More hated even than in Kiev is the Cheka in Odessa. Ghastly stories are told of its methods and the ruthlessness of the predsedatel, a former immigrant from Detroit. The personnel of the institution consists mostly of old gendarme officers and criminals whose lives had been spared “for services to be rendered in fighting counterrevolution and speculation.” The latter is particularly proscribed, the “highest form of punishment”—shooting—being meted out to offenders. Executions take place daily. The doomed are piled into automobile trucks, face downward, and driven to the outskirts of the city. The long line of the death-vehicles is escorted by mounted men riding wildly and firing into the air—a warning to close the windows. At the appointed place the procession halts. The victims are made to undress and to take their places at the edge of the already prepared common grave. Shots resound—the bodies, some lifeless, some merely wounded, fall into the hole and are hastily covered with sod.
But though the “speculation” is forbidden and the possession or exchange of Tsarist money is frequently punished by death, the members of the Cheka themselves receive part of their salary in tsarskiye, whose purchasing power is many times that of Soviet paper. There is considerable circulation of the forbidden currency on the markets, and it is rumored that Cheka agents themselves are the chief dealers. I refuse to believe the charge till a member of the Expedition informs me that he succeeded in advantageously converting some of the tsarskiye, officially given us in Moscow, into Soviet money. “You are taking a great risk in exchanging,” I warn him.
“No risk at all,” he replied gleefully. “Do you think I am tired of life that I would sell on the open market? I traded it through an old friend, and it was the good man N⸺ himself who did the little business for me.”
N⸺ is a high placed magistrate of the Cheka.
With Emma Goldman I attend a gathering of local Anarchists come to meet the “comrades from America.” The large room is filled with a mixed company—students and workers, Soviet employees, soldiers, and some sailors. Every nongovernmental tendency is represented: there are followers of Kropotkin and of Stirner, adherents of positivism and immediate actionists, with a number of Sovietsky Anarchists, so called because of their friendly attitude to the Bolsheviki.
It is an informal assembly of the widest divergence of opinion. Some denounce the Communists as reactionary; others believe in their revolutionary motives, but entirely disapprove of their methods. Several consider the present stage as a transitory but inevitable phase of the Revolution. But the majority deny the historic existence of such a period. Progress, they claim, is a continuous process, every step foreshadowing and shaping the next. Long-continued despotism and terror destroy the possibilities of future liberty and brotherhood.
The most animated discussion revolves about the proletarian dictatorship. It is the basic problem, determined by one’s conception of revolution and in turn determining one’s attitude to the Bolsheviki. The younger element unreservedly condemn the Party dictatorship with its violence and bloodshed, its punitive measures, and general counterrevolutionary effects. The Sovietsky Anarchists, though regretting the ruthlessness of Communist practice, consider dictatorship inevitable at certain stages of the revolution. The discussion is drawn out for hours, and the vital question is obscured by theoretic assertions. I feel that the years of storm and stress have entirely uprooted the old values without having clarified new concepts of reality and vision.
“Can you suggest something definite in place of the dictatorship?” I ask at last. “The situation demands a unified purpose.”
“What we have is a dictatorship over the proletariat,” retorts an enthusiastic Kropotkinist.
“That is begging the question. Not the faults and shortcomings of the Bolsheviki are at issue, but the dictatorship itself. Does not the success of the Revolution presuppose the forcible abolition of the bourgeoisie and the imposing of the proletarian will upon society? In short, a dictatorship?”
“Assuredly,” assents the young woman at my side, a Left Social Revolutionist; “but not the dictatorship of the proletariat only. Rather the dictatorship of the toilers, including the peasantry as well as the city workers.”
“If the Communists would not persecute the Anarchists, I’d be with them,” remarks an Individualist Anarchist.
The others scorn his narrow partisanship, but the Kropotkinists refuse to accept dictatorship. There may be times during a revolutionary period where violence, even organized force, becomes necessary, they admit. But these matters must rest in the hands of the workers themselves and not be institutionalized in such bodies as the Cheka, whose work is detrimental and fosters a counterrevolutionary spirit among the violated masses.
The discussion gives no promise of reaching a basis for common work with the Bolsheviki. Most of those present have for years consecrated themselves to their ideal, have suffered persecution and imprisonment till at last the Revolution triumphed. Now they find themselves outlawed even by the Communists. They are deeply outraged by the “advance guard of the proletariat” turning executioners of the best revolutionary elements. The abyss is too wide to be bridged. With deep sorrow I think of the devotion, ability, and idealism thus lost to the Revolution, and of the fratricidal strife the situation inevitably involves.
—Wrangel is reported to be advancing northwest after having defeated the Red Army in several engagements. Budenny’s cavalry is in retreat, leaving open the road to Rostov. Alyoshki, a suburb of Kherson, is invested by the Whites, and refugees are streaming into Odessa. Official silence feeds popular nervousness, and the wildest rumors are gaining circulation.
Our work in the city is completed, but the new military situation makes it impossible to continue our journey southeast, toward the Caucasus, as originally planned. We have therefore decided that the Expedition remain in Odessa, while two of its members attempt to reach Nikolayev, there to determine the possibilities of proceeding further. The predsedatel and secretary have been chosen
