THE AWFUL TCHEKA

Evening Star, Issue 19298, 10 July 1926, Page 9

THE AWFUL TCHEKA

“A STATE WITHIN A STATE” MONSTROUS WOMAN OFFICIAL The assertions of Communists and others that accounts of Bolshevist outrages in Russia have been deliberately exaggerated for political purposes are amply disproved (says Sydney ‘ Sun ’) by two books recently issued. Both authors are Russians, and are educated men, habituated by training to keen observation and careful examination oi evidence, and they write of what they have themselves experienced. “ The Tchoka, the twentieth century Inquisition,” says M. Popoff, in the introduction to his book, “is a State within the Soviet State, and paralyses all endeavors of the latter which could bring about a ‘ Europeanisation ’ of Russia.”

M. Popoff, a member of the old regime and a correspondent in Moscow for foreign newspapers, writes with a lack of bitterness and an obvious desire to be just that are the more admirable in one who suffered so much at the hands of the “Extraordinary Commission.”

The formation of this political secret police—to describe tho Tcheka in a phrase—was not approved by all leaders of the October revolution. ‘'lt must bo stated,” writes M. Popoff, “ for the sake of fairness and justice, that among tho Soviet leaders and within tho Russian Communist Party voices were raised which declared that a Socialist Russia did not need to befoul its bands by taking over_ such unclean legacios_ of tho Tsarist tyranny. ..It is enough to say that the establishment of tho Tcheka was fatal to tho Soviet leaders. They could not free themselves of tho spirit they had called up.” Djhersliinsky was the moving spirit, mid in tho early days of the revolution he “ ruled Russia on his own responsibility ” while 1 lenin had more important work to do. So powerful did the organisation grow that Lenin himself was forced to bow to its power, for M. Popoff records that when on one occasion Lenin asked for the release of a certain prisoner, a Tchckist official replied: “Vladimir Hitch, if you wish it, we will, of course, release tho prisoner. But ... we shall bo forced to see in your action a proof of your want of confidence in us. Lenin, of course . . . made no further _ attempt to secure tho fulfilment of his wish.” M. Popoff was arrested on a trumpedup charge of anti-Soviet activitieshe was eventually freed, hut not before ho had been examined Iwonty-ono times, tortured, and subjected to the grossest indignities. Ho was then light-heartedly told that it was “ all a misunderstanding.” His account of the ghastly execution chamber in which those condemned to death were shot by the official executioner is painfully vivid, as arc his descriptions of the brutalities and murders of the Tchokisls, led by the notorious Djherskinsky, “the man who is the head of the unofficial Government which rules alongside the Kremlin. . . . This bloody, almighty

potentate) rules over Russia, without possessing in the slightest degree the ambitions or aspirations of a. monarch. Ido is a gigantic, insensible machine in human shape, a machine which an accident of history set moving, and whose wheel swings evenly, powerfully, indifferently, in giant circles, crushing and destroying everything that resists it. . . The most matter-of-fact and at the same time the bloodiest governmental machine in history—is Felix Djhcrsbinsky I” Having succeeded in escaping from Russia, M. Popoff went to Germany, and in 1924 met in Berlin two of the Tcheka’s most dangerous agents. His subsequent information led him to the conclusion that “ the agents of Moscow operate most openly and shamelessly in Germany. . . . In no other European country is the number of secret Tchcka agents specially detailed for work abroad so great as in Germany. It is obvious that the Tcheka also makes use of the German Bolshevists.” VICTIMS OF THE REDS. M. Popoff’s book bears the stamp of good faith, and where ho refers to events of which he was not an eyewitness he docs not hesitate to say so. Those people who have hitherto regarded the stories of Bolshevist outrage and intrigue as political exaggerations would do well to read this book from cover to cover. The ‘Red Terror in Russia’ is the other book. It contains, incidentally, a number of striking photographs of the Reds’ victims and of male and female torturers and executioners—the latter being remarkable for a brutal and debased type of features. M. Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, the, author of this volume, himself one of the party of “ People’s Socialists,” actively opposed Bolshevist tyranny, and narrowly escaped with his life. He describes with terrible detail such scenes as the execution by'the Tchcka at Primorsko-Aikarskaya. Sta.nitzn. of 1,600 persons, who were slaughtered in batches of 100 by machine-gun fire; the boating of prisoners with rubber rods: and “the doings of the female president of the Tcheka of .Penza,—a ■woman called Roche—in the year 1918. They grew' so bad that at last the central authorities had to insist on her retirement. And during the winter of 1920 it was the practice of the twenty-year-old head of the Tcheka of Vologda to scat himself. . . beside the frozen river . . . and send to the gaol for the captives due for the day’s ‘questioning.’ and. having, caused the wretches to be thrust into sacks, keep them immersed in a bole in the iee while he subjected them to examination. ... On his being medically examined be was found to be insane.” When 107 corpses were disinterred from a concentration camp “ ibe most horrible' atrocities became revealed—terrible traces of flogging, shattered bones, fractured skulls . . . patches whoro the skin had been burnt off with red-hot instruments ._. . porous scalded with boiling liquid, and . . backed to death.” The appalling outrages committed on women by officials and soldiery are almost indescribable.