A NOTORIOUS BOLSHEVIK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19386, 22 July 1926, Page 9

A NOTORIOUS BOLSHEVIK.

DEATH OF DZERJINSKY. "THE RUSSIAN BUTCHER." BLOODTHIRSTY ACTIVITIES. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. (Received 12.25 a.m.) Renter-Sun. LONDON, July 21. A message from Moscow says the death has occurred there of Feliz Dzerjinsky, chief of the Cheka. Alternatively known as "the Black Pope of Bolshevism" and "the Russian Butcher," it is estimated that Dzerjinsky was responsible for the execution of 1,250,000 people after the most horrible tortures. The Times says: "How a man who was personally fanatically honest and unbribable could use every means of bribery, corruption, intimidation and betrayal in the interests of < a campaign of wholesale murder is perhaps a psychological riddle, but it explains the power of Dzerjinsky."

Feliz Edmundovitch Dzerjinsky, the head of the Cheka, was born at Vilna in 1877. In 1895 he joined the Lithuanian Socialists and agitated _ among the factory workers, latterly in Kovno, where he was arrested and exiled for three years to Viatka. On his return he went to Warsaw, but was again arrested and sent to Siberia for five years. On the way he escaped and went abroad. In 1905 he returned to Poland, only to be interned within a few months; but the amnestv in October gave him freedom. In 1906, he was the Polish delegate to the Russian Socialist Congress. Two years later he was again exiled to Siberia, but again escaped and eventually got back to Poland. The war found him in a Moscow prison, but the .Kerensky revolution net him free, and he joined the Bolsheviks. During the subsequent Bolshevik revolution he was made commandant of the Smolny Institute at Petrograd (now Leningrad), in which the Soviet Government at first had its seat and which Dzeriinsky fortified. He gradually rose to be Chief of Police, first of Petrograd then of Moscow, where ho was commandant. of the Kremlin, and finally of all Russia. As such he was the head of the Cheka. the "Pan-Russian Extraordinary Commission for suppressing the Counter-revolution," which gradually became the supreme power in Russia. and during the long years of its bloodthirsty activities he prevented any successful or even serious rising against the Bolsheviks and extirpated- the bourgeoisie. In 1922 the Cheka was given another title, but its task and its methods remain the same. Dzerjinsky was also entrusted with the reorganisation of the means of transit and took up his new task with the ruthless energy which was one of his characteristics. But anrarently he still remained head of the Cheka.