CAMP OFFICIALS
The colonel did not stand alone, there was corruption in every branch of the administration. The hospital kitchen was in the hands of a Polish Jew and his wife. They had begun the war with almost nothing, and they were now said to be worth thousands of pounds. No money was paid by the kitchen but some stuck to their palms. His staff collected money for a water carrier, and gave it to him to disburse. He put it in his own pocket, and used to pay the man out of Government funds. His soldiers were so angry with him that at the outbreak of the Revolution he was one of the first they impeached. He was sent to Irkutsk to await his trial, but the case dragged on interminably. After the Bolsheviks came in he was released, and when I last heard of him he was occupying some position under their Government.
Like master, like man. The minor officials squeezed all the money out of us they could. If a window was broken in a barracks, they fined every prisoner who lived there, and reaped a sum sufficient to glaze all the windows in the camp. The Russian clerks in the colonel’s office treated us just as if we had been Russians ourselves. Every petition had to be accompanied by a tip adapted to the importance of what you wanted, otherwise it simply found its way to the waste-paper basket. The prisoners took advantage of these customs to spin intrigues against one another with the Russians. A German medical student made application to be considered as such, i.e. that he should be removed from the stuffy barracks to the doctors’ quarters, receive a salary, and enjoy considerable privileges. He accompanied this application with ten roubles for the clerk. Heinze, the medical student I have already mentioned, was jealous of his colleague, so he overtipped him, and gave the clerk twenty roubles to keep the application back. The clerk, of course, pockets the twenty roubles, and then after some time informs the first man how the matter stands. So by whetting the one against the other he reaped a golden profit. All our letters and parcels had to be paid for by tips. If we stopped tipping, we received nothing. The prisoners were, of course, forbidden to send letters except through the prisoners’ censorship, but all the while I was at Stretensk I conducted with friends in England an extensive correspondence that never went through our censor’s hands. To put the Russians off the scent I used to describe myself as a fur-merchant. In one letter I pretended to be a lady, wrote in a very round hand, underlined every other word, and described how good Russian eau-de-cologne was for my headaches. My correspondents were mystified; I had offers of capital for my fur business, and a letter of very tender sympathy about my headaches.
VENALITY
In fact, everything had its tariff. The Regulations existed only on paper. Those who wanted to, and had enough money to pay for it, could go into the town every day. It was simply a question of establishing a connection with the soldiers, and making your custom so valuable that they would not like to lose it. The clerks in the colonel’s office often came to me and threatened to denounce me, if I did not pay them a certain sum down. I pointed out that, if they did denounce me, they would lose a profitable source of income, because, once I had returned to the barracks, they would make nothing out of me. After that they left me alone. We were supposed, like everybody else in Russia, to have two meatless days a week. A certain amount of meat was weighed out and handed over to us, and officially we were not allowed to have any more. As a matter of fact, we never confined ourselves to our rations, we had meat every day and as much as we wanted. Russian soldiers would come and sell us a whole pig or a sheep at prices far below those ruling in the market. We had great fun getting these animals into our house without our guards noticing it. It had to be done at night, windows had to be wrenched from their frames, and sentries posted all around to give warning of the approach of obnoxious persons. Or if we wanted boots, soldiers would supply us with the leather and get them made for us at half what it would have cost an ordinary Russian. We had our own ideas as to how it was possible to supply us so cheaply, and we never asked where the goods came from. The peasant women kept us supplied with butter at a time when the housewives in Stretensk could get none. It was not done out of love for us, but because we were ready to pay any price they asked. The sale of alcohol was forbidden throughout Russia, but whenever we wanted wine we got it. The common prisoners were often cheated. One of the guards would come up in the twilight and offer a pound of sugar; you would buy it, and when you got in you would find that they had passed off on you a pound of salt or of sand. An enormous trade was done in smuggling beer and confectionery into the camp from the town, but it was nearly always ruined by tale-bearers. Sooner or later there would be a quarrel about the division of profits; or even the mere sight of a comrade getting rich would be enough to send some Austrian Jew sneaking off to the Russians.
The prevailing dishonesty had its bitter consequences for us. Our parcels from home scarcely ever arrived intact. They were regularly plundered, and the contents sold in the town. Once a Chinese coolie appeared in the barracks in order to sell us cigars from a box which still bore the address to one of our number. My wife in despair used to put a picture of St. Antony of Padua in her parcels. She had heard that the Russians were superstitious, and would respect parcels protected by the saint. But their sense of humour was still greater than their superstition, and I used to receive parcels out of which everything had been stolen but the picture of St. Antony.
CORRUPT POLICE
We got strange and terrible glimpses of what all this corruption meant for private Russians. Our dentist was in need of instruments, and wished to ask a lady dentist living in Stretensk to lend him some. He could not approach her directly, and was obliged to ask the Russians to act for him. To his surprise they all refused point blank. He could not understand why it was, and after much pressure they told him the lady’s history. Some years before she had been denounced to the Secret Police, and they had made a raid on her lodgings. They discovered nothing to justify their suspicions, but they told her that if she did not pay them blackmail they would report that they had found certain incriminating documents in her house. She indignantly refused, and, relying on the justice of her cause, wrote an account of the whole matter to the Governor-General at Irkutsk. She so far succeeded in clearing herself as to escape punishment in a court of law. But from that time onwards she was a suspect, a marked person, and no one in the Government service durst have anything to do with her. Few of the officers had much affection for the old régime, some were even Bolsheviks, and yet so great was the terror exercised by the Secret Police, that not one of them would speak to the lady.
The whole administration of the camp was corrupt. Of all the officers I know only two that were honest. One of these was a Bolshevik—the regimental doctor. He was a poor man, and might have acquired a fortune by declaring rich recruits unfit for service, and yet he remained resolutely and unchangeably loyal. Some men were ready to pay £500 for such services. Everything was forbidden and everything was allowed. We were prisoners, and lived like lords. Whatever of luxury or pleasure there was in Stretensk we could enjoy, only we had to pay a little more for it than ordinary mortals. Unlike ordinary mortals we knew nothing of rent, taxes, or insurance, we had neither wife nor child to clothe and feed, and so it generally happened that what we wanted we could pay for.
What a world! you say. A nobleman and officer cheating prisoners of their food; the common soldier falling in abject humiliation and kissing the hands of the enemy he was set to guard. Yes, that was Russia before the Revolution.