do not need evidence or cross-examinations or suspicion to justify shooting.
We find it useful, and we shoot’, declared with great cynicism one of the
active Chekists (in Kungur).
And here again an enormous number of facts, countless instances con-
firming what has been said above, may be found in my book, which the
Bolshevics naturally called “slanderous”. But it suffices to read the descript-
ton of “revolutionary justice” given by the Soviet journalist Koltov in his
Jubilee article, in the Pravda, to be persuaded that numerous facts collected
in my book, are facts indeed. Here are certain, sentences that should be
remembered: “The chairman of a provincial Cheka, a worker, would sit
down on a broken chair and in the vehemence of his ‘class conscience’ scrawl
(using for this purpose a pencil and a bit of paper) the following order:
“Order to shoot Melnichenko, him (sic) being vermin of the world-bour-
geoisie, and seven others in the same cell.”” We have already noted that
similar verdicts were also issued in Kiev and were signed by Latsis himself in
the luxurious appartments of former bourgeois houses turned into Cheks
offices.
The aim of the Cheka was not only to destroy the enemy but also to
intimidate him: in the words of Latsis, to kill in him every desire to
“sabotage’’ the Government. Naturally enough the Cheka, the “beauty and
pride” of the communist party became a subject of hatred in the eyes of
the Russian people. Aiming to affect the soul, a whole system of terrorisa-
tion was built up, going so far as wholesale arrests of hundreds and
thousands, night trials, terrible conditions of prison life, a room with
cork (soundproof) walls, feigned shootings and shootings “for every case’.
It was most likely with the aim of intimidation that in the 3rd issue of that
official organ of the Extraordinary Commission, already more than once
referred to, there was printed that significant appeal to obtain evidence by
torture. This really historical document, under the title “Why Do You
Take Mild Measures!” written by the representative of one of the provincial
commissions, was published in connection with the well-known case of the
British Consul Lockhardt. “Tell us,” said the article, “why you did not
subject this man Lockhardt to the most refined tortures in order to obtain
information. Tell us why, instead of subjecting him to such tortures as
would send a cold chill over the counter-revolutionaries at the mere recital
of it, you allowed him to leave the Cheka. Enough of sentimentalism!
Catch a dangerous scoundrel. Get all the information you can from him
and send him to the heavenly kingdom’. Is it necessary to point out how
such appeals from the Centre must have spurred on the Cheka agents to
action? I may point out that at the 6th Session of the Soviets, the
representative of the Cheka officially declared that the Cheka must be
‘ruthless towards all that rabble” (the bourgeoisie and its hangers-on).
YO) 4
