Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/86

 would have dropped to the floor. I was asked: "How long ago were you in Belaya Tserkov?" And then, "How long ago were you in Lipovetz?" I answered. The next question was: "What speeches did you hold at the Square in Belaya Tserkov and in the suburbs of Lipovetz in order to incite the people to rebellion?" When I answered that I do not speak Ukrainian and that not only had I not delivered any speeches, but I had not attended any meetings, Lubansky and then Siemashkevitch testified in my presence that I had incited mobs against the government and delivered an inflammatory speech, recruiting men for my own regiments with the object of attacking the Government's forces at night, defeating them, overthrowing the Government, and becoming ruler myself. This lie was so apparent, so obvious, that even a child would have doubted it. … The judge, however, believed it. The question of robbery was no longer raised. I was tried as a counter-revolutionary and sentenced, as forty-eight hours previously, to be shot.

I was not taken back to prison, but directly to a barn under a shed. Seventy-six naked counter-revolutionaries were standing at the wall. Among them were also women who must have already passed through excruciating tortures because their breasts were either entirely torn out with forge-tongs or were so that, instead of breasts, their flesh was hanging in fragments. These women were covered with blood from their breasts down to their heels. … I was ordered to undress. I was in a state of dumb stupor. They began to tear off my clothes. Just then an "official" entered and asked: "Is Dudikoff here?" They pointed me out to him because I could not utter a word. The official came over to me and said: "You were in Skoropadsky's and Petlura's Armies!" I shook my head. The official continued: "Take this wretch back! He must be re-examined." While I was dressing hurriedly, the order to fire from the machine gun was given, and all seventy-six men and women who stood under numbers I