In Sarapulsk County a peasant woman, helped by her lover, killed her husband. For this crime the People’s Tribunal sentenced the woman to be buried alive and her lover to die. A grave was dug, into which first the body of the killed lover was lowered, and then the woman, hands and feet bound, put on top. She had been covered by almost fifteen feet of earth when she still kept on yelling “Help!” and “Have pity, dear people!” The peasants, who witnessed the scene, later said, “But the life of a woman is as lasting as that of a cat.” In the village of Bolshaya Sosnovka a shoemaker killed a soldier who tried to break in during the night. The victim’s comrades, also soldiers, created a “Revolutionary Tribunal,” which convicted the shoemaker to “be beheaded at the hands of one of his comrades to whose lot it should fall to perform the task.” The shoemaker was put to death in the presence of a crowd of thousands of people. In the village of Bootsenki five men and three women were accused of misconduct. The local peasant committee undertook to try them. After a long trial the committee reached the verdict to punish them by flogging, giving each one publicly thirty-five strokes with the rod. One of the women was pregnant and it was decided to postpone the execution in her case until she had been delivered. The rest were severely flogged. In connection with this affair an interesting episode occurred. One of the convicted received only sixteen strokes instead of thirty-five. At first no attention was paid to it. The next day, however, rumors spread that the president of the committee had been bribed, and had thus mitigated the punishment. Then the committee decreed to flog the president himself, administering to him fifty strokes with the rod. In the village of Riepyrky, in Korotoyansk County, the peasants caught a soldier robbing and decided to drown him. The verdict was carried out by the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the presence of all the people of the village. In the village of Vradievka, in Ananyensky County, eleven thieves, sentenced by the people, were shot. In the district of Kubanetz, in the Province of Petrograd, carrying out the verdict of the people, peasants shot twelve men of the fighting militia who had been caught accepting bribes. These sentences speak for themselves. They were not expressions of Bolshevist savagery, for in the village tribunals there were very few Bolsheviki. As a matter of fact, the same people who meted out these barbarous sentences treated the agents of the Soviet Government with equally savage brutality. The Bolsheviki had unleashed the furious passion of these primitive folk, destroyed their faith in liberty within the law, and replaced it by license and tyranny. Thus had they recklessly sown dragons’ teeth.