I can see that scene in my mind’s eye. In his hand Dzerzhinsky would have a list of prisoners and the evidence hastily gathered. Lenin would look at Dzerzhinsky’s list, asking sharp, short questions in his shrewd way. Most of the names of the counter-revolutionary conspirators were familiar to him. He could quickly piece together the scanty evidence of the secret trials. In his mind thoughts like these must have traveled: “Ah, yes, there is X—— caught plotting with Y——, which, of course, entirely accounts for the rising at B——.” Suddenly he would turn to Dzerzhinsky and say without excitement and without raising his voice: “It would be better to shoot these two, hold these five and release the rest.”
In justice to Lenin it must be recorded that he was always against capital punishment for his political rivals, or even for those who plotted to assassinate him; he believed in the death penalty only for those who attempted forcibly to overthrow the government. His dictatorship of the Cheka, like his dictatorship of other government departments, ceased with the first semblance of order. At the same time, I do not believe for a moment that the Cheka ever got beyond his control. Recently, when he saw it growing into a power which interfered with the natural development of the country, he began at once to weaken it. Dzerzhinsky will no doubt assist him in such an undertaking with the same zeal which he brought to its creation.
A good deal of political manœuvering has always been necessary in order to appease popular opinion about the Cheka. When time has cooled our emotions for and against the Communist idea, we will realize that Jacob Peters and Fedore Dzerzhinsky were just as much victims of the revolution as were those counter-revolutionaries who came under their stern jurisdiction.
Peters was sent away from Moscow in 1919 because he had become, however unjustly, a symbol of terror in the public mind and life was beginning to settle down again into more normal ways. As a matter of fact, Peters but countersigned orders already bearing the signature of Dzerzhinsky. It was his duty to see that the prisoners were quickly and humanely disposed of. He performed this grim task with a dispatch and an efficiency for which even the condemned must have been grateful, in that nothing is more horrible than an executioner whose hand trembles and whose heart wavers.
Pursuing the same devices, a few weeks back when Lenin forced the Cheka to be made subservient to the Department of Interior and Communications, the public looked upon this step as a real compromise and a definite move toward the abolition of the secret police. Trials again became public with employers and other unbelievers in Socialism openly represented by lawyers, who had long ceased to regard their profession as anything but a dead asset. Lenin never dismisses men he can trust, so while Dzerzhinsky ceased to be head of the once all-powerful Extraordinary Commission, he was elected in the same moment Commissar of the Interior and Communications, although temporarily he was sent to Siberia to expedite grain shipments for the famine areas. Thus the history of the Cheka repeats itself.
In the first moments of elation following the March revolution when prison doors were thrown open all over Russia and prison records publicly burned, it seemed as if the day of the secret police was forever passed. In those joyous days it was almost impossible to keep one’s perspective, or to feel a premonition of the rising storm of world opposition to the development of the revolution. When Kerensky abolished the death penalty in the army, he sacrificed his last shred of control to the dictates of his heart. At that time even the Communists did not believe in capital punishment. Once Trotsky, in an impassioned speech at Smolny, during the November days, made mention of a guillotine. His remarks let loose the most violent opposition. For weeks this issue was discussed everywhere; in the press, at public gatherings, even in street cars and on railway trains. He was vigorously denounced for holding such opinions. And he had merely said that this was something to be considered in a national crisis.
By the summer of 1918 the Soviet government found itself surrounded by an iron ring of death. Also, there was graft and intrigue and dishonor in the Communist ranks. It was Peters himself, torn between the right and wrong of re-establishing capital punishment, who said to me in January, 1918, “If we ever have to kill, it must begin in our own ranks.” His face was white and stern; he appeared on the verge of collapse.
“Will it ever really come to that?” I asked.
He passed his hand across his eyes with the weary gesture of a man who has not slept well for many nights. Before him on his desk, was a pile of papers. He pointed to them and said, “If you could know what evidence I have here, you would see how necessary it is if the revolution is to continue, for the Communists to purify their own ranks.”
It is a matter of record that the first persons put to death were opportunists who pretended to believe in Communism and had accepted bribes or otherwise had betrayed their own party.