Khortiza, October 26, 1919

Our commander told me today that the irritation of the Anarchist against us had diminished. Probably they consider their fighting position more favorable now. The last days the telephone calls were seemingly very exciting. Today they do not speak so much.

Yesterday I heard them asking about the city of Yekaterinoslav, whether it was still in their hands or not. Although we prick up our ears we dare not inquire directly about their fighting situation, so as to give them no excuse for suspecting our neutrality. The attitude of the Anarchists toward us is as menacing as ever. There is a special board of inquisition, one might say, which likes to appear as being occupied with counter espionage. It is headed by the ill-famed Father Pravda. They speak of him as the right hand of Makhno. He is a man of an unusually strong and vigorous constitution though his legs have been amputated some time ago. He stands and walks on artificial feet which are fastened to his short stumps. He has been a beggar, they say. Now he is one of the most brilliant stars among the Anarchists. They even gave him the honorable surname Batyko, meaning, Father.

He pays no heed to anybody and does not shrink from any means of torturing people.

Not far from our house lives a man who was part proprietor of a factory. Evidently he has some money. Batyko Pravda managed to find a pretext to cross-examine him. He must confess where he has hidden his arms. Since he did not have any they went on with the inquisition. They knouted him, they took off his clothes and put him over a flame to apply a new torture. Then again they erected gallows and had him hanging until he was near to death; then they would release him from the loop. This kind of extortion was continued for a long time.

The other day they tortured a man to make him confess which of the colonists had hidden arms. As the pains became unbearable, the man was weak enough to give a few names just to avoid being tortured any longer. They immediately laid hold of the young men named. It happened that they were two of my students, two young teachers. During three days, at the beginning of every hour, they beat them with leadknouts until at last they begged their torturers on their knees for the coup de grace, the finishing stroke.

Finally they were sent back, but people who have seen them assure me that there is no spot on their bodies which is not sore. They lie there like the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. It has been difficult to take off their clothes because they were healed into the wounds. These innocent victims are lying now with their festering wounds unable to turn from one side to the other.

A mill owner, father of a large family, has been so maltreated that he died after two days.

A few days ago these inquisitors were in our house. They pretended that my friend and I were hiding two bales of cloth. This monstrous statement had just the purpose of vexing us. I was not at home and so they sent after me. When they were threatening my friend with their revolvers he fled to the Anarchists who had been staying with us for many weeks and they, indeed, averted the peril. They left before I came back.

They had gone on to our neighbor and had searched through his whole house. They found but a piece of sole leather and took it. That was the last for this time.

A Westerner reading this will say, why mention the robbing of a piece of sole leather? Oh, you out there, you don’t know the value of all those little things. You cannot realize the loss of such a thing. We do. It is of much more value than gold and silver. There is no leather in the whole country. No factory has been working for years, no import is possible from other countries. If you could see how precious a needle became to us! We borrow it and take great care not to break or lose it because the loss is irreparable. By no chance can you buy a needle. And nobody can make it from iron-wire. Yet our old clothes need to be mended. Revolution is an awful state, and the provocateurs certainly did not realize the consequences. I blame the revolutionists, but I blame not less the old regime which made the revolution unavoidable.

Everybody is praying, Save us, O Lord, from our tormentors!