861.00/5086: Telegram
The Commissioner at Constantinople (Ravndal) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 21, 10:13 p.m.]
360. Your 388[188], August 15th, 7 p.m.20 After taking Odessa, Bolsheviks inaugurated a reign of terror against the bourgeoisie, levying a tribute of 500,000,000 rubles to be paid in cash. All personal bank accounts were confiscated. Those who did not pay their share of the tribute were thrown into prison or sent to work to clean streets et cetera. Judges in public courts suffered from kinds of repression.
Hundreds of people including women and children have been shot. For instance the nine-year-old boy of Prince Radziwill was killed to stop the family succession. Escapes from Odessa are made in small boats at night reaching French or Greek ships at sea.
At first the workmen met the Bolsheviks with enthusiasm, thinking life would be cheaper. This expectation has not been realized as bread has passed from 12 rubles a pound to 100 and wood from 18 rubles a pud to 120.
Neighboring villages are anti-Bolshevik hoarding their savings and not bringing their products to town, the consequence being great scarcity in Odessa of bread, fuel and oil. Railroads do a minimum of work. The city’s water supply is in danger. Odessa receives her water from Beliavka fifty miles away. The piles of the quays and the woods in the famous Estokade are being taken for the city pumping station.
[Page 769]Conditions of life are growing constantly worse and opposition to Bolshevik regime is increasing. Mobilization has rendered the workmen disaffected and many railroad hands formerly Bolshevik have been disarmed. As already stated, the peasants are enemies of Bolshevik communists and lately repeated insurrections have occurred in neighboring villages.
Odessa has not been taken by the peasants because they have no organization and no ammunition. The city is governed by the Soviet of Kieff. Gregorieff has never become known in Odessa. Rakowsky, a Roumanian or Hungarian, and Lieutenant Sadoul, who came in with the French, have been amongst the chief commissioners. Thomas Whitemore tells me that a year ago last spring he saw Lieutenant Sadoul constantly with Colonel Raymond Robbins in Moscow. However, these men are said to have left Odessa and the city is in the hands of only second-rate commissioners including “Michael the Japanese”, the head of a band of robbers. Robberies and executions come in [omission] of from 20 to 200 daily. Lately about 400 foreigners were exchanged by the Odessa Bolsheviks for 2,000 Russians from France. By this exchange, quite a few Bolshevik agents came out, some of whom are operating in Constantinople. Power in Odessa is wielded by Red terror and supported by Letts and Chinese and Georgians, and a small group of the Red Army. A thousand determined men with proper arms can take Odessa.
- Not printed.↩