The chairman of the Commission had said in his opening address that there was perfect liberty of speech and action in the country. As I knew that a real terror existed I suggested to him that, in all probability, the arrest of certain persons for imagined or trivial offences was due to the exaggerated zeal of ignorant minor officials working under the Commission. The reply was that this could not be so, since the agents who behaved like this would be punished very severely. I did not consider the answer conclusive, nor an explanation of the terror.
“Why,” I asked, “have many people expressed a fear of coming to see us? And when they come, why are they afraid to speak with perfect confidence?”
“Because,” said this clever person, sarcastic and evasive, “English people have been here before and have tempted our people into counter-revolutionary activities which have got them into very serious difficulties. They do not want to be caught again.”
I ventured to ask one more question. “Does the Extraordinary Commission maintain spies and agents-provacateurs for its work?”
To this an absolute denial was given. “But,” he continued, “every good citizen considers himself under an obligation to report to the Commission everything he sees which he considers to be of a counter-revolutionary nature.”
It was denied that any conscientious objector had been shot. It was denied that anybody had been shot without trial. It was denied that any great tyranny was exercised. It was declared that the object of the Extraordinary Commission was to protect perfect liberty of speech outside of those who were fomenting armed opposition to the Republic.
The independent translator who was with us on this occasion said before leaving the room, her eyes swimming with tears: “It is hard for me to hear these replies and be able to say nothing.”
I left the room cold with horror and dislike, for I knew without the implication of the interpreter’s words that much of what had been said to us was absolutely untrue.
There had been held a few days before this a meeting of Mensheviki, or moderate Socialists, the members of the old Social Democratic party. The meeting was held under the auspices of the Printers’ Union, a body numbering seventy thousand members in Russia. This meeting was attended by some thousands of persons, including (as I was informed) about three hundred Communists, a noisy little group in the heart of the gathering.
I was not myself present, but I give the story as I had it from one of the members of the British Delegation, not himself in sympathy with the Mensheviki.