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New Militant, 16 May 1936
Aid the Russian Bolshevik Exiles!
Report Death, Suffering in Stalin’s Siberian Jail
From New Militant, Vol. II No. 19, 16 May 1936, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The following information on our prisoners in the U.S.S.R. has
been received from an absolutely trustworthy source. For obvious
reasons we cannot disclose the name of our informant
- Our comrade SOLNTSEV, imprisoned in 1929 after his return
from America served three years in prison and then an additional
two. Released at the beginning of 1935, he was deported to the
Siberian frontier – I do not know the name of the locality,
but I was in indirect communication with him – in a village
where it was impossible for him to find work and where he therefore
suffered the greatest physical privation. At the end of 1935, he was
arrested again, without any conceivable legal reason, and soon
condemned to 3 or 5 years in prison. He refused to undergo this
punishment and carried through a hunger strike lasting about 29 days
in defense of his “freedom” of exile. He won his point;
the N.K.W.D. consented to send him to Minoussinsk where his exiled
wife and son awaited him. On route, travelling by stages with other
prisoners, he fell ill with exhaustion (inflammation of the internal
ear), was operated on immediately in the hospital at Novosibirsk
where he died last January (1936).
- All the Trotskyist exiles of Tara, a dozen comrades among
whom is Guerstein, were arrested in January–February. This
means that a “case” is being cooked up against them
which can only end by their removal to concentration camps for long
terms.
- LADO DOUMBADZE must be saved. Wounded in the civil war,
seriously bruised besides, he is paralyzed in both arms. Imprisoned,
in 1934–35 he was moved from Souzdal to Boutirky, from
Boutirky to exile, from exile again to Souzdal, rapidly transferred
from prison to prison, from city to city, without obtaining any real
care, he becomes more seriously ill. They ended by exiling him to
Sarapoul, where he is alone, an invalid, receiving an allowance of
50 roubles a month. It is almost impossible for him to dress and
undress himself; he has no one to care for him, letters seldom reach
him, it is only with the greatest pain that he succeeds in writing a
few lines and then after hours of painful travail. – I read
one of these letters, it 'is a tragic document; but if we do not
obtain care for him or other living conditions, LADO DOUMBDAZE is
lost; his heroism can now serve him only to go under like a man.
I believe it necessary to broadcast widely the sufferings and
death of Solntsev, the danger to Doumtoadze. My information is quite
reliable and for my part I will do everything in my power ...
I have read Tarov and Ciliga: they are, on the whole, understating
the case. The truth is much worse.
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