766 



RUSSIA. 



sky, Lavrenius, Achkinazi, Demski, Mile. Brorn- 

 berg, and Mile. Fedorovna. The founder of the 

 Socialistic party in Poland, Mendelssohn, was, at 

 the instance of the Russian Embassy, arrested 

 likewise, but was discharged because no connec- 

 tion could be traced between him and the others. 

 Loaded bombs, bottles of explosives, and tools 

 for making copper bombs were found in the 

 houses of several. They were tried, and on July 

 5 Reinstein, Nakachizo, Katchinzeff, Lavrenius, 

 Levoff, and Orloffsky were sentenced to three 

 years' imprisonment. Gen. Seliverstoff, who had 

 succeeded Gen. Mesentzoff as Chief of the Third 

 Section, but had lost his post because his fear of 

 being murdered like his predecessor had betrayed 

 him into an act of cowardice, was living in re- 

 tirement at Paris, and was generally suspected of 

 being the chief organizer of the Russian political 

 police in the French capital. On Nov. 18 he was 

 fatally shot bya Polish Hebrew named Podlevsky. 

 Some French journalists aided the escape of the 

 murderer to Spain. He was subsequently arrested 

 at Olot, and the abettors of his flight, Labruyere, 

 Gregroire, and Mme. Duc-Quercy, were tried and 

 convicted on their own declarations. Mendels- 

 sohn was again arrested and was detained in 

 prison for weeks, and finally expelled. 



In the early part of November the police of St. 

 Petersburg searched the house of a privy coun- 

 cilor, a high official of the Holy Synod, to which 

 their attention had been directed by an anony- 

 mous letter. There they found, in the apartment 

 of the official's niece, Olga Ivanovsky, proclam- 

 ations, manuscripts in cipher, some dynamite, 

 and letters from Nihilists in the Russian prov- 

 inces and in foreign countries. On the evidence 

 furnished by these documents, a large number 

 of persons were arrested in St. Petersburg and in 

 other towns. Five prisoners, who had been ar- 

 rested some time before, were tried before a sec- 

 tion of the Senate in the middle of November. 

 They were Sophie Giinzberg, a Jewess from 

 Kertch, who was intimately associated with Olga 

 Ivanovsky ; Michael Stoyanofsky, a Jewish stu- 

 dent in the University ; Leib Freifeld, son of a 

 Jewish merchant ; Alexis Orotchko, a soldier in 

 the fortress of Sebastopol ; and Peter Dooshefsky, 

 a lieutenant of artillery, in the garrison of Croii- 

 stadt. The men were all acquaintances and 

 helpers of Sophie Giinzberg, and the band was 

 discovered through a slip of paper threatening 

 the assassination of the Czar, which was found in 

 her purse that she had left inadvertently in a 

 tobacco shop. Lieut. Tchijefsky and Simon 

 Stoyanofsky, who were arrested at the same time 

 with the others, became insane in prison. The 

 Giinzberg woman had been an active agent in 

 spreading the revolutionary propaganda in the 

 army, and had the co-operation of the officer 

 who went mad and of Lieut. Yastreboff, who 

 had recently died. Dooshefsky's complicity was 

 not proved, and he alone of the 5 prisoners was 

 acquitted. The others were condemned to death. 

 The first 5 prisoners of the circle of Olga Ivan- 



ovsky were brought up for trial three weeks later, 

 and the trial lasted till the end of the year. 



The constitutional agitation, as it was called, 

 was the immediate outcome of the students' dis- 

 turbances ; but the stories of the ill-treatment of 

 political exiles had done much to produce the 

 ferment, and a letter written by Mme. Tshebri- 

 kova, a lady widely known from her writings on 

 female education, who had never before taken 

 part in political discussions, had contributed s f .i 11 

 more to the excitement, which, in turn, communi- 

 cated a fresh impulse to Nihilistic activities and 

 gave rise to renewed plots against the life of 

 the Czar. Mme. Tshebrikova's epistle was ad- 

 dressed to the Czar, and a copy was delivered to 

 each of the ministers. In it she described the 

 evil results of the suppression of free speech and 

 all popular liberties and the return to the gloomy 

 tyranny of Nicholas I, which Count Tolstoi and 

 other functionaries had counseled after the 

 murder of Alexander II as the only means of 

 saving the autocracy. The autocracy, she said, 

 was practically one of the public functionaries, 

 for the Emperor is obliged to see only what the 

 Tchinovniki permit him to see. Revolution and 

 terrorism were not the fruit of the reforms of Al- 

 exander II, since obliterated, but of the tardiness 

 and insufficiency of those reforms. At present 

 the country is governed without law according 

 to the caprice cf functionaries who abuse their 

 power for the gratification of spite and passion 

 and the advancement of their private interests. 

 Spoliation and excesses go unpunished. Each 

 governor is an autocrat in his province, each 

 Ispravnik in his district, each Stanavoi in his 

 canton, and each Ouriadnik in his village. By 

 closing the high schools and universities to 

 young men without fortunes, the Minister of 

 Public Instruction had irritated the poorer sec- 

 tion of the nobility and other classes, and the 

 regulation restricting students to the schools 

 and universities of their own districts and all 

 his other measures tended to stifle education. 

 The Czar and his family had nearly paid with 

 their lives for the suppression of exposures in 

 the press of the jobbery and corruption in the 

 construction of railroads. The policy of perse- 

 cuting thought drives the youth of the country 

 into the camp of the revolutionists. The Gov- 

 ernment employs provocating agents in the Ni- 

 hilistic press and accepts with open arms and 

 believes without question the revolutionists who 

 can be induced to betray their associates. On 

 their testimony and that of police spies interested 

 in securing convictions, political prisoners, some- 

 times children of fourteen years, are consigned to 

 solitary confinement or to' the often fatal hard- 

 ships of exile. Offenses that would be punished 

 in Austria with two weeks' imprisonment entail 

 twelve years of banishment to Eastern Siberia. 

 And when legal proofs are wanting an adminis- 

 trative order is signed on the mere suspicion of 

 the police functionaries for the deportation of 

 persons to that deadly climate. 



