PETROGRAD, _October 17th_.--At to-day’s meeting of the Conference of the Extraordinary Investigating Commission, Comrades Moros and Baky read reports giving an account of the activities of the Extraordinary Commission in Petrograd and Moscow. Comrade Baky threw light on the work of the district commission of Petrograd after the departure of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Moscow. The total number of people arrested by the Extraordinary Commission amounted to 6,220. _Eight hundred people were shot._ On November 5, 1918, _Izvestia_ said: A riot occurred in the Kirsanoff district. The rioters shouted, “Down with the Soviets.” They dissolved the Soviet and Committee of the Village Poor. The riot was suppressed by a detachment of Soviet troops. Six ringleaders were shot. The case is under examination. The _Weekly Journal of the Extraordinary Commissions to Combat Counter-Revolution_ is, as the name implies, the official organ in which the proclamations and reports of these Extraordinary Commissions are published. It is popularly nicknamed “The Hangmen’s Journal.” The issue of October 6, 1918 (No. 3), contains the following: We decided to make it a real, not a paper terror. In many cities there took place, accordingly, _mass shootings of hostages_, and it is well that they did. In such business half-measures are worse than none. Another issue (No. 5), dated October 20, 1918, says: Upon the decision of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission, 500 hostages were shot. These are typical extracts: it would be possible to quote from this journal whole pages quite similar to them. How closely the Extraordinary Commissions copied the methods of the Czar’s secret police system can be judged from a paragraph that appeared in the _Severnaya Communa_, October 17, 1918: The Extraordinary Commission has organized the placing of police agents in every part of Petrograd. The Commission has issued a proclamation to the workmen exhorting them to inform the police of all they know. The bandits, both in word and action, must be forced to recognize that the revolutionary proletariat is watching them strictly.