RUSSIA. 



719 



an officer of engineers ; Warznski, a lawyer ; 

 Kuznicki, a civil engineer of St. Petersburg ; 

 Dr. Rechnievski, of Moscow University ; Jano- 

 wicz, a large land-owner of Lithuania ; sever- 

 al "Warsaw journalists, and five working-men. 

 They were charged with belonging to the cen- 

 tral committee of a Warsaw society called the 

 Proletariat, allied to the executive commit- 

 tee of the Narodnaya Volya, with organiz- 

 ing workmen's committees throughout Poland, 

 with making an attempt on the life of the Em- 

 peror by laying a mine in a street of Warsaw, 

 and with murdering two police agents. The 

 proceedings were conducted with the utmost se- 

 crecy. Bardovski, Kuznicki, and four others 

 were condemned to be hanged, and the other 

 twenty-two prisoners were sentenced to long 

 terms of penal servitude. 



Industrial and Agrarian Disturbances. The in- 

 dustrial depression in Russia was attended 

 with more frequent and lawless disturbances 

 than occurred in any other country. There 

 was a curtailment of production in most in- 

 dustrial branches in the early part of 1885, 

 and the mujiks, who had been driven into the 

 factories by agricultural distress, were worse 

 off than before. The majority of employers 

 of labor are foreigners, Germans or English- 

 men. In their differences with the workmen, 

 the authorities sided with the latter in many 

 instances. Some of the mill- owners are more 

 solicitous for the comfort and welfare of their 

 employes than the employers in other coun- 

 tries, providing them with sanitary houses, hos- 

 pitals, medical attendance, schools, and amuse- 

 ments. In their establishments no disturbances 

 occurred. Others are exacting and unscrupu- 

 lous. A system of fines is frequently resorted 

 to, by which as much as one quarter of the 

 wages of the mill-hands is withheld from them. 

 The working-men are extensively indoctrinated 

 in the theories of Nihilism, and organized by 

 revolutionary emissaries, who disguise them- 

 selves as factory -hands. Police spies hire them- 

 selves out as workmen for the purpose of ferret- 

 ing out these Nihilist organizations. Frequent- 

 ly an employer finds his business thrown into 

 confusion by the sudden arrest of a large num- 

 ber of his workmen. When the employers 

 began to dismiss their employes in large num- 

 bers in the winter of 1884-'85, the men com- 

 mitted many acts of destruction and violence. 

 The police interfered and cautioned them not 

 to send away more than a few men at a time. 

 Many masters in the iron and cotton industries 

 were compelled to work their mills at a loss, 

 for fear of offending the authorities or pro- 

 voking the men to violence. In January, 1885, 

 a strike began in a cotton-mill on the Moscow 

 and Jaroslav Railroad. The men in another 

 mill struck work and wrecked the factory and 

 provision-stores. The strikes and riots spread 

 then to all the factories in the district, and a 

 large force of Cossacks was not able to restore 

 order. Later in the year the industrial situa- 

 tion improved, 



Agrarian discontent continued to produce 

 rural disorders in 1885. The peasantry are 

 dissatisfied with their insufficient allotments, 

 which are continually growing smaller by sub- 

 division among their children. They manifest 

 their discontent by burning the crops or de- 

 .stroying other property of their former mas- 

 ters. The tax-gatherer that comes to confis- 

 cate the last cow of an impoverished mujik 

 for arrears of payment is frequently set upon 

 and beaten nearly to death. Sometimes the 

 peasants of adjoining villages dispute with one 

 another the possession of a piece of land. In 

 a quarrel of this nature near Elizavetpol, in 

 July, fire-arms were freely used. About the 

 same time 298 peasants were sentenced to a 

 month's imprisonment for destroying a mill, 

 the owner of which had deprived them of a 

 piece of pasture-land. Such disturbances were 

 frequent in various parts of Russia. 



Russia and the Bulgarian Beyolution. When Rus- 

 sian diplomacy, supported by the influence of 

 Prince Bismarck, opposed the union of the two 

 Bulgarias in the Constantinople Conference, 

 the Slavophiles in Russia vigorously attacked 

 the policy of the Government. The Slavonic 

 societies, the Russian Red Cross, and the Sla- 

 vophile press, have been useful instruments for 

 the accomplishment of Russian designs in the 

 Balkans. The Government, though anxious 

 to reverse the popular revolution in Roumelia 

 and to degrade Prince Alexander of Bulgaria, 

 was reluctant to quell the ardor of Slavophile 

 sentiment, which the next turn of affairs in 

 the Balkan lands might bring into accord with 

 its own purposes. At length, in the beginning 

 of December, an interdict was placed upon the 

 freedom of expression previously allowed. 



Immediately after the Roumelian coup d'etat 

 the Emperor ordered Prince Cantacuzene, the 

 Russian who was Minister of War at Sophia, 

 to resign, forbade the entry of Russian volun- 

 teers into Bulgaria, and interdicted the Rus- 

 sian officers in the Bulgarian army from giv- 

 ing any assistance to the revolutionary gov- 

 ernment in Roumelia. In consequence of these 

 orders, the Russians that held the higher posts 

 in the Bulgarian army resigned and returned 

 to Russia. On Nov. 5 the Czar struck Prince 

 Alexander's name from the Russian army list, 

 declaring him to be unfit to hold an honorary 

 command in his army. 



The Baltic Provinces. The rejection of the 

 suit of the German nobility and the municipal- 

 ities in the Baltic provinces for the confirma- 

 tion of their privileges allows the work of 

 Russification to be openly proceeded with by 

 the Imperial Government. These privileges, 

 granted by Peter the Great, guaranteed auton- 

 omous government, the preservation of the 

 provincial laws and customs, the preservation 

 of German as the official language, and of the 

 Lutheran as the established Church. The 

 mixed agrarian and national movement of the 

 Letts and Esthonians, and the disturbances and 

 incendiarism resulting from its repression by 



