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Since
the first massacres of Red prisoners
by the Whites, the murders of Volodarsky and Uritsky and the attempt
against Lenin (in the summer of 1918), the custom of arresting and,
often, executing hostages had become generalized and legal. Already
the Cheka, which made mass arrests of suspects, was tending to settle
their fate independently, under formal control of the Party, but in
reality without anybody's knowledge. The Party endeavoured to head
it with incorruptible men like the former convict Dzerzhinsky, a sincere
idealist, ruthless but chivalrous, with the emaciated profile of an
Inquisitor: tall forehead, bony nose, untidy goatee, and an expression
of weariness and austerity. But the Party had few men of this stamp
and many Chekas. I believe that the formation of the Chekas was one
of the gravest and most impermissible errors
that the Bolshevik leaders committed in 1918 when plots, blockades,
and interventions made them lose their heads. All evidence indicates
that revolutionary tribunals, functioning in the light of day and
admitting the right of defense, would have attained the same efficiency
with far less abuse and depravity. Was it necessary to revert to the
procedures of the Inquisition?
Early Bolshevik Victor Serge in Memoirs of a Revolutionary |
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