PRISON KELLS IN RUSSIA

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11655, 20 October 1923, Page 14

PRISON KELLS IN RUSSIA

830 AWAITING DEATH. A Russian medic 01 student, who for some time had bee brcibly erqployed as junior medical of -r\t the “preliminary prison” of the Che-ka, in Moscow, on the famous Lubianka, and who escaped abroad, and is now in Constantinople, relates in the Russian Press his experiences. According to his account, on February Ist, 1923, there were 15,290 political prisoners detained in the different prisons of Moscow. Of this total, 60 per cent, were workers, peasants and Red Army soldiers, and 40 per cent, were members of the “intellegontzia” and professional classes. The most terrible of all the Che-ka prisons and places of detention is tho famous “Internal prison” on the Lubianka, which is guarded by the special Che-ka military detachment, consisting exclusively of'Letts and Chinese, who do not speak or understand a single word of Russian. Last February there were 830 inmates in this prison, all awaiting their death, as only persons sentenced to capital punishment are kept there. The conditions prevailing in this “Internal prison” are too horrible to relate. The inmates are not allowed to receive or send any letters, nor to read books or receive food from the outside world. They are only allowed out into tho tiny courtyard once a day, and that for not more than 10 minutes.