RUSSIA. 



777 



newspapers and periodicals ; and generally to 

 adopt whati-vi-r measures should appear neces- 

 :! the maintenance of public order. At 

 Bt Petersburg, (invernor-GenoralGourkogave 

 order* tliat. a porter should bo stationed day 

 and ni^ht at tho door of every house, whose 

 duty it .should bo to watch that no unauthor- 

 i/.i-ii plaranh were posted up anywhere, and 

 that no objects of a dangerous nature should 

 be placed in tho streets. Gunsmiths were or- 

 dered to furnish full lists of the goods in their 

 warehouses to tho commandant of the city, 

 and were forbidden to sell except to purchasers 

 who could present, letters of authorization from 

 that officer. Private persons possessing fire- 

 arms must make the police acquainted with 

 tho fact, and must obtain a permit from the 

 commandant of the city as a condition of their 

 keeping them. The order commanding guards 

 to be stationed before all the houses was found 

 to be impracticable, and was finally not insist- 

 ed upon. Regulations of a similar character, 

 differing only in details, were made for all the 

 principal towns of the empire. 



Several weeks elapsed before the disorders 

 appeared to be at all quieted, even under the 

 most rigorous enforcement of these regulations. 

 Bold attacks were made on officers of the Gov- 

 ernment and obnoxious persons in broad day- 

 light; residences and offices of the police in 

 some of the towns, as at Rostov, were plun- 

 dered. The best parts of the towns of Irbit 

 and Orenburg, places to which the Govern- 

 ment was accustomed to consign political of- 

 fenders, were burned down ; fires were set 

 at Uralsk, Petropolovski, Irkutsk, and other 

 places ; and many of the large towns were 

 thrown into a panic by notices that they would 

 be burned. During May 1,730 conflagrations 

 occurred in the empire, occasioning damage to 

 the amount of more than two million rubles ; 

 and the loss which had been inflicted on the 

 country during the past six months was esti- 

 mated on the 1st of June at 30,000,000 rubles. 

 June was likewise prolific of fires. The num- 

 ber occurring during the month is given as 

 3,500, causing damage to the amount of 12,000,- 

 000 rubles. Only 900 of these were accounted 

 for; the other 2,600 were attributed to public 

 disturbers. Courts-martial were instituted at 

 Kiev for tho trial of the revolutionists, and a 

 plot is said to have been discovered to blow 

 up the court-room during the trial. The first 

 group of persons tried included three noble- 

 men, the daughter of a privy councilor, and a 

 Prussian subject. A part of the number were 

 found guilty of armed resistance to the police, 

 and sentenced to death ; others, who were con- 

 victed of conspiring against the state and social 

 order, were sentenced to terms of penal servi- 

 tude. Explosions which were attributed to 

 the revolutionists took place in the police office 

 at Omsk, at Nizhni-Novgorod, and in A pow- 

 der-magazine near St. Petersburg. Numer- 

 ous persons were arrested throughout the em- 

 pire for having explosives or forbidden arms, 



or for being engaged in manufacturing explo- 

 sives. On the night between the 26th and 

 27th of June more than tour hundred persons 

 were arrested at Kiev, large stores of danger- 

 ous materials were found, and a secret press 

 and revolutionary documents were discovered 

 in near connection with the ecclesiastical sem- 

 inary. Michael Solovieff, who attempted to 

 assassinate the Czar in April, was tried in 

 June, found guilty of belonging to a criminal 

 association, the object of which was to over- 

 throw by violence the institutions of the state, 

 and was hanged on the 7th of the month. Sev- 

 eral of his relatives were arrested and impris- 

 oned. An imperial order was issued in July 

 empowering the Governors-General to exer- 

 cise their discretion in the cases of political 

 offenders, whether to send them for trial be- 

 fore the military courts or the ordinary tribu- 

 nals. The number of persons who had been 

 convicted or were held under arrest exceeded 

 anything that was before known in the history 

 of the present reign, and reports became rife 

 that the prisons were greatly overcrowded. 

 On June 19th six hundred convicts were dis- 

 patched from Odessa in the ship Nizhni-Nov- 

 gorod for the island of Saghalien, off Japan, 

 where they were to serve their terms of pun- 

 ishment. The friends of the Government rep- 

 resented that they were for the most part per- 

 sons who were guilty of common crimes, but 

 others asserted that by far the larger part of 

 them were revolutionists. The vessel sailed 

 by the way of the Suez Canal and the Red 

 Sea, and arrived at Nagasaki on August 1st. 

 Reports of their frightful sufferings were offi- 

 cially contradicted. In November the Minis- 

 ter of the Interior sent out a circular to the 

 governors of provinces, instructing them to 

 order the rural police not to interfere with the 

 public dances and amusements in the villages, 

 as such interference had produced discontent 

 among the rural population. The trial of Leon 

 Mirsky, with seven persons charged with be- 

 ing his accomplices, for the attempted assassi- 

 nation of General Drenteln, chief of the gen- 

 darmerie, began in the military court at St. 

 Petersburg on November 27th. All the pris- 

 oners were accused of belonging to a secret 

 society whose object was to overturn the ex- 

 isting Government and to enforce a change of 

 the social order of the empire. Mirsky was also 

 accused specifically of the attempt to assassi- 

 nate General Drenteln, of resisting the officers 

 who came to arrest him, of fabricating false 

 passports, and of inciting his fellow prisoners 

 after they were arrested to revolt. The chief 

 accusation against the other prisoners was that 

 of concealing Mirsky after his attempt against 

 General Drenteln. Mirsky acknowledged the 

 commission of the offenses for which he was 

 arraigned, and only pleaded that he had com- 

 mitted them for public, not for personal rea- 

 sons, and asked not to be hanged as a common 

 murderer. A sentence to death by hanging 

 was imposed upon him, but was afterward 



