6 June 1917. The New York Times

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

The New York Times

To the Editor of The New York Times:

The Associated Press correspondent the other day informed the American public that the army and navy officers suspected of actively sympathizing with the autocracy who are held in the Kronstadt prisons are treated horribly.

I am utterly out of sympathy with the so-called Kronstadt republic, but I protest against the attitude of those who try to raise American public opinion against revolutionary Russia.

The correspondent asserts that the cells are overcrowded, unventilated, windowless, etc. No doubt they are. But one must not forget that these prisons were built not by revolutionary Russia but by the Government of the Czar, and were originally intended for revolutionists. Had the builders known that the time could come when they themselves would have to inhabit those prisons, they would surely have made them more comfortable.

Admiral Kurosh, one of the prisoners, complained to the correspondent that the prison food (the correspondent admits that it is the food of a private soldier) has ruined his health. I am very sorry if it did. But in times of war and revolution even civilians must be satisfied with the food they get. “Babushka” Breshkovskaya, Vera Zasulich, Maria Spiridonova, Vera Figner, Herman Lopatin, Prince Kropotkin, and multitudes of others during many years of their imprisonment would have been lucky to get the kind of food that Admiral Kurosh gets.

And, as the correspondent tells us that the prisoners are allowed to read newspapers, to buy tobacco, to write and receive letters (although censored,) and even to complain to The Associated Press correspondent, I really do not see where the “horrors” are.

Russia, which has known the tortures of Riga prisons, the executions of Rennenkampf, the horrors of Siberia, would surely not be amazed by such “horrors” as those described by the correspondent. And if the American public will read George Kennan it will admit that the revolutionists are very good-natured people after all.

Mark Weisbaum,

Editorial Staff of Russky Golos

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