SOVIET PENAL CAMP

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 August 1930, Page 11

SOVIET PENAL CAMP

TEN YEARS OF HORRORS. The reported formation by the Soviet Government of an autonomous “Republic of the Condemned” _in the Solovetsky Island, in the White Sea (to which a cablegram published recently stated that 130 Lettish colonists had been sent tor attending religious services-), but was vehemently opposed at the time by the Public Prosecutor, Krylenkoj The islands, turned into a penal concentration camp, have been populated since 1920 with political prisoners composed chiefly of Social Democrats and Anarchists. Only the strongest and healthiest are still alive. Nearly every well-known Socialist and Radical politician of pre-war Russia was deported there arid they were soon joined by large numbers of friends and adherents.

In many cases whole families, including babies in arms, were deported, and for at least four years were entirely neglected by the Soviet authorities. Food was supplied only for the guards, the majority of whom were the most brutalised Soviet adherents who could be recruited for the work by the then Chief of the Ogpu (secret police), the famous Felix Djerjinski. The Anarchists —male and female — were at first interned on one of the smaller islands, where they were permitted to lead an “anarchistic” life, and, with the exception of a certain amount of “public and social” work, were at liberty to do as they liked..

As the death rate in the islands is the highest’ in the world, the Soviet found them exceedingly useful as a place of deportation for heretic Communists, a considerable number of whom were sent there every year with the usual consequences. The history of the islands since 1920 is full of horrible tragedies and revolting atrocities. Men and women have been flogged to death at the whim of brutal commanders and hundreds are known to have been stripped and allowed to freeze to death.. I;

Thousands of Russia’s pre-war intelligentsia have been driven to suicide. Among* the “lost” are scientists, artists and members of every learned profession who powers,of endurance gave out under the barbaric conditions. With grim humour the Bolsheviks named these islands “Solovetsky,” are the islands of the nightingales. In fact, they are islands with practically no bird life and certainly without song.