Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1888 — THE TYRANT OF RUSSIA. [ARTICLE]

THE TYRANT OF RUSSIA.

ANihilHtic Detin.tion of Nlhlliam— It* Aim* *nd Demand*, f* " Slapnlak, lia Gnlnlur Rpini, Telia Why the United Stele* Srnxte Should Ratify th* Kuwun Tree y London cable to Cincinnati Enquirer. .« Stepniak, the Nibuiet leader and writer, who is an exile from Ruaaia, and whose works are well-known in America, is at present a resident of London, tn an interview in regard to the extradition treaty between hi* native, country and the United States, he said: “I am glad to see you, with regard to the petition I have sent to the United States Senate begging for the rejection of the extradition treaty which will shortly be placed before them for their sanction. Before sanctioning this treaty I want to give the American Senate and people an idea of what the so-called Nihilist Party of Russia really is, to enable them to form someconception of the motives—the Treib Feder—tn face of the actions of the men whom this treaty classes with felons and forgers, and to save them from prejudicing our case on very meager, and most often distorted information which is within their reach. The actual value of the right of asylum in America, which by this treaty is taken away from us, is really nil. Since the first rebellion against Czar Nicholas, in 1825, and the inception of what has become the so called Nihilist movement, not six political offenders have taken refuge in America, which Compared with England, is so far away. But the sanction of the Senate to this treaty wiH be a tremendous victory for Czariem. The moat despotic will have become allied with the most liberal Government on the globe. In a sense, the United Sates will become a party to the crimes of the tyrannical Czar. It will refuse refuge and shelter to those who, trampled upon by au iron-heeled despotism, have played the only manly part, preferring to give hopeless battle rather than relapse into shameful slavery. “By the life’s blood of these gallant men the flame which is devastating the imp< rial autocracy of Russia is being fed. I can not hope that Americans in the aggregate will approve of our unlawful means of warfare, but I do hope that by placing strikingly before them the causes which have compelled us to take such barbaric action, they will refrain from joining hands with the Czar and his clique ol courtiers, who have taken away from us all other means of action but the desperate ones we now make use of. “Let me contrast the two Governments, and then I think the abyss between your ballot qnd our bomb will appear somewhat, if not quite, abridged. Your Government is crystalized public opinion. Your law is not the ‘ewige krankheit’of which Goethe speaks, or a ’heritage of woe’ from generation to generation. This constant—changing with you at the command of the people and the press is quite in accordance with the nature of your Government. From the keystone to the capstone of the despotic edifice is written the motto, the Czar’s will be done. Our Government is composed of those who form themselves to be his most obedient and unscrupulous servants. Their term of office rests alone upon his pleasure. Our law—law upon which the liberty of one hundred million men depends—is the mere whim of the ruling Romanoff, meted out by utterly dependent officers. Public opinion has no vent, the people no right of ' meeting. There are no popular assemblies to make known popular wants. Even the mediae val right of petitioning has been taken away and those who are hardy enough to reclaim it, not ooly do not meet with a hearing, but are transported or imprisoned for their termity. There are some newspapers permitted for the purpose of publishing governmental decrees. They are subsidized, and their editors are appointed by the Minister of the Interior. Tne trge voice of the people heard a.intervals through the peripatetic press of ‘underground Russia’ is one which the Government seeks to stifle, well knowing that every time it is heard it awakens echoes in the breasts of all Russians which will never cease to reverberate afid grow. “I have told you thav-the people of Russia have ho vested rights, no trial by jury, no press, no frsnehisekand no voice in their fate. Now for an arbitrary and untrammeled arbiter of their destiny, the Czar is absolute master of all. Our hatred of him is, of course, merely ex-officio. He is not responsible fbr his birth. Some three or four years ago, shortly after the unsuccessful at tempt to assassinate him, on the 13 h of March, the anniversary of his father’s death in Newak, the Cz«r issued a manifesto to his people,iu which he eaid that in view of some apparent discontent he had consulted the Crown advisers as to the best manner of relieving it, and that they had agreed to the then in force form of aristocratic government was necessary to the well being of the greatest number of subjects, and that by the help of God and of his loyal subjects he would continue to rule after the fashion of his fathers before him. And I believerhe believed wh the said. He suffers the curse of tyrants. No one will tell him the truth. And if someone should dare speak the truth to him he would first be Janghed at, then carted off «c Siberia, as tainted with the new and t übversive teaebings of modernism. The bureaucrats whom the Czar con-

sult* are indeed wise in their generation. For them there are year* of plenty. They are fattening. But they foresee years of famine for them to come. They seek merely to delay. Of course they will not tell the Czar the reason of the the present universal discontent. First ol all, the a ceptance of the true status of things means their downfall from power with it* unlimited power of polite pillage. . “Some few years ago there were agrarian troublee in one of the Northern Government*. Some of the notables of the district were invited by the Czar.to explain the trouble and Submit a plan of relief. These luckless nobles had lived a long way from the courts, and did not know that telling the truth was out of the question. They replied to the invitation of the Czar, stating that the grievances were well founded, and submitted a plan for their redressal, which entailed the institution of a local elective assembly. But the punishment of these men, who on being asked told the truth, is sad to relate. One and all of them were arrested. Some were sent to Siberia, some to the fortresses along the Baltic, and not one of them was again seen in his native province. They had been adjudged guilty of ‘modernism’ by the Vehmgericht of the Czar. After this you will no longer ponder why no one tells the Czar the truth. “It is strange but true, more owing to the disadvantages of his position than to any peculiar hereditary traits, the ruling Romanoff is bound to be grossly ignorant and cruel, from not having a perception of what is mis< ry and wrong. His reign is that of a military and medieval Danciad. “We have, then, tens of millions suffering unexampled wrongs. Russia is speechless, stifled, gagged, bereft of legal and constitutional means of making known her grievances. The despairing cry of the suffering serfs do not reach the serene height of the throne. Without trial by jury, without franchise—on the tdge of the precipice—it is only with dynamite that we can make ourselves heard—only with the dagger’s fear. But at the time when Vera Baesulitch shot and almost, but unfortunately did not quite, kill General Trepoff, the late Czar had a strange whim. He willed that she should be tried by jury. This incident shows more than anything that cm be written or said how far out of the ken of popular opinion he is. He felt convinced that the brave woman would be convicted, and wished to give the verdict the force of being a popular one. But she was declared ‘not guilty.’ St. Petersburg was all but illuminated in her honor. The Czar was cured of his whim of starting jury trials. “What is Nihilism and what do Nihilists seek to attain? You ask a large question but not difficult to answer. Old Nihilism, as you know, meant individualism par excellence, as Anarchy. New Nihilism, I distinctly maintain, is a movementof the intelligent amelioration of the iron despotism under which, to our shame, we have lived so long. Tourgene if, who gave in a slighting sense old Nihilism its name, learned to see the good of the new party of Liberalism. And before he died he was with us. “We ask to be enfranchised, to have some constitutional counterpoise to the power of the Czar. We ask that the Russian people be given a collective voice with which to articulate its woes, and to ask for their redress. We only ask that the gag, which was thrown upon us centuries ago, be removed. Unices in time he perceives the patn of wisdom the twentieth century will see the Czir of all the Russias in exile. He could compromise now on a constitutional monarchy. Per haps three k yesrs hence he may not be able to, and the Czir sees this rapid progress and eels the decadency of his power of brutal resistance. I. do not think that ' this will drive once again the Czar into war. The last time this expedient was tried it was found too costly. The conquest of the latest appendage to the Crown, the Central Asian Empire, has, like all the preceding wars of conquest and aggrandizement, occupied the minds and energies of many of our most enterprising men, and but for which many would undoubtedly have joined our movement. So, if it depends upon Russia, as some say, I feel anre in predicting that there will be no war next spring, t “One last word about dynamite and about daggers. I have said that their use is repugnant to humanity. To none is it more hateful than to our comrades. They use both one and the other under the sternest compulsion of an inexorable destiny. I have seen men bent with sorrow and their eyes red with weeping leaving the meeting ot” the Central Committee when intrusted with some sanguinary mission. Not that they were not glad to seal their fidelity to the cause by uncomplainingly dying, but horrified at the thought of the only means left with which to cripple the tyrant. “I am aware that all I can say is exparte. Allow me to recommend the writings Of Mr. Kennon, an American, ( who recently visited Russia an avowed conservative and came away convinced of the justice of Nihilism. Let the American Senators read carefully what he says before entering upon political partnership with the Russian Czar. In reality, the sanctioning or rejecting this treaty is nothing to us. Morally, it means everything.” -