Russia. No. 1 (1919). - 33. Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon.


No. 33.


Mr. Alston to Earl Curzon.(Received February 11.)


(Telegraphic.) Vladivostock February 8, 1919.

FOLLOWING from consul at Ekaterinburg, 6th February :―.

"From examination of several labourer and peasant witnesses I have evidence to the effect that very smallest percentage of this district were pro-Bolshevik, majority of labourers sympathising with summoning of Constituent Assembly. Witnesses further stated that Bolshevik leaders did not represent Russian working classes, most of them being Jews.

"As a result of refusal of 4,000 labourers near Ekaterinburg to support local Bolsheviks many were arrested, and twelve were suffocated alive in slag gas-pit, their mutilated bodies being buried afterwards, and ninety peasants taken out of Ekaterinburg prison, where they had been thrown because they objected to Bolsheviks requisitioning their cattle, &c., were brutally murdered."