TURKISH SOCIETIES
Young Turkey.-Thevivifying wave of revolutionary ideas which swept over Europe in the first half of this century extended even to Turkey, and, in imitation of its effects in other countries, produced a Young 'Turkey, as it had produced a Young Germany, a Young Poland, a Young Italy, and so on. Mr. David Urquhart, as violent a Turcophile as he was a Russophobe, attributed to Moustapha Fazyl-Pacha, whom- he calls a Turkish "Catiline," the doubtful honour of having been the founder of Young Turkey, whose aims were the abolition of the Koran and of the Sultan's authority, the emancipation, in fact, of Turkey from religious and civil despotism. The society did not make much progress in the earlier half of the century, hence, in 1867, a new association with the same title, and under the same chief, was formed at Constantinople, Paris, and London . Its objects were the same as those of the first society, with the additional aim of destroying Russian influence in the East by the emancipation of the Christian subjects of the Porte. The members of the directing committee in Paris and London were Zia Bey, Aghia-Effendi, Count Plater, a Pole, living at Zurich, Kemal Bey, and Simon Deutsch. The chief agent of the committee at Constantinople was M. Bonnal, a French banker at Pera.
Moustapha Pacha agreed to contribute annually three hundred thousand francs to the funds of the association. Murad Bey, the brother of the present Sultan, is now the leader of the Young Turkey party, of which Midhat Pacha was a prominent member. Murad Bey attributes to the Sultan himself and the palace camarilla all the evils from which the country is now suffering.
Armenian Society.-Weshall see further on (637) that the Armenians of Russia formed a secret society against that country in 1888; recent events (1896) have prominently brought before Europe the existence in Turkey of Armenian societies. They are organised in the same way as the old venditas of the Carbonari ; that is to say, the committees do not know one another, nor even the central committee from which they receive orders. They number five, and comprise altogether about two hundred members. Each committee has a significant name. They are called Huntchak (Alarm), Frochak (Flag), Abdag (Bellows), Gaizag (Thunderbolt), and Votchintchak (Destruction). The last two are the most recently created. The committees act according to a plan fixed by the occult central committee. Thus the Huntchak organised the demonstration in 1895 at the Porte, while the attack on the Ottoman Bank(1896) devolved on the Frochak committee. There remain three, who will have to act successively. In the following month of October the Armenian revolutionary leaders sent a letter to the French Embassy at Constantinople, threatening further outrages. The latest detailed account of the society, published in December 1896, says: The discovery of seditious papers found in the possession of Armenian conspirators, when arrested in December 1896 at Kara Hissar Charki, reveals all the details of the revolutionary programme, circulated by the leaders of the insurrection, and imposed on their adherents. The programme includes thirty-one draconic rules, to which the members of the numerous Armenian bands have to submit. For instance, each band must be composed of at least seven members, who take an oath that they will submit to torture, and even to death, rather than betray the secrets of the society. By Rule 14 the band is ordered to carry off into the mountains any unjust or cruel Ottoman official, to compel him to reveal any State secret which he may possess, and even to put him to death. Rule 15 authorises the band to attack and plunder the mails and couriers, but it must not assail any person found travelling alone on the roads, unless it is absolutely necessary in the interest of the band to do so. Any member showing cowardice, when fighting, is to be shot at once. The chief is the absolute master of the band, and may punish as he chooses any member with whom he is dissatisfied.
Amongst some of the most stringent clauses is one which orders the members to act as spies upon each other, and to report to the chief all the doings and movements of one another. One of the characteristic features of the Armenian revolution is the use of numerous disguises, which enable them to go secretly through towns and circulate arms and seditious literature, pamphlets, and even pictures, with the view of inciting the Armenian population against the Imperial Government. The English agitation of the present day in favour of the Armenians shows the crass ignorance existing in this country as to the true character of that people . If the Armenians were worthy of, or fit for, the liberty they claim, they would do as the Swiss-a poor nation, whilst the Armenians are rich-did five hundred years ago in fighting Austria-they would fight Turkey.
THE UNION OF SAFETY
Historical Sketch of Society.-Russiahas ever been a hotbed of secret societies, but, to within very recent times such societies were purely local; the Russian people might revolt against some local oppression, or some subaltern tyrant, but they never rose against the emperor, they never took up arms for a political question. Whatever secret associations were formed in that country, moreover, were formed by the aristocracy, and many of them were of the most innocent nature; it was at one time almost fashionable to belong to such a society, as there are people now who fancy it an honour to be a Freemason. But after the wars of Napoleon, the sectarian spirit spread into Russia. Some of the officers of the Russian army, after their campaigns in Central Europe, on their return to their native country felt their own degradation and the oppression under which they existed, and conceived the desire to free themselves from the same. In 1822 the then government of Russia issued a decree, prohibiting the formation of a new, or the continuance of old, secret societies. The decree embraced the masonic lodges. Every employe of the State was obliged to declare on oath that he belonged to no secret society within or without the empire; or, if he did, had immediately to break off all connection with them, on pain of dismissal.
The decree was executed with great rigour; the furniture of the masonic lodges was sold in the open streets, so as to expose the mysteries of masonry to ridicule. When the State began to prohibit secret societies, it was time to form some in right earnest. Alexander Mouravief founded the Union of Safety, whose rites and ceremonies were chiefly masonic-frightful oaths,daggers, and poison figuring largely therein. It was composed of three classes-Brethren, Men, and Boyards. The chiefs were taken from the last class. The denomination of the last degree shows how much the aristocratic element predominated in the association, which led, in fact, to the formation of a society still more aristocratic, that of the "Russian Knights," which aimed at obtaining for the Russian people a constitutional charter, and counteracting the secret societies of Poland, whose object was to restore Poland to its ancient state, that is to say, absolutism on the part of the nobles, and abject slavery on the part of the people. The two societies eventually coalesced into one, tinder the denomination of the " Union for the Public Weal" ; but, divided in its counsels, it was. dissolved in 1821, and a new society formed under the title of the "Union of the Boyards." The programme of this union at first was to reduce the imperial power to a level with that of the President of the United States, and to form the empire into a federation of provinces. But gradually their views became more advanced; a republic was proposed, and the emperor, Alexander I., was to be put to death. The more moderate and respectable members withdrew from the society, and after a short time it was dissolved, and its papers and documents carefully burnt.
The revolutions of Spain, Naples, and Upper Italy led Pestel, a man who had been a member of all the former secret societies, to form a new one, with the view of turning Russia into a, republic ; the death of Alexander again formed part of the scheme. But circumstances were not favourable to the conspirators, and the project fell to the ground. Another society, called theNorth,sprang into existence, of which Pestel again was the leading spirit. In 1824, the "Union of the Boyards" heard of the existence of the Polish Patriotic Society. It was determined to invite their cooperation. The terms were speedily arranged. The Boyards bound themselves to acknowledge the independence of Poland; and the Poles promised to entertain or amuse the Archduke Constantine at Warsaw whilst the !revolution was being accomplished in Russia. Both countries were to adopt the republican form of government. This latter condition, however, made by the Poles, displeased the Boyards, who, themselves lusting after power, did not see in a republic the opportunity of obtaining it. The Boyards therefore united themselves with another society, that of the "United Slavonians," founded in 1823 by a lieutenant of artillery, named Borissoff, small in numbers, but daring. As the name implied, it proposed a Slavonian confederation under the names of Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Dalmatia, and Transylvania. The insurrection was on the point of breaking out; but the Emperor Alexander had already (in'June 1823), by the revelations of Sherwood, an Englishman in Russian service, who was ennobled, received some intimation of the plot, but seems to have neglected taking precautions; whilst he was lying ill at Taganrog, Count De Witt brought him further news of the progress of the conspiracy, but the emperor was too near his death for active measures. He died, in fact, a few days after of typhoid fever be had caught in the Crimea. It was rumoured that he died of poison, but such was not the case: the report of Sir James Wylie, who was with him to the last, disproves the rumour. Besides, it is certain that the conspirators were guiltless of the emperor's death, since it took them unprepared and scattered at inconvenient distances over the empire.
Immediately on Alexander's death General Diebitsch, commanding at Kieff, ordered Colonel Pestel and about a dozen officers to be arrested. But the conspirators did not therefore give up their plan. They declared Nicholas, who succeeded Alexander, to be a usurper, his elder brother Constantine being the rightful heir to the throne. But Constantine had some years before signed a deed of abdication in favour of his brother, which however was not publicly known; and Alexander I. having died without naming his successor, the conspirators took advantage of this neglect to further their own purposes. But they were not supported by the bulk of the army or the people; still, when it came to taking the oath of fidelity to the new emperor, an insurrection broke out at St. Petersburg, which was only quelled by a cruel and merciless massacre of the rebellious soldiers. Pestel, with many others, was executed, but his equanimity never deserted him, and he died with sealed lips, though torture is said to have been employed to wring confessions from him. Prince Troubetskoi, who had been appointed Dictator by the conspirators, but who at the last moment pusillanimously betrayed them, was nevertheless by the merciless Nicholas I. exiled to Siberia for life, and condemned for fourteen years to work in the mines, and he belonged to a family which had, with the Romanoffs, competed for the throne!
These secret societies, with another discovered at Moscow in 1838, whose members were some of the highest nobles of the empire, and who were punished by being scattered in the army as private soldiers-these secret societies were the precursors of the Nihilists, whose history we have now to tell.
THE NIHILISTS
"There are alarmists who confer upon the issuers of these revolutionary [Nihilistic] tracts the dignified title of a secret society, . . . but the political atmosphere of the country [Russia . . . is no longer so favourable as it used to be to their development'
-ATHENAEUM 29th January1 870.
"A political movement that is perhaps the most mysterious and romantic the world has ever known."
-ATHENIEuM,23rd September1882.
"Nihilism is the righteous and honourable resistance of a people crushed under an iron foe; Nihilism is evidence of life. . . . Nihilism is crushed humanity's only means of making the oppressor tremble."
-WENDELL PHILLIPS (in speech at Harvard University).
Meaning of the term Nihilist.-Whenthe first edition of this work was published, but scanty information concerning this society had as yet reached Western Europe. As will be seen by the first quotation above, its scope and importance were at that date not understood; twelve years after, the same publication in eloquent and-coming from such an authority-significant language paid due honour to it. And indeed since 1870 the Nihilists have made their existence known to the world both by burning words and astounding deeds, which we will record as concisely as possible. The term " Nihilist " was first used by Turgheneff, the novelist, in his "Fathers and Sons," where one of the characters, Arkadi, describes his friend Bazaroff as a "Nihilist."
" A Nihilist?" says his interlocutor. "As far as I understand the term, a Nihilist is a man who admits nothing."-" Or rather, who respects nothing," is the reply. "A man who bows to no authority, who accepts no principle without examination, however high this principle may stand in the opinions of men." This was Turgheneff's original definition of a Nihilist; at present he means something very different. The term was at first used in a contemptuous sense, but afterwards was accepted from party pride by those against whom it was employed, just as the term of Gueux had in a former age been adopted by the nobility of the Netherlands.
Founders of Nihilism.-The original Nihilists were not conspirators at all, but formed a literary and philosophical society, which, however, now is quite extinct. It flourished between 186o and 1870. Its transformation to the actual Nihilism is due, in a great measure, to the Paris Communists and the International, whose proceedings led the youth of Russia to form secret societies, having for their object the propagation of the Liberal ideas which had long before then been preached by Bakunin and Herzen, who may indeed be looked upon as the real fathers of Nihilism, with whom may be joined Cernisceffski, who, in 1863,published his novel, "What is to be Done?"for which he was sentenced to exile in Siberia, but which mightily stirred up the revolutionary spirit of Russia. Herzen, who died in 1869, aimed only at a peaceful transformation of the Russian empire; but Bakunin, who died in 1878, dreamt of its violent overthrow by means of a revolution and fraternisation with other European States equally revolutionised.
Even during his lifetime an ultra-Radical party was formed, having for its organ theOnward,founded in 1874 by Lavroff, whose programme was, "The party of action is not to waste its energies on future organisation, but to proceed at once to the work of destruction."
Sergei Nechayef-Anotherimportant and influential personage in the early days of Nihilism was Sergei Nechayeff, a self-educated man, and at the time when he first became . active as a conspirator, in 1869, a teacher at a school in St. Petersburg. He advocated the overthrow, though not the death, of the Tsar. But the conspiracy was prematurely discovered; Nechayeff had an intimate friend, the student Ivanoff, but ultimately they disagreed in political matters, and Ivanoff, declaring that his friend was going too far, threatened to leave the secret association. This was looked upon as an act of treason, and on the 21st November 1869 Nechayeff slew Ivanoff in a grotto near the Academy of Agriculture at Moscow. This murder led to the discovery of the society, and eighty-seven members thereof were tried, in 1871. Prince Cherkesoff was implicated in this attempt; he had on several occasions supplied the required funds.
Tie was deprived of his rights and privileges, and banished to Siberia for five years. Nechayeff himself escaped to Switzerland, but so great were his powers of organisation and persuasion that the Russian Government set a high price on his head, and finally succeeded in obtaining his extradition from Switzerland, no less than 20,000 francs being paid to the Zurich Prefect of Police, Pfenniger, who facilitated the extradition, which, according to all accounts, was more like an act of kidnapping. The Municipal Council strongly protested, and passed a resolution that even common criminals should not be given up to such.Governments as those of Russia and Turkey. Nechayeff was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude in Siberia, but he was too important a person to be trusted out of sight, and so he was confined in the most secure portion ofthe fortress Peter and Paul. For a time he was kept in chains fastened to a metal rod, so that he could neither lie down, stand up, nor sit with any approach to ease. But even in prison he never lost an opportunity of making converts ; he received visits from high officials, nay, the emperor himself "interviewed" him. Of course all these visits were paid with a view of sounding him about the forces and prospects of the revolutionary party, but he remained true to them; and with wonderful self-abnegation preferred remaining in prison to delaying the killing of the Tsar, which delay would have been necessary had his friends undertaken his deliverance.
In 1882 the friendly guards around him were arrested, and nothing more was ever heard of Nechayeff beyond the fact that he was cruelly beaten with rods in consequence of a dispute with the inspector of the prison, and died shortly after. Some suppose that he committed suicide, others that he was killed by the effects of the blows. He was keenly lamented by all the Nihilists, for all recognised his ability, his courage, and utter disregard of self.
Going among the People.-Oneof the earliest effects of the newly-awakened enthusiasm for social and political freedom was the eagerness with which young men, and ,women too, went "among the people." The sons and daughters, not only of respectable, but of wealthy and aristocratic, families renounced the comforts and security of home, the love and esteem of their relatives, the advantages of rank and position, to associate with the working classes and the peasantry, dressing, faring, and working like and with,them, with the object of instilling into them ideas as to the rights of humanity and citizenship ; of expounding to them the principles of Socialism and of the revolution. Thus in the winter of 1872, in a hovel near St . Petersburg, Prince Krapotkine gathered round him a number of working-men ; Obuchoff, a rich Cossack, did the same on the banks of the river Don; Leonidas Sciseko, an officer, became a handweaver in one of the St. Petersburg manufactories to carry on the propaganda there; Demetrius Rogaceff, another officer, and a friend of his, went into the province of Tver, as sawyers, to spread their doctrines among the peasants ; Sophia Perovskaia, who, like Krapotkine, belonged to the highest aristocracy-her father was Governor-General of St . Petersburg-took to vaccinating village children; in the secret memoir drawn up in 1875 by order of Count Pahlen, the then Russian Minister of Justice, we also find the names of the daughters of three actual Councillors of State, the daughter of a general, Loschern von Herzfeld, as engaged in this propaganda; and from the same document it appears that as early as the years I870 and 1871 as many as thirtyseven revolutionary "circles" were in existence in as many provinces, most of which had established schools, factories, workshops, depots of forbidden books, and "flying sheets," for the propagation of revolutionary ideas. But though the propagandists met with some successes among the more educated classes, and received great pecuniary assistance from them -thus Germoloff, a student, sacrificed his whole fortune, maintaining several friends at the Agricultural Academy of Moscow; Voinaralski, an ex-Justice of the Peace, gave forty thousand roubles to the propaganda-yet among the peasantry their successes were not equal to their energy and zeal.
The Russian peasants, too ignorant to understand their teachers, or too timid to follow their advice, were not to be stirred up to assert the rights belonging to the citizens of any State. Moreover, the young men and women, who went forth as the apostles of revolution, were lacking in experience and caution; hence they attracted the attention of Government, and many were arrested. How many was never known. The propaganda was stamped out with every circumstance of cruelty, the gaols were filled with prisoners, the penal settlements with convicts ; half the students at the universities were in durance, and the other half under the ban of the law.
Nihilism becomes Aggressive.-Nihilism doctrinaire having thus proved a failure, it became Nihilism militant. The Nihilists who had escaped the gallows, imprisonment, or exile, determined that revolutionary agitation was to take the place of a peaceful propaganda. They began by forming themselves into groups in different districts, whose object it was to carry on their agitation among those peasants only whom they knew as cautious and prudent people. The St. Petersburg group was at first, 1876-78, contemptuously called "The Troglodytes," but afterwards, after the paper published by them, "Land and Liberty." There was also a large "group" at Moscow. Most of its members had been students at the Zurich University; it included several girls, one of whom was Bardina, of whom more in the next section. Some of them had entered into sham marriages, which they themselves, in their letters, called farces, and which were performed without any religious ceremony, and were, in most cases, never consummated, their object being simply to render the women independent, and to enable them to obtain passports, and at many a trial it was proved that these women had, in spite of their adventurous lives and intimate association with men, preserved their virtue unimpaired. But the groups, though they held their ground with varying fortunes for several years, remained without results; the immensity of Russia, thevis inertia of the peasantry, and the necessity of acting with the utmost circumspection, rendered these local efforts futile.
The leaders at Moscow wrote despairingly. Thus in 'a letter from Sdanowitch to the members at Ivanovo, a village of cotton-spinners, we read: "The news from the south are unsatisfactory. . . . We send you books and revolvers. . . Kill, shoot, work, create riots! " There seems to have been no scarcity of books or money: one member of the association was found in possession of 8545 roubles in cash, a note for: i ioo roubles, and 300 prohibited books, and with another 2450 prohibited books were discovered. The central administration at Moscow, which became necessary when, after the arrests in March 1875, the members went to the provinces, provided books, money, addresses, and false passports; carried on correspondence (in cipher), gave warning of approaching danger and notice of the arrest of brethren, and kept up communication with prisoners. But this Moscow society was discovered in August 1875, and totally extinguished.
Sophia Bardina's and other Trials.-But Nihilism was not to be suppressed. It continued to gather strength, even among the peasantry, as was shown by the trial of Alexis Ossipoff, who in 1876 was condemned to nine years' penal servitude for having distributed prohibited books. For the same offence Alexandra Boutovskaia, a young girl, was sentenced in the same year to four years' penal servitude.
In March 1877 a new revolutionary society was dis covered at Moscow; of fifty prisoners,, whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty-five years, three were condemned to ten years' penal servitude, six to nine years (two of them were young girls), one to five years; the rest were shut up in prisons, or exiled to distant provinces. Sophia Bardina, then aged twenty-three, was one of the prisoners, the daughter of a gentleman; she bad on leaving college received a diploma and a gold medal; but to further the Socialistic propaganda, she took a situation as an ordinary work-woman in a factory. Accused of having distributed Liberal pamphlets among the factory hands, she was imprisoned, and kept in close confinement for two years, without being brought to trial; she was included in the trial of the fifty, and sentenced to nine years' penal servitude in Siberia. On being asked what she had to say why sentence should not be passed; she made one of the most splendid speeches ever heard in a court of law. In her peroration, she said, "I am, convinced that our country, now asleep, will awake, and its awakening will be terrible. . . . It will no longer allow its rights to be trampled under foot, and its children to be buried alive in the mines of Siberia. . . . Society will shake off its infamous yoke, and avenge us. And this revenge will be terrible. . . . Persecute, assassinate us, judges and executioners, as long as you command material force, we shall resist you with moral force; . . . for we have with us the ideas of liberty and equality, and your bayonets cannot pierce them I"
Then came the monster trial of the one hundred and ninety-three. The whole number of persons implicated in this prosecution originally amounted to seven hundred and seventy. Of the one hundred and ninety-three who were tried, ninety-four were acquitted ; thirty-six were exiled to Siberia, and Myschkin, one of the leaders, sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. Seventy prisoners are said to have died before they were brought, to trial ; the investigations in the trial lasted four years. At these and other trials which took place in various provinces of Russia, the prisoners conducted themselves with the utmost courage and resolution. The Russian people appreciated their self-sacrificing patriotism. "They are saints! " was the exclamation frequently heard from the lips of even such persons as did not approve of the objects of the accused.
The Party of Terror.-The Nihilists continued to put forth manifestoes, in which they distinctly stated their demands. Whilst (justly) accusing the highest officials and 'dignitaries of dishonourable conduct, avarice, and barbarous brutality, they demanded their removal from the entourage of the emperor, to whom they then intended no harm. It was the court camarilla they were aiming at, and the suppression of the emperor's private chancellery, commonly called "the Third Division." , But the more ardent Nihilists were for more drastic measures, and a portion of the party, represented by their organ, Land and Liberty, seceded, and took the name of the "Party of the People," which section was in 1878 divided again, and the seceders called themselves the "Party of Terror," and were represented by the Will of the People. The party had no definite plans at first; its first overt act was Solovieff's attempt on the life of the emperor (617). And the Government seemed to play into the hands of the Terrorists. It did everything it could to goad the people to desperation : the merest suspicion led to arrest; ten, twelve, fifteen years of hard labour were inflicted for two or three speeches made in private to a few working-men; spies were employed by Government to obtain, by false pretences, admittance to Nihilistic meetings, in order to betray the members. Naturally the Nihilists retaliated by planting their daggers into such traitors as they discovered and could reach. Thus Gorenovitch, originally a member of the propaganda, who had betrayed his companions, was, in September 1876, dangerously wounded, and his face disfigured for life by sulphuric acid ; in the same month and year, Tawlejeff was assassinated at Odessa; and in July 1877, Fisogenoff at St. Petersburg.
Vera Zassulic.-Butthe signal for the outbreak of the terrorism, which distinguished the latter phases of Nihilism, was given, unintentionally, by the shot fired by the revolver of Vera Zassulic on 24th January 1878. General Trepoff, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, had ordered a political prisoner, Bogolinboff, to be flogged for a slight breach of prison discipline. Vera Zassulic made herself the instrument to punish this offence. Her life had been an apprenticeship for it. She was then twenty-six, and at the age of seventeen she had been arrested and kept in confinement twoyears, because she had received letters for a revolutionist. She had then passed her first examination as a teacher, and was working at bookbinding. At the end of two years she was released, but in a very few days was seized again, and sent from place to place, and finally placed at Kharkoff, nearly two years under police supervision. At the end of 1875 she returned to St. Petersburg. Her experiences had prepared her for her deed: she knew what solitary confinement was, and the resentment of Russian society against Trepoff -for even persons without revolutionary tendencies called him the Bashi-bazouk of St. Petersburg became in her mind a conviction that he must be punished, though she had no personal acquaintance either with Bogolinboff or Trepoff. She waited on the latter, presented a paper to him, and while he was reading it, fired her revolver at him, inflicting a dangerous wound, and then allowed herself to be seized, without offering any resistance. Though the attempt was 'tot denied at her trial, the jury pronounced her "Not guilty," and the verdict was unanimously approved as the expression of public opinion in Russia. Men saw in the acquittal a condemnation of the whole system of police, and especially of its chief, General Trepoff.
Vera Zassulic was declared to be free; but in the adjoining street her carriage was stopped by the police; a riot ensued, for the people would not allow her to be seized again, and in the commotion Zassulic made her escape, and after a while found refuge in Switzerland. The emperor was furious at her acquittal, Went in person to pay a visit of condolence to his vile tool Trepoff-whom he made a Councillor of State-and then ransacked the whole city in search of Zassulic, to put her in prison again.
Officials Killed or Threatened by the Nihilists.-The attempt of Zassulic was followed on the 16th August by the more successful one on General Mesentsoff, chief of the, third section of police, who had become notorious by being implicated in a trial about a forged will and false bills of exchange. Taking advantage of his irresponsible position, he caused all the witnesses who might have appeared against him to be assassinated. It was known that he starved the prisoners under his charge, subjected them to all kinds of cruelty, loaded the sick with chains, "all by express orders of the emperor." The Nihilists resolved he must die. On 16th August 1878, just as he was leaving a confectioner's shop in St. Michael's Square, two persons fired several shots at him with revolvers. He fell, and his assailants,' leaping into a droschky which was waiting for them, made good their escape, and fled in the direction of the Newski Prospect. One of them was a literary man, who in 1883 lived in Germany. His name was frequently mentioned in connection with German literature.
General Mesentsoff died the same day at five in the afternoon. In a pamphlet entitled Death for Death, which appeared directly after, the writer declared political assassination to be both a just and efficacious means of fighting the Government, which the writer's party would continue to use, unless police persecutions ceased, political accusations were tried before juries, and a full amnesty granted for all previous political offences. But the Government showed no intention of granting any such reforms. Its severity was increased, and trial by jury, in cases of political offences, entirely suspended. Special courts were instituted, guaranteed to pass sentences in accordance with the Tsar's wishes. In September 1878, the St. Petersburg organisation called "Land and Liberty," and consisting of about sixty members, was broken up. A great many were imprisoned, others made their escape, but by the energy of four or five members the society was not only re-established, but was enabled to erect a printing-press, on which their paper, called after the, society, was regularly printed. The Tsar having appealed to "Society" to assist him in putting down the revolutionary agitators, the attempts of "Society" to do so led to numerous riots, and in St. Petersburg and Kieff, meetings of students were dispersed by policemen and Cossacks, many of the students being wounded, and some killed. An association of working-men, comprising about two hundred members, whose objects in reality were only Socialistic, was betrayed by the Jewish spy Reinstein, and about fifty of the working-men were imprisoned. Rein stein, however, met his reward by being killed soon after by the Nihilists.
On the 9th February 1879, Prince Alexis Krapotkine, a cousin of the famous agitator, Peter Krapotkine, and Governor of Kharkoff, was shot on returning home from a ball, as a punishment of his inhuman treatment of the prisoners under his charge, which had led the latter to organise "hunger-mutinies" (638), many of them preferring starving themselves to death rather than any longer undergoing the cruelties the governor practised upon them. Goldenberg, their avenger, made good his escape.
On March 12, General Drenteln, the Chief of the Secret Police, was fired at by a Nihilist called Mirski, who managed to escape. The causes of the attempt were: firstly, that Drenteln had caused a prisoner to be hanged for trying to escape; secondly, his general cruelty, which had provoked another "hunger-mutiny"; and lastly, his having sent many Nihilists to prison.
First Attempts against the Emperor's Life.-Thuswe see that the persons aimed at by the Nihilists gradually rose in rank, and the logical conclusion of aiming at the highest, at the Tsar himself, could not be evaded. The idea came to several persons simultaneously. As early as the autumn of 1878 a mine was laid at Nikolaieff, on the Black Sea, to blow up the emperor; but it was discovered by the police, the only one they did discover. About the same time A. Solovieff, who had been a teacher, but who on becoming a Socialist learned the trade of a blacksmith that he might thus place himself into closer connection with the labouring classes, came to St. Petersburg with the intention of killing the emperor. At the same period Goldenberg, still elated with his successful attempt on Prince Krapotkine, also reached the Russian capital with the same object in viewthe death of the Tsar. Solovieff and Goldenberg entered into communication with some of the chiefs of "Land and Liberty," and eventually Solovieff undertook the task. On the 2nd April 1879,he fired four shots at the emperor as the latter was walking up and down in front of the palace. Solovieff was seized, tried on the 6th June following, of course found guilty, and hanged on the 9th of the same mouth. At the trial he declared himself a foe of the Government and a foe of the emperor, and at his execution he preserved his composure to the last.
Numerous Executions.-After Solovieff's attempt a virtual state of siege was established throughout the whole Russian empire, and a police order was issued at St. Petersburg requiring each householder to keepadvornik,or watchman, day and night at the door of the house to see who went in and out, and that no placards were affixed. In the month of May there were 4700 political prisoners in the Fort Petropowlovski, who were removed in one night to eastern prisons, to make room for those newly arrested. Eight hundred prisoners, under strong escort, were drafted off from Odessa to Siberia. In the same month the trial took place at Kieff of the persons who, about a year before, had resisted the police sent to arrest them for being in possession of a secret printing-press. Four of the accused were cited as unknown persons, because they refused to give their names and were unknown to the police, but during the trial the names of two of them oozed out. Ludwig Brandtner and one of the unknown, but calling himself Antonoff, were sentenced to be shot. The Governor-General of Kieff, however, ordered them to be hanged. Three others, and Nathalie Armfeldt, daughter of a State Councillor, Mary Kovalevski, ranked as a noble, and Ekaterine Sarandovitch, daughter of a civil servant, were condemned to hard labour for fourteen years and ten months. Ekaterine Politzinoy, the daughter of a retired staff-captain, for not informing the police of what she knew of the doings of the other prisoners, was sentenced to four years' hard labour. At another trial, held a day after, two other Nihilists, Osinsky and Sophia von Herzfeldt, were condemned to be shot.
The Moseop Attempt against the Emperor.-on the 17th to the 21st June the Nihilists held a congress at Lipezk (province of Tomboff), at which Scheljaboff, a prominent leader, maintained, as we learn from his "Life," written by Tichomiroff, that since the Government officials, such as Todleben at Odessa, and Tschertkov at Kieff, were simply the tools of the Tsar, this latter must be personally punished, which was agreed to by his colleagues. It was decided to blow up the imperial train during the journey of the emperor from the Crimea to St. Petersburg. The mines under the railway line were laid at three different points-near Odessa, near Alexandrovsk, and near Moscow. But owing to a change in the emperor's itinerary, the Odessa mine had to be abandoned; in that at , Alexandrovsk, the capsule, owing to some defect, did not explode, though the battery was closed at the right moment, and the imperial train passed uninjured over a precipice, to the bottom of which it would have been hurled by the slightest shock; near Moscow alone the terrorists made at least an attempt.
They had purchased a small house close to the railway, and Leo Hartmann, an electrician, Sophia Perovskaia, and others, excavated a passage, commencing in the house and ending under the rails. The work was nearly all done by hand, and owing to the wet weather the passage was always full of water, so that the miners had to work drenched in freezing water, standing in it up to their knees. The attempt to blow up the emperor's carriage was made on the i st December 1879, but his train, fortunately for him, preceding instead of following the baggage-train, the latter only suffered. When, after the explosion, the cottage was searched some of the apparatus, and even an untouched meal, were found; but the inmates had all disappeared, and were not afterwards apprehended, though many hundreds were sent to prison on the denunciation of Goldenberg (616), who a few days before the Moscow attempt had been seized by the police with a quantity of dynamite in his possession, and who, to benefit himself, as he hoped, betrayed a great number of his fellow-Nihilists. Finding that he did not thereby obtain any alleviation of his own fate, he committed suicide.
Various Nihilist Trials.-Another great trial of Nihilists took place at Odessa in August. Twenty-eight prisoners were tried, of whom three were sentenced to be hanged. They were Joseph Davidenko, son of a private soldier, and Sergay Tchoobaroff and Dmitri Lizogoob, gentlemen. The latter, who had sacrificed nearly his whole fortune, a large one, to the "cause," and of whom Stepniak gives so moving an account in his "Underground Russia," justly styling him "The Saint of Nihilism," was betrayed by his steward, Drigo, the Government having promised to give him what still remained of Lizogoob's patrimony, about £4000. The other prisoners were sentenced to various terms of hard labour in the mines, ranging from fifteen to twenty years.
In December another important trial of Nihilists was heard before the Odessa military tribunal. The most prominent prisoner was Victor Maleenka, a gentleman, who was tried for the attempt made three years before to murder Nicholas Gorenovitch, for having betrayed some of his fellow-Nihilists (614). It appeared that Gorenovitch had been enticed to a lonely place in Odessa, where Maleenka felled him with blows on the head, while a companion threw sulphuric acid over what was supposed to be the corpse of Gorenovitch, in order to destroy all traces. But the victim survived, and appeared as a witness at the trial. He presented a horrible appearance : the acid had destroyed his sight and all his features, and even his ears; consequently his head was enveloped in a white cloth, leaving nothing but his chin visible. It may, by the way, be mentioned, that he was then inflicting his awful presence on poor people as a scripture reader, being led about by a devoted sister . Maleenka and two of his fellow-prisoners were sentenced to be hanged.
Explosion in the Winter Palace.-The failure of the Moscow attempt did not discourage the Nihilists. They now adopted the title of "The Will of the People," and though in January 1880 two of their secret printing-presses were discovered and seized by the police, and numerous arrests were made, they managed to issue on the 26th January a programme, in which they declared that unless the Government granted constitutional rights, the emperor must die. The emperor replied by ordering greater severity and more arrests. Then the Nihilists planned a fresh attempt, more daring than any previous one, to blow up the emperor in his own palace. Its execution was undertaken by Chalturin, the son of a peasant, a very energetic agitator and experienced organiser of workmen's unions. Being also a clever cabinetmaker he easily, under the assumed name of Batyschkoff, obtained a situation in the imperial palace; he ascertained that the emperor's dining-hall was above the cellar in which the carpenters were at work, though between it and the latter there was the guardroom, used by the sentinels of the palace, and his plans were made accordingly. So blind and stupid were the Russian police that-though towards the end of the ear1879 (Chalturin found employment in the palace in the month of October) a plan of the Winter Palace, in which the dining-hall was marked with a cross, was found on a member of the Executive Committee who had been apprehended, in consequence of which the police made a sudden irruption into the carpenters' quarters-nothing was discovered, yet Chalturin used a packet of dynamite every night for his pillow ! A gendarme, however, was installed in the carpenters' cellars, and a stricter surveillance exercised over all persons entering or leaving the palace. This rendered the introduction of dynamite exceedingly difficult, and greatly delayed the execution of the project.
It may here incidentally be mentioned that what may appear to the reader to have been an exceptionally difficult undertaking, viz ., to introduce dynamite into the imperial palace itself, was, after all, very easy. The Winter Palace, till then always-a change was made after the attempt-had been a refuge for numberless vagabonds, workmen, friends of servants, and others, many without passports, who could not have lived anywhere else in the capital with impunity. It appears there is an old law which gives right of sanctuary, as far as regards the ordinary police, to criminals taking refuge in an imperial palace. When General Gourko searched the Winter Palace, it was found that no fewer than five thousand persons had been living in it, and no one knew the precise duties of half of them . Chalturin gave startling accounts of the disorder pervading the palace, and of the robberies committed by servants . They gave parties of their own, invited scores of friends, who freely went in and out, yea, stayed overnight, whilst the grand staircase remained inaccessible to even highly-placed officials. The servants were such thieves that Chalturin, not to excite their suspicions, was compelled occasionally to take food and other trifles as "perquisites." True, the wages of the upper domestic servants were only fifteen roubles a month.
To resume our narrative. Chalturin suffered terribly from headaches, caused by the poisonous exhalation of the nitroglycerine on which his head rested at night. However, he continued to work on without exciting any suspicion, yea, the gendarme on guard tried to secure the clever workman, who at Christmas had received a gratuity of a hundred roubles, for his son-in-law. At last fifty kilogrammes of dynamite had been introduced; the Executive Committee urged Chalturin to action; and on the 5th February i88othe explosion took place, Chalturin having had time to leave the palace before it occurred. It pierced the two stone floors, and made a gap ten feet long and six feet wide in the dininghall, in which a grand dinner in honour of the Prince of Bulgaria was laid. Through an accidental delay the imperial family had not yet assembled, and thus escaped total destruction. The explosion killed five men of the palace guard, and injared thirty-five-some accounts say fifty-three. Some of the parties implicated in the plot were brought to trial in November 1880, but Chalturin was not captured till early in 1882; he was hanged on the 22nd March of that year, and only then recognised as the cabinetmaker of the Winter Palace. The Executive Committee, in a proclamation, regretted the soldiers who had perished, but expressed its determination to kill the emperor, unless he granted the constitutional reforms asked for. The Tsar, in reply, invested Count Loris-Melikoff with unlimited authority as Dictator. The attempt on the latter's life, made on 3rd March by Hipolyte Joseph Kaladetski, for which he suffered death on the 5th, was not prompted by the Executive Committee, who, on the contrary, expressed their disapproval of it, because Count Melikoff had shown some tendency towards Liberal ideas.
Assassination of the Emperor.-Duringthe remainder of the year 1880, large numbers of suspected persons were arrested, tried by a secret tribunal, and many of the prisoners condemned to death or transportation to Siberia. In the previous year, 11,448 convicts were despatched eastward, and in the spring of i 88o there were in the prisons at Moscow 2973 prisoners awaiting transportation to Siberia and hard labour in the mines or government factories. But the Nihilistic movement, instead of being killed, acquired fresh strength by these wholesale persecutions; the Tsar, in his blind fury, seemed bent on his destruction-and it was nearer than he anticipated. The Executive Committee determined that now the emperor must die. Fortyseven volunteers presented themselves to make the' attempt on his life. On the i3th March 1881, the Tsar was assassinated. Returning from a military review near St. Petersburg, a bomb was thrown by Ryssakoff, which exploded in the rear of the carriage, injuring several soldiers. The emperor alighted, and a second bomb, thrown with greater precision, by Ignatius Grinevizki, exploded and shattered both the legs of the emperor below the knees, tore open the lower part of his body, and drove one of his eyes out of its socket. Within one hour and a half the Tsar was dead.
Grinevizki was seized, but he was himself so injured that he died shortly after his arrest. He was the son of a small farmer, who with great difficulty for some time managed to keep his family, consisting of eleven persons, but eventually fell into difficulties; his farm was sold, and he became insane. Ignatius, in the greatest poverty, attended several schools. In 1875 he was sent, as the best scholar of his class, to the Technological Institution at St. Petersburg; there he joined the students' unions for Radical purposes, in which, by his activity and address, he soon acquired great influence. In 1879 he would have been satisfied with a moderate constitution, but seeing that there was no prospect of even that small boon, he joined the Terrorists, working with and for them till the great work of his life was assigned to him. The Nihilists ascribe to him the fame of a Brutus, of Harmodius, and Aristogeiton! Return we to the other actors in this historic tragedy.
The signal for throwing the bombs had been given by Jessy Helfmann and Sophia Perovskaia; who were on the watch, waving their handkerchiefs. She and Helfmann were arrested, as also some of the other conspirators, Kibalcie, Micailoff, and Ryssakoff, and, with the exception of Helfmann, who, being four months pregnant, was reprieved, were hanged on the 15th April following. . All the prisoners died like heroes; Perovskaia even retained the colour in her cheeks to the last. But the execution was a "butchery." (See Kolnische Zeitung and London Times of 16th April 1881.)
The Mine in Garden Street.-Onthe 25th March the' revolutionary correspondence found on the prisoners led to the discovery of the conspirators' quarters in Telejewskaia Street, where Timothy Michailoff was arrested. A copy of the proclamation of the new Tsar's ascent to the throne was found on him, on the back of which were marked in pencil three places of the city, with certain hours and days against each. One place thus indicated was aconfectioner's shop at the corner of Garden Street. Just round the corner from this confectioner's in Garden Street was a cheesemonger's shop, kept by one Kobizoff and his wife, whose mysterious disappearance on the day of the assassination led to the discovery of a mine under the street. From subsequent discoveries it became evident that this mine was not intended to blow up the emperor, but to stop his carriage, and afford others time to assassinate him, after the fashion of the hay cart, which stopped General Prim's carriage at Madrid.
Constitution said to have been Granted by late Emperor. -It was said that the day before his death the emperor had signed a Constitution, and that by their action the Nihilists had deprived their country of the benefits it would have conferred. But what he had signed was merely the appointment of a representative commission to consider whether provincial institutions might not be widened, and the calling together of the zemskij sobor, or communal council, a measure Loris-Melikoff had strongly advised him to adopt, as a means of enlisting the people's co-operation in putting down Nihilism, the minister taking care to remind the emperor that such an assembly would, after all, be only deliberative, and that the final decision would always remain with the crown. The whole scheme was a mere blind to allay public discontent, with no intention on the Tsar's part of relinquishing any portion of his absolute prerogatives. The emperor's death thus did not deprive the Russian of any substantial benefit, but saved them a delusion.
The Nihilist Proclamation.-Tendays after the Tsar Alexander II. had been put to death, the Executive Committee issued their nobly-conceived and expressed proclamation to his successor, Alexander III., in which, on condition of the emperor granting (1) complete freedom of speech, (2) complete freedom of the press, (3) complete freedom of public meeting, (4) complete freedom of election, and (5) a general amnesty for all political offenders, they declare their party will submit unconditionally to the National Assembly which meets upon the basis of the above conditions. Hundreds of Easter eggs containing this proclamation were scattered about the streets of Moscow at Easter time. Nay, a rumour was then universally current in St. Petersburg, that the Nihilists had deputed one of their number to wait on the Emperor Alexander and explain to him in unambiguous words what they really wanted. The emperor received him, and after having heard what he had to say, ordered him to be placed in durance in the Fortress Petropowlovski ; the police, however, failed to find any clue to his identity. So runs the story, and there is nothing improbable in it, considering the daring self-sacrifice which characterises all the acts of the Nihilists.
The Emperor's Reply thereto.-The emperor's reply to the Nihilistic proclamation, asking for such constitutional rights as are possessed by every civilised nation, was given in a manifesto, issued on the 11th May, in which the emperor expressed his determination fully to retain and maintain- his autocratic privileges. Furthermore, fresh executions were ordered, thousands of his subjects were exiled to Siberia, greater rigour was exercised against the press and every Liberal tendency. Not only did the emperor not grant any reforms, but he even retracted concessions already made, as, for instance, the reduction of the redemption money, whereby nearly four millions of his subjects continued to be kept in virtual serfdom. Ignatieff, the newly-appointed Minister of the Interior, whilst bravely seconding his master in his oppressive measures, tried to open a safety-valve to public dissatisfaction and indignation by fomenting antiJewish riots, the blame of which was laid to the charge of the Nihilists, who, however, published a very spirited reply, showing that it was not their policy to incite the people against the Jews, they being, as was proved at many a trial, and especially those of Southern Russia, great supporters of the Nihilistic movement. But irrespective of this, it was no part of Nihilistic tactics to set one race or religion against another in the empire. Nor did the despoiling of private individuals, such as distinguished the violence against the Jews, enter into their plans. They robbed, they admitted, but only in the interest of the "cause" and of the people. They warned the emperor against listening to pernicious counsel. But the emperor closed his ears to this advice. Trembling for his life, he shut himself up at Gatshina, to which place he had fled. The day when he was to start, four imperial trains were ostentatiously ready at four different stations in St . Petersburg, with all the official and military attendants, while the emperor fled in a train without attendance, which had been waiting at a siding.
When in June 18 the Court removed to Peterhoff, the railway between the two places was strictly guarded by troops; for every half verst-about one-third of a mile English-there was a sentinel with a tent. Besides this, the photographs of all the railway officials were lodged in the Ministry of Ways and Communications, so that any Nihilist, disguised in railway costume, might the more easily be detected.
Attempt against General Tcherevin.-OnNovember. 25, a young man presented himself, at the Department of State Police, which was the old third section or secret police under a new name, and asked to see General Tcherevin, the chief director of measures for assuring the safety of the emperor, stating that he had to disclose some business gravely affecting the State. On being ushered into the presence of General Tcherevin, he immediately drew a revolver and fired at the general, but missed him, and was secured. He declared that he was acting as the instrument of others, and for the good of Russia, but named no accomplices. His own name was Sankofsky. As the Russian Government suppressed as far as possible all allusions to the event-and we have no account as to what became of Sankofsky-he was probably tried with closed doors, and what was his punishment remains unknown.
Trials and other Events in 1882.-Numerous arrests, and trials of persons who had long been in prison, took place in 1882. Of twenty prisoners tried in February, ten, including one woman, were sentenced to be hanged. On 12th June Count Ignatieff, having rendered himself unpopular to the public by his anti-Jewish schemes, and incurred the disfavour of his imperial master by intimating to him that, without the introduction of the ancient States-General of the Tsars, the government of the country could not be satisfactorily carried on, under the time-honoured fiction of illhealth sent in his resignation. Count Tolstoi, who was known to disapprove of the anti-Semitic policy of Count Ignatieff, was appointed his successor.
Five days after, the Nihilists received a terrible blow . In a house occupied by them on an island in the Neva, there was discovered a great number of bombs and a large quantity of dynamite; but of more importance were the papers found on the Nihilists apprehended at the same time, from which it appeared that they were kept au courantof the Government correspondence in cipher with foreign countries, as far as it referred to themselves, which information they had received from Volkoff, one of the higher officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In July a secret printing-press of the Nihilists was discovered in the Ministry of Marine; its director committed suicide. Encouraged by the disasters which had befallen the Nihilists, the emperor ventured to return to St. Petersburg, and on the 11th of September attended the fete of Alexander Nevsky, the patron-saint of the emperor, but slightly guarded, without evil results ; and in the exuberance of his feelings he went so far as to extend his clemency even to the Nihilists, for on October 4 he graciously commuted the sentence of death, passed by a secret tribunal, on two Nihilists for having murdered a police spy, to perpetual labour in the mines-and yet the Nihilists were not conciliated! For when, on the 21st November, the emperor and empress paid a visit to St. Petersburg extra precautions were taken on the part of the police and military authorities; all along the route, from the railway-station to the palace, police-officers in sledges and on foot were met with at every half-dozen yards; policemen were posted at regular intervals in the centre of the street, and the bridges over the canals were closely guarded by the marine -police. But the emperor maintained his serenity, As the Official Gazette informed its readers: "Towards the end of December the new chief of police, General Grossler, had the honour of exhibiting before his Imperial Majesty several policemen attired in the latest new and last old uniforms of the force. His Majesty carefully examined the difference, consisting mainly in alterations of colours and buttons." He also began to think of his coronation, which was announced to take place at various dates during the current year; but the ceremony was postponed from time to time, and did not finally take place until 27th May 1883.
Coronation, and Causes of Nihilistic Inactivity.-Great surprise was excited by the peaceful nature of the coronation; but it appeared by the trial (in April 1883) of seventeen Nihilists at Odessa, five of whom were sentenced to death, that the conspirators had made the most extensive preparations for killing the emperor at his coronation, as proposed in 1881 and 1882; but by the vigilance of the police, and the denunciation of spies, their schemes were frustrated, and the terrorists found it impracticable to make the attempt in 1883. As they themselves declared afterwards, they came to the conclusion that such an attempt would damage their interests. They argued that the revolutionary movement.in Russia embraces many persons of moderate views, whose opinions must ,be taken into consideration; that the people, who came to the coronation would not belong to a class likely to approve of a revolutionary plot. But the Nihilists profited in another way by the coronation. The whole force of the Government, and its most intelligent spies, being concentrated, at Moscow, the Nihilists seized this occasion to spread their doctrines and to enrol supporters at St. Petersburg and other large centres, to which may be attributed the great riots which, after the coronation, occurred at St. Petersburg, which were intensified by the fact that none of the expected constitutional reforms were granted.
The manifesto issued by the emperor on the coronation day consisted simply of a remission of arrears of taxes ; criminals condemned without privation of civil rights had one-third of their terms remitted; exiles to Siberia for life had their sentences commuted to twenty years' penal servitude; those still lying under sentence for the Polish troubles in 1863 were to be set free; but confiscated property was not to be restored. Much more had been expected, and the Burgomaster of Moscow had been bold enough, in his congratulatory address to the emperor, to express those hopes, for which ",presumption" he was visited with the emperor's displeasure. But the disappointment of the people's expectation of an amnesty and a constitution greatly favoured the spread of Nihilistic doctrines. The Nihilists continued to hold secret meetings, issue their papers, flying sheets, and manifestoes. In September 1883 a number of officers were arrested, and a large depot discovered at Charkoff, containing arms of every kind, large quantities of gunpowder, dynamite bombs, and new printing apparatus. It was found that dynamite was being manufactured in Kolpino, close by St. Petersburg. Here 138 naval and 17 artillery officers were arrested and conveyed to the St. Peter and Paul fortress. In Simbirsk an artillery colonel was arrested, who had gained an enormous influence with the peasants, and incited them to revolutionary deeds.
Colonel Sudeikin shot by Nihilists.-Onthe 28th December the Nihilists took their revenge by shooting Colonel Sudeikin, the Chief of the Secret Police, in a house to which he had been enticed by the false information of an intended Socialist meeting . They also left a letter stating that the next victims would be Count Tolstoi, Minister of the Interior, and General Grossler, the Chief of the St. Petersburg police. "If ever assassination could be palliated," says the Evening Standard of the 31st December 1883, "it is in such a case as the present. When men know that sons, or brothers, or wives are being driven to madness or death by prolonged and deliberate cruelty, no Englishman can blame them very greatly if they take vengeance on their tyrants. In a free country, under just laws, assassination of officers for a fancied wrong is altogether unjustifiable and wicked; but under such a regime as exists in Russia, it can hardly be judged in the same way. Men ihay shudder, but they cannot unreservedly condemn."
Attempt against the Emperor at Gatshina.-The Nihilists continued to issue journals and proclamations, and to extend their influence among the working classes. Of course they also continued to meet with checks. Early in January 1884 numerous arrests were made among the factory hands at Perm, on the Kama, and, many revolutionary documents were found in their possession. Towards the end of the month of December of the preceding year the emperor had met with what was thought, or at least officially represented, to be an accident ; while out hunting, his horses took fright, upset the sledge, and the emperor sustained a severe injury to his right shoulder. But in the following January it was rumoured that the accident was really a Nihilist attempt at assassination. It was said that about a fortnight before the murder of Colonel Sudeikin, Jablonski, alias Degaieff, who had sent Sudeikin the letter which led to his death, accompanied by a woman, arrived at the house of the imperial gamekeeper at Gatshina, and producing a letter from Colonel Sudeikin, informed him that the woman was to be received into his house in order to assist the detectives already at Gatshina. The woman remained, and whenever the Tsar went shooting, she attended, disguised as a peasant boy. On the day of the " accident " the woman was not there, but made her appearance next day and reported that the Tsar bad met with an accident, one of the gamekeepers having carelessly discharged his gun close to the imperial sledge and frightened the horses. On the day after the assassination of Sudeikin, and when it was known that Jablonski had played the chief part in the tragedy, three detectives arrived at Gatshina and arrested the woman. She was said to be a sister of Streiakoff, who was hanged for complicity in the murder of Alexander II., and there were rumours current afterwards that she had
secretly been hanged in one of the casemates of the Petropowlovski Fortress for the attempted murder at Gatshina. Odessa then became notorious for the frequent murders and attempted assassinations of officers of the gendarmerie by Nihilists. During the summer, Colonel Strielnikoff and Captain Gezhdi were killed; on the 19th August a determined attempt to kill Captain Katansky, the successor of Strielnikoff, was made by a second Vera Zassulic. The girl, Mary Kaljushnia, who made the attempt, was a merchant's daughter, barely nineteen, and her object, to avenge her brother, who had been sentenced to penal servitude for life in Siberia. She had for some time been under police supervision; she earned a miserable subsistence by giving lessons, maintaining herself on about fourpence a day. Her requests to be allowed to go abroad were persistently refused. On the date above named, she called on Captain Katansky, avowedly with the object of renewing her request, but in the course of conversation she suddenly drew a revolver and fired straight into the officer's face. But the ball only grazed his ear; she was seized before she could fire again, and on the loth September following sentenced to twenty years' hard labour. She was tried by the Odessa Military Tribunal with closed doors. Several political arrests were made about the same time, especially of students and young ladies, one of the latter a doctor of medicine.
Trial of the Fourteen.-Inthe month of October a trial took place in St. Petersburg of fourteen Nihilists, including six officers and the celebrated female revolutionist Figner,alias Vera Filipava, who had offered shelter to the regicide Sophia Perovsky, and of another woman, named Volkenstein, who had been implicated in the murder of Prince Krapotkine at Kharkoff in 1879 (616). The tribunal. _ was virtually a court-martial with closed doors, and the greatest secrecy was observed throughout the week for which the trial lasted. The six officers and the two women, Figner and Volkenstein, were condemned to death, and the others sentenced to hardlabourin the mines.
Reconstruction of the Nihilist Party.-After 'a years' silence, the organ published clandestinely in Russia by the Nihilists, theNarodnaia TTolia(The Will of the People), reappeared, dated 12th October 1884, in large 4to. . The losses suffered by the party were admitted; their type and printingmachines had fallen into the hands of the police, and some of their chief men were in prison . These losses they attributed to the denunciations of Degaieff, the assassin of Colonel Sudeikin, who had been a leading Nihilist, had turned traitor, but finding the Government not grateful enough, and fearing the vengeance of the Nihilists, had purchased his safety by acting again for the latter and killing Sudeikin. This, latter being killed, and Degaieff rendered harmless, the Committee was able to reconstitute the party. TheWill of the People also gave a summary of the principal Nihilistic events during the year, comprising some interesting details concerning the- great development of agrarian Socialism in the south of Russia,- facts till then studiously concealed by the Government. The paper further stated that the revolutionary group, which had at one time separated itself from the party of the Will ofthe People, "The Party of the People"(614) and the revolutionary party of Poland, had coalesced with the Russian Nihilists. Among the other subjects treated, there was an obituary notice of Professor Neoustraieff, who was shot at Irkutsk for striking the governorgeneral of the province. The last pages of the paper were filled with a long list of arrests made, and a paragraph incidentally mentions that M. Larroff never belonged to the Executive Committee, though he is recognised as one of the editors of the review Onwards,published by the Nihilists at Geneva, and as a warm friend of the party.
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