A keeper appears in the door. “To your places!” he shouts angrily. “Don’t you know the regulations? Send your petitions in writing to the Commission.”
“We’ve done it, but we get no reply,” several women cry.
“Silence!” the overseer commands.
At the gate of the Cold Hill Prison (Kholodnaya Gorka) we meet an excited crowd, mostly women and girls, each with a little bundle in hand. They are wildly gesticulating and arguing with the guards. They have brought provisions and clothing for their arrested relatives—the custom, known as peredatcha, prevailing throughout the country owing to the inability of the government to supply its prisoners with sufficient food. But the guard declines to accept the offerings. “New orders,” he explains: “no more peredatcha.”
“For how long?”
“For several weeks.”
Consternation and resentment break from the people. The prisoners cannot exist without peredatcha. Why should it be refused? Many of the women have come long distances, even from neighboring towns, to bring some bread and potatoes to husband or brother. Others have deprived themselves of necessaries to procure a little delicacy for a sick friend. And now this terrible order!
The crowd besieges us with pleas. We are accompanied by the woman secretary of a high commissar, herself an official of the Rabkrin, the powerful Department of Inspection, organized to investigate and correct abuses in the other Soviet institutions. She is past middle age, lean and severe looking, with the reputation of being efficient, strict, and heartless. I have heard that she was formerly in the Cheka, one of its Commandants, as the executioners are called.
Some of the women recognize our guide. From all sides come appeals to intercede, in tones of fear mixed with hope.
“I don’t know why peredatcha is refused,” she informs them, “but I shall inquire at once.”
We enter the prison, and our guide sends for the commissar in charge. A youngish man, gaunt and consumptive-looking, appears. “We have suspended the peredatcha,” he explains, “because we are short of help. We have more work just now than we can handle.”
“It is a great hardship for the prisoners. Perhaps the matter can be managed,” the Secretary suggests.
“Unfortunately it can’t,” the man retorts coldly. “We work beyond our strength. As for the rations,” he continues, “the honest workers outside are no better off.”
Noticing our look of disapproval, he adds: “As soon as we have caught up on our work, we’ll permit the peredatcha again.”
“How soon might that be?” one of our party inquires.
“In two or three weeks, perhaps.”
“A long time to starve.”
The Commissar does not reply.
“We all work hard without complaining, tovarish,” the guide reproves him severely. “I regret I shall have to report the matter.”
The prison has remained as it was in the days of the Romanovs; even most of the old keepers still hold their positions. But it is much more crowded now; sanitary arrangements are neglected and medical treatment is almost entirely absent. Yet a certain indefinable new spirit is felt in the atmosphere. The commissar and keepers are informally addressed as tovarish, and the prisoners, even the non-politicals, have acquired a freer, more independent manner. But the discipline is severe: the old custom of collective protest is sternly suppressed, and repeatedly the politicals have been driven to the extreme method of self-defense—a hunger strike.
In the corridors the inmates walk about without guards, but our guide frowns down their attempts to approach us by a curt, “Not officials, tovarishi.” She seems not quite at ease, and discourages conversation. Some prisoners trail behind us; occasionally a more daring one appeals to have his case looked into. “Send in your petition in writing,” the woman admonishes him, whereupon there comes the retort, “I did, long ago, but nothing has been done.”
The large cells are crowded, but the doors are open, and the men pass freely in and out. A dark-haired youth, with sharp black eyes, unobservedly joins our party. “I’m in for five years,” he whispers to me. “I’m a Communist, and it was revenge on the part of a crooked commissar whom I threatened to expose.”
Walking through the corridors I recognize Tchernenko, whose description was given me by Kharkov friends. He was arrested by the Cheka to prevent being seated in the Soviet, to which he was elected by his fellow workers in the factory. By the help of a friendly soldier he succeeded in escaping from the concentration camp, but was rearrested and sent to the Cold Hill Prison. I slow down my pace, and Tchernenko, falls into the rear of our party. “More politicals than common criminals here,” he says, pretending to speak to the prisoner at his side. “Anarchists, Left Social Revolutionists, and Mensheviki. Treated worse than the others. Only a few Whites and one American from the Kolchak front. Speculators and counterrevolutionists can buy their way out. Proletarians and revolutionists remain.”
“The revision commission?” I whisper in an aside.
“A fake. They pay no attention to our petitions.”
“What charge against you?”
“None. Neither charge nor trial. The usual sentence—till the end of civil war.”
The guide turns into a long, dark passage, and the prisoners fall back. We enter the women’s department.
Two rows of cells, one above the other, cleaner and lighter than the male part. The doors stand ajar, the inmates free to walk about. One of our party—Emma Goldman—asks permission to see a political whose name she had secured from friends in the city. The guide hesitates, then consents, and presently a young girl appears. She is neat and comely, with an earnest, sad face.
“Our treatment?” she repeats the question addressed to her. “Why, at first they kept us in solitary. They would not let us communicate with our male comrades, and all our protests were ignored. We had to resort to the methods we used under the old regime.”
“Be careful
