RUSSIA. 



709 



In 1859 permission for the literary use of 

 Little Russian was granted. A luxuriant growth 

 of literature in the ancient tongue and an 

 enthusiastic revival of philological studies re- 

 sulted. This movement was hemmed, but not 

 checked, by the recall of the permission in 

 1876. The idiom, banished from the church, 

 the school, the theatre, and the book-shop, and 

 persecuted in the land of its origin, took refuge 

 in the eastern districts of the Austrian prov- 

 ince of Galicia. Among the Ruthenians of 

 Galicia the Russians set agencies to work to 

 encourage the national sentiment which they 

 endeavor to crush out in Esthonia and Li- 

 vonia. 



Educational Measures. The reform of univer- 

 sity education is under consideration. The 

 indications are that the changes will be reac- 

 tionary. It is proposed to reintroduce bodily 

 punishment in the gymnasia. An order of 

 Delyanoff, issued in 1882, allows students to 

 be transferred from one university to another 

 at the discretion of the curators. The eccle- 

 siastical censorship over scientific books has 

 ceased, and the jurisdiction of the censors is 

 confined to political works. The universities 

 gave the authorities much trouble in the spring. 

 First occurred an outbreak of the students at 

 Nova Alexandria, on the Polish border, result- 

 ing in the closing of the college and the ex- 

 pulsion of 143 students. Subsequently the 

 students at Kazan revolted against the uni- 

 versity authorities, and then those at St. Pe- 

 tersburg. 



Nihilism. Numerous arrests, made under the 

 administration of Count Tolstoy, reduced the 

 number of daring and desperate conspirators. 

 The coronation passed off without any terror- 

 istic act, though various plots were frustrated 

 by the police, to whose vigilance it was due that, 

 for a long time after, no political crime oc- 

 curred. Yet the issue of proclamations from 

 the secret press showed the vitality of the 

 revolutionary party, and by many evidences, 

 kept from the knowledge of the public as far 

 as possible, the Government perceived that it 

 was not less numerous or dangerous than be- 

 fore. Arrests were made in great numbers, 

 particularly among the students. The old pre- 

 fecture of police was re-established. The Holy 

 League, formed to combat the Nihilists by 

 means of their own system of secret organiza- 

 tion, was not approved of by the Government, 

 and accomplished no results of importance. 

 -In April a great Nihilist trial took place at St. 

 Petersburg. Bogdanovich, who was accused 



between the Slavs and the Muscovites in the middle of tha 

 eighteenth century. The process of Slavification is still go- 

 ing on in the eastern governments, where Finnish, with only 

 an admixture of Slavic words, is spoken ; while, in the west- 

 ern and northern parts of the same region, the lower classes 

 still speak a compound language. The number of Slavifled 

 Tartars in European Russia is estimated at 40,000,000, against 

 only 15,000,000 pure Eusso-Slavs. After the time of Peter 

 the Great, the Government began to conceal and deny 

 the Asiatic origin of the Great Russians. A protest of Cath- 

 arine the Great provoked the remark of Mirabeau that " the 

 Russians are Europeans only by virtue of a declaratory defi- 

 nition of their sovereign." 



of laying the mine under the Little Garden 

 street, made a noteworthy declaration of the 

 aims and principles of the Party of Terror, 

 which were not to overthrow all authority, but 

 to establish a just system of administration. 

 The seventeen prisoners belonged to all ranks 

 of society, from the peasantry to the nobility. 

 All but one were convicted, and six of them 

 sentenced to death, including Bogdanovich, 

 Telahoff, who was implicated in the attempt 

 to blow up the imperial train at Alexandroff- 

 sky in 1879, and Gracheffsky, who was charged 

 with being one of the assassins of Alexander 

 II. Soon after the trial a number of officers 

 of the army were said to have been arrested. 

 At the very end of the year, Lieut.-Col. Sudei- 

 kin, of the St. Petersburg gendarmerie, the 

 most efficient officer engaged in the detective 

 work against the Nihilists, was murdered by 

 subordinates, who enticed him into an empty 

 building, on the pretext of arresting a female 

 Nihilist. The perpetrator was Degajeff, alias 

 Jablonsky, formerly a captain on the artillery 

 staff, who was known to have been a mem- 

 ber of the revolutionary party, and was em- 

 ployed by Sudeikin as a spy. 



Anti- Semitic Disturbances. Spasmodic out- 

 breaks of anti-Jewish feeling occurred during 

 the year, and serious disturbances in Ekate- 

 rinoslav, the district of Southern Russia which 

 is most notorious for such excesses. In May 

 occurred anti-Semitic disturbances in Rostov, 

 where one hundred and thirty houses were 

 wrecked by rioters, fifteen of whom were shot 

 down by the police. In July the Jewish burial- 

 ground at Ostrog was violated and the attend- 

 ants murdered. In August grievous excesses 

 were committed in Ekaterinoslav. They be- 

 gan on the 2d with the destruction of the 

 shop of a Jewish merchant who struck a peas- 

 ant-woman. The riot then took the usual 

 course. The mob broke into one house after 

 another, and with knives and hammers demol- 

 ished everything. The Jews who did not es- 

 cape in time to the woods were beaten and 

 maltreated. Some of them died of their in- 

 juries. The military arrived immediately and 

 fired into the mob, killing fourteen and wound- 

 ing twenty-eight, but without stopping the 

 work of demolition. This disturbance in Eka- 

 terinoslav was characterized by a new and por- 

 tentous feature. The Jews were not the only 

 objects of the rage of the mob, but the houses 

 of Christians were attacked as well, indicating 

 the prevalence of communistic sentiments, and 

 the dangerous discontent caused by the eco- 

 nomic distress which exists in many parts of 

 Russia, particularly in the south. In Novem- 

 ber a riot, in which Jewish dram-shops and 

 nouses, and houses of Christians as well, were 

 plundered, broke out in Krivbrog, a town in 

 the government of Ekaterinoslav. 



A Jewish commission, presided over by 

 Count Pahlen, formerly Minister of Justice, 

 proposed in their report methods for abating 

 the evil practices to which the Jews are ad- 



