RUSSIAN RULE.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1921, Page 4

RUSSIAN RULE.

IN A SOVIET PRISON. ( \ By permission and invitation of the f Soviet Government, Mrs Harding went 1 ( to Russia last June as correspondent- . : of the “New York World.” On the day i , of her arrival in Moscow she was flung into prison on a baseless charge of he- j , ing in the British Intelligence Service, and informed that she had been invited | to Russia merely to lie given the choice J of suffering the penalty of espionage in war time or of disclosing the secrets ol the “British Organisation in Russia.” She writes of her experiences as follows : j After protesting my innocence in interrogatories which lasted for whole ; nights, 1 was condemned without trial : by a stupid and ignorant judge. Finding myself in the hands of an arbitral,\ oppression against which the only "Capons arc force and fraud, I attempted to get- out by fraud in order to take my case to Tchitclierin. This attempt was unsuccessful. For months I was kept in solitary confinement under the most terrible conditions, in the hope of inducing me to obtain release by consenting to become a spy on my own colleagues and other foreign residents in Russia in the interests of the Extraordinary Commission. As release was offered to me on these foul terms, I remained in prison, till recently liberated as a result of Lord C'ur/.on’s Note demanding the release of nil British prisoners, and making this a sine qua non condition of the continuation of trade negotiations. In a series of articles, which started recently in the “New York World” and other American papers, 1 described at length my Russian experiences, of which I will here continue my brief outline. After telling the fictitious story, which seemed to fulfil his condition of release, t<> Mogilewsky, he at once became polite and renewed his promise of ini mediate release. Then, after getting me in write and sign the story 1 had told him, he broke his promise of release unless 1 accepted the conditions which he then added: that I should agree to help them in counter-espion-age! This f refused, then and thereafter. That same night 1 secured a momentary glimpse of Tchitclierin, by holding out promises oi a fuller statement if Tchitclierin told me that I could rely on Mogilewsky’s word. I hoped in this way to gain an opportunity of making my appeal to Tchitclierin. But in an unguarded moment 1 betrayed my intention of meiely protesting niv innocence to Tchitclierin : and Mogilewsky prevented me from doing so. After Tchitclierin had said: “You can rely on Mogilewsky s promise, Mogilewsky hurried him out of the. room before I could make my appeal. j and then turned on me furiously. “1 promised to make a fuiihcr statement,” I said ; “1 am not and never was o, will lie in the British Intelligence Service. And what 1 told you to-day 1 told you merely in order to obtain release and take my ease to Tchitclierin.” I was sent hack to my cell; m.v freedom was slid five months away. THE TSARIST SEC RET CELLS. The Lubiaiika is the foremost prison of the All-Russian Kxtraordinnrv < ommission. Till two years ago the place was a lodging-house of the cheapen* sort, where rooms were let out for the night at low prices. It has been lett much as it was. except that the windows have been barred and spy-holes let into the doors. Later on 1 got to know the notorious secret cells of the old Tsarist prison of Buturky, with their ponderous iron doors and massive stone walls, and found incarceration there less trying to the mind. These at least were the typical cells in which prisoners have pined in all ages; but in the Lubiaiika cells, where the filthy paper hung in ; tatters from tne walls, one felt that one ; had been trapped by low scoundrels and locked up in a small verminous room where one might well he forgotten for ever. My cell was a queer oblong sliajie; just like a coffin seen from the wrong side—that is the inside. 1 was in this prison till October 5, with one week’s respite in the secretcells referred to above. Of these thirteen weeks, nine wore spent in solitary confinement ol the most rigorous description, under conditions ot indescribable squalor. Later on. 1 spoke with many prisoners who had spent long terms of imprisonment in Tsarist- days. They told'me that they had had hooks had been allowed to write to their friends at intervals, and see them, and had been permitted a short daily walk in the prison courtyard. DRIVING PRISONERS INSANE. It is impossible to explain to anyone , who has not suffered solitary confine- | m.ont- without those consolations, the difference which such privileges make; it is the difference which there is between sanity and insanity. Solitary confinement of this description is a deliberate attempt on the sanity of the prisoner. The idealists who are at the head of affairs in Russia know these things. They tolerate the employment of these I methods towards their political opponents, or those who have been denounced as such by some former Oohrana spy or miserable foreign agent who, to save his own hide, has gone into the service of the Extraordinary Commission. They know and allow these things, and this should cut-them off from the fellowship of just men. . . . After my first unsuccessful attempt to get out of the hands of my especial Torquemada by ruse, I told him the truth in repeated interrogatories for weeks. Then, suddenly, lie became very polite, and seemed inclined to release me and send me out of the country if I could assure him that it would be possible for me to sco the Prime Minister on my return to England and agree to take him a message. I played for this, end told him a few lies to prove that ’ f should have such an opportunity. Unfortunately, I told one of Ins spies (whom I believed to he a heroic, selfsacrificing soul willing to take the rise of being shot in order to help me) what message I would really give the Prime Minister if I ever hnd the unsought honour of seeing him. That message was that Communist Russia is in the strangle grip of the Extraordinary Commission—an institution hardly distinguishable from the old Oohrana, except that its chiefs are frowsier and less intelligent. T was not- sent out with this message

Finally, in October, I obtained trails- |] ferenee from the cold-storage cell, where ' I was being done to death in the Lu- p; binnka, to the Buturky, where condi- [- tions were better, and it would be pos- <- sible to survive the Russian winter. I obtained this by giving them a docu- ■ ment which Mogilewsky thought he could use in his spy ease against me, • j but which in reality protests my innocence. It deals with a kindly meant article about myself, signed l l ’. S. 1)., which appeared in the ‘‘Daily News” of last spring. At the Buturky there are just under three thousand prisoners; and 1 decided that a. Soviet prison of this sort is ! rather a good place for a Moscow corj respondent to study conditions. In such a prison one meets people of all '• clashes—savants, artists, officers, popes, ] prostitutes, thieves; and one meets ; them on equal terms, and sees how they all react towards Bolshevism and what it. has done for them. Among my fellow-prisoners were many Socialists who had been arrested because a Soviet election had gone wrong; in other words, because the Communist candidate had not i elected. During my stay in Russia I had no opportunity of seeing Red Army reviews, or of hearing the International sung on state occasions; but, on the other hand, I heard Socialist women in Soviet prisons singing their prison-born babies to sleep with the same sad songs which they sang long ago on the way to Siberia. For the Bolsheviks have become the arbitrary tyranny which they and the other revolutionaries fought. The Soviet republic has become an absolutist police state.