THE BLACK POPE OF BOLSHEVISM.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16501, 31 July 1919, Page 3

THE BLACK POPE OF BOLSHEVISM.

A SINISTER FIGURE, ' TERRORISM RAMPANT. M. A. Sokoloff, tlio writer of the follow- ’ ing article, was at one time a Bolshevist, but broke away from the ' party when it severed its relations with the Social-Democrats. He then became one of the editors of M. | Gorky’s newspaper, the Novaya. Jisn, ; until it was suppressed by the Bolshevist Government. The Roman Catholic Church had two ] heads, ono crowned with the tiara and possessed of all the outward signs; of authority, another ensconced in the re- ' condito corners of the offices of the . Society of Jesuits, silent, inaccessible, I ( and omnipotent. - The first bestowed j blessings and laid bans; the second ■ ■ pulled the wires and put into action the j ; formidable machinery of the Church, j militant. Bolshevism, likewise, has two I heads. If its spiritual wisdom is embodied in the person of Lenin, the infallible and the impeccable, its tern- • poral sword is entrusted to the care of the firm, the never-wavering M. Dm--jinsky. Even as the General of the Society of Jesus was the. Black Pope of the' Roman Catholic Church, so M. Dzorjinsky is the Black Pope of 80l- I shevism. . I His official title is modest and nn- j assuming. Ho is nothing more than the Commissary of the Extraordinary I Commission for eradicating profiteering | and counter-revolutionary conspiracies, j an institution designed to take the , place of an old-fashioned Police Department. Uildor ordinary conditions he would have ended his days as a second-rate* official or a modest intellectual of advanced view's. The history of Russia would have nothing to tell ■ about him except the mere fact that he existed. A freak of fortune has made | him a person under whoso scrutinizing ; staro not only common mortals but i even the members of the all-powerful , Council of the People’s Commissaries wince, fall bade, and experience nn- | comfortable ‘ forebodings of some re- I tribution in store for them. i He did not cut too brilliant a figure ! in the ranks of the party. People who | know' him personally arc rather aouht-,i ful of Ins political gifts and cven_go ns ; far as to deny him any considerable j amount of theoretical knowledge. He i has spent so much of his time in prisons | and the mines of Siberia that he had ; but a few chances of wandering through i the mazes of the Marxist doctrine to | some practical purpose.. However, from ■; those incidental excursions to the .fields | of learning he has obtained three f unda-1 mental truths to he treasured up in j his mind to the end of his days; first, ! that there is such a thing as class- * struggle; second, that . class-strngglo , means class war; and third, that class war means extermination. And as to ; the methods of that extermination, ho ; had them from his Siberian gaolers, who knew to perfection everything connected with the subject. > A MODERN TORQUEMADA. , The general effect of these methods was often eclipsed if not totally extinguished by the deplorable custom of bribery, which would be, of course, utterly out of place in such an instftu- , , tion as the Extraordinary Commission. < Dzorjinsky is free from that weakness. | He is an honest gaoler. He can never ; he bribed, or assuaged, or talked round, ; or adulated into lenience. Torquemada himself might have envied those stern eves, burning with fanatical hatred, ; i those thin, ascetic, bloodless lips, that ; 1 pale brow, those resourceful brains, on- j liancing the scourge of cruelty by the j scourge of honesty. If the temple of . universal happiness is to be cemented ■ by blood and erected on an enormous 1 pyramid of mutilated corpses, then, | indeed, Dzorjinsky is the only man to I he entrusted with laying out its foun- ; dations. ! It would bo an exaggeration to say ; that ho has succeeded in inculcating j upon the minds of those around him ! that elevated spirit of self-denial. Ear ; frpm that. As late as in the month j of November, 1918, no less a person; than Ids right-hand man, M. Peters, at whoso orders hundreds had been put : to death, was tried for blackmailing, not to speak of dozens of others who ; were tried and shot for the same thing. ■ But the executions have somehow fail- j ed to bo an effective deterrent, and j it is a secret to nobody that the Extraordinary Commission, with its miniberless ramifications spread all over the country, has become a place where i blackmail, extortion, and acts pf per- ; sonnl vengeance are being practised on i. an unheard-of scale. Even the most enraged Communists, while speaking of ■ the Commission, cannot help a grimace ! of disgust, twitching their lips. All tlio spies, informers, and agents provocateurs of the old regime and all the pickpockets and murderers of ; . the new era seem to have found shel- , ! tor in the lap of that hospitable organisation. “Scum of society” and . “wasps’ _nest” arc about the gentlest . nicknames by which those guardian an- ‘ gels of the Bolshevist order arc untversally styled. And yet without them, as everybody knows, Trotsky's temple ; of happiness would have crumbled into dust a. long time ago. They arc in- , dispensable for the Communistic vir- . tuos to prosper. Avowed miscreants though they arc, they arc not to be ; . dispensed with. And thus it comes about that curses and oaths hurled in j such profusion at the heads of mnr- j defers and blackmailers arc usually : ' ended with the invariable refrain: V “There is no God but tlio Extraordin- j ; ary Commission, and Dzerjinsky is its i | prophet.” ' ■ \ i < TORTURES AND SHOOTINGS, j . As I have said, the Extraordinary : : Commission has its representatives • : everywhere. Eacli small, town, each j big Village has a Commission of its i own; and the traditional division of j < administrative and judiciary powers be* ing abolished, there remains not a : single earthly affair that could not he : brought within the purvciw of this in- | stituiiou. Very often its members ad- | minister justice on the spot, shooting I ' without much ado all those whose < guilt has been, in their opinion, more i or less established. .It is done openly, i or in a more, or less covert maimer ; when criminals are led to tlio gaol. To secure the course of justice,, there • have been reintroduced tortures of the same kind as had been practised in some notorious prisons of tho old Russia. Prisoners are fed with pickled Herrings, to bo refused drink afterwards, or they are Hogged and beaten i by the hour, or they have wooden pins ; driven under their finger-nails, or, as is the ease at tho Moscow prison, they i are fmt down on an electric chair. I There is. though, a difference he- ! tween tho old times and tho nefv. Un- ; dor the Tsar’s regime people Jn an- . thority tried to husk up or explain away those proceeding, while Bolshe-.J •<

vist Russia has put the question, of tortures on tho order of the day. The Extraordinary ‘ Commission, issues a weekly newspaper (“Messenger of the E. 0.”) distributed in tho capital and in tho provinces, where readers will find very interesting 'iiscussions on the advisability of .t'ortiupos from the Communist point of view; ' Tho same publication, jives sometimes rather instructive statistical items of tho activity of tho Commission. Asid every word, every igure, breathes terror, blood, death. I saw many a Bolshevist throw' away n horror those blood-drenched records >f human perversity. But on tho folowing day I found them as loyal as wer, holding forth to the t-imo. “There s no God but the Extraordinary Comnission, and Dzerjinsky is it 4 prophet.” 1 witnessed Communist women faint jnd Communist agitators fall into fits >f hysterics on hearing of the deeds of die Commission. And stiTT their loyilty to the party prevailed_ovor pricks if conscience, and an article in the Izvestia or a speech by Trotsky always succeeded in sotting their doubts at rest . Some people call it tho power of lonviotion. Nothing of what I saw lorroborates this assertion. Dilated yes, that strange, vague stare pecuiar to people under hypnotic suggestion, those unaccountable mental leaps from tho utter dejection of a natural, deeply suffering man to the fanatical wrath of a fire-eating terrorist testify to a psychic disease rather fKTn to force of character. If terrorism is preached from day to day, if it is printed in big typo on every sheet of newspaper, if it is extolled by men of theory and freely indulged in by men of action, if not a single printed lino or a single spoken word is allowed to doubt its blessings—. no wonder that the Bolshevist rank and file should in the long run become obsessed with tile idea; and grumble, curse, or weep as they may, the people of the Extraordinary Commission, who know their customers, will only laugh at their short-lived fits of opposition. The Extraordinary Commission has achieved its object, at least for the time being, far more thoroughly than its clumsy predecessors of the tsar’s epoch. The whole of the country has been so firmly enmeshed in tha network of Communistic espionage that there is hardly anybody who would dare to express his opinions in public. Per centuries, even in the darkest periods of their history, . Russians thought themselves entitled, if not to opposition, at least to whispered criticism) until they have learned from the Conimonistic Government that the chief, nay, the only, political virtue expected from them is complete abstinence from speech. The point lias struck home, apparently. i shall never forget a scene I witnessed in on© of the hjg thoroughfares ;of Moscow on a. bright October morning. A heavily-laden cart was approaching at an unusually high speed. As it drew near I discerned two Red Guards sitting in the -front seat, with six coffins .piled high up behind them.. These-were the remnant's of the executed being conveyed from the prison of Butyrka to the outskirt of the city. The coffins were spotted with blood; one of them bore a clear print of a bloody hand, belonging seemingly to one of the executioners. The Red Guards looked jovial, contented, quiet. Their. rosy-cheeked, youthful, almost boyish faces betrayed no interest hi tho hideous load with which they were charged. One of them whs telling a story that must have been rather amusing, because the other laughed in it most satisfied way. “Fresh ones!” whispered a man in a shop-keeper’s coat, waiting for the tramcar, to his neighbour, who by way of reply winked at him knowingly. And nobody, not oven a most experienced spy of the new formation, would: be able to say what they really meant by their looks. iPassers-by gazed at the cart for a moment and then turned their heads away and'hurried on. Only an old, wrinkled woman, who must have forgotten the times she was living in, made an attempt ht relapsing into the old superstitious ways. She stopped and lifted up ®er right hand for crossing herself, then suddenly thought better of it, dropped her hand hastily and, after casting round a few timid glances, hurried on at the top of her poor, shaky speed. The bright street 'was bright for me no more. In its doorways, behind the curtains of the windows, in the gestures of men, in their looks and words and thoughts, I discerned tho same ominous shadow that casts its poisonous gloom over at?, tho expanse of tin. country, the shadow of the Black Pop* of Bolshevism.