An island hell: A Soviet prison in the far north — Story, Setting & Ideas

ence thought fit to rescue me, by a miracle, from this place of torment. And I count it my most sacred duty to tell the world what I saw, heard and went through there.

These notes, of course, make no claim either to literary qualities and beauty of style or to exhaustive completeness. I look upon them as the testimony of a fair witness who speaks the truth and only the truth. And if my testimony is recognised as worthy of consideration, and is accepted as a part of that gigantic indictment which the Russian nation, the whole of humanity, history and God will without doubt bring forward against the Soviet power, I shall consider that my duty has been discharged.

In confirmation of my claim to have been, to the best of my power, impartial in my exposition of the facts, I may say that when I showed these notes to my comrades who escaped with me they were of opinion that, in my description of the regime in the Solovetsky Islands, I had in many cases been too moderate.

PART I (_Introductory_)

FROM BATOUM TO THE SOLOVETSKY ISLANDS

A WHITE GUARD IN THE CAUCASUS

_Denikin's Failure — Guerilla Warfare — An Unexpected Blow — The Elusive Tchelokaeff — A Treaty that is Observed._

Before proceeding to my main task — an account of the conditions in the Soviet prisons in the Solovetsky Islands — I should like to dwell briefly on the period of my life which immediately preceded my transportation to that place. I think that this period is of more than merely personal interest. As far as I know, the punitive activities of the Soviet power in the Caucasus after the crushing of the armed anti-Bolshevist rebellion there have not found a place in any book of memoirs.

At the time of the final retreat of General Denikin's forces I was in the ranks of the Caucasian Army (on the Tsaritsin front). The disaster to the Volunteer Army compelled us all to take refuge in the mountains. Keeping touch all the time with the attacking enemy, our cavalry brigade reached the river Terek, where it was dissolved. The most reliable elements of it crossed the frontier of Georgia, at that time still an independent State.

In Georgia, the members of the brigade who were fit for service were incorporated by Keletch Sultan Hire in a cavalry regiment. Its duties were to execute raids on the Soviet rear and throw it into confusion, to destroy roads and excite rebellion against the Bolsheviks.

The raid into the Kuban planned in the summer of 1920 by the staff of General Wrangel, who was then in the Crimea with his army, gave Sultan Hire the idea of sending us also to the Kuban in the hope of inciting the Cossacks to rebellion. In the Kuban, we took part in the retirement of the invading troops to the Crimea, the raid having considerably outgrown its original dimensions. The bold plan of bringing about a rising did not succeed. We were dissolved once more.

In exceptionally difficult conditions, surrounded by troops of the Red Army, we formed a new detachment under the command of Colonel X (I cannot give the colonel's name; he is still carrying on guerilla warfare with the Soviet power in the Caucasus). Our detachment, despite its small numbers, waged warfare of a kind with success, and we were beginning to think of operations on a larger scale, when we unexpectedly lost the support on which we absolutely depended and counted; the famous "national rebellion" took place in Georgia. In reality the country was occupied, almost without resistance, by regular troops of the Red Army. Our detachment retired fighting through the wild mountains to Batoum. Here part of it was broken up and turned into larger or smaller bodies of insurgents, part left for Anatolia.

I made my way to Ajaristan. Thence communication was established with Trebizond, where Y lived; his name, too, I cannot give in full for the reason stated above. Until the autumn of 1922 we and Y organised frequent raids on the Soviet Russian frontier.

Then, as now, the unofficial direction of the whole insurgent movement in the Caucasus was in the hands of the well-known Colonel Tchelokaeff. Thanks to extensive help from the population, which sympathises with the "Whites," and to his own bravery and skill, the Bolsheviks have found Tchelokaeff quite uncatchable.