"Won't you come outside the wire with us?" (It was there that women were violated.)
Madame X was in a state of raving hysteria till the next morning.
Uneducated and half-educated "K.R." women are exploited by the Tchekists without scruple. Particularly lamentable is the fate of the many Cossack women, whose husbands, fathers and brothers have been shot and they themselves transported.
CHAPTER X
FOREIGN PRISONERS
Espionage for Mexico! — A Cryptic Message — Gpu Tactics — Attempts to Escape Savagely Punished.
Most of the foreigners in the Solovky were sent there on the charge of "espionage for the benefit of the international bourgeoisie" (Clause 66). Sometimes a second clause is brought into action as well as Clause 66, quite groundlessly; the Tchekist "jurisprudence" is most skilful in discovering a crime where there is not the shadow of one.
Among the prisoners in the Solovky are Count Villa, Mexican Consul-General in Egypt, and his wife. It must have been, one would think, rather difficult for a man living in Cairo to direct "Mexican espionage" in Soviet Russia, especially in view of the fact that the Consul-General does not speak or understand a single word of Russian. The circumstances of his arrest were as follows.
Count Villa's wife is a Georgian lady, née Princess Karalova. In 1924 she and her husband came to the Caucasus to visit her mother, with the permission of the Soviet Government and with their passports in order. Unluckily, just at that time the Georgian rebellion broke out. The Bolsheviks shot the Countess's brother, Prince Karaloff, and sent the diplomatist and his wife to the Solovky for three years for "espionage for the benefit of Mexico." They arrived there in February, 1925.
The Consul-General is living in the Solovky by virtue of a diplomatic passport guaranteeing him personal immunity! On his arrival in the camp he tried to send to Mexico a full account of the outrage committed on him by the Soviet authorities, but the Solovetsky censorship destroyed it. Then the Count had recourse to the language of Æsop and sent his Government a telegram which began with the words:
"I am making a very interesting tour in the north of Russia."