The Red Conspiracy

by Joseph J. Mereto

In the September 18, 1918, evening issue of the "Northern Commune," there is a report of a meeting of the Soviet of the First District of Petrograd. After a report made by Kharitonoff, who emphasized the necessity of suppressing the bourgeois press, and after speeches by other members, the following resolution was passed:

"The meeting welcomes the fact that mass terror is being used against the White Guards and higher bourgeois classes, and declares that every attempt on the life of our leaders will be answered by the proletariat by the shooting down not only of hundreds, as the case is now, but of thousands of White Guards, bankers, manufacturers, Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) and Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right."

We are indebted to "Struggling Russia," March 29, 1919, for the following information as regards the Red rule of Lenine and the shooting of children:

"The following quotation from a speech of one of the most active Bolshevist leaders, Zinoviev, printed in the 'Northern Commune' of September 19, 1918, fully expresses the spirit of the Bolshevist terrorism:

"'To overcome our enemies we must have our own Socialist Militarism. We must win over to our side 90 millions out of the 100 millions of population of Russia under the Soviets. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be annihilated.'

"The program of annihilating ten million of the opponents of Bolshevism in Russia (Mr. Zinoviev has considerably underestimated their number) began to be executed by the Bolsheviki from the first moment of their coming into power. In the beginning of March, 1918, they held mass executions in Rostov-on-the-Don, killing, among others, many youths. The Moscow 'Russkiya Viedomosti' (Russian News) in its issue of March 23, 1918, reported that the president of the Rostov Municipal Council and the Chairman of the Don Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, B. C. Vasiliev, the mayor of the city, P. Petrenko, the former Chairman of the Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of Workingmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, P. Melnikov, and even M. Smirnov, at that time Chairman of the Council, have handed in a petition to the Bolshevist War-Revolutionary Council asking them to shoot them 'instead of the innocent children who are executed without law and justice.' A group of women, horrified by what was going on, also asked that they be shot instead of the children. In their petition they wrote as follows:

"'If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and life in order to establish a Socialistic state and to create new ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and fathers, but let our children live. They have not yet had a chance to live; they are only growing and developing. Do not destroy young lives. Take our lives and our blood as ransom....

"'We, mothers, have served the country by giving our sons, husbands and brothers. Pray, take our last possession, our lives, but spare our children. Call us, one after the other, for execution, when our children are to be shot! Every one of us would gladly die in order to save the life of her children or that of other children.

"'Citizens, members of the War Revolutionary Council, listen to the cries of the mothers. We cannot be kept silent!'"

Charles Dumas, a French Socialist, on his return to France from Russia, wrote a book in which he warns his fellow-comrades on the dangers of Bolshevism, and among other things he says:

"Upon my arrival in Petrograd I wanted, first of all, to meet three of my old Russian friends, but soon learned that my searches were in vain. Two of the poor fellows had lost their minds and the third had cut his own throat with a razor....

"The Sebastopol horrors of March, 1918, when the sailors of the port, inflamed to a high pitch of bestiality by the Bolshevist press decided to kill all the inhabitants of the principal streets, not sparing even children above the age of five, are still so fresh in your minds that I need not remind you of them....

"On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village organized, in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St. Bartholomew night in the city of Kuklovo. About 500 bodies of the victims were found afterwards, most of them 'intellectuals.' All residences and stores were plundered and destroyed, the Jews being among the worst sufferers. Entire families were wiped out, and for three days the Bolsheviki would not permit the burial of the dead.

"In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible massacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and 300 citizens were killed. The Peoples' Commissaries and the Soviets have, upon more than one occasion, made admissions that these horrors were part of their program. At the Congress of the Soviets the chairman of the Central Committee of the Soviets, Sverdlov, said: 'We invoke the Soviets not to relent, but to fortify the Terror, no matter how terrible it may be and what dimensions it may assume.'"

An Associated Press despatch, dated Omsk, April 5, 1919, stated that the Bolsheviki had murdered 2,000 at or near Osa:

"Indisputable evidence of the massacre by the Bolsheviki of more than 2,000 civilians in and near the town of Osa has been obtained by Messrs. Simmonds and Emerson and Dr. Rudolph Teusler of the American Red Cross, who have just returned from reoccupied Russian territory. Approximately 500 persons were killed at Osa and 1,500 in the surrounding districts."

The same despatch shows the excessive cruelty of Lenine's gang of blood-thirsty Reds:

"A blacksmith was shot because he could not pay 5,000 rubles. A man was shot because he lived in a brick house. All attorneys and jurists and doctors whose services were not required were killed. A woman was compelled to fetch a lamp and gaze upon her murdered sons for the amusement of the slayers.

"The Soviet called a meeting and prepared lists of those to die. The houses prescribed were visited by squads, the doors were smashed in, the victims dragged to the edge of the town and forced to dig their own graves. A survivor testified that he had seen men thrown into a pit and buried alive. Priests were hunted unmercifully. The evidence showed that men were slain whose only offense was that they worked as sextons or caretakers of churches. In the Perm district everything of value was stolen from the churches, the monastery was looted and several priests were murdered."