The arrest of Lea Gutman and others

Lea Gutman and Helena Ganshina were delegated by the Moscow Aid Society to travel North and distribute food, clothing and other necessaries among the politicals in the prisons and camps of Archangel Province. They went with the permission of the all-Russian G. P. U. During their presence in the North, the Anarchists imprisoned in the Pertominsky Camp declared a hunger strike, demanding better living conditions and transfer to Archangel. Because Gutman, Ganshina and Peter Skurikhin (an exile in Archangel for 2 years) informed the comrades in Petrograd and Moscow about the Pertominsky hunger strike, they were arrested and sent to Moscow. There the G. P. U. sentenced Gutman and Skurikhin to two years exile in Beresov, in the Tobolsk Province. It required a hunger strike of seven days to change the sentence to exile to Narimsky Kray, which is considered a more preferable place of exile.

(Ibid) (Bulletin of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia. October 1923, Berlin).

From: The Guillotine at work p530.