simply walked away. 13
By the time the Bolsheviks took charge, the few prisons that remained in operation were overcrowded and inadequate. Only weeks after the Revolution, Lenin himself demanded “extreme measures for the immediate improvement of food supplies to the Petrograd prisons.” 14 A few months later, a member of the Moscow Cheka visited the city’s Taganskaya prison and reported “terrible cold and filth,” as well as typhus and hunger. Most of the prisoners could not carry out their forced-labor sentences because they had no clothes. A newspaper report claimed that Butyrka prison in Moscow, designed to hold 1,000 prisoners, already contained 2,500. Another newspaper complained that the Red Guards “unsystematically arrest hundreds of people every day, and then don’t know what to do with them.” 15
Overcrowding led to “creative” solutions. Lacking anything better, the new authorities incarcerated prisoners in basements, attics, empty palaces, and old churches. One survivor later remembered being placed in the cellar of a deserted house, in a single room with fifty people, no furniture, and little food: those who did not get packages from their families simply starved. 16 In December 1917, a Cheka commission discussed the fate of fiftysix assorted prisoners—“thieves, drunks and various ‘politicals’”—who were being kept in the basement of the Smolny Institute, Lenin’s headquarters in Petrograd. 17
Not everyone suffered from the chaotic conditions. Robert Bruce Lockhart, a British diplomat accused of spying (accurately, as it happened), was imprisoned in 1918 in a room in the Kremlin. He occupied himself playing Patience, and reading Thucydides and Carlyle. From time to time, a former imperial servant brought him hot tea and newspapers. 18
But even in the remaining traditional jails, prison regimes were erratic, and prison wardens were inexperienced. A prisoner in the northern Russian–Finnish border city of Vyborg discovered that, in the topsy-turvy post-revolutionary world, his former chauffeur had become a prison guard. The man was delighted to help his former master move to a better, drier cell, and eventually to escape. 19 One White Army colonel also recalled that in the Petrograd prison in December 1917 prisoners came and left at will, while homeless people slept in the cells at night. Looking back on this era, one Soviet official remembered that “the only people who didn’t escape were those who were too lazy.” 20
The disarray forced the Cheka to come up with new solutions: the Bolsheviks could hardly allow their “real” enemies to enter the ordinary prison system. Chaotic jails and lazy guards might be suitable for pickpockets and juvenile delinquents, but for the saboteurs, parasites, speculators, White Army officers, priests, bourgeois capitalists, and others who loomed so large in the Bolshevik imagination, more creative solutions were needed.
A solution was found as early as June 4, 1918, when Trotsky called for a group of unruly Czech war prisoners to be pacified, disarmed, and placed in a
kontslager
: a concentration camp. Twelve days later, in a memorandum addressed to the Soviet government, Trotsky again spoke of concentration camps, outdoor prisons in which “the city and village bourgeoisie . . . shall be mobilized and organized into rear-service battalions to do menial work (cleaning barracks, camps, streets, digging trenches, etc.). Those refusing will be fined, and held under arrest until the fine is paid.” 21
In August, Lenin made use of the term as well. In a telegram to the commissars of Penza, site of an anti-Bolshevik uprising, he called for “mass terror against the
kulaks
[rich peasants], priests and White Guards” and for the “unreliable” to be “locked up in a concentration camp outside town.” 22 The facilities were already in place. During the summer of 1918—in the wake of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty which ended Russia’s participation
By the time the Bolsheviks took charge, the few prisons that remained in operation were overcrowded and inadequate. Only weeks after the Revolution, Lenin himself demanded “extreme measures for the immediate improvement of food supplies to the Petrograd prisons.” 14 A few months later, a member of the Moscow Cheka visited the city’s Taganskaya prison and reported “terrible cold and filth,” as well as typhus and hunger. Most of the prisoners could not carry out their forced-labor sentences because they had no clothes. A newspaper report claimed that Butyrka prison in Moscow, designed to hold 1,000 prisoners, already contained 2,500. Another newspaper complained that the Red Guards “unsystematically arrest hundreds of people every day, and then don’t know what to do with them.” 15
Overcrowding led to “creative” solutions. Lacking anything better, the new authorities incarcerated prisoners in basements, attics, empty palaces, and old churches. One survivor later remembered being placed in the cellar of a deserted house, in a single room with fifty people, no furniture, and little food: those who did not get packages from their families simply starved. 16 In December 1917, a Cheka commission discussed the fate of fiftysix assorted prisoners—“thieves, drunks and various ‘politicals’”—who were being kept in the basement of the Smolny Institute, Lenin’s headquarters in Petrograd. 17
Not everyone suffered from the chaotic conditions. Robert Bruce Lockhart, a British diplomat accused of spying (accurately, as it happened), was imprisoned in 1918 in a room in the Kremlin. He occupied himself playing Patience, and reading Thucydides and Carlyle. From time to time, a former imperial servant brought him hot tea and newspapers. 18
But even in the remaining traditional jails, prison regimes were erratic, and prison wardens were inexperienced. A prisoner in the northern Russian–Finnish border city of Vyborg discovered that, in the topsy-turvy post-revolutionary world, his former chauffeur had become a prison guard. The man was delighted to help his former master move to a better, drier cell, and eventually to escape. 19 One White Army colonel also recalled that in the Petrograd prison in December 1917 prisoners came and left at will, while homeless people slept in the cells at night. Looking back on this era, one Soviet official remembered that “the only people who didn’t escape were those who were too lazy.” 20
The disarray forced the Cheka to come up with new solutions: the Bolsheviks could hardly allow their “real” enemies to enter the ordinary prison system. Chaotic jails and lazy guards might be suitable for pickpockets and juvenile delinquents, but for the saboteurs, parasites, speculators, White Army officers, priests, bourgeois capitalists, and others who loomed so large in the Bolshevik imagination, more creative solutions were needed.
A solution was found as early as June 4, 1918, when Trotsky called for a group of unruly Czech war prisoners to be pacified, disarmed, and placed in a
kontslager
: a concentration camp. Twelve days later, in a memorandum addressed to the Soviet government, Trotsky again spoke of concentration camps, outdoor prisons in which “the city and village bourgeoisie . . . shall be mobilized and organized into rear-service battalions to do menial work (cleaning barracks, camps, streets, digging trenches, etc.). Those refusing will be fined, and held under arrest until the fine is paid.” 21
In August, Lenin made use of the term as well. In a telegram to the commissars of Penza, site of an anti-Bolshevik uprising, he called for “mass terror against the
kulaks
[rich peasants], priests and White Guards” and for the “unreliable” to be “locked up in a concentration camp outside town.” 22 The facilities were already in place. During the summer of 1918—in the wake of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty which ended Russia’s participation
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