Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1887 — The Russian Police. [ARTICLE]

The Russian Police.

The following case was tried before they.St Petersburg tribunal April 23, 1886: Herassimoff, the ooriadnik of a village called Bprki, in the Peterhoff district, was convicted of having put to the torture several peasants in order to extort confessions about a robbery committed by unknown persons. The peasant Marakine and the two brothers, Antonoff were all three kept hanging for several hours on a sort of improvised strappado. They were stripped of their clothes and their hands tied behind their backs by a rope, which was then passed over a rail fixed high in the wall of an ice cellar. The bodies of the unfortunate men were then raised from the ground so that they could hardly touch the icy ground with the tips of their toes. The ooriadnik appeared now and then, asking for their confessions and giving them blows on the head as they refused to comply with his wishes. One of the three victims, the peasant Marakine, "on the way to the torture-chamber was subjected to no less infamous treatment. The testimony of the elder of the village is particularly noteworthy. “Herassimoff (the ooriadnik) came to me and asked whether I equid lend him thirty men. ‘Why do you require so many ?’ I asked. Tn order,’ said he, pointing to Marakine, ‘that I may make this fellow run the gantlet.’” The witness answered that he would never permit such things to be done with the peasants of his commune, whereupon Marakine had his hands and legs tied, and was fastened by his legs to the back of the car, while his body was allowed to drag upon the ground. The horse was made to run, and Marakine was dragged inthe mud for about ten yards. Then Herassimoff said to the elder: “Bring me some straw; burn him a little.” But witness refused to bring it to him. Herassimoff was found guilty and condemned to one year’s penal servitude, so lenient is the Russian law toward crimes against humanity, reserving its severity for those who are working for humanity. Such, barbarities, which would have set on fire European diplomacy had they’ been committed by a Turkish officer, are of course exceptional, though it would be wrong to suppose them unique. From the opposite end of the Empire we hear of things which are not better, but if anything worse. It was proved by judicial inquiry before theKisheneff tribunal that in the Orgheef district the ooriadniks and the communal authorities have used for a long time various instruments of torture, one of which, called bootook, figured on the table of “mateterial evidences” in the court. It is a wooden instrument, composed of two sliding beams, which serve for screwing between them the feet of the culprit. These abominations were not unknown to the police, but the thing was brought before the tribunal only because the authorities arrested the wrong man, on whom they used the bootook with such zeal as to make him a cripple.—Steptniak, in TheFortnigtly Review.