The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-05-24
VERA SASSULITCH.


WomAn's WroDgs, and Wronged
% Woman's Revenge.
The history of Vera Sassulitch, the
would be Russian Charlotte Corday,
says the Chicago Tribune, is full of ro-
nance, and at the same time indicates q
remarkable change in popular sentiment
in that empire. Going buck as far as
1867, a conspiracy was discovered at
Moscow, in which student by the
name of Netchaief had been one of the
leaders. After shooting the man who
had betrayed him, Netchaieff fed to
Switzerland. The police arrested his
supposed accomplices in every direction,
among them his sister. Vera Sassulitch,
then schoolgirl of II, was an intimate
friend of this sister, and, for no other
reason than because she was an intimate
friend, she was thrown into prison and
kept there for two years. She was re-
leased in 1869, but, a few days after
ward, she was again arrested upon no
charge and reincarcerated. She was re-
leased again, and was again arrested,
and this time was hurried off into East
ern Russia, nearly perishing with cold
on the way. From time to time her
place of imprisonment was changed, and
in the nine years of her captivity she
travelled all over the eastern part of the
empire. AT last, in 1876, she was set
free. She had been arrested as school
girl. She was now woman of 26, and
the very flower of her life had been
spent within prison walls, with no charge
against her. She was the victim of an
absolute and cruel caprice. For year
chn I,pa1 IN, I1~
wrongs and brooding over plans of re-
venge. Last July she read in the pa
pers that n political prisoner, named
Bogolinbod, had been sentenced by Gen.
Trepoff, the Chief of Police of st. Pc
fersburg, to receive twenty-five lashes
for some trihing act of INSTRUMENTATION,
and that the punishment had been adj
ministered in an unnecessarily cruel
manner. AS the unfortunate man was
already under sentence of perpetual
Punishment to Siberia, with hard labor
in the mines, the barbarity of
Trepoff aroused widespread indig-
nation. To Vera Sassulitch, who had
already suffered nine years without
offense, or even legal charge against
her, his case seemed but an echo of her
own, and she made it personal. She saw
no possibility of redress for Bogolinbotf,
who was already civilly dead. His Of
Tense was so slight-merely the failure
to salute Gen. Trepoff-that she deter
mined to avenge herself and him at one
blow. Through the medium of friend
she procured revolver, sought an inter
view with Trepoff upon the pretense of
presenting petition, visited him
at his reception and shot him,
infiicting wound that nearly proved
mortal.
After accomplishing her purpose, Vera
Sassulitch made no effort to escape. She
was arrested and brought to trial, and
she made no pretense of denying the
facts. She did not deny that she shot
Trepoff, but, after considerable induce
ment by her counsel, she partially as
sented to their plea that her object was
not SO much to kill Trepoff as to call
public attention to his brutalities. At
the same time she modified that plea
with the personal declaration that it
woul.. have made no difference to her if
she had killed him. Her case was heard
before large crowd. The jury was not
made up from the ignorant classes, who
would have been under the control of
the Government, but represented men
of education and position. Half of the
Jurors were Government functionaries,
and there were two merchants, a noble
man, and student in the panel. That
jury decided that she was not guilty of
having fred at Trepoff, evidently feeling
that if they declared her guilty she
would suffer new fortunes ut the hands of
her former prosecutors. The crowd in
the courtroom burst out in demonstra-
tions of enthusiasm, which the court
could not check. The multitudes in the
streets of st. Petersburg answered with
jubilant shouts, and Vera SassuEtch and
her advocate were carried to their homes
in triumph.