The mountaineer, with a precipitous wall of rock behind him and plenty of cartridges in his pocket, withstood an attack from several squadrons of Communists for several hours. One of his well-aimed shots killed Shtybe himself. Although several times wounded, he killed eleven more Communists. At last he fell mortally wounded. In his rifle, which his cold fingers held close to his face, not one cartridge was found; he had fought to the last. He was tied to a horse's tail and dragged to Vladikavkaz.
The executioner Shtybe was buried with pomp and ceremony in the Pushkin Square at Tiflis. The death of this rascal was made a pretext for reprisals against the prisoners.
The cowherd in charge of the beasts which the insurgents had driven off into the mountains was a boy, deaf and dumb from birth, and clearly half-witted. This imbecile creature was ordered by the Tchekists to identify, from among all the prisoners in the gaols of the Caucasus, "those concerned in the murder of that unforgettable champion of the happiness of the proletariat, Comrade Shtybe."
The presidential body of the "Gortcheka" (Tcheka of the Mountain Republic)[[6]] did not trouble to ask itself how we, who had been in a Tcheka prison at the time of Shtybe's death and long before it, could have been concerned in his "murder." We were drawn up in two ranks. If the cowherd stopped in front of a man, uttered an inarticulate sound, or simply smiled foolishly, it was considered sufficient proof that the man who had attracted the half-witted boy's attention had "murdered the unforgettable Comrade Shtybe." He immediately received the order, "Two paces to the front!" and a bullet was put through his head.
Several dozen men were killed in this manner before my eyes. Then, walking along the second rank, the cowherd stopped before me. Death seemed inevitable. But, apparently, the public prosecutor of the Mountain Republic, Toguzoff, who was walking behind the cowherd, and who had interrogated me only the night before and knew perfectly well that I had absolutely nothing to do with Shtybe's death, felt a momentary prick of conscience, and led the cowherd on just as he was distorting his countenance in an idiotic grimace before me.
This public prosecutor is a characteristic figure. Kazbek Toguzoff, an ex-officer, in 1917 carried on a desperate struggle in the Caucasus in support of the Provisional Government, demanding the dissolution of all the Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils by armed force and the immediate hanging of all Bolsheviks. By unascertainable methods he entered the Communist Party, and to-day he is still hanging men — but now anti-Bolsheviks!
[3] "Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic." The present official designation of Soviet Russia is "Union of Socialist Soviet Republics" (U.S.S.R.).
[4] Mogilevsky was Mrs. Stan Harding's examining judge during her imprisonment in Moscow in 1920; see her book "The Underworld of State" (Allen & Unwin).
[5] Gpu (Gosudarstvennoe Polititcheskoe Upravlenie), the present official designation of the Tcheka. The sham "abolition" of the Tcheka in 1922 and its "replacement" by the Gpu are ironically described by Mr. George Popoff in his book "The Tcheka." The synonymous terms "Gpu" and "Tcheka" are used indifferently by the author.
[6] In Russian Gorskaya Respublika, hence the portmanteau-words "Gortcheka" and "Gor-Gpu."