Communism

After Denikin's White forces defeated the Bolsheviks at Odessa in
August 1919, Rev. R. Courtier-Forster, Chaplain of the British forces at Odessa and the Black Sea ports, who had been held captive by the
Bolsheviks, reported the horrors of Bolshevism, relating how on the
ship Sinope, the largest cruiser of the Black Sea Fleet, some of his personal friends had been chained to planks and slowly pushed into the
ship's furnaces to be roasted alive. Others were scalded with steam
from the ship's boilers. Mass rapes were committed, while the local
Soviet press debated the possibilities of nationalizing women. The
screams from women being raped and from other victims in what
Rev. Courtier-Forster called the "Bolshevik's House of Torture" at
Catherine Square, could be heard for blocks around, while at Cathe-
rine Square the Bolsheviks tried to muffle the screams with the noise
of lorries thundering up and down the street.100

Lenin used the Allied intervention as a rationalization for the "RedTerror" stating in 1919 that, "The Terror was forced on us by the Entente."101 However the plan for a "Red Terror" was already drafted on the orders of Lenin in December 1917 for the Cheka, the secret political police.102 The People's Commissary for the Interior, Ptervosky, sent a communiqué to all Soviets not to flinch from the "mass execution by shooting" of hostages to achieve their aims.103 Of the Civil War period,

Melgunoff states that the number of "hostages" shot by the Bolsheviks
in the autumn of 1918 cannot be estimated.104 The number of victims
of the Bolsheviks in South Russia during the period 1918-1919, was
estimated by the Denikin Commission to be 1,700,000, a total with
which Melgunoff concurs.105

When the Rohrberg Commission of Enquiry entered Kiev, after the
Soviets had been driven out in August 1919, it described the "execu-
tion hall" of the Cheka as follows:

All the cement floor of the great garage (the execution hall of the
departmental Cheka of Kief) was flooded with blood. This blood
was no longer flowing, it formed a layer of several inches: it was
a horrible mixture of blood, brains, of pieces of skull, of tufts of
hair and other human remains. All the walls were bespattered
with blood; pieces of brains and scalps were sticking to them. A
gutter twenty-five centimetres wide by twenty-five centimetres
deep and about ten metres long ran from the centre of the garage
towards a subterranean drain. This gutter along its whole length
was full to the top with blood. ... Usually as soon as the massacre
had taken place the bodies were conveyed out of the town in
motor lorries and buried beside the grave about which we have
spoken; we found in a corner of the garden another grave which
was older and contained about eighty bodies. Here we discov-
ered on the bodies traces of cruelties and mutilations the most
varied and unimaginable. Some bodies were disembowelled,
others had limbs chopped off, some were literally hacked to
pieces. Some had their eyes put out and the head, face, neck and
trunk covered with deep wounds. Further on we found a corpse
with a wedge driven into the chest. Some had no tongues. In a
corner of the grave we discovered a certain quantity of arms and
legs.106

The nature of Bolshevism was understood in the West by the time
Graves took command of the Americans in Siberia. However, of the
leaders of the major powers only France's Clemenceau desired to see
the elimination of Bolshevism, and introduced Wilson and Lloyd
George to eyewitnesses in regard to the "Red Terror." Wilson howev-
er would not be moved by the testimony.107

Amidst the numerous accusations by Graves regarding White
atrocities, the only comment he makes on the "Red Terror" is that:
The foreign press was constantly being told that the Bolsheviks
were the Russians who were committing these terrible excesses,
and propaganda had been used to such an extent that no one ev-
er believed that atrocities were being committed against the Bol-
sheviks.108

While Graves might have pleaded ignorance when he took com-
mand of the American forces in Siberia, these statements were made
in his book America's Siberian Expedition published in 1931, and by that time there could be no excuse for ignorance, other than that of an apologist for Bolshevism.

"VERY LARGELY OUR FAULT"
In March 1919 Captain Montgomery Schuyler, Chief of Staff of the
American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, reporting from Omsk to Lt.
Colonel Barrows in Vladivostok, wrote of his misgivings:

You will feel I am being hot about this matter but it is I feel sure,
one which is going to bring great trouble on the United States
when the judgment of history shall be recorded on the part we
have played. It is very largely our fault that Bolshevism has
spread as it has and I do not believe we will be found guiltless of
the thousands of lives uselessly and cruelly sacrificed in wild or-
gies of bloodshed to establish an autocratic and despotic rule of
principles which have been rejected by every generation of man-
kind which has dabbled with them.109

In the same month as Captain Schuyler was writing his report
which confirms the widespread White Russian assertions, much to
Graves' ongoing outrage, that the Americans were pursuing a policy
helpful to Bolshevism, Graves cabled Washington to ensure that his
actions were in accord with the US Administration. General March,
Chief of Staff of the US War Department, replied: "Your action as re-
ported in the cablegram was in accordance with your original instruc-
tions and is approved, and you will be guided by those instructions
until they are modified by the President."110

Wilson had urged "evacuation of all Russian territory" by foreign
troops as the sixth of his "Fourteen Points," which would hardly en-
courage confidence among the White movement in regard to the in-
tentions of the USA, the implications of Wilson's statement again be-
ing pro-Soviet:

The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of
all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest
cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her
an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the inde-
pendent determination of her own political development and na-
tional policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society
of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more
than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need
and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her
sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their
good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished
from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish
sympathy.111