RED TERROR IN MOSCOW

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 76, 24 December 1918, Page 6

RED TERROR IN MOSCOW

. e aLONDON BUSINESS MAN'S STORY

100 EXECUTIONS A WEEK After sixteen days' arduous travel, seventy-six Britishers from Moscow 'have reached London, bringing graphic tales of the red terror of Bolshevik rule, lliey set out 78 strong, but at the Russian frontier tivo-a man and a woman-were stopped bv the authorities. "X was'one of those in charge of the Earty," said a member of a weii-Kiiown ontion business house, who gave _ a

"Daily Chronicle" representative an insight into life at Moscow,' where he had been residing: for about a year. Speaking the Russian language fluently,, he has off and on 'spent k-ngthy periods in the" country for several years, making his home at l'etrograd as well as'at Moscow, and his last return to the latter city was just as the Bolsheviki took it over, There was then an English colony of 600 or 700; there are now about 250 left. "Life in Moscow had been crowded with incident," he said. -'There had been great destruction of property, especially when the Bolsheviki bombarded a number of houses where tile Anarchists were, blowing them to bits. I have been shot at several times—all of us have. You cannot expect anything else in a rough-and-tumble. "I have had to go before a tribunal against speculation to explain a business telegram which came to my private ad- • dress, and on that occasion I was arrested at 2 o'clock in the morning. The president of the tribunal was. an ex-care-taker,' and his colleagues were four or five boys, at whose lequest I told them what to write in th.eir report. Arrests are made in capricious fashion, often without the slightest explanation.

Comedy and Tragedy. "A group of people watching the removal of a statue of Alexander 111 included an Englishman, and ■ all were taken into custody.on the ground that they were engaged in anti-Bolshevik propaganda. The Englishman, who is elderly, on requesting an explanation, was told that he was a capitalist. Numbers of men have been executed—l cannot speak about the fate of the women; and in recent months daily executions have run into 100 a week, for no reason except that the victims, sent to their death without trial, were forirerly officers or wealthy people. . . i "I know of a case where an officer's wife was allowed to bring food'for. him for four days after he had.been shot; and of another where a woman inquired about her husband, after a lengthy silence, only to be told that 'ho had been shot by mistake. . That tragic news was callously given by' Jacob Peters, Russia's execntioner-in-chief, who was suspected of having been 'concerned in the Houndsditch murders in 1910. Peters, who is about 30 years of age, had, after Lenin's reported death, a fairly free hand to do what he liked, and no doubt Trotsky backed him up. I have been before him. His ministerial office gives him absolute rigiit of life and death. He signs a paper, and that is all. Sometimes ho signs without looking at the papers.

' What Bolshevism Means. "What Bolshevik rule means in that land of massacres it is difficult for people at home fully to realise. Banks are, in my opinion, gone, investments and goods nre confiscated, current accounts taken, safes opened. Nothing is left. You cannot close your business, on the ground that, it does. not pay, lest the officials hand it over to jour 1 employees to keep going. If you discharge an , employee you have to give three months' or six months' notice, and pay an equal amount into an unemployment fund. There is no law or reason in taxes; they may tell you to pay what 3-011 did before, and repeat the demand a month later. You cannot speak in the streets without risk of trouble;-there is no free Press—all is taken over by the Government and confiscated, as has been trade after trade. Freedom, as we understand it, is non-ex-istent, and the life under the Tsar was Utopia compared with present conditions. Houses and flats are requisitioned on various pretexts or none at all. Es- r peciall.v have educated people been vie-' timised, as although there are hundreds of flats empty in Moscow, expensive furniture is dumped in the -main streets and left (here because the owners have nowhere to take it.'

"Women arc in a pitiable plight. Thousands, whose husbands have be'en shot in the war or are away .on service, are stranded, with war pensions stopped, investments confiscated, jewellery confiscated or taxed beyond endurance, and even their stored furs appropriated for workin? people. Hundreds of educated and refined women have asked uie far work for a mere pittance. Some have been nelling newspapers in the streets, "but there are now only the official organs, which they are not "permitted to trade in.

Russia Living on Capital. "Government workers have had their wastes raised 100 per cent., and they get preferential treatment in "the use of bread cards; the educated man, such ns the doctor, is the bottom dog, and gets nothing. Russia is living on her capital. For the past twelve months she has been receiving no goods from . anywhere; factories are not getting raw material; ami big' wages will not buy bread. The industrial outlook is very grave. It has been a Red Terror in Russia for the past six months. Peasants in many places are starving, having had all their corn taken by the expeditions of Eed Guards. "The Bolshevik organisation is much stronger than people in England have any idea of; but, except for the Bolshevik Government, tho feeling of the people is very bitter against Germany. She will be forced to withdraw her troops from the Ukraine—she is doing so now; and the Bolshevik terror will spread there. There is enormous Bolshevik propaganda going on. .Millions of roubles are being spent, the activities radiating from a Moscow bureau. It extends to this country,.-to India, and to Ireland, to Austria and Germany. The position is creating a big scare in the last-named country, where it is said, 'We have lighted a fire that we are unable to put out.' The xluration of the Bolshevik Government depends on how long they can live, on their resources; these at an end, Bolshevism will crumble. When it is stamped out there is an enormous field for British trade in Russia, with a welcome by the gimerai community for the Britisher."