From: CDELL@VAX1.UMKC.EDU ("VALENTINE M. SMITH")
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Comments on Document D2presid.doc of the LC exhibit
Date: 28 Jul 92 19:08:00 GMT
Reply-To: "talk.politics.soviet via ListServ" <TPS-L@indycms.iupui.edu>

Now, I have heard from an LOC staffer, and understand this exhibit
much better than I did before, and thanks to Helen Schmeierer of
Brown, I've seen a list of all the documents, and their dates, though
it is VERY confusing to sort through the checklist, for two reasons.
One, the LC designations within that checklist do not, apparently,
indicate the online documents, but visual exhibits (posters, maps and
at least photograph). Two, it is not clear reading th checklist
exactly which documents ARE the "on-line documents" from that
checklist, as the designations used to put them online are not used
on the checklist.

I appreciate Bob Zich's long note telling me about the history and
background of this exhibit, and apologize that the press of other
matters caused a 10 day hiatus in my commentary on these documents (I
misplaced the note, but when one has fifty sub-directories, it's easy
to do!).

One last note. According to the "handbook," this document is from
1926, before Stalin had consolidated his grip on the country, and
apparently while gulag prisoners, or ex-prisoners, thought
petitioning the central regime might actually accomplish something.
It would be curious to know the fate of the thre who signed this
letter.

>To the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Union
>Communist Party (Bolshevik)

(Note: a term adopted in 1925, and "Bolshevik" was not abandoned
until 1952, despite the destruction of most of them long before).

>We appeal to you, asking you to pay a minimum of attention to our
>request.

As best as can be discerned, very little attention was given to these
requests.

>We are prisoners who are returning from the Solovetsky concentration
>camp because of our poor health.  We went there full of energy and
>good health, and now we are returning as invalids, broken and
>crippled emotionally and physically.  We are asking you to draw your
>attention to the arbitrary use of power and the violence that reign
>at the Solovetsky concentration camp in Kemi and in all sections of
>the concentration camp.  It is difficult for a human being even to
>imagine such terror, tyranny, violence, and lawlessness.  When we
>went there, we could not conceive of such a horror, and now we,
>crippled ourselves, together with several thousands who are still
>there, appeal to the ruling center of the Soviet state to curb the
>terror that reigns there.  As though it weren't enough that the
>Unified State Political Directorate [OGPU] without oversight and due
>process sends workers and peasants there who are by and large
>innocent (we are not talking about criminals who deserve to be
>punished), the former tsarist penal servitude system in comparison to
>Solovky had 99% more humanity, fairness, and legality.  [...]

They were right. The Tsarists had NOT been as harsh, the OGPU DID
send "innocent people" down the pike, but the petitioners failed to
understand a basic truth - what was happening to them was designed TO
happen, and had sanction from the highst authority in the land.

>People die like flies, i.e., they die a slow and painful death; we
>repeat that all this torment and suffering is placed only on the
>shoulders of the proletariat without money, i.e., on  workers who, we
>repeat, were unfortunate to find themselves in the period of hunger
>and destruction accompanying the events of the October Revolution,
>and who committed crimes only to save themselves and their families
>from death by starvation; they have already borne the punishment for
>these crimes, and the vast majority of them subsequently chose the
>path of honest labor.  Now because of their past, for whose crime
>they have already paid, they are fired from their jobs.  Yet, the
>main thing is that the entire weight of this scandalous abuse of
>power, brute violence, and lawlessness that reign at Solovky and
>other sections of the OGPU concentration camp is placed on the
>shoulders of workers and peasants; others, such as
>counterrevolutionaries, profiteers and so on, have full wallets and
>have set themselves up and live in clover in the Soviet State, while
>next to them, in the literal meaning of the word, the penniless
>proletariat dies from hunger, cold, and back- breaking 14-16 hour
>days under the tyranny and lawlessness of inmates who are the agents
>and collaborators of the State Political Directorate [GPU].

It got worse. Some of the "collaborators" were also killed, as were
many that the petitioners saw as "getting off." Time leveled the
situation, most "organized groups" suffered heavy extermination.

>If you complain or write anything ("Heaven forbid"), they will frame
>you for an attempted escape or for something else, and they will
>shoot you like a dog.  They line us up naked and barefoot at 22
>degrees below zero and keep us outside for up to an hour.  It is
>difficult to describe all the chaos and terror that is going on in
>Kemi, Solovky, and the other sections of the concentrations camp.
>All annual inspections uncover a lot of abuses.  But what they
>discover in comparison to what actually exists is only a part of the
>horror and abuse of power, which the inspection accidently uncovers.
>(One example is the following fact, one of a thousand, which is
>registered in GPU and for which the guilty have been punished: THEY
>FORCED THE INMATES TO EAT THEIR OWN FECES.  "Comrades," if we dare to
>use this phrase, verify that this is a fact from reality, about
>which, we repeat, OGPU has the official evidence, and judge for
>yourself the full extent of effrontery and humiliation in the
>supervision by those who want to make a career for themselves.  [...]

Yet, despite ALL of the above, these three WROTE anyway! The
"inspectorate" referred was a joke and a travesty, to the degree it
even existed.

>We are sure and we hope that in the All-Union Communist Party there
>are people, as we have been told, who are humane and sympathetic; it
>is possible, that you might think that it is our imagination, but we
>swear to you all, by everything that is sacred to us, that this is
>only one small part of the nightmarish truth, because it makes no
>sense to make this up.  We repeat, and will repeat 100 times, that
>yes, indeed there are some guilty people, but the majority suffer
>innocently, as is described above.  The word law, according to the
>law of the GPU concentration camps, does not exist; what does exist
>is only the autocratic power of petty tyrants, i.e., collaborators,
>serving time, who have power over life and death.  Everything
>described above is the truth and we, ourselves, who are close to the
>grave after 3 years in Solovky and Kemi and other sections, are
>asking you to improve the pathetic, tortured existence of those who
>are there who languish under the yoke of the OGPU's tyranny,
>violence, and complete lawlessness....

The petitioners were wrong. Humanity vanished in the Soviet Union
prior to Lenin's death, it's still struggling today to stay alive
after rebirth in the 1990s, and erratically at that.

>To this we subscribe: G. Zheleznov, Vinogradov, F. Belinskii.

Like i said above, I wonder what happened to these three. One
suspects this was their last will and testament, and that they were
shot or tortured to death for daring to complain.

>Dec. 14, 1926

>True copy
.................................................................
>TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTS: The letter is written in very poor Russian.
>For the sake of clarity, the translator corrected the grammar and
>substituted a few words.

Victims do not always have the ability to be lucid!

VMS