NIGHTMARE OF BOLSHEVISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17901, 5 April 1920, Page 10

NIGHTMARE OF BOLSHEVISM

HORROR AND GROTESQUERIE. ( I saw a decently-dressed gentleman sitting on a bench in a squa i with an empty t basket in his hand, dead from hunger 1 (writes Countess Ludmila U' lirien de Lacy, treating of rccent conditions in < Russia, in Tho Times). Such a sight was ■ not uncommon. We fed on unpeeled pota- : toes and black flour l>oiled in water, and even that was hard to obtain. There werj j four categories of breadcards, wluch were supposed (leaving the bourgeoisie nearly breadless) to supply the working class with about Jjlb per /lay. But in reality, except tho communists, very few ever received the bread due to them according to their , cards. To get it one had to stand hours ( in an endless queue, and it was almost uneatable when you did get it. There were people's kitchens. Queues of se'veral hundreds of shivering, hungry people stood hour after hour in tho frost or rain to reccivo a plate of watery soup for 50 roubles. The streets looked dismal; all the shops , wero closed, and hungry-looking people, shabbily dressed, hurried along with a haunted look on their thin faces. The ■ only richly-dressed women were the "communist battalion," who walked about with guns, acting partly as a kind of.police, partly as spies, taking a particularly active and ferocious part in domiciliary visits and arrests. I never saw such malignant, low, truly wicked faces as those of these "gallant Red Amazons." Nobody was safe anywhere. To dress a little smarter, to present a little more civilised appearance—a mere smile even—was enough to be arrested, or sent to fulfil some dirty work, or dig graves for the "anti-Revolutionists" who had been shot. • When there was x rumour of the White troops advancing a decree was issued forbidding the bourgeoisie to smile in the street, this being regarded as showing an unseemly joy. One of my pupils, a young, student," walking one evening with a lady, and smiling as young mer. generally do in ladies! society, was actually arrested, and only set free in the morning after having given tho particular commissary 400 roubles. It was rather an expensive smile. If we bad little bread, wo had many decrees. Every morning we woke in horrible anticipation of some new form of "freedom" in store for us. One day there was a decree forbidding anybody to possess more than three chemises or shirts, four towels, three sheets, etc. Constant domiciliary visits by night were the result of this decree.. Having fotfnd rest in sleep from a day of work, hunger, and mostlyfruitless, exhausting efforts to get some food, you woke with a start, hearing a fearful banging at your door; opening it, you saw,, before you several "Red amazons" and "Red soldiers." Turned out of your room, you were not allowed to choose a new one, but obliged to take the abode assigned to you by the "Lodging Committee." It was never a good one, of course. It was either damp or cold, always very dirty, two or three families sometimes- put into one room, sometimes even in the immediate neigh■bonrhood of the typhus barracks. I have known families with small children who wero forced to change rooms in winter three or four times. You continually met parties of frightened and haggard-looking "bourgeois" dragging themselves from house to house with such siftall remnants of clothing and household utensils as were left them by the "Rod brotherhood." So great was tho number of deaths, especially from spotted typhus, fostered by enforced dirtiness (there was no soap), lrunger, and all kinds of privations, that at the churchyards there was a queue of peoplo waiting for their turn to bury their dead. The Red newspapers (no others were permitted) did not mention such a thing, of course, but I had good opportunity of knowing this, as at one time I helped in the town typhus bar nicks, where the nurses were overwhelmed with work. The Red guards, when they died, wero borne to their last restinsrplaces in vivid red coffins.' These coffins looked exactly as if they had been dipped in blood which their owners had shed. Highly unpleasant was the position of people employing servants. Luckily.l was, not among .them. You had do right to dismiss any of $ie servants, however bad, rude, or dishonest, without tho permission, of the "Servants' Soviet," which always fined the employers enormous sums or imprisoned them. Those who could not afford to face the justice of the "Servants' Soviet" had to be prepared for every kind of humiliation. I heard a cook say to the daughter of the house, a very nice and highly cultivated girl. "Now, miss, it's our turn; you shall arleep in my room, and I will have yours." When I next called the cook was . installed in the girl's room, receiving one of her friends, a Red guard. A parlourmaid in my presence addressed her mistress in terms of such a nature I hesitate to repeat them. Hall porters' enjoyed the special favour of the "Soviet Government." They were expected, and often justly, t<> give much useful information about the political opinions of the tenants. They were nearly always transferred from tho porter's lodge to one of the best flats of the houses, and every, tenant had to win their favour under the fear of being reported as an antirevolutionist. And woe to such! Under different pretexts, and often without any, there were continued arrests. Thousands of people, men, women, and even school children, wero thrown into prisons to bo starved and ill-treated in the best cases, and too often shot, not seldom after torture. A young officer I had known as a boy, Prince. Meshersky, before being shot at Kieff had his Gross of St. George (the Russian V.C.) nailed to his breast, the nails, one after the other, being driven into tho flesh. The Bolshevik education policy was rather quaint. Anybody could be admitted to the high schools. .No matter how faint were the applicant's ideas about reading and spelling, his wish to bo a student wa3 a sufficient guarantee of his abilities. Age was no objection. Tho types coming in and out of the doors of the Temple of Science were quite remarkable; girls and boys under 15, old men about 60, crowds of people of all ages and conditions. Many entered thinking it a novel entertainment, but more hoping that the student's certificate would protect them , from being forced to sweep the streets and from other effects of the "Red freedom." Tho pupils of the elementary schools, even the very youngest classes, were ordered by the "Schools Soviet' to elect delegates to form "school committees," who could dismiss the teachers if they chose or criticise the way of teaching. TTie sieter of on© of my pupils, a child about 12, once returned home earlier than expected. On being questioned she answered: —'Our French teacher was four minutes late. I am the class delegate. I told the class to leave the school. Wo found it a slight u-pon our dignity to have to wait." Perhaps it was a result of a similar 6ystem that there was in Kieff a procession of children bearing a -banner with the strange motto: "Down with parents." Travelling in "Red republics" was a painful business; I remember a journey from Kieff to Moscow. Paying for your ticket did not entitlo you to ,any sort of place, everybody being at libes% to* squeeze in as best they might. With the help of some of my former patients (1 had Deen a nurse at the front beforo the Bolshevik Revolution) I squeezed through one of the unglazed windows to the upper berth of what had formerly been a smart sleeping-car. Now the stuff covering the seats was cut and stolen away, and the horsehair underneath sticking out. Still I considered myself lucky when 1 was stretched out on this prickly couch. A throng of Red soldiers eat, lay, and stood about, spitting and smoking foul tobacco and using fouler language. • In the middle of the night I heard a man 1 say : "Why is this bourgeois woman lying ' while we are sitting? Let us pull her : down." He seized mo by the feet, but another took my 'part, and I was left in for the tinie being. In tho Red republics we knew nothing of what was going on in the world. Tho Red papers contained, besides numerous decrees, flaring descriptions of the "certain advent of the world revolution" aad profuse abuse of "English robbers," "French thieves," and "American frauds," who wanted to put "their murderous and dirty heels on tho sparkling crown of the people's liberty."