Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/87

 Rh workers in Moscow, reported in the Bolshevist Wireless of April 3 (1921) he said:

It is evident that a despot who feels he has the power to wage war against the personnel of his own army is liable to proceed against any other element of his subjects.

The use of the Extraordinary Commission and of terroristic methods against labor is shown in the following passages from the report drawn up on February 1 by the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party:

In Mohilev the entire membership of both the RussionRussian [sic] Social-Democratic Labor Party and the Bund were arrested during the night of the 1st of November. The Extraordinary Commission gave the following motives for the arrest: "guilty of pernicious criticism of the Soviet power and its activities, thereby affecting very badly various measures taken by said power, and, since it occurred in the war zone it affects detrimentally the gallant Red Army." Among those sentenced (to forced labor in various concentration camps until the end of the civil war) were. …

Towards the close of the year the "verdict" (administrative order without trial) was handed down. Astrov, Korobkov, Grossmann, Babin, Tkatchenko, Kuchin-Oransky and others were sentenced "for belonging to the right wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party" to confinement in a concentration camp throughout the duration of the civil war.