Chapter XII · GOVERNMENTAL TERRORISM

Arrived in Bielostok—First impressions—Stories of the injured—The crucifix as a weapon of death—The hospital fired upon—Children victims—Failure of government to place responsibility—Mass of evidence proving governmental complicity in massacres—Other massacres officially instigated—Prince Urusoff’s speech—The assassination of Professor Hertzenstein—A celebrated Moscow physician murdered—Warsaw horrors—Upon whom rests the responsibility?—Arrest of Pasha—Shooting a girl in prison—Bureaucracy guilty of murder and assassination—Placing the responsibility on the Czar—The arch-terrorist and assassin of Russia.

HE sixth week of the Duma session a pogrom, or massacre, was instigated in the town of Bielostok, in Grodno, on the edge of Poland. I hurried to the scene as fast as I could, arriving shortly after the slaughter had ceased and before the wreckage and debris had been cleared from the streets.

My train was late. Bielostok was wrapped in midnight quiet when I alighted at the station. The first impression was that I had been set down in the midst of an armed camp. Soldiers were bivouacked in and around the station. A little bridge a few hundred yards down the line was held by a force of fighting strength. Sentinels patroled the deserted streets.

The station lies a mile or more outside of the town, and as I had not been there before I at once engaged a man to guide me to the center of the town, where I might find a place to sleep. (There was not a cab anywhere.) We trudged through arbored, deserted streets, turning out for piles of wreckage, and sometimes jumping over obstructions. Suddenly my escort stopped short with an exclamation.

“What is wrong?” I inquired.

The fellow began to blubber. It was not till I had coaxed him several minutes that he was finally able to blurt out:

“It was at this very spot that they killed our school-master—”

“Who did it?” I asked.

“Three gendarmes. I stood right there”—and he pointed to the middle of the road. “The teacher was coming along the street, annoying no one. Then three gendarmes appeared and caught hold of him and began pounding nails into his head.”

The next day I secured a photograph of the man’s corpse with the nails still in the skull.

The evening of the first night of the massacre the police gave to the world the report that a Jew had thrown a bomb into a religious procession, and for the moment the world believed this.

As a matter of fact, according to the unanimous testimony of the townspeople, and the report of the investigating committee, no bomb was thrown in the whole town on the day of the religious fête, and no Jew in any way disturbed the procession. This was an out-and-out fabrication of the police who inaugurated the massacre, designed to protect themselves.

The first man wounded told me with his own lips what actually transpired. He was standing by the bedside of his wife, who had that hour given birth to a child. Hearing a procession passing the house he stepped to the window to look out. A soldier deliberately raised his rifle and fired at him—the bullet hitting him in the shoulder. That shot was the signal for the beginning of the massacre which continued in the shape of a murderous riot for three days. Not a hand was raised during those three days to put a stop to the deeds of horror, although the governor of the province knew about it and had at his disposal troops sufficient to quell a dozen such affairs. The police led in the massacre, assisted by the flotsam and jetsam of the town known as the Black Hundred, while the military acquiesced by refraining from interference. As I passed one cot in the hospital a voice called to me in broken English:

“You speak English?”

I turned in surprise and saw a man of about middle age, almost wholly swathed in bandages.

“How do you come to know English?” I inquired.

“I lived five years in London,” he answered, adding quickly, “Do you want to know what happened to me?”

I told him I did.

“Well, you see, I had worked hard and saved five hundred rubles ($250.00), and I thought I would take my family to America. I went to Warsaw to buy the tickets. I was coming back with the tickets in my pocket. I got off the train at Bielostok and saw a crowd coming down the street. I did not know what it was, but I was not frightened. Then, all of a sudden, the man with the cross came at me and began to beat me, and that is all I remember.”

I wondered what the “man with the cross” could mean, and the hospital surgeon explained that the man who marched before the religious procession carried a gold cross with an image of the crucified Christ upon it, and that sacred symbol was used as a weapon of butchery and death!

Among all civilized nations hospitals are respected, even in war times. But the gendarmes stood before the Bielostok hospital and deliberately poured volley after volley into it, with no other object, apparently, than to throw the patients into a panic. Some of them threw themselves under the beds, others climbed up the chimneys. One man remained three days in a chimney, and then dropped down through the exhaustion of hunger.

When the firing upon the hospital ceased, a gendarme entered the hospital and asked if one of the doctors would come into the street to attend to some wounded men. A feldsher (a doctor’s assistant) gathered some bandages and antiseptics together and hastened out of the hospital-yard. As he passed through the gateway a gendarme shot him. He lay dead where he fell until night.

A young boy of twelve whose face had been slashed with a sword told me how the police had carried him to the local gendarmerie, after he had been cut down with the saber stroke. He recovered consciousness shortly and not being seriously hurt was perfectly able to walk home. Instead of permitting this the gendarmes threw him into a cart and then piled a number of corpses above him, and sent him out to where the dead were being buried. The grave-diggers were compassionate and allowed him to escape.

The story of Bielostok is the story of nearly every massacre of recent years in Russia that has been inaugurated by local authorities, with or without the connivance of higher authorities in St. Petersburg.

From Bielostok I ran over to Vilna, the old Lithuanian capital, picturesquely situated on the river Vilia. Immediately after the Bielostok pogrom the Vilna police circulated the rumor that on Sunday there would be a massacre of the Jews in Vilna. On Sunday the rumor was corrected. The massacre was set for Tuesday. On Tuesday it was put off till Thursday and for two weeks and a half the Jews of Vilna lived in a state of perpetual panic. Those who could fled the city, but the most were imprisoned there through their poverty.

Governmental terrorism in one form or another is employed by Russia to terrify the people of a given locality into submitting to certain impositions, or to quiet seditious gossip, or to coerce the people into voting for a Duma deputy whom they disapprove of, but who is the representative of the government.

In Russia no official of the government can be prosecuted at law without the approval of his official superiors. The prosecution of an official is popularly supposed to threaten the prestige of the Emperor, consequently any prosecution is very rare. The right of the Emperor to promulgate “exceptional laws,” which take precedence over all other laws in the empire, reduces to an absurdity every form of law-making in Russia. The right of the Emperor to place a certain official in supreme command of a given locality, removing him for the time without the pale of all civil and military authority, makes possible the greatest abuses which culminate from time to time in organized massacres. These massacres are sometimes arranged by the police and the gendarmes, as at Bielostok; sometimes by a single official, sometimes by the organization of the Black Hundred, as at Odessa. There are famous instances when massacres have been secretly planned by local authorities with the knowledge and consent of St. Petersburg. General Trepoff’s attitude of tacit consent and approval is well known.

The complicity of the Russian government in massacres and other barbarities that are periodically visited upon the Russian people is familiar to most people in Europe, but America seems very reluctant to accept the facts. We are loath to believe that a government, having dealings with civilized nations, does condone the monstrous crimes which incontrovertibly do belong to Russia.

A volume of evidence on this issue could easily be prepared. My present task is to tell of the things I saw with my own eyes, and the things I learned from unimpeachable sources. Recognizing, however, the seriousness of these charges, I feel justified in appending enough citations to official and authoritative reports to adequately support my most condemnatory statements.[13]

Senator Turau, an official investigator for the government, in reporting upon one of the Kieff pogroms stated that for purposes of defense the troops stationed in the city had been assigned to the four quarters of the town.

“Yet the pogrom lasted for three days,” he goes on to state, “and stopped only when all Jewish shops and many Jewish houses had been ransacked. The police were almost entirely absent. The troops walked slowly down the middle of the street while robbery was proceeding on both sides of them. When private persons or officials asked for help from the troops, the answer was always: ‘We have no orders.’ Even the vice-governor, Raffalsky, though in uniform, had this answer from a squad of Cossacks. Generally a shop already ransacked was guarded by a sentinel, who thought it his duty to stand there, paying no attention to the pillage which was going on all around him.”

A bystander and a policeman were told by soldiers that they were only ordered to go up and down the street. One soldier said to a law official: “We are ordered not to mix with the crowd.” A policeman appealed to a patrol which was watching the pillage of a shop; they replied: “We are ordered to see that there is no fighting and that no Russians are hurt.” Some Cossacks told a policeman: “We are here that no one may fire on the pillagers from the windows and balconies, and that they may not quarrel among themselves.” A crown lawyer asked some policemen why they did not take stolen goods from the pillagers; they answered: “Now it is impossible, as the authorities are against it.” An officer of the reserve saw robbers with knives “literally cutting up two Jews”; ten yards away stood a squadron of cavalry “looking on quietly and not moving a step.” “To stop the pogrom was possible without special efforts.” The very soldiers who refused “to break their oath,” that is, to stop the pogrom, on the very next day, obeying orders, fired on the pillagers and arrested them. The pillagers then asked: “Where were you before? Why didn’t you shoot when the Emperor’s pictures were torn down?”

According to numerous eye-witnesses, including officials, some of the policemen and soldiers joined in the robbing and seized goods. “Many ex-soldiers in uniform took an active part”; “a lieutenant of artillery was leading the robbers on the Haymarket.” Police-captain Lyashchenko and his assistant, Pirozhkoff, were in charge of the ward in which most of the sacking took place. “These two,” says a lieutenant of the reserves, “were present during the pillage and took no measures, though policemen and patrols were close at hand.” Some say that on October 31 they shouted “Hit the Jews and rob them.” Two witnesses assert that Pirozhkoff directed the robbers against a certain shop.

Major-general Bezsonoff was in charge of the second district, in which nearly all the outrages took place. He stood nearly all the time in the square before the town-hall “quietly looking on and taking no measures.” “You may wreck,” he said to those near him, “but you may not rob.” The pillagers shouted “Hurrah!” and cheered the General. A shop near the town-hall was being sacked; a detachment of troops stood looking on. Bezsonoff joined them; when asked to interfere, he remarked that he would not allow force to be used against the pillagers, and remained a cold-blooded spectator of the scene (evidence of a crown lawyer). The chief secretary of the governor-general said to him, “Your Excellency, there is a pogrom; no measures are being taken; how will you order me to understand this?” “What pogrom?” said the general; “it is a demonstration.” A woman picked up a cloth thrown from a window. “Do you call that robbery?” said Bezsonoff. “Why, it’s a find.” On November 1 two detectives heard him make a speech to the pillagers. “Boys,” he said, “you have already hit the Jews enough; you have shown that the Russian people know how to stand up for its Czar. Enough of rioting; if you go on wrecking to-morrow, then we will use force.” The robbers shouted “Hurrah!” and set about making the best use of their time. On that day General Karass summoned him and warned him for the last time that he must carry out orders and act with decision. The next day the pogrom was easily stopped.

Simultaneously with this pogrom in Kieff was another in Odessa, carried out along parallel lines.

In both of these cases the Jews were the chief victims. It must be remembered that the Jewish question in Russia is the greatest governmental red herring in history. Whenever a really vital and serious question comes up the government diverts public attention to the Jewish question. But the Jews are by no means the only victims. It will be recalled that in the Caucasus the Armenians are the sufferers, while from time to time in the interior of Russia and in Siberia pure Russians have been massacred—as in Samara on the Volga, where there was a massacre of “intellectuals” in the autumn of 1905.

In January, 1906, the Gomel pogrom occurred. In connection with this affair a secret press for the printing of incitements to violence was discovered in the chief gendarme’s office. A similar press was unearthed in the central police department at St. Petersburg. Prince Urusoff, who was assistant minister of interior under Witte, described this discovery in the course of a speech in the first Duma—a speech which was probably the most important single speech made during the brief life of Russia’s first representative assembly. He said:

In January, 1906, one of the persons occupying a subordinate position in the ministry ... began to receive a large quantity of specimen appeals ... and also anxious protests against the organizing of massacres in Vilna, Bielostok, Kieff, Nikolaieff, Alexandrovsk, and other towns.... He used every means to avert any further massacres, which he also succeeded in doing.... At this time some light, though still of an imperfect nature, was thrown on the ... work of the artificers of massacres. A group of persons, composing a kind of fighting organization of one of our “patriotic clubs,” together with some who were in close touch with the editors of a newspaper—not in St. Petersburg—undertook to combat revolution.... The Russian population (of the frontiers), and in particular Russian soldiers, were invited to settle accounts with the traitors in tens of thousands of appeals with the most agitating contents.... There were strange results if one thinks of the preservation of the unity of authority. An assistant police-master (I merely give an example) circulates the appeals without the knowledge of his chief; ... or again, a police-captain, let us say, of the first ward, was considered worthy of a confidence which was denied to the police-captain of the second ward. Some one serving in the gendarmes’ office, or in the defense section, proved to be supplied with special sums of money. To him certain of the lower people began to resort.... Frightened inhabitants went to see the governor.... Telegrams from the ministry spoke of measures to be taken to secure tranquillity; and such measures were often taken.... In some cases the police quite earnestly supposed that the measures were taken simply for show, for decency, but that they were already acquainted with the real intention of the government; they read between the lines, and thought that they heard, beyond the order of the governor, some voice from far off in which they had greater belief. In a word ... the authorities became completely demoralized.

Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, as early as the autumn of 1905, and, it would seem, before the October ministry came into office, in No. 16, Fontanka, in some remote room of the police department, a printing-press was at work; it had been purchased for the department by government money. This press was put under the control of an officer of gendarmes in civil dress, one Comisaroff, who, with a few assistants, assiduously prepared the appeals to which I have alluded. The secret of the existence of this “underground” press was so carefully kept, and the conduct of its organizers was so conspirative, that not only in the ministry, but even in the police department, there were but few persons who knew about it. Meanwhile, the work of the Union of Russian Men, whose organ the press was, was already meeting with success; for, when questioned by a person who happened to come upon the track of this organization, Comisaroff answered: “A massacre we can make for you, of any kind you please—if you like for ten men; and, if you like, for 10,000.” I may add that in Kieff a “massacre for 10,000” was arranged for February 20, but it was successfully prevented.

The President of the council of ministers (Count Witte) had, we are told, a serious attack of nervous asthma when the facts I have just narrated were communicated to him. He summoned Comisaroff, who reported to him on what he had done, and on the full powers which he had received. In a few hours the department no longer contained either the press, or the appeals, or the staff; there was left only an empty room.

Why did not Count Witte expose Comisaroff? Who can estimate the value to the government of a good Comisaroff trial? But Count Witte knew that he could not take this line and retain his place. He did not dare to combat influences which were more powerful than his own. M. Durnovo, who, reactionary as he was, confessed to Prince Urusoff that “this was not his way,” was equally impotent. Comisaroff, who had received a “decoration,” was quite recently living at large under an assumed name.

Prince Urusoff resigned office to become the assailant of the policy of massacre as a member of the imperial Duma. The ordinary bureaucratic comment on his speech was that “Prince Urusoff had betrayed government secrets.” General Trepoff said, on July 9, to a representative of Reuter’s agency, “Il mentit, et c’est tout.” But the prince did not speak at random. His speech was founded on intimate knowledge not only of the government reports already quoted, but of other documents equally important.

It matters little how much high officials of the Russian government in St. Petersburg and diplomatic representatives abroad deny governmental responsibility in regard to massacres, so long as there is abundant evidence of the guilt of lesser officials and these are allowed to go unpunished. The maximum rebuke that is usually visited upon any particularly conspicuous pogromschik is temporary suspension or transfer from one post to another—sometimes with advance in rank, sometimes with advance in pay, sometimes both.[14]

Governmental terrorism, however, does not cease with the massacres. Individuals are assassinated at official instigation, precisely as the terrorists select a bureaucrat or official for “removal.” A notable instance of this was that of Professor Hertzenstein, a dignified and honored professor in the University of Moscow. Mr. Hertzenstein had given a great deal of attention to the agrarian question in Russia during twenty years or more. His counsel and advice guided the members of the first Duma when they were framing their “agrarian program.”

Late one afternoon, Professor Paul Miliukoff, who was then editor of the “Retsch,” received word from Moscow by telegram that a semi-official Moscow newspaper

Seventy-two years old Child four years old wantonly shot

Youth and old age—Bielostok pogrom victims

just published contained an account of the mysterious murder of Professor Hertzenstein near his summer home in Terioki, Finland. No one could be found in St. Petersburg who knew of it, so Professor Miliukoff despatched a messenger to Finland to investigate. Professor Hertzenstein, while walking in his garden with his daughter, was fatally shot that night at a little before nine o’clock, or three hours after the governmental newspaper in Moscow had announced his murder!

The next morning the “Retsch” printed a concise statement of the facts—and the police instantly seized the entire edition.

Several weeks later it developed that the assassin was an ex-gendarme officer who was paid to do away with the one man whom intellectual Russia trusted to bring them through the thicket of the agrarian tangle.

Another famous instance was that of a prominent Moscow physician, named Vorobieff. About the time of the Moscow insurrection, Vorobieff’s house was entered by a party of police commanded by an ex-guards officer called Ermoleff. Ermoleff accused Vorobieff of “treating revolutionaries.”

“I am not a politician,” replied the doctor; “I am a physician, a surgeon, and as such I do what I can for whoever is brought to me without regard to political belief.”

“Have you a revolver in the house?” inquired the police officer.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “and I also have a government permit to own it and to carry it.”

“Where is it?” demanded the officer.

“In the drawer of my desk.”

“Get it.”

The doctor turned to obey—and the officer shot him in the back of the head.

“Oh, what have you done,” cried the doctor’s wife as she saw her husband fall.

“Hold your tongue and wipe up that mess on the floor,” retorted the officer as he turned to withdraw his party.

Owing to the outcry that was raised against this wanton murder the officer was arrested, but after a fortnight’s detention he was released.

The most cruel tortures are applied to prisoners in more than one Russian prison, but I think that during my year in the country I learned of no darker deeds than those perpetrated by the chief of the secret police in Warsaw, a man named Victor Green (a literal translation from the Russian). Green became dissatisfied with the number of arrests that were being made in the old Polish capital, so he ordered the arrest of many innocent men and women and then had them tortured to wring from them confessions implicating other people. I heard of his applying the most excruciating torture to young girls as well as to mere boys.

A Russian writer named Vladimeroff went to Warsaw shortly after my visit to investigate the case of a girl of eighteen, concerning whom certain terrible reports were then circulating. The following is a translation of his report on this case:

A young man named Rottkopf, a citizen of Riga, went to visit a friend who lived, as most Russians live in the larger cities, in an apartment-house containing a number of families. Now, most unfortunately for Rottkopf, just before his visit a bomb had been found by the police secreted in one of the flats. Suspicion pointed to Rottkopf’s friend. He was promptly arrested, and as a friend of the suspected man Rottkopf was arrested also.

Rottkopf had a sister, a young girl of eighteen. She, one must remember, had committed no crime. No such charge was brought against her, but she was a sister of a friend of a suspected man, and that was enough for the police. The very evening of her brother’s arrest she went out to drink tea with some friends in company with her younger brother. The police descended upon the house, and she was arrested without even a chance to change her evening clothes or to take linen along. She did not even know why she was imprisoned or of what crime the zealous police suspected her.

She was put in a solitary cell in a secret apartment of the Warsaw citadel. A sentinel was placed within; the cell was bare, with the exception of a stool and a small table. There was no bed. The bare, stone floor was meant for a sleeping-place. The sudden transition from the cheerful company of friends into the severe and gloomy surroundings of the dungeon stunned the girl. She comprehended nothing for quite awhile. She sat in a corner of the cell lost in thought. From this condition she was suddenly awakened by the indifferent voice of the sentinel. “Wake up! You will soon be taken to be tortured.”

Suddenly the cell door opened, the chief inspector entered, said a few words to the guard, and she was led through a number of poorly lit corridors and into a small room, where an oil-lamp was feebly flickering. “Listen attentively, and you will understand!” said the guard rudely as he left the room and bolted the door.

A deathly silence reigned in the room. She tried to catch the least sound, the least motion to discern the least token of life, but all was still as the grave. Suddenly she heard some voices in the adjacent room, and through the thin partition she could distinctly hear all that was spoken there. She felt her heart sink within her, as among many other voices she recognized her brother’s voice. Then there was a sound of a heavy blow, a thud from the falling of a human body, and her brother’s outcry.

Her heart was beating fast. She understood that she was alongside of the torture-chamber, where her brother was brought in to be tortured, and that she was put there in order to be tortured by the pangs and sufferings of her dearly beloved brother.

Then fell in quick succession a number of heavy blows, followed by his desperate outcries. The pain must have been unbearable—he seemed to be gasping for breath. His tormentors did not stop, however, but continued beating him for a long time. The blows fell thick and heavy, and his outcries turned into desperate screams, into wild heartbreaking sounds of one losing his reason under the influence of terrible pain. And the poor girl had to hear it all, and to know that she was powerless to stay the hands of his tormentors.

Finally the cries ceased. Were the hangmen tired, or was her brother dead? Her heart full of anguish, she pressed her ear against the partition in an effort to catch the least sound of his voice. At that moment one of the executioners entered the room and she began begging him to tell her what had become of her brother. Was he alive? Why was he tortured? What for? But it was in vain to expect human feeling in a hangman. Could the suffering of a young girl touch his heart? To her beseeching he replied rudely, laughing: “If you will not inform us all about your brother and the rest of your friends, the same will be done to you. Then you will find out what became of him and whether he is still alive.”

He then ordered her to follow him and she was led back into her former cell, where she was left to pass the night on the bare floor. But she did not close her eyes the whole night. In a dull stupor, thoughtless, motionless, she sat in a corner till morning.

The guard was all the time within, never for a moment leaving her. In the morning some black bread and water was brought to her; no other food through the whole day. But she could not touch a mouthful. As soon as night came on she was again taken into the room where she had been the previous night, and again she had to live through the same horrors of the past night. For many hours of horror she heard almost continually the screams and sobs of her brother. These sobs rent the poor girl’s soul. After her brother’s cries she heard others; she heard the sobs of another man and instinctively recognized the voice of a dear friend, a man whom she knew well and who was very near to her. That was the second night.

The third night she was again taken to listen to the sobs of the tortured; but that night she remembers as a horrible nightmare, which she could not distinguish from reality. She did not hear her brother’s cries any more; others of her friends were being tortured. She felt that she was losing her reason and she wished for death.

The fourth night she was again taken in this room. The chief executioner, organizer, and director of these tortures, Green, came in and proposed that she inform him about her brother and confess all her own crimes.

But what crimes? She had done nothing criminal; she is still so young; she knows nothing criminal either of her brother or of her other friends. What could she confess?

Upon getting her negative answer she was led into the adjacent room, from which those screams had come forth the preceding nights. It was a small room with two windows. In the center stood a table; on it were wooden and rubber canes. There was a gendarme officer, Ivanoff, with ten secret-police agents. Many held canes in their hands. The young girl was seized and put flat on the table, face down, four of the detectives grabbed her hands and feet, and the others that were armed with canes began to beat her at the command of Officer Ivanoff. The blows fell heavily, striking over the head, back, and legs.

She was beaten till she nearly lost consciousness, but not a sound escaped her. Getting tired in their monstrous work, the executioners stopped when she became motionless. She looked like a corpse with eyes closed, lips pressed tightly together, not a muscle moving. Nothing betrayed signs of life. She was in a deep faint.

Green ordered some cold water to be sprinkled on her, and she began to come to. She was then given a glass of cold water and told to confess and tell about her brother.

“But, for the sake of Christ, what shall I confess? I have done nothing criminal, I am not guilty of anything,” feebly murmured the girl.

And in answer to that came the command of the officer: “Give it to her, boys; give it to her!”

And they resumed their diabolic work.

In moments when the pain was terrible she would scream aloud. At times she would bite the edge of the wooden table, pressing her teeth hard together in the effort not to cry out. The pains were awful. The executioners had turned into cruel beasts, as if they were wild animals instead of human beings possessing heart and soul.

That night she was beaten till dawn, with interruptions, as she fainted frequently. Every time she regained consciousness the same question was put to her by the officer—whether she was willing to confess—and every time that he got her negative answer he became more furious.

At dawn she was carried into her cell and dropped on the floor in a semi-conscious condition. During the day she regained consciousness. Every part of her body ached, she could not bend her joints. The bruised parts became pitifully swollen, the red and blue marks began to fester, making the slightest motion very painful.

The next night she was again carried into the torture-room and stretched out on the table. The executioners were already at their posts awaiting their victim. The subordinate officer Ivanoff repeated the question, and, getting no answer, ordered his men to strike her, exclaiming in his rage that he would make that obstinate girl confess all.

Then Green gave orders to pinch her naked body in the contused spots, which was especially painful because of the festering and swelling.

She could not stand the pain any longer and her wild cries filled the room. The almost unbearable agony seemed to rob her of her senses. Other executioners were in the meanwhile striking her with canes over her head, her abdomen, the fingers, and toes.

The blows caused blood to ooze out through the skin in some places, and her shirt was stained with it. Some of her teeth were knocked out by blows over her face, and tufts of hair were pulled out by blows on the head, causing indescribable pain.

That lasted the whole night long.

The third night she was again taken into the torture-room, as she stubbornly refused to calumniate anybody. And she was beaten as on the previous nights. Then Green bethought himself of new ways of torture and ordered the eleven men to surround the prostrate girl and beat her over the abdomen. The blows then rained fast but not very hard on the abdomen exclusively. This immediately caused her to vomit....

On the fourth night she was also beaten. She was weak and faint; it seemed to her that she was dying. Had she not been a girl with a splendid constitution she could never have lived through this long-continued torture. The blows were raining fast; the fiends pinched her and pulled her hair. Suddenly Green ordered his men to stop, and for a few minutes she was left to lie quietly on the table. Then she was dragged on the floor and put on her back. Her executioners began kicking her with their boots. They stamped on her chest, on her abdomen; they trampled on her face. She bled from the mouth. She did not cry out; she had no more strength; she seemed silently dying.

. . . . . .

In this condition she was taken back into her cell and the prison feldsher (nurse and orderly) was called to her. Her face presented a shapeless mass of red and blue bruises. The eyes were closed by an enormous swelling; the cheeks, chin, and mouth were a big bruised mass.... For two months she hovered between life and death, but youth conquered, and she slowly began to recover. At the end of two months she began to walk a little. All this time no one was admitted to her, as the government was afraid to let her relatives see her in the condition she was in. That was to be kept a secret, not to escape from the prison walls into the outer world, so it would not cause any stir, as did Spiradonova’s case.

An acquaintance of the writer’s met her after six months had elapsed, in a northern prison, where she had been taken when she began to walk a little. This acquaintance gave his impression of her. At the first moment he thought that she was an elderly woman with an enormously large face of indefinitely outlined features. The face was pale except where covered with red and bluish spots.

But her eyes—her eyes spoke for themselves. Looking into them, he was dumbfounded—there was so much suffering, so much sadness in those eyes! He understood that this old woman must have lived through some great calamity in life, something enormous, some disaster that is beyond human endurance. He tried to engage her in conversation.

He learned then what this seemingly elderly woman had gone through. She was aged not by years, but by unbelievable tortures. She is not an elderly woman, but a young, beautiful girl who has been maimed and broken by suffering. She told with tears in her eyes that her brother was shot after being tortured, without having gone through any form of trial, solely upon the behest of Governor-general Scallon.

A few months after this Victor Green was assassinated. If there were any tribunal in Russia to whom appeal against an official of this stamp could be carried, the so-called terrorist would never have been called into existence. In America I frequently have it said to me: “The Russian revolutionists who are guilty of murder and assassination do more than anything else to injure the cause of liberty in their country. Their deeds are veritably the sowing of dragon’s teeth of hate and murder.”

But fairly—on the testimony—who sows the dragon’s teeth? Is it the man who checks the career of a monstrous creature like Green? Is it the murderous official himself? Or is it the government and the police and other officials of the Czar?

Pasha was taken one afternoon in July. Her family had persuaded her to go abroad for the summer, so with her mother she started for Switzerland. They traveled to St. Petersburg from Moscow and were to take the Berlin train late one afternoon. About two o’clock that afternoon Pasha ran over to the office of a certain newspaper to bid a friend good-by. Suddenly the police appeared, the office was surrounded, and every one who chanced to be there at the time was marched off to prison. The mother awaited the return of her daughter with impatience that soon became alarm. Train-time came and passed. About dusk a party of gendarmes appeared at the house where they had been stopping and informed madame of Pasha’s arrest. Then they ransacked the house. The only evidence found was a copy of my notes on my interview with Marie Spiradonova, which Pasha had borrowed. Incidentally, during the course of the search, Pasha’s gold watch and chain, which had been lying on the bureau, disappeared.

While there were really serious charges against Pasha, these were all registered against her conspirative name, consequently no definite charge of any kind was known against her at the time of this arrest. Merely on the strength of her having been in the newspaper office she was kept “on suspicion.” Later developments in her case are not germane to the moment. She was put into a cell with a number of other women to await trial. One Sunday afternoon an incident occurred in this cell which aroused wide interest, and Pasha, knowing that I would want an accurate account of the affair, managed to write and have smuggled out to me a graphic letter. The only necessary word of explanation concerns the time-worn custom observed in Russian prisons of allowing political prisoners to receive donations of food one day a week from their friends, which recipients share with their less fortunate comrades. In the particular prison where Pasha was incarcerated there was a group of men politicals in a room directly over the women. When the women were ready to divide their contributions with the men they generally rapped on the ceiling with a broom or mop-handle, and the men would drop a cord out of their window so that it would dangle in front of one of the windows of the women’s room. Pasha’s account of what is now known as the Semonova tragedy (Semonova being the name of one of the other women confined in the prison) is as follows [I give her own words]:

On Sunday after six o’clock Semonova came to the center window. She tapped on the ceiling with the mop-stick for the men of the room above to drop the string—the telephone—they called it. The package with tea, sugar, and tobacco was on the window-sill. Some women were standing near Semonova, others, I among them, were sitting at the table, drinking tea. One was walking up and down. We were sixteen in the room, which made it very crowded. I saw the string drop and several hands go through the bars to hold it, but the winds blow it from them and then suddenly it was jerked up. Semonova sat sideways on the window sill, her left side toward the window, and her left hand supported her head. She seemed to be waiting for the telephone to be dropped for the second time. A few seconds later a shot rang out. I saw a small puff of yellow smoke. Semonova’s head dropped strangely. My heart stood still. “Can it be!” but I saw that the group at the window moved and no one seemed wounded. I ran to them in the hope that I was mistaken. Meanwhile one who was standing near her took Semonova and laid her down on the floor with the words “She is killed.”

One of the prisoners who was a feldsher felt her pulse, but with a gesture of hopelessness turned aside. Semonova’s eyes were glazed and blood flowed from her head. I could not desert her. It seemed to me she still felt and I could not leave her alone.

A general uproar arose in the room and the women cried and shrieked “Doctor! Doctor!” Then the room suddenly became empty. Some one poured water on Semonova’s head. A feldsher came in, examined her, and said: “Her skull is fractured.” We lifted her up and placed her on a cot. I did not believe her dead and thought she still suffered.

When the doctor came he said death had been instantaneous. The bullet entered the left temple and came out through the forehead, because she had been sitting with her head a little bent, leaning it on her left hand. Her back had been turned to the soldier who was pointing at her.

When I saw she was dead I went to the window and cried to the soldier: “Murderer! You have killed a human being!” He pointed at me, but I jumped back before he had time to fire. The same thing happened to the others who attempted to approach the window. We ran to the gate which acted as a door between our room and the hallway and behind which were amassed a pack of overseers and cried: “Murderers, will you shoot us all?” One of them with an impudent laugh said: “Well, why did she sit on the window-sill?”

Later some one, I don’t know who, said that the soldier had received the order “not to shoot any more.”

I learned from others what happened outside of the rooms. The women ran to the gate with cries of “doctor.” A woman overseer opened it because, it seems, she was so bewildered she could not realize what had happened. All ran out into the corridor. There they met the prison director, who was going to our room. A comrade ran up to him and began beating his face with her fists. He was so bewildered that all he could do was to say: “I am not guilty. I gave no orders to shoot,” and went back and did not come again to our room. All the officials who came later were without him. The comrade who beat the director was taken by force to the hospital. Later she was allowed back.

Our first demand was that Semonova’s brother should know what had happened. We gave them his address, but we knew later they did not do it. We asserted that without her brother and without the court officials we would not give up the body, and we waited for the coroner and procuror. The prison inspector came, but went away soon. We were seventeen besides the dead in the room now because two from the hospital had come also. The overseers wanted to drag them back.

Imagine a large, high room, lighted by one lamp. On the cot the body with bloody head and glazed eyes covered with a sheet. Near the cot, on the floor where she had been lying, was a pool of blood. Many of us had blood on our hands and dresses. Some were annoyed by the light and the lamp was covered by a piece of dark cloth, then others were afraid of the darkness and after sitting some time in a dark corner would lose consciousness. Hysterical cries, long faintings, hallucinations—all we lived through that night....

The table was covered with bromo, Hoffman drops, ice-bags, ammonia, etc. We called the doctor every minute. We were afraid it would not end with one death only. After some hours they cleared a little room in the hospital and the weakest of us were brought there. At last, about eleven o’clock, the judge of the court and procuror came. While the judge and the doctor were examining the wound, we told the procuror that the brother had not yet been notified. “But I can do it,” he said. After the prison procuror came he said he would leave it to him and he sneaked away—because a talk with a dozen outraged and fury-like women could not have been agreeable to any one. You should have seen these “gentlemen” placed there in our cage and forced to hear epithets far from flattering which were addressed against them and the prison director. Of course any other time we would have had to pay for this, but in sight of the body which was still warm they could not bring themselves to call in the overseer and use force.

The procuror told me that all the details noted by the judge of inquiry would be handed over to the military procuror, because the murderer was a soldier. When the judge of inquiry left, the prison procuror and prison inspector remained. They told us that the body would be taken by the police to be buried. We replied that we would give it up only to her brother. We received the answer that that was impossible....

The procuror promised to influence the police to let the brother know before the burial and that the brother would be allowed to see one of us so that we might be assured that he was at the funeral. However he seemed frightened of his last promise and he said: “I will come myself to you and I will tell you about everything. You surely believe me.”

“We don’t believe you at all and we demand to see the brother.”

They were forced to consent and one of us was promised to see him.

A bier was brought. We put her on it ourselves and carried her out along the corridor. We wanted to keep her as long as possible from their unclean hands. Some one proposed to sing the funeral march, but our hearts were too heavy. Quietly, quietly we carried her through the corridor, then down-stairs, and there we put her in her coffin. There were packs of overseers in the upper and lower corridors. The scoundrels were waiting for a “disturbance.” They could not understand that that was far from our hearts. Through the open doorway we saw the police waiting for the coffin. There, too, the ugly face of the prison director hiding from us flashed by....

It was about one o’clock at night. We came back to the same room where all that remained of her was a pool of blood. We became terribly depressed as if we had behaved badly toward her to give her up without a fight. And no one will know where her grave will be, for we could not believe their promises. However, the next day one of us was called to see the brother. Expecting a lie, she asked him from where he comes, for she knew from Semonova where her birthplace was. He answered correctly. Then she told him the details of the shooting.

“You can’t expect justice from them,” he replied. However he promised to talk with a lawyer about the case.

He said that about ten o’clock in the morning he was told to go to the police-station. There they told him to go to the monastery of the Alexander Nevski. He called for a girl friend of his sister’s to go along with him. They were hardly given time to take leave of his sister. He came about ten minutes before the interment. There was an order from the chief of police—“to hurry with the funeral.” At the funeral was a police captain, a sergeant, a gendarme, the brother, and the girl’s friend.

We brought to the notice of the procuror:

1. That the administration knew for a long time about the existence of the telephone and had never objected. And when we disobeyed a rule of the administration, we were always punished. As, for instance, for singing we were deprived of seeing visitors and receiving things from them.

2. That at the time of the shooting she was sitting still, which gave the soldier an opportunity to make a good shot.

3. That he shot into a crowded room, and it was a miracle that others were not killed also.

To the last statement the procuror interposed: “What might have happened has no importance.” Altogether he was impossible....

To our demand to give a definite promise that the appointment with the brother would be given he answered prudently: “If nothing particular will interfere.”

“That means”—

“That means if he won’t be arrested before. We are all in the hands of God.”

“Do you mean because they killed the sister, you will arrest the brother?”

“You did not understand me. I was only speaking of a possibility. I was presupposing. Why do you insist on misunderstanding me?”

We came to such a good understanding that next day the brother was still free.

A considerable uproar followed this incident. St. Petersburg newspapers clamored for the court-martial of the soldier who had fired the shot. The man was eventually tried—and acquitted. Then the newspapers, echoing public sentiment, declared that the trial was a farce. The matter was not allowed to drop out of sight.

One day the regiment to which the soldier belonged was ordered out on parade and this man’s name was called. The letter was then read from the Czar, announcing that the soldier be rewarded with ten rubles, or five dollars, for having so nobly done his duty!

This closed the incident.

Governmental terrorism exists throughout the whole gamut of the Russian bureaucracy. Petty police and gendarme officers plan and execute massacres; soldiers are called upon to stand one side, or to assist in the slaughter. Knowledge of these massacres is often known in advance in St. Petersburg and sometimes they are actually arranged in the offices of the central administration.[15]

Premier Stolypin with his field courts-martial (described in detail in another chapter) has shown himself no more of a humanitarian than Trepoff, and in the Semonova incident the Czar revealed to the world his intimate familiarity with small incidents.

I have no sympathy whatever with the belief that the Czar does not know what his ministers and officials are doing. If there are details that do not reach him, he alone is at fault. The present Emperor is a traditional autocrat. It is my conviction that he acquiesces in, if he does not instigate, massacre and occasional assassination. However much one may deplore terrorism—white or red—one thing stands out clear and true to my mind, namely, the burden of responsibility lies not with the terrorists of the revolution—their acts are human if to be deplored—but rather with the infinitely more heinous assassins of the government—who are distinctly inhuman—and most of all upon him who is the ultimate head of the whole governmental terroristic organization, the arch assassin who, by a word, could end for all time massacre and murder in the Russian empire—Czar Nicholas II.