If the Tchekists want to transport somebody, but cannot find a handle for doing so, Clauses 68 ("concealing a counter-revolutionary") and 72 ("ecclesiastical counter-revolution") serve their purpose most conveniently.

One of the most peculiar cases is that of a man named Witte, from Petrograd, who was transported because he bore "a counter-revolutionary name!"

There are Communist engineers — e.g., one Osipoff, who was famous throughout the camp for the incredible quantity of lice on his body — naval officers who had been "seksoty,"[[27]] jewellers, hair-dressers, landowners, followers of Makhno (the Ukrainian guerilla leader), "economic bandits," commanders of the Gpu troops, watchmakers — in short, prisoners of every conceivable profession, position, rank and designation.

The case of the brothers Myshelovin, watchmakers, was a curious one. They were both accused of forging and uttering notes, although the evidence given before the examining judge and the results of a domiciliary visit showed that while one of the two brothers had actually uttered counterfeit notes, the other was completely innocent. And what was the decision of the Gpu? It sent the guilty brother to the Solovky for three years — and the innocent one for ten years!! The motives of Tchekist "courts" in pronouncing such sentences as this must always be a mystery to us all.

A very interesting figure was the technical engineer Krasilnikoff (Nicholas Dimitrievitch). He had been sent to the Solovky for "ecclesiastical counter-revolution," but in reality he had had no connection with anything of the kind. Before the Revolution he had been well known in Petrograd as an able and vehement opponent of Socialism of all shades. When the Bolsheviks came into power, Volodarsky sent for him several times and tried to persuade him to stop preaching counter-revolution. But the truculent engineer, taking advantage of his immense authority among the workers, continued to make speeches and publish his pamphlets. He soon migrated to Moscow and there continued his activities, the tendency of which was, as in pre-Revolution days, to discredit Socialism of all kinds.

Dzerzhinsky himself was interested in Krasilnikoff and sent for him. The engineer appeared at the Gpu headquarters, and there, in the study of the President of the Extraordinary Commission, Dzerzhinsky and Krasilnikoff disputed for hours on end about Socialism and its Utopian aims. It must have been almost the only time in his life that Dzerzhinsky permitted freedom of speech — and that in the very offices of the Gpu! Krasilnikoff — a brilliant speaker — endeavoured to persuade the head Tchekist to abandon all hope of being able to make a reality of such nonsense as Socialism. Dzerzhinsky would not agree, but put forward arguments on the other side.

The night wore on. Dzerzhinsky offered the engineer a camp bed in his study, and in the morning ordered that he should be given coffee and allowed to go. Soon after, however, he was arrested by subordinate Tchekists and sent to the Solovky.

In the camp, Krasilnikoff was literally eaten up by lice. I myself, having passed through dozens of prisons on my way north, possessed the experience of a lifetime in the matter of vermin; but never and nowhere have I seen such multitudes of lice as on the engineer. Every morning and every evening he used to kill vermin in incredible quantities, remarking every time he caught one:

"Aha, got him — that's another!"

The Solovky swallow up old and young alike. In February, 1925, fifty students and schoolboys from Theodosia, Sevastopol, Simferopol and Yalta, in the Crimea, arrived at Popoff Island. They had all got three years for organising a "counter-revolutionary conspiracy in complicity with the foreign bourgeoisie." The latter was alleged to be directing the conspiracy from Constantinople, but the whole thing was quite unproved. Besides adult students, the party included some twenty pupils of the middle and upper classes in the secondary schools, quite boys still.