Evening star., 1921-01-16
RUSSIAN 0UTRAGES
ST|RLABOR LEADER
Metal Workers. Secretary at
Paris Acts in Behalf of
Social Democrats.
WORLD REBUKE FAVORED
Leader in General Confederation
Presents Series of Documents
to Show Terrorism.


BY Cable to The Star and Chicago Daily News
Copyright, 1921.
PARIS, January ia. Merrheim,
secretary of the Metal Workers
Union. and one of the leaders of the
General Labor Confederation, calls
on the International Trades Union to
protest against the terrorism by
which the Russian communists are
trying to repress the social demo-
cratic party in Russia
After presenting a series Of docu-
nents, mostly from socialist sources,
he goes on to say:
Such are the facts. Equally with
those In Hungary, regarding which
the International trades unions have
already been protesting, there should
arise the vehement and indignant
reprobation of all trades union mem
oers and socialists who still have a
sense of dignity and independence"
Various Instances Cited.
Instances are cited by NJ Merr-
helm from the documentary evidence.
The arrests attendant on the al
legged social democratic conspiracy
last September necessitated 1000 new
places In the Moscow concentration
camps. to procure which the bolshe-
Wiki sent 1000 Of the older prisoners
to Ekaterinburg and Archangel.
Among the prisoners sent to Eka-
terinberg were several leaders of the
center party and the cooperative
union.
The trip took ten days. On the way
the prisoners received no hot food
and no hot water. Moreover, the
Ekaterinburg authorities had not
been warned of their coming and
there was no place for them in the
IA Nhav
two days in the station and a month
in half-built house, and then were
finally thrown into jail with common
criminals.
In October and November there
were mass arrests of social demo-
Gratis. In Mogile all the leaders of
the party except two were arrested.
Twelve. leaders were arrested at
Vitebsk and twenty at Samara. At
Smolensk the president of the COM
arrested. There were arrests and
seizures Of property at Stavropol.
Kursk. Nijninovogorod, Sormovo and
Vologda. In Briansk an influential
metal worker. Samsonov, was thrown
into Jail. There are now twenty-six
cow prison.
Arrested mt Party Congress-.
Many of the leaders Of the Ukrai-
August 10 during the party congress
at kharkov. Seventeen of these have
been >exiled to Georgia and others
have been condemned to forced labor
in the concentration camps until the
end of the civil war" Among the
latter is Kutchline Gransky, the So
cialist writer, who volunteered in the
red army at the beginning of the
campaign against Poland.
Members of the central commit
tee of the social revolutionary party
after a long sojourn in the Karoslav
feebled to the Butyrki prison, in
Moscow.
This Karoslav Jail is famous
Throughout Russia. On August II. as
a protest against ill-treatment, the
prisoners declared a hunger strike.
The authorities Immediately retail
ated by removing the ringleaders to
"a dungeon.
All prisoners thenceforth were for
hidden to receive visitors, receive or
send letters. read newspapers or re-
ceive food packages. without which
they must slowly starve.
The daily fare in this prison con-
sists, in the morning, of 800 grams
(about ten and one-half ounces) of
black bread, like putty" and cup
of hot water; at noon. thin soup
with a few pieces of potato. beet and
cabbage and a few herring heads, and
at night two spoonfuls Of mashed
potatoes.
Threat to Strikers.
NJ Merrheim then quotes this re-
sumo of a communiQue in the official
newspaper Pravda:
"The workmen in the Ekaterino-
slav steel mills having gone on a
strike and committed numerous acts
of sabotage. the soviet government
has effected military occupation of
the mills and given the workmen
forty-eight hours in which to resume
work At the expiration of this time
the striking workmen and their fam
lilies will be arrested and interned
in concentration camps in northern
Russia
'In the face of these acts, COM
mitted by the Russian communists.
are we going to make ourselves ac-
completes by our silence?" asks NJ
Merrhein. To do so, he thinks. would
be to surrender the principle of soli-
darity in unionized labor.