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BEGINNING OF TERROR Tatyana Shvetsova |
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We
shall be quoting passages from a book by Roman Gul “Dzerzhinsky”. A participant
of the ‘white movement’, an officer of the Voluntary Army, he wrote his book
in emigration. Despite the quite understandable highly emotional and
incriminative style, the book is undeniably honest. It is based on credible
documentary evidence, which the author scrutinized, and the testimonies of
witnesses to the events. “On
December 19th 1917, in room ? 75 in Smolny, a bald man dressed in a worn
jacket was dashing about, taking short, frenzied steps. This was none other
than Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October revolution, in consternation
listening to a report made by executive secretary of the Council of People’s
Commissars, die-hard cynic Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich. The Secretary spoke of
the reigning panic among the party leadership, the people’s growing
discontent with the Bolsheviks, and the high likelihood of conspiracy and
assassination attempts. Lenin interrupted Bonch with an outburst of
indignation: “Can’t we find our own answer to Fouquier-Tinville, who could
deal with the counterrevolution?” Just a
reminder: Fouquier-Tinville was appointed an official of the criminal court,
set up to deal with the events of the antimonarchic coup in When
after the overthrow of Robespierre in the summer of 1794 the Convention took
a decision to arrest and take Fouquier-Tinville to court, he showed up at
prison himself. The trial that took place several months later ruled that he
be sentenced to death, despite the fact that he scrupulously abided by the
Law and never took bribes. So,
Vladimir Lenin was dreaming of just such a man like this Fouquier-Tinville
for the Bolsheviks. According to the following quote from the book we are
looking at today: “…on the next day the epitomized image of Fouquier-Tinville
of the October revolution wasn’t long in manifesting itself. On December 20th
a tall, skeletal-like man, dressed in ill-fitting soldier’s uniform, that
accentuated his thin frame, appeared at the enlarged meeting of the Soviet of
People’s Commissars. His name was Felix Dzerzhinsky… He spoke of terror, ways
of saving … the revolution. His drawn face, sharp features and feverishly
glowing eyes were those of a fanatic. He spoke with difficulty, hurriedly,
nervously, as if fearful lest he omit something very important: “Revolutions
were always accompanied by deaths – there is nothing out of the common about
this! At the present moment we need to make ample use of terror, making the
most of it! Do not be mistaken in thinking I am searching for revolutionary
lawful justifications! Justice does not become us right now… We mustn’t waste
time on procrastinated debates! This is a head-on fight, to the death! It’s a
case of who gets who… All I demand is that we organize a means of
REVOLUTIONARY REPRISAL!” He
concluded his speech on a shout – an ill, wasted man, strongly resembling a
monk, dressed in soldier’s uniform. They
had found their Fouquier-Tinville. Regarding
the October coup, in a bout of cynical humor, among friends, Lenin liked to
say with a smirk: “Well,
if this is gamble, it’s certainly on an international, historic scale!” On
December 20th 1917, when his choice fell on Dzerzhinsky, Lenin laid the
cornerstone of terror for the protection of the ‘gamble on an international,
historic scale.” The
protocol of the meeting where this decision was taken is kept at the Kremlin
as a prize relic, for it was hurriedly jotted down in Lenin’s own hand: “…to
name the commission for fighting counterrevolution – the “All-Russia
Extraordinary Commission under the Soviet of People’s Commissars’, and
approve its members, headed by its Chairman Comrade Felix Dzerzhinsky…” And so
on… From that day on, Felix Dzerzhinsky raised aloft the ‘revolutionary
sword’ above So who
was this individual, who succeeded in pushing not only Russia, but through it
– perhaps, the rest of the world, back into the medieval frame of mind…There
is every reason for wondering about his biography and spiritual constitution.
As the
irony of Russian history and Russian revolution would have it, the man who
stood at the helm of the terror organization in a “Noble
Knight of love”, “tender as a dove”, “golden heart”, “a creature of
indescribable spiritual beauty”, “charming individual”… While
poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (who, alas, frequently demeaned himself to writing
official odes) even dedicated the following lines to this inspiring force
behind All-Russian killing:
“To Youth, reflecting on life
In doubt as to whom to emulate
Without a moment’s hesitation I say:
Comrade Dzerzhinsky you should imitate! So,
Dzerzhinsky accepted the Chair of Chairman of the VCheka… Now the
Bolsheviks, who lived in endless fear of riots, conspiracy, assassinations, the
masterminds of a world-scale gamble, could sleep easily. They knew whom they
had entrusted with unlimited power over the population. Rising
up above the party and the people, the leader of the VCheka evolved into a terrifying
figure, reminiscent of a thinking guillotine. With the setting up of the
VCheka, all actual power in the country passed into the hands of Dzerzhinsky.
Apart from him, nobody could exert any influence on the leader of the
revolution Vladimir Lenin. A
Bolshevist authority, People’s Commissar Leonid Krasin testifies: “Lenin
has become quite irresponsive, and if anyone can influence him it’s “Comrade
Felix” Dzerzhinsky, an even greater fanatic, and, in actual fact, a clever
manipulative genius, who intimidates Lenin with threats of counterrevolution,
which he says will destroy everyone, Lenin first and foremost. While Lenin, I
am quite convinced of this, is the greatest of cowards, trembling for his
hide. Dzerzhinsky plays this card really well.” “While
initially it was planned to endow the VCheka with the office of ‘preliminary
investigation’,” writes Roman Gul, “Dzerzhinsky insisted the VCheka be given
the authority to committing direct reprisals and violence on the spot, on the
basis of, as he put it “class and revolutionary conscience”. Thus, they were
granted the right to execute.” Having
secured the much-sought post of Chairman of the VCheka and brandishing the
‘sword of the revolution’, Dzerzhinsky thus characterized his task: “I am
in the fire of struggle. It’s the life of a soldier who knows no peace since
he has to save a house on fire. No time to think of his own and himself. Only
work and struggle… Yet, in this fearful struggle my heart remains alive, the
same as it always was. All of my time is spent towards working incessantly at
my post. I have been delegated to the forefront of the fire, and all my will
is focused on fighting and looking with wide-open eyes directly at the
imminent danger, and “Strong
words. And terrifying inasmuch as the one who wrote them believed in his
revolutionary calling.” …Dzerzhinsky
went home to visit his family only on big holidays. He worked round the
clock, frequently personally interrogating the arrested. …In
this life of a ‘zealot’, as it transpires, Dzerzhinsky found only one form of
entertainment – in personally interrogating well-known, prominent people
among the arrested… His office witnessed the interrogation of all manner of
political rivals, Mensheviks, monarchists, democrats, the clergy… …Dzerzhinsky
perceived the essence of his ‘terror’ as: “Proletarian
coercion in all its forms, beginning with executions, is a method of
delivering a communist man out of the material of a capitalist epoch.” At a
time when in the post-October chaos a majority of branches of state
government were in a state of complete collapse, the punitive apparatus
of the new state, the communist secret police - developed at lightening
speed. The
Kremlin owes this entirely to the VCheka…And Dzerzhinsky, as the head of the
secret police, was invaluable. This formerly exiled revolutionary suddenly
evinced rare policing skills, augmented by awesome work efficiency. Standing
at the helm of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission, Dzerzhinsky besides
all else, created a previously unheard-of in the world academy of espionage
and provocation, which was a symbiosis of past experience of Czarist security
forces and revolutionary underground expertise… A
colleague and comrade-in-arms of Felix Dzerzhinsky – Vyacheslav Menzhinsky
noted: “In
1918 the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission , or VCheka, led by Dzerzhinsky,
was already a state within a state, wielding immediate power over the
Kremlin. This was the very heart of the communist center.” At one
time Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin advised the French
revolutionaries when seizing power to ‘awaken the devil in the popular
masses’ and ‘unleash the most ugly of passions’… This is exactly the method Dzerzhinsky
applied in 1917. Dzerzhinsky
burst open the society’s underworld, channeling into the VCheka an army of
pathological killers and criminal elements. He was perfectly aware of the
terrible force of his army. However, anxious to instill immediate communism
by means of firing squads, already in 1918 Dzerzhinsky swiftly spread
out a bloody web of extraordinary commissions all across the vast expanses of
Russia: these were Gubernia, uyezd, city, village, transport, frontline,
factory commissions, augmented by so-called ‘military-revolutionary
tribunals’, ‘special departments’, ‘extraordinary headquarters’, ‘punitive
detachments’. From
the social basement, broken open by an ‘armed psychopath’, a vast stream of
sadistical morons filed into the ranks of these commissions, ready material
for criminal psychologist and psychopathologist. With their help, Dzerzhinsky
turned In the
French Revolution, Danton’s followers said of Robespierre that if he and
Sain-Juste were given a free hand, “all that would be left of Take a
closer look at Dzerzhinsky’s comrades-in-arms in the struggle for the ideals
of world revolution. These warriors of communism are particularly
fascinating, since in the words of Dzerzhinsky, they were “on the forefront
of the line of fire”.
…When
in 1917 Yakov Peters, dressed in the invariable VCheka uniform – a leather
jacket - all festooned with mausers, strode into the Petersburg Soviet of Workers’
Deputies, where there were also socialists, the latter met him with indignant
cries of “A guard!” Yet, Peters was not at all fazed, replying
brazenly: “Yes, I
am proud to be a guard of the working people!” Just
two years later, after many bloodbaths that Peters generously exposed the
Russian proletariat to, this easy rider, arriving in Tambov Gubernia to put
down the peasants’ unrest there over the communist exactions, issued the curt
order: “To
unleash merciless red terror against all families of rebellious peasant folk,
arresting everyone over 18 years of age, regardless of sex, and if the revolt
continues – execute them, as hostages; imposing extraordinary contributions
on the villages, threatening those who do not pay up promptly with confiscation
of land and property.” So much
for this “guard of the working people’s interests!” The October revolution
transformed him into one of the all-powerful characters of the secret
communist police. Yakov
Peters has his historical quotes: “Any revolutionary
knows that a revolution is not carried out in silk gloves.” And
more: “Any
attempt of the counter-revolution to lift up its head shall encounter such
violence, that everything referred to as ‘red terror’ shall pale in
comparison.” It was Dzerzhinsky’s
right hand man, Yakov Peters, the hangman of dozens of Russian towns, who
wrote the most bloody of pages in the chronicle of communist terror. It was
through him that the Don region, Petrograd and “To
turn everything upside down!” He
formulated the philosophy of his terror quite simply: “The
VCheka is the dirty work of the revolution. It’s a game of heads… If the work
goes as planned, the heads of the counter-revolutionaries shall roll, but I
make few mistakes, we might lose our own heads… All the customary norms of
war, put down in various conventions, according to which prisoners are not
executed, etc. are hilarious: the law of civil war demands that you slaughter
all those wounded in action against you.” Following
this law, Martin Latsis bathed “VCheka
isn’t a court, a tribunal or investigative commission,” he said. “It is a
military body, acting along the inner front. It does not serve to judge the
enemy, but strikes it down…Does not display charity, but decimates each one…
Do not seek to find proof during the investigation that the accused acted in
word and deed against the Soviet power. The first question you should pose
is: what class does he belong to, what is his education, upbringing, origins
and profession. It is these questions that should determine the fate of the
accused. There lies the essence of red terror.” Later,
in “Why
bother with these questions regarding origins and education. I shall just
walk into their kitchen and look into the pot: if there is meat there – he is
an enemy of the people! To be stood before a firing squad!” These
people were the pride of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission, to be cited
as an example for all others to follow. Now you can imagine in what hands lay
the fate of Copyright © 2006 The Voice of Originally
published at http://www.vor.ru/English/homeland/home_030.html 12/15/2005 Illustrations: A.Tishkov, “Dzerzhinsky”,
Molodaya Gvardiya, |
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