many thousands of people were imprisoned
merely on suspicion, amongst them Mensheviks,
Social Revolutionaries, Cadets, Czarists
and foreigners. The duty of the Commission
was to track down persons likely to be centres
of disaffection or to be thrown into the net
of the disaffected. It was a difficult business,
because many people, especially some
of those belonging to other Socialist and
Anarchist groups, at times professed loyally
to join the Bolsheviks, only later on to be discovered
plotting for the overthrow of the
Government. Supporters of the old regime,
clerics connected with the Church, and people
with no fixed opinions, and many aliens, also
joined in as loyal to the new order, to be
found later on as agents provocateurs for
conspiracies.
There was also a great deal of work to do in the army, where the Czarist officers, joining up very often as privates, made themselves the centres for promoting desertion and betrayal in the face of the enemy. Sometimes batches of “ Red ” troops have surrendered to Denikin, or in the North to our own officers, being led to do so by Czarists who had professed to become Bolsheviks.
In these circumstances, in the early days of the revolution, there was the “ Terror,” which resulted, according to statistics, in the execution of about 3,000 persons. It is claimed for
