Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1887 — RUSSIAN TERRORISM. [ARTICLE]

RUSSIAN TERRORISM.

The Manner of Securing Testimony AgainA Political Revol utloniuts. The following is from George Kennan’s account of “Prison Life of the Russian Revolutionists” in the 1 December Century: When General Btrelnikoff was intrusted by the Czar with almost dictatorial power in order that he might extirpate sedition in the provinces of southern Russia, he arrested and threw into prison in the single city of Odessa no less than 118 pereons in three days. He went to Kiev and arrested 89 persons almost simultaneously, and ordered the imprisonment of hundreds ; of others in Kbarkoff, Nikolaief, Pultava, Kursk, and other South Russian cities Most of these arrests were made entirely without what is known as “probable cause,” and for the sole purpose of obtaining clews to plots which the police believed to exist, but which they had not been.able to discover. Many of the persons arrested were mere children—immature sohool-boys and girls from fifteen to seventeen years of age—who could not possibly be regarded as dangerous conspirators, but who might, it was thought, be terrified into a confession of all they knew with regard to the movements, conversations, and occupations of their older relatives and friends. General Stretnikoff’s plan was to arrest simultaneously a large number of the “untrustworthy” class; throw them into prison; keep them for ten days or two weeks in the strictest* solitary confinement, ana men subject tnem t to a terrifying inquisitorial examination with the hope of extorting scraps of information, here a little and there a little, which might be pieced together, like the parts of a dissected map, so as to reveal the outline of a revolutionary plot. If, for example, a young girl belonged to an “untrustworthy” family, and a ‘ suspicious” letter to her had been intercepted by the authorities; or if she had been seen coming out of a “suspicihus” house at a late hour in the evening, she was arrested in one of these police raids, generally at night; conveyed in a close carriage to the Odessa prison; put into a small solitary confinement cell and left to her own agonizing thoughts. No explanation was given her of this summary proceeding, and if she appealed to the sentinel on duty in the corridor, the only reply she obtained was “Frikazano ne gavarit”—“Talking is forbidden.” The eflect produced upon a young, inexperienced, impressi-* ble girl, by the overwhelming shock of such a transition from repose, and security of her own bedroom, in her own -home, to a narrow, gloomy * cell in a common criminal prison at night, can readily be imagined. Even if she were a girl of courage and] firmness of character, her self-control might give way under the strain of such an ordeal. The sounds which break the stillness of a Russian criminal prison at night—the stealthy tread of the guard; the faintly heard cries of a drunken “casual” who is being strapped to his bed in another part of the prison, cries which suggest to an inexperienced giri some terrible scene of violence and outrage; the occasional clang of a heavy door; the moaning and hysterical weeping of other recently arrested prisoners in cells in the same corridor, and the sudden and noiseless appearance now and then of an unknown human face at ihe little square port-hole in the cell door through which the prisoners are watched—all combine to make the first night of a young girl in prison an experience never to be forgotten while she lives. The This experience, however, is only the beginning of the trial which her courage and self-control are destined to undergo. One day passes—two days—three days—ten days—without bringing any news from the outside world, or any intormatiou concerning the nature of the charges made against her. Twice every twenty-four hours food is handed to her through the square port-hole by the taciturn guard, but nothing else breaks the monotony and the solitude of her life. Bhe has no books, no writ ing materials, no means whatever of diverting her thoughts or relieving the mental strain which soon becomes almost unendurable. Tortured by apprehension and by uncertainty as to her own fate and thf fate of those dear to her, she can only pace hercell from corner to corner until she is exhausted,and then throw herself on the narrow prison bed and in sleep try to lose consciousness of her misery. c At last, two'weeks perhaps after her arrest, when her spirit is supposed to beesuffieiently broken by solitSsy confinement and grief, she is summoned to the doprbs, a’prelimfnary examination, _wiihont witnesses or counsel, conducted by General Streinikoff in° person. He begins by saying to her that she is “charged with very Herious crimes under such and such sections the of PeDal Code, and that she stands in danger of years. In' view, however, of her youth and inexperience, and of the probability that she has been misled by criminal associates, he feels authorized to say to “her that if she will show repentance,and a sincere desire to reform, by making a ‘cristo-serdechni,’ —‘clean-hearted’ confession,—and will answer truthfully all quegtions pnitbTier.BhewHttnnnedlateIv be released. If, on the contrary, she manifests an obdurate disposition and thns proves herself to be tinworthy of ek money, it will become hia doty, as - v. J- ; -»-- •.. ' . ' "

prosecuting officer of the Crown, to treat her with all the rigor of the law.” The poor girl is well aware that the reference to Siberian exile is not an empty threat. Belonging a 3 she does to an “untrustworthy” family, site has often heard discussed the case of Marie Prisedski, who was exilpd before she was sixteen years of age because she would not betray heroldersister,aud the case of the Ivitchevitch children, one seventeen and the other fourteen years of age, who were arrested in Kiev and sent to Siberia in 1879 for no particular reason except that their two older brothers were revolutionists and, been shot * dead while resisting arrest. It is not a matter for surprise if a young girl who has thus been torn from her home, who is depressed and disheartened by solitary confinement, who is without counsel, without, knowledge of the law, without the support of a single friend in this supieme crisis of her life, breaks down at last under the strain' of deadly fear, tells the inquisitor ail she knows. She is at once released, but only to suffer agonies of Belf-reproach and remorse as she sees, her relatives and dearest friends arrested, imprisoned, and exiled to Siberia upon information and clews which she herself has furnished. It frequently happens, however, that a girl remains steadfast and refuses to answer questions even after months of solitary confinement. The authorities then resort to other and even more discreditable methods.