Letters From Russian Prisons: Consisting of Reprints of Documents by Political Prisoners in Soviet Prisons, Prison Camps and Exile, and Reprints of Affidavits Concerning Political Persecution in Soviet Russia, Official Statements by Soviet Authorities, Excerpts from Soviet Laws Pertaining to Civil Liberties, and Other Documents
Published for The International Committee for Political Prisoners, Albert & Charles Boni, New York 1925

International Committee for Political Prisoners, Roger N. Baldwin, Chairman, Jane Addams

Jane Addams

Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...

, Henry G. Alsberg, Carleton Beals

Carleton Beals

Carleton Beals was a radical American journalist, author, historian, and a crusader with special interests in Latin America.-Early years:...

, Louis B. Boudin

Louis B. Boudin

Louis B. Boudin was a Russian-born American Marxist theoretician, writer, politician, and lawyer. He is best remembered as the author of a two volume history of the Supreme Court's influence on American government, first published in 1932....

, Max Danish, Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...

, Anna N. Davis, Eugene V. Debs

Eugene V. Debs

Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...

, W.E.B. DuBois, John Lovejoy Elliott

Hudson Guild

The Hudson Guild is a community-based social services organization rooted in and primarily focused on the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1897 by Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott as a settlement house, with the intention of helping to alleviate the problems of the...

, Nathalie B. Ells, Charles W. Ervin, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World . Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage...

, John G. Forbath, Felix Frankfurter

Felix Frankfurter

Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...

, Lewis Gannett

Lewis Gannett

Lewis Gannett is an American writer.Gannett is the author of the books The Living One, Magazine Beach, The Siege, as well as two Millennium novels: Gehenna and Force Majeure.-External links:*...

, Elizabeth Gilman, Arthur Garfield Hays

Arthur Garfield Hays

Arthur Garfield Hays was a lawyer born in Rochester, New York. His father and mother, both of German descent, belonged to prospering families in the clothing manufacturing industry...

, Norman Hapgood

Norman Hapgood

Norman Hapgood was an American writer, journalist, editor, and critic, born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Harvard in 1890 and from the law school there in 1893, then chose to become a writer...

, John Haynes Holmes

John Haynes Holmes

John Haynes Holmes was a prominent Unitarian minister and pacifist, noted for his anti-war activism.-Early years:John Haynes Holmes was born in Philadelphia on November 29, 1879. He studied at Harvard, graduating in 1902, and Harvard Divinity School, which he graduated in 1904. He was then called...

, Paul Jones

Paul Jones

Paul Jones may refer to:*Paul Jones , Australian politician*Paul Jones , American Episcopal Bishop*Paul Jones , British former professional boxer...

, David Starr Jordan

David Starr Jordan

David Starr Jordan, Ph.D., LL.D. was a leading eugenicist, ichthyologist, educator and peace activist. He was president of Indiana University and Stanford University.-Early life and education:...

. Paul U. Kellogg

Paul Underwood Kellogg

Paul Underwood Kellogg was an American journalist and social reformer.He was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1879. After working as a journalist he moved to New York City to study at Columbia University....

, Harry Kelly

Harry Kelly

Harry Kelly may refer to:* Harry Kelly , American anarchist* Harry Kelly , American Division I basketball player with over 3,000 career points and 1,000 rebounds* Harry Kelly , the Governor of Michigan...

, Emil Lengyel, Robert Morss Lovett

Robert Morss Lovett

Robert Morss Lovett was an American academic, writer, editor, political activist, and government official....

, Juliam W. Mack, James H. Maurer

James H. Maurer

James Hudson "Jim" Maurer was a prominent American trade unionist who twice ran for the office of Vice President of the United States on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...

, David Mitrany

David Mitrany

David Mitrany was a Romanian-born, naturalized British scholar, historian and political theorist. The richest source of information concerning Mitrany’s life and intellectual activity are the memoirs he published in 1975 in The Functional Theory of Politics.-Professional life:Mitrany worked on...

, S.E. Morison

Samuel Eliot Morison

Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years...

, Fremont Older

Fremont Older

Fremont Older was a newspaperman and editor in San Francisco, California for nearly fifty years. He is best known for his campaigns against civic corruption and efforts on behalf of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, wrongly convicted of the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916.Born in a log cabin in...

, John A. Ryan

John A. Ryan

Monsignor John Augustine Ryan was a leading moral theologian, priest, professor, author, and social justice advocate. Ryan lived during a decisive moment in the development of Catholic social teaching within the United States...

, Nevin Sayre

John Nevin Sayre

The Reverend John Nevin Sayre, , brother of US State Department offiicial Francis B. Sayre, was an Episcopal minister, peace activist, and author...

, Alexander S. Tardos, Graham R. Taylor, Norman Thomas

Norman Thomas

Norman Mattoon Thomas was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...

, Girolamo Valenti, Ernesto Valentini, Oswald Garrison Villard

Oswald Garrison Villard

Oswald Garrison Villard was an American journalist. He provided a rare direct link between the anti-imperialism of the late 19th century and the conservative Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...

, B, Charney Vladeck

Baruch Charney Vladeck

Baruch Charney Vladeck was an American Jewish labor leader, manager of the Jewish Daily Forward for twenty years, and a member of the New York City Council.-Early years:...

Introduction

The book opens with ah introduction written by "Roger N. Baldwin For the Committee". In it he writes, This book is an attempt to tell the story of these political prisoners, chiefly in their own words...... As far as we can get the facts, the prisoner with whom this book deals are intellectuals and working class revolutionists imprisoned for expressing their view and for their political activities in hold ing meetings, speaking, printing. selling their party literature and communicating with their party members and sympathizers abroad.

Baldwin continued with This committee as such approaches the issue of Russian political prisoners without partisan interest, in the belief that the holding of political prisoners by any government blocks progress by stifling ideas and forces necessary for growth.

Letters from Celebrated Intellectuals

The introduction section is followed by a series of letters from "Celebrated Intellectuals". The content of these varied from Brandes

Georg Brandes

Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...

', "Not a day passes that I do not receive fifty letters insisting on answers. Try to understand. My day is filled with necessary work. Sixty or seventy are asking all day long by letter or in personally an hour of my time. It is enough to drive me mad" to Einstein's

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

 "All serious people should be under obligation to the editor of these documents" to Russell's

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

 "The holders of power in Russia, as elsewhere, are practical men, prepared to inflict torture upon idealists in order to retain their power."

The "Celebrated Intellectuals" included are:

Letters from Celebrated Intellectuals

• Arnold Bennett
  Arnold Bennett
  - Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
  
  
• H.N. Brailsford
• Georg Brandes
  Georg Brandes
  Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...
  
  
• Karl Capek
  Karel Capek
  Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
  
  
• Albert Einstein
  Albert Einstein
  Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
  
  
• Knut Hamsun
  Knut Hamsun
  Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....
  
  
• Gerhardt Hauptmann
• Sven Hedin
  Sven Hedin
  Sven Anders Hedin KNO1kl RVO was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, and travel writer, as well as an illustrator of his own works...
  
  
• Bernard Kellerman
• Selma Lagerlof
  Selma Lagerlöf
  Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish author. She was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and most widely known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige ....
  
  
• Harold I. Laski
  Harold Laski
  Harold Joseph Laski was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946, and was a professor at the LSE from 1926 to 1950....
  
  
• Sinclair Lewis
  Sinclair Lewis
  Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
  
  
• Maurice Maeterlinck
  Maurice Maeterlinck
  Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
  
  
• Thomas Mann
  Thomas Mann
  Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
  
  
• Karin Michaelis
  Karin Michaelis
  Karin Michaelis was a Danish journalist and author.- Early life :...
  
  
• Romain Rolland
  Romain Rolland
  Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
  
  
• Bertrand Russell
  Bertrand Russell
  Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
  
  
• Arthur Schnitzler
  Arthur Schnitzler
  Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...
  
  
• Upton Sinclair
  Upton Sinclair
  Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
  
  
• H. G. Wells
  H. G. Wells
  Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
  
  
• Rebecca West
  Rebecca West
  Cicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
  
  
• Izrael Zangwill
  Israel Zangwill
  Israel Zangwill was a British humorist and writer.-Biography:Zangwill was born in London on January 21, 1864 in a family of Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia, to Moses Zangwill from what is now Latvia and Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill from what is now Poland. He dedicated his life to championing...
  
  

Exile, Letters form Prison and The Northern Camps

The next three sections, Part I, Exile, Part II, Letters form Prison and Part III, The Northern Camps consist of the letters collected, mostly from anarchists, syndicalists and social revolutionaries

Socialist-Revolutionary Party

thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...

 who have either been exiled

Exiled

Exiled is a 2006 Hong Kong action crime drama film produced and directed by Johnnie To, and starring Anthony Wong, Roy Cheung, Francis Ng, and Simon Yam. The action takes place in contemporary Macau.-Plot:...

 or placed in prisons

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

.

Civil Liberties, Justice and Prisons

Part IV, Documents Concerning Civil Liberties and Administration of Justice and Prisons are more letters from prisoners regarding rules in the prisons, the use of hunger strikes by political prisoners, the "Right of Defense" imprisonment without trial and other allied topics.

Questionnaires

Part V is an attempt to discover who the prisoners are in terns of political background (Mensheviks, 12: Zionist-Socialists

Labor Zionism

Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...

, 16: Socialist-Revolutionists

Socialist-Revolutionary Party

thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...

, 4: Left Socialist Revolutionists

Left Socialist-Revolutionaries

In 1917, Russia the Socialist-Revolutionary Party split between those who supported the Provisional Government, established after the February Revolution, and those who supported the Bolsheviks who favoured a communist insurrection....

, 4: Anarchists, 7: Non-Partisan, 2), what their ages and gender were, how often they were arrested (average, over three times), what sort, if any, trial occurred and what the conditions were under which they were held and imprisoned.

Laws and Regulations

Part VI, Excerpts from Laws and Regulations is a review of the legal framework that the Soviet officials were operating under.