We have a valuable insight into the methods the Cheka employed to enhance economic performance from an eyewitness, a Menshevik timber specialist in Soviet employ who happened to be present when Lenin and Dzerzhinsky decided on the means to increase the production of lumber:
A Soviet decree was then made public, obliging every peasant living near a government forest to prepare and transport a dozen cords of wood. But this raised the question of what to do with the foresters – what to demand of them. In the eyes of the Soviet authorities, these foresters were part and parcel of that sabotaging intelligentsia to whom the new government gave short shrift.
The meeting of the Council of Labor and Defense, discussing this particular problem, was attended by Felix Dzerzhinsky, among other commissars… After listening a while, he said: “in the interests of justice and equality I move: That the foresters be made personally responsible for the fulfilment of the peasants’ quote. That, in addition, each forester is himself to fulfill the same quota – a dozen cords of wood.”
A few members of the council objected. They pointed out that foresters were intellectuals not used to heavy manual labor. Dzerzhinsky replied that it was high time to liquidate the age-old inequality between the peasants and the foresters.
”Moreover,” the Cheka head declared in conclusion, “should the peasants fail to deliver their quota of wood, the foresters responsible for them are to be shot. When a dozen or two of them are shot, the rest will tackle the job in earnest.”
It was generally known that the majority of these foresters were anti-Communist. Still, one could feel an embarrassed hush in the room. Suddenly I heard a brusque voice: “Who’s against this motion?”
This was Lenin, closing the discussion in his inimitable way. Naturally, no one dared to vote against Lenin and Dzerzhinsky. As an afterthought, Lenin suggested that the point about shooting the foresters, although adopted, be emitted from the official minutes of the session. This, too, was done as he willed.
I felt ill during the meeting. For more than a year, of course, I had known that executions were decimating Russia – but here I myself was present while a five-minute discussion doomed scores of totally innocent men. I was shaken at my innermost being. A cough was choking me, but it was more than the cough of one of my winter colds.
It was plain to me that, when within a week or two the executions of those foresters took place, their deaths would not have moved things forward one single iota. I knew that this terrible decision stemmed from a feeling of resentment and revenge on the part of those who invoked such senseless measures.
Source:
Pipes, Richard. "The Red Terror." The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1990. 831. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Liberman, Building, 14-15.
Further Reading:
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov / Lenin
Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский (Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky)
No comments, yet...