The sad death of Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison highlights the brutal way political prisoners are treated in Russia, but this is not new. The death rate has always been high and reached a peak after the Head of the Secret Police, Felix Dzerzhinsky, developed the Nackenschuss technique in 1918, which caused instant death and avoided the loss of much blood. A full understanding of how this was used to govern the Soviet Union can be found in George Popov’s 1925 book The Tcheka: The Red Inquisition.
The Foreign Office Committee to Collect Information on Russia interviewed many of the prisoners who returned from Moscow in 1920 and published a comprehensive report that can be found in the Archives of Nuffield College, Oxford. The cross-party committee included the Conservative MP for Bassetlaw, the Liberal MP for Middleton and Prestwich and the Labour MP for Rhondda East. The Committee concluded that although the treatment of the British captives was appalling, it was better than the conditions endured by Russian political prisoners who were routinely tortured and killed.
Rupert Wieloch 