in every respect it transformed itself into a specially privileged institution, 
not only in the fulness of its power, but also in the conditions of material 
existence. It was a kind of government within a government. Requisitions, 
goods and food-products went for the needs of the Chekisti. In the days 
of famine which the population lived through, from 1918 to 1920, the 
Chekisti had special rations. Service in the Cheka was often a way of 
getting rich; it meant the possibility of living well and on a lavish scale, 
as the commissions engaged not only in the struggle against counter-revo- 
lution, but also against speculation. Hence those innumerable abusers of 
power above referred to. Wholesale search and arrest furnished the Cheka 
agents a means of providing themselves with what they needed. Plunder, 
forgery, bribery mark the history of an institution which was to “stand on 
guard over the revolution’, and to draw to itself Communists devoted to 
the cause. It is clear that a former circus clown, a former keeper of a 
house of ill-fame, former criminals with a definitely criminal record who 
penetrated into the Cheka remained under the Communist toga what they 
were in reality. 
Cheka Cynicism. 
All the background of the Red Terror was bound to exercise a degene- 
rative influence on the active workers of the Cheka. Human life became 
utterly worthless in the eyes of these men. Before me lie original protocols 
of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission. History will keep them for 
future generations. These original documents were left behind by the 
Chekists when in 191g they fled from Kiev. In reading them ome is always 
surprised by the extreme simplicity of the forms of the “Legal Pro- 
ceedings’. The “revolutionary conscience” allows, for instance, at one 
session, consideration of fifty-nine cases, and in twenty-five cases the decree 
of execution by shooting. In the protocols are contained death sentences 
over the signature of Latsis himself, without even the date being given when 
they were issued. It is unnecessary in order to learn the actual activity of 
the Extraordinary Commission fo penetrate into far-off provincial regions, 
where the most hideous forms of abuse of power could be met with 
especially often, where the Cheka could absorb more easily elements which 
we call criminal, for even in the centre of events one is surprised by the 
ignoring of questions which the human conscience and morale ask those 
who put into practice the right of the revolution to commit murder. The 
last names only were published with unusual carelessness; people were shot 
“by mistake”, people of the same name were shot, people without names 
were shot, with a brief comment: “Counter-revolutionary by conviction”, 
“a counter-revolutionary hard to catch’”’, and so on, or simply, under the 
circumstances of the Red Terror such and such a number were shot. “We 
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77k,