File No. 861.00/2971
[Enclosure]
The American Consul at Moscow (
Poole) to the Netherland Minister (
Oudendijk)
Moscow,
September 2,
1918.
Sir: As of possible interest to you in
connection with your negotiations with the People’s Commissar
for Foreign Affairs, I have the honor to inform you that I was
approached on August 26 by Mr. B. M.
Sverdlov, brother of the chairman of the Central
Executive Committee, respecting the case of certain women and
children said to have been taken as hostages at Ufa.
Mr. Sverdlov explained that the Bolshevik
forces upon retiring from Ufa took with them a large number of
hostages, chosen more or less at random from the more wealthy
inhabitants, and that it was possible that these hostages had
subsequently been treated with severity. Without attempting to
defend this action he pointed out that the taking of women and
children as hostages, even as a measure of reprisal, was a
barbarity which should be stopped at all costs. He proposed that
if I should prepare instructions in the premises to the American
Vice Consul at Samara he would use his influence to have these
instructions forwarded by wireless telegraph.
Pursuant to his proposal I wrote Mr.
Sverdlov a letter in which I referred
to his request for cooperation in the matter of the release of
hostages and asked him to employ any means which might be at his
disposal to have the following telegram dispatched:
At request of People’s Commissars I draw your attention
to the cases of wife of Commissar of Food Supply
Tsuryupa, wife of Commissar Bruikhanov, wife
[Page 681]
of Commissar
Yuriev, wife and son President Railway Committee Mukhin,
wife of Muraviev, Madam Iliin, wife of Commissar
Kadomtsev, wife of Commissar Kibanov, all of whom are
said to have been taken hostages at Ufa. You will
investigate at once and if confirmation obtained act
vigorously to secure the immediate release of the
persons named. The taking of hostages of any kind is
barbarous. The extension of such measures to women and
children is not to be tolerated and, whatever the
circumstances, must be prevented by every means in our
power. Liberation should not be made contingent upon
reciprocity but offered gratuitously as an example which
a civilized opponent cannot but follow. Poole.
At the request of Mr. Lockhart I added to the letter that the British
Diplomatic Agent concurred in the foregoing instructions and
regretted that there was no British agent at Samara whom he
might address in a similar sense. At Mr.
Sverdlov’s suggestion I submitted the
case to M. Grenard and he in turn addressed
a letter to Mr. Sverdlov, asking him to
forward to the French Vice Consul at Samara telegraphic
instructions of the same tenor as those quoted above.
I am personally convinced that the only hope of bringing to an
end, or in any way mitigating the course of mutual reprisals
upon which the Bolsheviki and a part of their opponents have
unfortunately entered, is to induce one or the other side to
liberate its hostages gratuitously, thus placing upon the other
the full moral onus of a failure to reciprocate forthwith. I am
not too sanguine of success even by this method but still
consider it possible that the Bolsheviki may finally perceive
that only by some striking act of abnegation and repentance can
they lessen in any degree the black discredit which they have
recently brought upon their cause and upon themselves
individually.
I have [etc.]
