Daily Republican., 1881-05-03
TORTUREIN RUSSIA.
How Prisoners, Political ana
Otherwise Are Treated.

+ Otherwise Are Treated.
A correspondent of the London Dali
Telegraph writes: The horrible in
y Fiction of the knout was abolished b,
Imperial ukase long ago, and, so far a
the public at large have any persona
knowledge on the subject, tiogging as
punishment is at present unknown il
Russian prisons and in the army and
navy. The police knock the people
about sometimes, and the Cossacks
make free use of their long-th0nged
whips in dispensing crowd; but there
is, in this vast empire, no more judicial
tiagellation than there isjudicial torture.
The extinction of the last-named relic
of uncouth times should be borne in
mind by those who are accustomed un-
thinkingly to stigmatlze the Russians
! as "barbarianS." 1t is undeniable that
was, until theaccession of the lamented
Alexander | |. ~ common and taCitly re-
cognized method OF extorting confess
sions from political prisoners in Russia.
! an not about to indorse all of the
more or less nightmare stories which
have been told of ladies of rank being
taken by night to the Ministry of Police
in Count Orloff's time, and their being
let down through trapdoors and being
terranean beneath; but it is patent and
notorious that, in the reign of the Gar
Nicholas, persons imprisoned for sus-
pected completely in revolutionary plots
were systematically and--irrespectively
of rank or sex-cruelly tortured either
by merciless and periodically repeated
scourging, or by what was known as
the cred herring torture" which CON
sisted in feeding the miserable victims
on saltrd fish, and denying them water
to drink until they would consent to
make statements eliminating them
selves or others.
/ may remark once for all that dur
ing my recent stay in st. Petersburg l
did hear rumor that Mile. Sofia Per
ovskaia had been practically put to the
torture by means of repeated galvAnlC
shocks; but there were no means pos
itively verifying this statement, any
more than there were any means OF
authenticating story of directly OPP
poSlte nature, to the effect that Mile.
Perovskaia had two elegantly furnished
rooms and n lady 's-maid allotted to her
in the fortress. The strongest guarantee
of the disappearance of torture from
Russian judicial prac1ice is that trials
now take place in public; for prisoners
who had been "Gehennaed"-to use the
graphic expression Of louis Nl.-would
scarcely hesitate, as soon as they were
placed in the dock, to make loud and
indignant protests against the outrages
to which they had been subjected in
Jail. may add that the other day,
when was in st. Petersburg, there
was general aStonishment at the com
pleteneSS and apparent spOntaneity of
the avowals already reported to have
been made hy Sofia PerOyskaia. Two
tn Urics on this head were current
first thai the female head and front
of the assassination plot had "thrown
up the sponge SO soon as ever she was
arreStcu--and she seemed almost to
have Courted Captnre-and disdained
to conceal the prominent part which she
had taken in the murder; and next, !
that she had fallen into the trap laid for
her by a willy Judge d'instruction, who
at her first examination is said to have |
confronted her with a sham confession !
to having been made by
JeliahOh, This ruse had been already |
practiccd in the case Of the
Nihilist Goldenburg, who is reported |
by some to have died in prison, but by
others is declared to be alive and flour
Shing in the United States. Russia is,
above all others, the country Of the I'M
'ertain.