ISLE OF DEGREDATION

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 17 August 1929, Page 11

ISLE OF DEGREDATION

'J'ROT'SKY is now in exile, and is enjoying the comfort and comparative safety -of “bourgeois Europe,” writes George Popoff, in “Pearson’s Weekly,” But what of his many supporters who are not allowed to leave Soviet Russia and arc doomed to pass long years in dreaded banishment in Siberia? 'The most dreadful place of exile in all Soviet Russia is Solovetzk, an island in the White Sea. North of Archangel. Quite apart from the unbearable climate, the treatment of the prisoners is .especially mean and cruel They die in hundreds, either through disease, or from cold and hunger. In this terrible climate, and often going for days without food, they have to endure the severest physical labour, such as trench-digging, unloading of goods, and chopping down trees in the bogs and swamps. !

At the end of 1927 there were over 10,000 exiles at Solovetzk alone, but in spite of the enormous number of deaths,,' which sometimes reached 00 per cent., the number of prisoners at Solovetzk has steadily increased. After four years of exile at Solovetzk, the young wife of a Russian Army doctor succeeded in escaping abroad, and she has depicted in graphic terms the almost incredible sufferings of the prisoners, especially of those regarded as supporters of Trotsky. The poor wretches are punished for the very slightest, ok even for no offence against the regulations. One of total darkness, but also lack of air. All “Dark Room.’’ Here there is not only total dafkness, but also lack of air. Ail the openings of the room are carefully stopped up, and here the victim is kept till ho faints. Then he is brought into the air, only for the process to be repeated. In winter the prisoners are, often sent out to work with only their underclothes on. Any .who rebel against this are shut up for hours in the “Ice Cell.” This icell, which contains neither chairs nor benches, is flooded with water. The prisoners, overwhelmed by a mass of water which soon freezes solid —the winter temperature of Solovetzk is many degrees below zero—are themselves frozen to living lumps of ice, and are finally taken out to lie carried if still alive, to the hospital. In the hospital of '.Solovetzk, out of 1400 patients in a recent winter, there] died no fewer than 1040. ■

The Bolshevik gaolers have also thought out ingenious methods of tor-

LIFE IN RUSSIAN PRISON

ture for the warm weather; indeed, they rival the tortures of t-he Middle Ages. The prisoners are first completely undressed and carefully rubbed over with grease, and then left bound to a tree in the blazing sunshine. The victims have to stay in this position all day and are not released till evening, when they have been literally eaten alive by flies, mosquitoes and other insects. Those of ‘Trotsky’s supporters who are sent as prisoners to Siberia live in slightly better circumstances, but there too. their position is very hard. They have to live in dirty little villages often situated a thousand miles from a railway. The exiles live fairly free lives, but they have to report to the local police several times a wdek. 'Generally speak, ing, their lives are a desperate i struggle; they can seldom find work j with the loical peasants, and there is so , great a shortage of foodstuffs that they ' are unable to stay for long in one village, and so drift farther and farther away.

Each exile receives a monthly (<subsidy” of five roubles—ten shillings—which ridiculously small sum is only enough to buy bread for the first few days of the month. After that, they beg, or starve to death. There are approximately 150,000 exiles in Siberia, and' among these there are many spies and “agents provocateurs” who serve the Teheka and report casual remarks of their fellow-prison-ersj

The only way of bettering one’s position is to fall ill. Then one is taken to the nearest hospital, where, at any rate, one is sure of a bed and food. But this way of escape is only possible for the really seriously ill. Teheka mostly considers illness as “malevolent counter-revolution,” and will not allow the patient to be taken to a hospital. The power in Siberia lies in the hands of the completely uneducated provincial Teheka officials, who can do what they like with the wretched exiles.

The usual period of exile in 'Siberia is from five to ten years. When this period is over, however, the prisoner may not return to Moscow or Leningrad ; he is allowed to settle only in some distant thiny-populated district, there to cultivate the land under the ceaseless watch of the Teheka.