workers. In the leather industry they have reached a 2500
per cent, increase, in the textile industry 2127 per cent.
('* Pravda," Moscow, October 24, 1918, No. 230.)
(b.) Food.
What they can get with their Higher Wages : The Bread Ration.
The Commissary of Food of the Petrograd Labour Commune informs
that on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, for four days, the
108
following products will be given, on the presentation ol the bread cards,
according to category : —
1st category. — 1 lb. (Russian) of bread and 3 lb. of potatoes.
2nd category. — \ lb. of bread and 2 lb. of potatoes.
3rd category. — \ lb. of bread and 1 lb. of potatoes.
4th category. — \ lb. of potatoes.
(" Vooruzheny Narod " (the Armed People), Petrograd, October 9,
1918, No 71.)
Rations for October.
For the month of October the second free coupon will be available
for the following products : —
1st category. — 1 lb. of fresh fish, \ lb. of leeks.
2nd category. — Two herrings, \ lb. of leeks.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (the Red Gazette), October 10, 1918,
No. 214.)
The Population of Petrograd.
The population of Petrograd is continuing steadily to decrease.
According to figures furnished by the Department of Statistics of the
Food Commissariat, at the beginning of the month of October there-
were 1,120,354 food cards in the hands of the population. Of this,
number there were 308,156 cards in the 1st category, 424,558 in the-
2nd, 85,691 in the 3rd, and 1,669 in the 4th.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (the Red Gazette), Petrograd, October 16,
1918, No. 219.)
The Vegetable Ration for the Month of October.
Owing to the increased arrival of vegetables in Petrograd during;
the month of October the third free coupon of the food cards will become
available for the following, according to category : —
1st category. — 3 lb. of cabbage and 1 lb. of onions.
2nd category. — 2 lb. of cabbage and 1 lb. of onions.
Owing to technical conditions the vegetables will be given out
according to their arrival at the stores of the Commissariat, that is^
simultaneously in all the districts.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (the Red Gazette), Petrograd, October 22,
1918, No. 224.)
The Commissariat of Food.
The Food Commissariat of the Petrograd Workers' Commune
informs the population that in February the adult population and
children of all ages will be able to obtain on the presentation of their
food cards (Coupon 14) : —
1st category. — 1 lb. of sand sugar.
2nd category. — \ lb. of sand sugar.
(" Severnaya Kommuna," Petrograd, February 6, 1919.)
109
Ostashkof.
In consequence of a complete absence of groats, white flour, and
milk products, children suffer immensely. The mortality is great.
(" Izvestia," November 2, No. 240.)
(c.) Health.
In the districts of the Viatka Government Spanish sickness is
raging. There is no medical help, no drugs are available. The popula-
tion, frightened by the high mortality, asks for help. There is an
epidemic of grippe in Sitnir Volost ; 200 have died. Good agitators
are urgently required. ( « Izvestia," October 31, 1918.)
Disease : Eruptive typhus.
Last week there were 967 registered cases of eruptive typhus in
Petrograd, as against 820 registered cases the previous week.
(" Izvestia," Moscow, February 7, 1919, No. 28 (580).)
(d.) Requisitions.
At a plenary sitting of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies of the
city region, in connection with events in Germany^ a resolution was
passed in favour of sending a greeting to the German proletariat, and
promise of being in readiness for sending assistance in the form of arms
and food.
In connection with this, in view of the fact that this question is
inevitably bound up with the security of our Red Army, the Soviet
has decided to take the measure of requisitioning warm things belonging
to the bourgeoisie for the Red Army.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (The Red Gazette), Petrograd, October 11,
1918, No. 215.)
The collection of warm things without the 1,000-rouble fine has
foeen prolonged until October 20, inclusive.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (The Red Gazette), Petrograd, October 16,
1918, No. 219.)
(e.) Compulsory Labour.
Compulsory Labour for Hawkers, Cabmen, &c.
Within a few days a registration will be made of all hawkers,
cabmen, and unemployed of both sexes.
All these persons will be summoned to do urgent work caused by
special conditions.
(" Krasnaya Gazeta " (The Red Gazette), Petrograd, November 2,
1918, No. 234.)
The Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party
informs all party organisations that all responsible workmen, Ukranians,
Letts, White Russians, and comrades of other nationalities, will be
freed from their local labours, and sent to their own country only by
permission of the Central Committee. All secondary workmen will
be freed by permission of the local organisations if their departure from
their posts does not involve a breakdown of the local work.
(Russian Wireless, February 5, 1919.)
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