Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1880 — Exiles in Siberia. [ARTICLE]

Exiles in Siberia.

We have heard it calculated by a very me derate Russian Liberal that there are at least 25,000 men of the higher ranks in Russia who are now either in Siberia, or at least exiles from Russia, and aware that to return there would cost them their liberty at once—of whom not many hundreds are involved in the Nihilist conspiracy. If anything like that estimate be the truth, the explanation of this wholesale indifference to Nihilism among the higher orders of. the Russians is obvious at once. Conceive the feelings of a Russian family the most promising of whom are either in Siberia, or in exile without hope of return, and this for no better reason than the suspicions of the Police Department.- Of course, such a family feels, and can feel, no sympathy with the authorities, and no adequate horror at the band which strikes such terror into the authorities. And tliis indifference to Nihilism among large classes who are not themselves Nihilists, of course reacts powerfully on the Nihilists, makes them feel themselves anything but outcasts, gives them even something of the character of heroes in their own eyes, since, without forfeiting the regard and respect of their class, they yet go beyond that class in the sacrifices and risks they undergo to remove, as they think, the evils from which all alike suffer. — Spectator.