Evening star., 1921-11-14
By r. A. MCKENZIE.

! by Cable to The Star and Chicago Daily News,
| Copyright, 1921.
PETROGRAD, Russia, November IL.
IL have had q unique opportunity of
| examining the ''cheka" or eXtraordi-
nary commission with police powers
! This organization has been the sub
+, has inspired an amazing dread. the
average man fearing even to whisper
! the name. 1 visited NJ. Semenov. chief
/ criticism of the body. He denied that
third degree" methods were now
used, although tacitly admitting that
such things were practiced during the
early revolutionary days. An inde-
pendent trades union committee, he
! said, regularly examines the prison,
seeking cases where release is pos
sible.
| M. Semenov justified the recent
shooting Of sixty-oen counter-revo-
! !lutionists by saying that they were
; responsible for burning buildings and
killing five and wounding ten cheka
agents who attempted to arrest them.
Iit was case of mailed fist for po-
| litical conspirators, he said. but a
soft hand for others. Semenov allowed
conducted me through the headauar-
ters prison. 1 found the cells to be
warm and airy and the cleanest
places I had been in since arriving
IN Russia. The prisoners looked
| clean and thin. The medical and
path, the attendance Of Ave doctors,
large, we'll equipped rooms and a
kitchen plant.
20 Persons i'm One Cell.
One cell built for thirty inmates
ana containing thirty beds was oc-
cupied by seventy-nine persons. The
planned to me. was due to reconstruc-
ton going on in another part of the
building. The prisoners were men
i detained for Interrogation before be-
ing tried. 1t was a mixed crowd Of
criminals. All apparently were with
out occupation, books and papers be-
ing withheld from them to prevent
! communication with the outside. I
! whom spoke English and assisted my
was said.
They agreed in denying that third
that they suffered from physical i'll
; treatment. Many of them complain
| ed, however. that they had been ar,
rested on insufficient grounds and
ssns ens of %s
are released from three to five
months after arrest, or as soon as
We have an opportunity of proving
! They suffer considerable inconven-
fence from overcrowding. they say,
but they understand the reason in
this case. One man complained about
the monotony Of the food and said
that the black bread. potato and her
ring diet was insufficient without the
! food which friends were permitted
| to send them from the outside.
Professor Writes in Prison.
+! found in this prison NJ kurtz. a
former newspaper writer and profess
| sor. He was arrested in September.
1919. on the charge of beng a spy of
Yudenitch and of operating as such in
| the red army. He was sentenced to
death in%December. 1920. but the sem
| tence was commuted to five years i'm
prisonment He is confined alone and
his cell is under close guard. He is re-
4 garded as particularly dangerous
prisoner, owing to his attempts at clan
destine correspondence. He has tobac-
/ co. paper. pen and ink. He told me
that he was preparing his memoirs of
the revolution. A woman political
prisoner. who had been arrested for
!, conveying reasonable correspondence to
the Finnish border, said that no physi-
cal or forcible methods had been used
in her case.
| The clean surroundings and well pre-
pared food OF these prisoners were in
strong contrast with the condition of
the famine refugees from the Volsa dis
trict Many Of these are now arriving
here and being quartcred in an old bar
racks Here / found scores of families
packed into large unheated rooms, men,
| women and children all being together.
Each family is given a small space on
! the floor as home. .
| There are no partitions between
them. Some of them were in dying