# Siberia and the Exile System/Volume 2/Chapter XIII

Siberia and the Exile System Volume 1
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHARACTER OF POLITICAL EXILES.
TO the student of modern Russian history few questions are more important, and none, perhaps, is more interesting, than the question suggested by the title of this chapter—what is the character of the men and women who have been exiled to Siberia for offenses comprehensively but vaguely known in Russia as "political"? Are all of these people alike in their dispositions, their aims, and their methods, or do they differ among themselves in these respects? Are they reasonable, patriotic, liberty-loving citizens, actuated by disinterested motives and provoked into violence only by intolerable oppression and injustice, or are they merely a gang of wrong-headed malcontents, visionary enthusiasts, and fanatical assassins who would be imprisoned or hanged in any civilized state? In short, are the Russian political exiles entitled to our sympathy, or do they deserve our reprobation? It has been my fortune to make the personal acquaintance of more than five hundred members of the anti-Government party in Russia, including not less than three hundred of the so-called nihilists living in exile at the convict mines or in the penal settlements of Siberia. I have formed a definite and well-settled opinion with regard to their character, and ​it is my purpose, in this chapter, briefly to state it and give my reasons for it.
There is a widely prevalent impression in western Europe and the United States that the anti-Government party or class in Russia is essentially homogeneous; that its members are all nihilists; that they prefer violence to any other means of redressing wrongs; that they aim simply and solely at the destruction of all existing institutions; and that, in this so-called nihilism, there is something peculiar and mysterious — something that the Western mind cannot fully comprehend owing to its ignorance of the Russian character. This impression seems to me to be a wholly erroneous one. In the first place the anti-Government party in Russia is not, in any sense of the word, homogeneous. Its members belong to all ranks, classes, and conditions of the Russian people; they hold all sorts of opinions with regard to social and political organization; and the methods by which they propose to improve the existing condition of things extend through all possible ​gradations, from peaceful remonstrance, in the form of collective petition, to terroristic activity, in the shape of bomb-throwing and assassination. The one common bond that unites them is the feeling, which they all have, that the existing state of affairs has become insupportable and must be changed.
In the second place there is no anti-Government party in Russia to which the term nihilistic can properly be applied. This may seem, perhaps, like a very strange statement, in view of the fact that we have never heard of any other anti-Government party in Russia; but it is a true statement nevertheless. There is no party in the Empire that deliberately chooses violence and bloodshed as the best conceivable means of attaining its ends; there is no party that aims simply and solely at the overthrow of existing institutions; and there is no party that preaches or practises a philosophy of mere negation and destruction. I make these assertions confidently, because my acquaintance with so-called nihilists is probably more extensive and thorough than that of any other foreigner, and I have discussed these questions with them for many hundreds of hours. Liberals, reformers, socialistic theorists of the Bellamy type, political economists of the Henry George type, republicans, constitutionalists, revolutionists, and terrorists I have met in all varieties, both in European Russia and in Siberia; but a nihilist in the proper, or even in the popular, signification of that word — never. Of course, if you use the term nihilist as you would use the term "Know-nothing," merely to denote a certain social or political party, and without reference to the original significance of the appellation, you may apply it to any body of men — to the Knights of Labor for example, or to the Farmers' Alliance; but if you use the word with a consciousness of its primary signification, as you would use the word "yellow" to describe an orange, you cannot properly apply it to any branch of the anti-Government party in Russia. ​There is in the Empire no party, organization, or body of men to which it is applicable.
The word nihilist was introduced in Russia by Tourguénef, who used it in his novel "Fathers and Children" to describe a certain type of character which had VÉRA PHILLÍPOVA [BORN FIGNER]. (A terrorist who has been immured in the castle of Schlüsselberg for life.) then recently made its appearance in the ranks of the rising generation, and which he contrasted, sharply and effectively, with the prevailing types in the generation that was passing from the stage. As applied to Bazaróf, the skeptical, materialistic, iconoclastic surgeon's son in Tourguénefs novel, the word nihilist had a natural appropriateness which the Russian public at once recognized. There were differences of opinion as to the question whether any such class as that represented by Bazaróf really existed, but there was no difference of opinion with regard to the appropriateness of the term as applied to that particular character. It was fairly descriptive of the type. The word nihilist, however, was soon caught up by the conservatives and by the Government, and was applied indiscriminately by them as an opprobrious and discrediting nickname to all persons who were not satisfied with the existing order of things, and ​who sought, by any active method whatever, to bring about changes in Russian social and political organization. To some of the reformers, iconoclasts, and extreme theorists of that time the term nihilist was perhaps fairly applicable, and by some of them it was even accepted, in a spirit of pride and defiance, as an appellation which, although a nickname, expressed concisely their opposition to all forms of authority based on force. To the great mass of the Russian malcontents, however, it had then, and has now, no appropriate reference whatever. It would be quite as fair, and quite as reasonable, to say that the people in the United States who were once called "Know-nothings" were persons who really did not know anything, as to say that the people in Russia who are now called nihilists are persons who really do not believe in anything, nor respect anything, nor do anything except destroy. By persistent iteration and reiteration, however, the Russian Government and the Russian conservative class have succeeded in making the world accept this opprobrious nickname as really descriptive of the character and opinions of all their opponents, from the terrorist who throws an explosive bomb under the carriage of the Tsar, down to the peaceful and law-abiding member of a provincial assembly who respectfully asks leave to petition the Crown for the redress of grievances. It would be hard to find another instance in history where an incongruous and inappropriate appellation has thus been fastened upon a heterogeneous mass of people to whose beliefs and actions it has no sort of applicability, or a case in which an opprobrious nickname has had so confusing and so misleading an influence throughout the world. The political offenders most misrepresented and wronged by this nickname are, of course, the people of moderate opinions — the men and women who seek to prevent injustice or to obtain reforms by peaceful and legal methods, and who are exiled to Siberia merely because they have rendered themselves obnoxious to the ruling powers. ​From the point of view of the Government there might be some propriety, perhaps, in the application of the term nihilist to a conspirator like Necháief, or to a regicide like Rissákof, — although in point of fact neither of them was a nihilist, — but there can be no possible reason or excuse for calling by that name a professor who opposes the inquisitorial provisions of the new university laws, an editor who questions the right of the Minister of the Interior to banish a man to Siberia without trial, or a member of a provincial assembly who persuades his fellow-delegates to join in a petition to the Crown asking for a constitution. These people are not nihilists; they are not even revolutionists; they are peaceable, law-abiding citizens, who are striving, by reasonable methods, to secure a better form of government; and yet, after having been removed from their official places, silenced by ministerial prohibition, and exiled without trial, they are misrepresented to the world as nihilists and enemies of all social order. It seems to me extremely desirable that the use of the word nihilist to characterize a Russian political offender be discontinued. It is not accurately descriptive of any branch or fraction of the anti-Government party in Russia; it does great injustice to the liberals and the non-terroristic revolutionists, who constitute an overwhelming majority of that party; it is misleading to public opinion in Europe and America; and it deprives a large class of reasonable, temperate, and patriotic men and women of the sympathy to which they are justly entitled, by making it appear that they are opposed to all things, human and divine, except bomb-throwing and assassination. If an American journalist, in a discussion of Irish affairs, should class together such men as Patrick Ford, Justin McCarthy, ex-Representative Finerty, Patrick Egan, Charles Parnell, O'Donovan Rossa, John Morley, and the Phœnix Park assassins, and call them all "Fenians," he would probably furnish more amusement than ​instruction to his readers; and yet that is almost exactly what some English and American writers do when they discuss Russian affairs and speak of Russian political offenders generally as nihilists. The novelists Korolénko, Máchtet, and Staniukóvich, the critic Mikháilofski, the political economists Lopátin and Chudnófski, the naturalists Kléments and Mikhaiélis, and scores of other political offenders in Russia, are no more nihilists than McCarthy, Morley, and Gladstone are "Fenians"; and it is simply preposterous to call them by that name. It is time, I think, for writers in western Europe and the United States to make some discrimination between the different classes of political offenders in Russia, and to drop altogether the inaccurate and misleading term nihilist. The latter was only a discrediting nickname in the first place, and it has long since lost what little appropriateness it had as a verbal caricature of a transitory social type. If the reader will examine the documents in Appendix C, he will be satisfied, I think, that the men and women with whom the Russian Government has been waging war for the last twenty years are anything but nihilists. He may disapprove their principles and condemn their methods; but he will see the absurdity of describing them as a "small but fanatical party, who are called nihilists because they will accept absolutely nothing, and see happiness only in the destruction of everything existing."
For the purposes of this chapter I shall divide Russian political exiles into three classes as follows.
1. The Liberals. — In this class are included the cool-headed men of moderate opinions, who believe in the gradual extension of the principles of popular self-government; who favor greater freedom of speech and of the press; who strive to restrict the power of bureaucracy; who deprecate the persecution of religious dissenters and of the Jews; ​who promote in every possible way the education and the moral up-lifting of the peasants; who struggle constantly against official indifference and caprice; who insist pertinaciously
upon "due process of law"; who are prominent in all good works; but who regard a complete overthrow of the existing form of government as impracticable at present even if desirable.
​2. The Revolutionists. — In this class are comprised the Russian socialists, the so-called "peasantists" [naródniki], "people's-willists" [narodovóltsi], and all reformers who regard the overthrow of the autocracy as a matter of such immediate and vital importance as to justify conspiracy and armed rebellion. They differ from the terrorists chiefly in their unwillingness to adopt the methods of the highwayman and the blood-avenger. If they can see a prospect of organizing a formidable insurrection, and of crushing the autocracy by a series of open blows, fairly delivered, they are ready to attempt it, even at the peril of death on the scaffold; but they do not regard it as wise or honorable to shoot a chief of police from ambush; to wreck an Imperial railroad train; to rob a Government sub-treasury; or to incite peasants to revolt by means of a forged manifesto in the name of the Tsar. The objects which they seek to attain are the same that the liberals have in view, but they would attain them by quicker and more direct methods, and they would carry the work of reform to greater extremes. The socialistic revolutionists, for example, would attempt to bring about a redistribution of the land and a more equitable division of the results of labor, and would probably encourage a further development of the principle of association, as distinguished from competition, which is so marked a feature of Russian economic life.
3. The Terrorists. — The only difference between the terrorists and the revolutionists is a difference in methods. So far as principles and aims are concerned the two classes are identical; but the revolutionists recognize and obey the rules of civilized warfare, while the terrorists resort to any and every measure that they think likely to injure or intimidate their adversaries. A terrorist, in fact, is ​nothing more than an embittered revolutionist, who has found it impossible to unite and organize the disaffected elements of society in the face of a cloud of spies, an immense body of police, and a standing army; who has been exasperated to the last degree by cruel, unjust, and lawless treatment of himself, his family, or his friends; who has been smitten in the face every time he has opened his lips to explain or expostulate, and who, at last, has been seized with the Berserker madness, and has become, in the words of the St. Petersburg Gólos, "a wild beast capable of anything."
In point of numerical strength these three classes follow one another in the order in which I have placed them. The liberals, who are the most numerous, probably comprise three-fourths of all the university graduates in the Empire outside of the bureaucracy. The revolutionists, who come next, undoubtedly number tens of thousands, but, under existing circumstances, it is impossible to make a trustworthy estimate of their strength, and all that I feel safe in saying is that, numerically, they fall far short of the liberals. The terrorists never were more than a meager handful in comparison with the population of the country, and they constituted only a fraction even of the anti-Government party; but they were resolute and daring men and women, and they attracted more attention abroad, of course, than a thousand times as many liberals, simply on account of the tragic nature of the rôles that they played on the stage of Russian public life. The liberals, who were limited by the censorship and the police on one side, and by their own renunciation of violence on the other, could do very little to attract the attention of foreign observers; but the terrorists, who defied all restrictions, who carried their lives constantly in their hands, and who waged war with dagger, pistol, and pyroxylin bomb, acquired a notoriety that was out of all proportion to their numerical strength.
​I met among the political exiles in Siberia representatives of all the classes above described, and I have tried, in the earlier chapters of this work, to convey to the reader the impressions that they made upon me in personal intercourse. I desire now to state, as briefly as I can, my conclusions with regard to their character.
1. The Liberals. — So far as I know, it is not pretended by anybody that the Russian liberals are bad men or bad citizens. The Government, it is true, keeps them under strict restraint, prohibits them from making public speeches, drives them out of the universities, forbids them to sit as delegates in provincial assemblies, expels them from St. Petersburg, suppresses the periodicals that they edit, puts them under police surveillance and sends them to Siberia; but, notwithstanding all this, it does not accuse them of criminality, nor even of criminal intent. It merely asserts that they are "politically untrustworthy"; that the "tendency" of their social activity is "pernicious"; or that, from an official point of view, their presence in a particular place is "prejudicial to public tranquillity." These vague assertions mean, simply, that the liberals are in the way of the officials, and prevent the latter, to some extent, from doing what they want to do with the bodies, the souls, or the property of the Russian people.
​An English writer, who signs himself "A Former Resident in Russia," and who seems to me to be not only extremely well informed, but just and trustworthy in his judgments, has recently published, in an English review, an article entitled "Some Truths about Russia," in which he refers to the Russian liberals as follows:
I have known scores of foreign residents in Russia, but never yet one who, whatever his political opinions may have been when he first visited the country, did not, at last, cordially sympathize with the ideas and aspirations of the Russian liberal party. Throughout the length and breadth of the Tsar's dominions there is not another group of men who, for genuine, wise patriotism, thorough grasp of the burning questions of the day, cordial sympathy with all that is noblest in the character of their countrymen, and exemplary political discipline, can compare with these liberals. The select band of thinkers and writers who rally round the Russian Gazette of Moscow and the review called Russian Thought, is not only an ornament to a nation still emerging from barbarism, but would do credit to an old constitutional country like our own.
I approve every word of this encomium, and believe it to be fully deserved. I am personally acquainted with many members of the Moscow group of liberals, and regard them with profound admiration and esteem. Few public men in the United States are better fitted than they, by education and by character, to take part in the government of a great state, and no Americans of my acquaintance are animated by more sincere or more disinterested patriotism. Many members, however, of the "select band of thinkers and writers who rally round the Russian Gazette and Russian Thought" have recently been in prison or in exile, among them Professor V. A. Góltsef, the late N. V. Shelgunóf, N. K. Mikháilofski, Vladímir Korolénko, K. M. Staniukóvich, Gregórie Máchtet, and the novelist Petropávlovski. The last three were in Siberia at the time of my journey, Professor Góltsef has been ​under arrest within a year, and the talented critic Mikháilofski was expelled from St. Petersburg last April.
2. The Revolutionists. — The character of the Russian revolutionists is a controverted question, and in order to state the case against them as strongly as possible, and at the same time to show in what manner and upon what grounds the Government proceeds in its dealings with them, I will quote a part of the authorized official report of a political trial.
In February, 1880, a young man named Arsene Boguslávski was brought before a court-martial in the city of Kiev upon the charge of belonging to the revolutionary party and distributing seditious books. General Strélnikof, the prosecuting officer of the Crown, in asking for the condemnation of the accused, made what seemed to be a carefully prepared address, in the course of which he reviewed the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia and expressed the same opinions with regard to the character of the revolutionists that I heard from Colonel Nóvikof and half a dozen other officers in Siberia. These opinions fairly represent, I think, the Russian official view. The latter part of the procureur's speech, which is the part that deals with the question of character and motive, is summarized in the authorized report as follows:
The procureur then referred to the personnel of the revolutionary party, and asked who were these people that had gratuitously taken it upon themselves to reconstruct society and change the whole order of things. He showed that, with a few exceptions, they were mere boys — often minors. The average age of the accused in the Ishútin case, for example, was only twenty-two and a half years, and in the Necháief case only twenty-three and a half, while the average age of the forty-nine political offenders tried by court-martial up to that time in Kiev was only twenty-four and a half years. The level of their education was extremely low. Out of all the political prisoners brought before the Kiev court-martial, not one had been graduated from the higher educational ​institutions, and only eight [two of them women] had even completed the course of study of the middle-class schools. The remaining fortyone either had not been at school at all, or had not been graduated.
The degree of maturity at which their opinions had arrived was also very low, as might be seen from their publications and from their declarations in the court-room, while their knowledge of the Russian people was limited for the most part to an ​acquaintance with the waiters in traktírs [public tea-houses]........
The procureur then passed on to the question of the real object of Russian socialism, showed how that object was made evident by the actions of the party, and cited a surprising number of attempts on the part of socialists to appropriate the goods of others. He referred to a long list of such cases brought to light in connection with previous political trials, beginning with that of Ishútin, and called the attention of the court to the fact that the victims of the crimes of the socialists included even their own comrades. From all that he had previously said the procureur then drew the follow- ing conclusions: 1. That "the welfare of the people" was not, by any means, the real aim of the socialistic party. 2. That the destruction of religion, the family, and the state, was only a means of removing obstacles in the way of their real aim. 3. That their real aim was selfish, personal gain. The procureur admitted that, in contravention of these conclusions, it might be argued: first, that not all socialists were so poor as to be in need of other people's property; secondly, that some of them committed their crimes in the face of great and inevitable peril; and thirdly, that in the court- room and on the scaffold they had shown great bravery. In re- joinder he said that while he believed selfish interest to be the chief aim of the party, he did not assert that it was common to all of its members without exception, but only to a majority of them. He would divide the members of the party, so far as their aims were concerned, into three categories, viz: 1. Fanatics, who, how- ever, were so few in number that among the forty-nine politicals brought before the Kiev court-martial there was not one. 2. Per- sons carried away by the desire to play a conspicuous part any- where, who wanted to declaim at meetings, to go on pilgrimages to the mound of Sténka Razín, and that sort of thing. 3. Com- mon robbers, who constituted a majority of the party. So far as the second objection was concerned, the procureur was of opinion that, of all the persons brought to justice up to that time, only Solivióf, and the Jew who tried to assassinate Count Lóris-Mélikof ran any great personal risk. All the rest had an opportunity to escape punishment. As for the bravado of the prisoners in the
1 Sténka Razín was a noted Russian insurgent who raised a large force on the Volga River in 1667 and virtually ruled southeastern Russia for several years. He was ultimately captured, brought in chains to Moscow, and there beheaded. He is the hero of the Russian revolutionists' song "On the Volga there is a Cliff." [Author's note.] ​courtroom, it ceased — at least in Kiev — when the first sentences of death were pronounced; and as for bravado on the scaffold, it was a mere matter of temperament, and was no more a characteristic of socialists than of common brigands. ...... In conclusion the procureur pointed out the danger that threatened social order and insisted that it was the duty of the court to treat such criminals with inflexible severity, bearing in mind the demoralizing influence of the verdict in the case of Véra Zasúlich. Any mercy or forbearance shown to persons who had declared war against the state and against society would be criminal weakness. For such people there should be only one punishment — the scaffold.
After listening to the speech of counsel for the defense the court allowed the accused an opportunity to speak his last words. The prisoner admitted the distribution of the seditious books, but declared that he acted upon conviction, and with a desire to promote the welfare of the people by spreading among them the light of scientific knowledge and culture. He had never taken any part, he said, in bloodshed, nor in acts of violence. He regarded a social revolution as inevitable, but thought that it would come in the form of an economic crisis, and that it would be brought about peacefully. He interspersed his remarks with texts from the Holy Scriptures inculcating kindness, meekness, and love to one's neighbor.
After a short consultation the court found the prisoner guilty as charged in the indictment, and, in accordance with sections 249 and 977 of the penal code, sentenced him to death by hanging.
— Official Report of the Trial of Arsene Boguslávski, Newspaper Gólos, St. Petersburg, March 4, 1880.
1 Véra Zasúlich was tried before a jury in March, 1878, upon the charge of having attempted to kill General Trepóf, the St. Petersburg chief of police. The fact that she shot Trepóf was not denied; but the jury regarded her act as morally justifiable, and, since they could not save her from punishment in any other way, they simply set aside all the evidence and found her not guilty. No political offender has had a trial by jury since that time. [Author's note.]
2 When a political case is tried by a court-martial, the prisoner chooses, or the judges assign, one of the military procureurs to conduct the defense; but as this officer is wholly dependent upon the Crown, and is totally out of sympathy, moreover, with the accused, the defense that he makes is a mere empty form and rarely goes beyond a perfunctory plea for mercy. [Author's note.]
3 In trying criminal cases in Russian courts it is customary, after the evidence is all in and the speeches of counsel have been made, to allow the prisoner at the bar to say anything that he may then wish to say in his own defense. His remarks are known as his "last words." [Author's note.]
​General Strélnikof, the procureur in this case, was a man of striking personality, an able officer, and a brilliant speaker; but he was also a bitter and vindictive enemy; and when speaking, without critics, in a closed court to a bench of sympathetic judges he allowed his passionate hatred of political offenders to carry him beyond the bounds, not only of truth, but of reason. Every artist knows that in drawing a caricature it is necessary carefully to preserve some of the features of the original, and to stop short of such exaggeration and distortion as may render the subject unrecognizable. General Strélnikof's caricatures never would suggest the persons that they misrepresent if they were not carefully labeled "political" and "socialist," as well as "robber" and "fanatic." If the young prisoner in Kiev had been tried by a jury of his peers, in an open court, under the observation of a free press, with an unprejudiced judge to protect his witnesses and a fearless lawyer to protect him, General Strélnikof, I think, would have tried to make his caricature at least recognizable.
According to the statements of the learned procureur, all of the political offenders that had been brought before the Kiev court-martial belonged to one or another of three classes, namely: 1. Fanatics; 2. Notoriety-seekers; 3. Common robbers. They were "mere boys" and intellectually immature, although they were older, on an average, than William Pitt was when he became Prime Minister of Great Britain, and older than Napoleon was when the Convention appointed him brigadier-general after the capture of Toulon. They were almost wholly without education, and yet two ​of them, Madam Kavaléfskaya and Madam Róssikova, had been school-teachers; a third, Florian Bogdanóvich, was a professor of chemistry in a Polish college; Miss Nathalie Armfeldt was the daughter of a Russian general, had been educated in western Europe, and was regarded as an unusually accomplished mathematician and astronomer; Iván M. Koválski and Vladímir Debagóri-Mokriévich were authors, and the former had just written a series of articles entitled "Rationalistic Sects in Russia" for the review Annals of the Fatherland; a number of others, whom I afterward met in Siberia, knew two or three languages and had read the works of such authors as Spencer, Mill, Draper, and Lecky; and finally, the "uneducated" prisoner himself was being tried upon the charge of distributing books among the people "in order to promote their welfare by spreading among them the light of scientific knowledge and culture."
According to the procureur Russian political offenders aim to destroy religion; but the prisoner at the bar, when allowed to say a few words in his own defense, quoted more texts from the New Testament than the court, perhaps, had ever before heard, and inculcated virtues, such as "kindness, meekness, and love to one's neighbor," that certainly are not characteristic of Russian officials as a class, and that might well seem to a Russian procureur to be evidences of fanaticism.
In General Strélnikof's opinion political offenders, with the exception of Solivióf and one unnamed Jew, have never shown any personal courage in the commission of crime, and yet, notwithstanding this timidity, they are such formidable criminals, and constitute such a serious menace to ​the state, that they must be hanged without mercy even when they confine their criminal activity to distributing books and quoting texts from the New Testament. He admitted that they die on the scaffold with dignified composure; but such self-control he declared to be "a mere matter of temperament." "Common brigands," he said, often die bravely. "Mere boys," therefore, who are "immature" and "uneducated," who have never shown any courage in the commission of crime, and whose highest aim in life is "selfish personal gain," will die on the scaffold like heroes as a matter of course.
Finally, most Russian revolutionists, in the judgment of the Kiev procureur, are nothing but "common robbers." They go about, it is true, distributing gratuitously books that they have bought with their own money, and quoting from the New Testament the words of Jesus Christ; but that is simply because they are "fanatics." It would doubtless be more profitable and less dangerous to rob with a drill, a crowbar and a dark-lantern; but politicals do not pursue that course because they desire to "play a conspicuous part," to "go on pilgrimages " and so forth, and they expect to rob the poor peasants, as they go, of money enough to buy the books that they distribute, and to compensate themselves for the labor of committing to memory a lot of texts from the Bible. If anybody fails to see the strength and coherence of this chain of reasoning he is "politically untrustworthy," if not "prejudicial to public tranquillity"; and the farther he can keep away from the Russian Empire, the better chance he will have of living out the natural term of his existence.
It seems to me foolish and impolitic for Russian Government officials to try to make it appear that the revolutionists, as a class, are despicable in point of intellectual ability, or morally depraved. They are neither the one nor the other. So far as education is concerned they are far superior to any equal number of Russian officials with whom, ​in the course of five years' residence in the Russian Empire, I have been brought in contact. In the face of difficulties and discouragements that would crush most men — in financial distress, in terrible anxiety, in prison, in exile, and in the strait-jacket of the press censorship — they not only "keep their grip," but they fairly distinguish themselves in literature, in science, and in every field of activity that is open to them. Much of the best scientific work that has been done in Siberia has been done by political exiles. Mikhaiélis in Semipalátinsk was an accomplished naturalist; Andréief in Minusínsk was a skilled botanist and made an exhaustive study of the flora of central Siberia and the Altái; Kléments in Minusínsk was a geologist and an archæologist of whom his country ought to have been proud; Alexander Kropótkin, who committed suicide in Tomsk, was an astronomer and meteorologist who made and recorded scientific observations for the Russian Meteorological Bureau almost up to the time of his death; Belokónski, in Minusínsk, continued these observations, and was a frequent contributor, moreover, to the best Russian magazines and reviews; Chudnófski, in Tomsk, was engaged for many years in active work for the West-Siberian section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, and is the author of a dozen or more books and monographs; Leóntief and Dr. Dolgopólof, in Semipalátinsk, made valuable anthropological researches among the Kírghis, and the work of the former has recently been published by the Semipalátinsk Statistical Committee under the title "Materials for the Study of the Legal Customs of the Kírghis"; Lesévich, who was in exile in Yeniséisk, is one of the best-known writers in Russia upon philosophy, morals, and the history and influence of Buddhism; Hoúrwitch, who was in exile in Tiukalínsk, but who is now in New York City, is the author of a monograph on "Emigration to Siberia" which was published in the "Proceedings of the Imperial Geographical Society," and is also the author of the excellent ​article upon the treatment of the Jews in Russia which was published in the Forum for August, 1891; and, finally, the novels, stories, and sketches of the political exiles Korolénko, Máchtet, Staniukóvich, Mámin [Sibiriák], and Petropávlovski are known to every cultivated Russian from the White Sea to the Caspian and from Poland to the Pacific.
Morally, the Russian revolutionists whom I met in Siberia would compare favorably with any body of men and women of equal numerical strength that I could collect from the circle of my own acquaintances. I do not share the opinions of all of them; some of them seem to me to entertain visionary and over-sanguine hopes and plans for the future of their country; some of them have made terrible and fatal mistakes of judgment; and some of them have proved weak or unworthy in the hour of trial; but it is my deliberate conviction, nevertheless, that, tested by any moral standard of which I have knowledge, such political exiles as Volkhófski, Chudnófski, Blok, Leóntief, Lobonófski, Kropótkin, Kohan-Bérnstein, Belokónski, Prisédski, Lázaref, Charúshin, Kléments, Shishkó, Nathalie Armfeldt, Heléne Máchtet, Sophie Bárdina, Anna Pávlovna Korbá, and many others whom I have not space to name, represent the flower of Russian young manhood and young womanhood. General Strélnikof may call them "fanatics" and "robbers," and Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy may describe them as "wretched men and women ... whose social ​depravity is so great that it would shock the English people if translated into proper English equivalents," but among these men and women, nevertheless, are some of the best, bravest, and most generous types of manhood and womanhood that I have ever known. I am linked to them only by the ties of sympathy, humanity, or friendship; but I wish that I were bound to them by the tie of kindred blood. I should be proud of them if they were my brothers and sisters, and so long as any of them live they may count upon me for any service that a brother can render.
The last of the three classes into which I have divided the anti-Government party in Russia comprises the terrorists. A recent writer in the Russian historical magazine Rússkaya Stariná, in a very instructive paragraph, describes them, and the attitude of the Russian people towards them, as follows:
We have been present at a strange spectacle. Before our eyes there has taken place something like a duel between the mightiest Power on earth armed with all the attributes of authority on one side, and an insignificant gang of discharged telegraph operators, half-educated seminarists, high-school boys and university students, miserable little Jews and loose women on the other; and in this apparently unequal contest success was far from being on the side of strength. Meanwhile the immense mass of the people who without doubt spontaneously loved the serene [svétloi] personality of the Tsar, and were sincerely devoted to law and order, and to the embodiment of law and order in the form of monarchical institutions, stood aside and watched this duel in the capacity of uninterested, if not indifferent, observers. We have called this a "strange spectacle," but it ought, with more justice, to be characterized as a shameful spectacle. It was only necessary for the great mass of the Russian people to move — to "shake its shoulders," as the saying is — and the ulcer that had appeared on the body of the social organism would have vanished as completely as if it never had existed. Why this saving movement was not made we ​shall not now attempt to ascertain, since the inquiry would carry us too far from the modest task that we have set for ourselves. We merely state the fact, without explanation, and, in the interest of historical truth, refer, in passing, to one extremely distressing phase of it. The repetition, one after another, of terrible crimes, each of which deeply shocked the social organism, inevitably led, by virtue of the natural law of reaction, to exhaustion. There was danger, therefore, that a continuance of persistent activity in this direction would fatally weaken the organism and extinguish all of its self-preservative energies. ... Ominous forewarnings of such symptoms had begun already to make their appearance. ...
According to the statements of this writer the terrorists of 1879-81 were nothing but "an insignificant gang of discharged telegraph-operators, half-educated school-boys, miserable little Jews, and loose women"; but this heterogeneous organization, notwithstanding its insignificance, almost succeeded in overthrowing "the mightiest power on earth, armed with all the attributes of authority." To a simple-minded reader there seems to be an extraordinary disproportion here between cause and effect. So far as I know there is not another instance in history where a gang of telegraph-operators, school-boys, Jews, and loose women have been able to paralyze the energies of a great empire, and almost to overthrow long-established "monarchical institutions" to which a hundred millions of people were "sincerely devoted." If the statements of Count Lóris-Mélikof's biographer are to be accepted as true, Russian telegraph-operators, Russian school-boys, Russian Jews, and Russian loose women must be regarded as new and extraordinary types of the well-known classes to which they nominally belong. There are no telegraph-operators and loose women, I believe, outside of Russia, who are capable of engaging in a "duel" with the "mightiest power
1 There are dots in the original at these points which indicate the omission of matter disapproved by the censor. The extract is from a biographical sketch of Count Lóris-Mélikof , published in the historical magazine Russian Antiquity for the month of January, 1889, page 65. [Author's note.] ​on earth" and of "extinguishing all the self-preservative energies" of so tough an "organism" as the Russian bureaucracy. It would be interesting to know how this combative
—not to say heroic—strain of telegraphers, schoolboys and loose women was produced, and why they should have directed their tremendous energies against the "serene personality" that was so universally and so ​"spontaneously" beloved, and against the "monarchical institutions" to which all Russians, except telegraphers, school-boys, Jews, and loose women, were so "sincerely devoted." But it is unnecessary to press the inquiry. Every thoughtful student of human affairs must see the absurdity of the supposition that a few telegraph-operators, school-boys, Jews, and loose women could seriously imperil the existence of a Government like that of Russia.
As a matter of fact the Russian terrorists were men and women of extraordinary ability, courage, and fortitude; of essentially noble nature; and of limitless capacity for heroic self-sacrifice. Professor Lombroso, perhaps the first criminal anthropologist in Europe, who has had an opportunity to study the heads and faces of a number of these people, and to compare them with the heads and faces of communists and anarchists, speaks of them as follows:
It is for me a thoroughly established fact, and one of which I have given the proofs in my "Delitto Politico," that true revolutionists, that is to say, the initiators of great scientific and political revolutions, who excite and bring about a true progress in humanity, are almost always geniuses or saints, and have a marvelously harmonious physiognomy; and to verify this it is sufficient simply to look at the plates in my "Delitto Politico." What noble physiognomies have Paoli, Fabrizi, Dandolo, Moro, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Bandiera, Pisacane, Perófskaya [Sophie Perófskaya, one of the assassins of Alexander II.], and Zasúlich [Véra Zasúlich, who shot General Trepóf, the St. Petersburg chief of police]. ... In a study that I have made with 321 of our Italian revolutionists [against Austria, etc.] the proportion of the criminal type was 0.57 per cent., i.e., 2 per cent. less than in normal men. Out of 30 celebrated nihilists 18 have a very fine physiognomy, 12 present some isolated anomalies, 2 only present the criminal type — that is to say, 6.8 per cent. And if from these unfortunate men, who represent to us, even psychologically, the Christian martyrs, we pass to the regicides, to the presidenticides, such as Fieschi, Guiteau, Nobiling and the monsters of the French Revolution of 1789, such as Carrier, Jourdan, and Marat, we there at once find in all, or in nearly all, the criminal type. And again the type ​frequently appears among the Communards and the Anarchists. Taking 50 photographs of the Communards, I have found the criminal type in 12 per cent. and the insane type in 10 per cent. Out of 41 Parisian anarchists that I have studied with Ber- tillon at the office of the police in Paris, the proportion of the criminal type was 31 per cent. In the rebellion of the 1st of May last I was able to study one hundred Turin anarchists. I found the criminal type among these in the proportion of 34 per cent., while in 280 ordinary criminals of the prison at Turin the type was 43 per cent. ... I have been able to study the photographs of 43 Chicago Anarchists, and I have found among them almost the same proportion of the criminal type — that is, 40 per cent.
From the above-quoted statements of Professor Lombroso it appears that the so-called nihilists, even in the cool judgment of exact science, represent, physically and psychologically, rather the early Christian martyrs than the French communists or the Chicago anarchists.
Most of the Russian terrorists were nothing more, at first, than moderate liberals, or, at worst, peaceful socialistic propagandists; and they were gradually transformed into revolutionists, and then into terrorists, by injustice, cruelty, illegality, and contemptuous disregard, by the Government, of all their rights and feelings. I have not a word to say in defense of their crimes. I do not believe in such methods of warfare as assassination, the wrecking of railway trains on which one's enemies are riding, the robbing of Government sub-treasuries, and the blowing up of palaces; but I can fully understand, nevertheless, how an essentially good and noble-natured man may become a terrorist when, as in Russia, he is subjected to absolutely intolerable outrages and indignities and has no peaceful or legal means of redress. It is true, as the Russian Government contends, that after 1878 the terrorists acted in defiance of all the generally accepted principles of civilized combat; but it must not be forgotten that in life and in
1 "Illustrative Studies in Criminal Anthropology," by Cesare Lombroso. — The Monist, No. 3, Vol. I, p. 336. Chicago, April, 1891. ​warfare, as in chess, you cannot disregard all the rules of the game yourself and then expect your adversary to observe them. The Government first set the example of lawlessness in Russia by arresting without warrant; by punishing without trial; by cynically disregarding the judgments of its own courts when such judgments were in favor of politicals; by confiscating the money and property of private citizens whom it merely suspected of sympathy with the revolutionary movement; by sending fourteen-year-old boys and girls to Siberia; by kidnapping the children of "politically untrustworthy" people and exiles and putting them into state asylums; by driving men and women to insanity and suicide in rigorous solitary confinement without giving them a trial; by burying secretly at night the bodies of the people whom it had thus done to death in its dungeons; and by treating as a criminal, in posse if not in esse, every citizen who dared to ask why or wherefore. A man is not necessarily a ferocious, blood-thirsty fanatic, if, under such provocation, and in the absence of all means of redress, he strikes back with the weapons that lie nearest his hand. It is not my purpose to justify the policy of the terrorists, nor to approve, even by implication, the resort to murder as a means of tempering despotism; but it is my purpose to explain, so far as I can, certain morbid social phenomena; and in making such explanation circumstances seem to lay upon me the duty of saying to the world for the Russian revolutionists and terrorists all that they might fairly say for themselves if the lips of the dead had not already moldered into dust, and if the voices of the living were not lost in the distance or stifled by prison walls. The Russian Government has its own press and its own representatives abroad; it can explain, if it chooses, its methods and measures. The Russian revolutionists, buried alive in remote Siberian solitudes, can only tell their story to an occasional traveler from a freer country, and ask him to lay it before the world for judgment.
* ↑ Of course, strictly speaking, there is no such thing in Russia as an "anti-Government party" in the sense of an organized and outspoken "opposition." I use the words merely to designate the whole body of people who secretly favor, or openly work for, the overthrow of the autocracy.
* ↑ The popular view of nihilism is shown in the following quotations, the number of which might be almost indefinitely extended.   "Nihilism, in its largest acceptation, is the flat negation of all faith and hope, whether in the social, political, or spiritual order." ["The Spell of the Russian Writers," by Harriet W. Preston. Atlantic Monthly Magazine, August, 1887, p. 208.]   "Nihilism is an explosive compound generated by the contact of the Sclav character with western ideas." ... The Nihilists, "like the maniacs of the French Terror, were too keenly alive to existing evils to see any road out of them except by wholesale demolition. A breach with the national past had no terrors to them, because they had broken with it already. Crime was not repulsive, for the landmarks of good and evil had been swept away." ["Russia and the Revolution," by B. F. C. Costelloe. Macmillan's Magazine, March, 1882, p. 408.]   "A minority of decided socialists, left to themselves, ... indulged in the conviction of the necessity of overturning all existing order; of annihilating property, state, church, marriage, society, etc., of placing communism instead of socialism on the throne; and of beginning this great work by the murder of the Tsar. This small but fanatical party were called Nihilists because they would accept absolutely nothing, and only saw happiness in the destruction of everything existing." ["Modern Russia," by Dr. Julius Eckhardt, p. 166.]   Compare the above quotations with the declaration of principles of the Russian revolutionists, and the letter of the terrorist executive committee to Alexander III., which will be found in Appendix C.
* ↑ See "The Word Nihilist" in Appendix C.
* ↑ "Modern Russia," by Dr. Julius Eckhardt, p. 166. London, 1870.
* ↑ A fairly accurate idea of the principles of the socialistic revolutionists may be obtained from the documents in Appendix C.
* ↑ Magazine Annals of the Fatherland, Vol. CCLXII, p. 152. St. Petersburg, May, 1882.
* ↑ The case of Professor Orest Miller.
* ↑ The case of Professor S. A. Múromtsef , formerly pro-rector of the Moscow university.
* ↑ The case of Mr. Ivan I. Petrunkévich, twice elected a member of the provincial assembly of Chernígof, and twice expelled and banished from the province by order of the Minister of the Interior.
* ↑ The case of the eminent essayist and critic N. K. Mikháilofski, banished from St. Petersburg the last time, only a few months ago, for the part taken by him in the ceremonies at the funeral of the publicist Shelgunóf.
* ↑ Sáltikof's Annals of the Fatherland, Kraiéfski's Gólos, Zagóskin's Sibír, Adriánof's Sibírskaya Gazéta, and many others. See Appendix B.
* ↑ See, in Appendix B, a list of the names of Russian poets, novelists, critics, editors, political economists, historians, and naturalists who have been hanged, imprisoned, or banished since the beginning of the reign of the Emperor Nicholas.
* ↑ 1
* ↑ 1
* ↑ 2
* ↑ 3
* ↑ I met many political exiles in Siberia who had been prosecuted by Strélnikof and who knew him well. If he were living I should like to give him two or three of my Siberian notebooks and let him read the estimates of his character that were furnished me by the unfortunate men whom he wanted hanged as enemies of all social order. It would bring a flush of shame to his face, I think, to see how much more fair, accurate, and generous these despised "robbers" and "fanatics" were in judging and describing his character, than he had been in judging and describing theirs.
* ↑ Since his return from penal servitude in Siberia Professor Bogdanóvich has published a volume entitled "Recollections of a Prisoner" ["Wspomnienia Wieznia," Lwow, 1888], and has also translated into Polish all of my Century articles relating to Siberia and the exile system.
* ↑ Debagóri-Mokriévich is the author of "Two Years of Life" and "Recollections of a Russian Socialist."
* ↑ In a report on the condition and work of the East-Siberian Section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society for the year 1885, Mr. V. Ptítsin, a member of the Section's revisory committee, refers to the researches and labors of the political exiles as follows: "It is well known that the best work done, up to this time, in the East-Siberian Section of the Imperial Geographical Society, is the work of exiles — of such men, for example, as the Polish scientist Shchápof [an exiled professor of the Kazán University] and others. Almost all of the work done and the observations made at the Section's meteorological stations must also be credited to exiles. Why should not the Section gather about itself, for scientific work, all of the educated exiles in the province of Irkútsk and the territories of Yakútsk and the Trans-Baikál? There are among them many people of high cultivation and ardent love for science." — Siberian Gazette, No. 33, p. 1068. Tomsk, August 17, 1886.
* ↑ Interview of the chief of the Russian prison administration with the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London Times. — Chicago Inter Ocean, March 16, 1890.
* ↑ 1
* ↑ 1
* ↑ 1