Letter from Prison and Extracts from a Reply to Lenin - Gavril Miasnikov

From a Communist (1924)

After having been imprisoned in Moscow for 20 days, I declared a hunger-strike in order to force a formal indictment and open court proceedings against me, or to secure my liberation. On the tenth day of my hunger-strike (which began on June 1, 1924) the "G. P. U." Commission attempted to subject me to forcible feeding. Everyone familiar with our revolutionary traditions knows how determinedly we always condemned and resisted the attempt to terminate a hunger-strike by force. Even Russian Tzarism resorted to such methods only on very rare occasions.

Only recently the "Pravda" characterized such treatment in Poland as a most barbarous and outrageous procedure. But that seems to refer only to the Polish bourgeoisie. When applied, however, in Tomsk it is not an outrage but the flower of proletarian communistic culture.

Twice I resisted the attempt to feed me forcibly. I continued my hunger-strike—and then the Tomsk prison authorities and the local "G. P. U." acted in a manner that transcends anything done by the Polish executioners and sets a fine example for the Fascisti of the whole world. On the thirteenth day of my hunger-strike, at 2 o'clock at night, they broke into my cell where I lay unconscious, dragged me out of bed, and brought me to an insane asylum.

Indeed, such proceedings are not practiced even by the Fascisti of Poland. They have not gone that far yet, but here the motto is: Whoever protests is crazy and belongs to the insane! Particularly when he is a of the working class and has been a Communist for 20 years. The Fascisti do not seem ripe yet for this kind of proletarian ethics.

It is obvious that these tactics are intended to stifle all political opposition. They brought me to Tomsk in order to hide their dark deeds. . . . Vasslov, the chairman of the local court, declared to me: "If we were to act legally, we would have to release you, because your imprisonment is illegal." And another representative of the Government, Mestcheriakov, sought to persuade me: "Recant! Say that you are sorry. It depends upon yourself whether you will be released or remain here."

By such means my life—and that of my family—is made a constant torture, for they are trying by all provocative means to force me to recant and renounce. . . . I have committed no crime; I maintain it absolutely. The sole reason for my arrest was the fact that I trusted the word of honor of Krestinsky1 and Zinoviev (and for that same reason I returned to Russia from abroad. And they sent me to Tomsk because I trusted the word of honor of Menjinsky,2 Deribas, Agranov and Slovatinsky. Also because they thought they would get rid of me here with less trouble. And because I have committed no offense, they can bring no charge against me.

When my revolutionary proletarian past, origin, and activities are considered, I am treated more cruelly than any of the counter-revolutionists and common criminals in the whole Tomsk prison. No one is permitted to speak to me, neither prisoners, wardens, nor keepers. Every counter-revolutionist is permitted to have relations with the outer world, but to me it is forbidden. . . . My wife and three children, the oldest of whom is four years of age, are in administrative exile. Her crime is more serious than mine, for she is my wife. And the babies are exiled too, because they are my children. . . .

Tomsk Prison, 1924
G. Miasnikov

(The foregoing letter belongs to the pen of one of the oldest members of the Russian Communist Party, a workingman by origin, who had suffered much persecution as a revolutionist under Tzarism. He is now in disgrace and therefore in prison because of his opposition to certain policies of the Bolshevist dictatorship. He was first arrested in 1922, and attempts were made to kill him "while trying to escape," but unsuccessfully. After a hunger strike of 12 days, he was released, but arrested again on May 25, 1923. Later he was permitted to go abroad. Trusting the pledges of inviolability given to him by Krestinsky, the Ambassador of the Soviet Government at Berlin, he returned to Russia where he was seized by the "G. P. U." Previous to his arrests, Miasnikov demanded a relxation of the dictatorship and the granting of elementary liberties to the workingmen. As far back as 1921, he addressed a letter to Lenin, part of which read as follows:)

I want freedom of speech and press for myself—a proletarian who has been a member of the Party for 16 years, and not abroad, but in Russia. Of the 11 years preceding 1917, I spent seven and a half in prison and at penal labor, during which period I was on hunger strike 75 days altogether. I was mercilessly beaten, subjected to torture. The remaining three and a half years I was busy escaping. Three times I fled from exile, not abroad, but to continue the work of the Party in Russia. . . . You should know that for such speech as I am indulging in at present, hundreds, even thousands of workers are imprisoned. If I am free, it is because I have been a Communist for 16 years now, my Communist beliefs having been formed as a result of suffering, and because the masses of the workers know me. . . .

G. Miasnikov

Taken from Letters from Russian Prisons, pp. 84-86.

• 1Soviet Ambassador in Berlin
• 2Menjinsky was an official of the Tcheka.