Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-02-14
TWO EXILES.

INO EAlLES.
The following pathetic passage is from
Mr.. Kennan's article in the February
Century:
Two of the most interesting politicals
whom we met in IrkutSk were Mr.. and
Mrs. Ivan Gherniavski, who were ban
ished to Siberia by administrative pro-
cess in 1878. l became very well ac-
quainted with them, and for Mrs. Cher
niaski especially came to feel the pro-
fOundest pity and regard. Few women,
even in Russia, have had before the age
of 35 so tragic and heart breaking a life,
and still fewer have maintained through
hardships, sickness, and bereavement
such cheerfulness and courage. She
was arrested in Odessa in the early part
of 1873 at the age of about 25, and after
long term of Imprisonment was sent
by administrative process to the prov
ince of TobolSk. In the city prison of
Kiev, on her way to Siberia, she was de-
tanned for few days, and while there
was forced to be an eyewitness of the
assassination of her dearest friend. A
young man of English descent named
Beverly, whom she had known from
childhood, had been arrested shortly be-
fore upon the charge of living on a false
passport and carrying on revolutiona-
ry propaganda, and he was at that time
in Kiev prison. The night before Mrs.
Cherniavski was to resume her journey
to Siberia, Beverly, with a c0mrade
named Izbitski, attempted to escape
through tunnel which they had sue
ceeded in digging from their cell to a
point outside the prison wall. The prs
on authorities, however, had in some
way become aware of the existence of
the tunnel, and had posted squad of
soldiers near the place where the fugi-
tives must emerge from the ground
Late at night, when they made their ap-
pearance, they were received with vol
ley of musketry. Beverly was mortally
wounded, and as he lay writhing on the
ground he was dispatched by a soldier
with several bayonet-thrusts. Izbitski,
wounded and severely beaten, was taken
back into prison. The next morning
when Mrs. Cherniavski started with her
party for Siberia she had to march past
the bloody and disfgured body of her
dearest friend, which was still lying
where it had fallen, in plain sight of the
prison windows.
81 can bear my own personal tor
ment," she said to me with a sob as she
the story of this tragedy, but
such things as that break my heart"
1 need not recount the hardships and
that she, a cultivated and re-
fined woman, endured on the road and
in the roadside etapes between Kiev and
the small town in the Siberian province
of Tobolsk where she and her husband
had been assigned residence. They
reached their destination at last; child |
was there born to them, and they lived |
there in something like like comfort un-
til March, 1881, when Alexander III. /
came to the throne, and Mr.. Cherniav- |
ski was required to take the oath of al
legiance. He refused to do so, and they |
were sent farther eastward to the town /
of Krasnoyarsk. A second refusal to
take the oath of allegiance resulted in |
their being sent to Irkutsk. By this |
time winter had set in, and they were
in open tarantas with deli
cate baby thirteen months of age. 1t |
was with the greatest difficulty that Mrs.
Cherniavski could keep her baby warm,
and at the last station before reaching
Irkutsk she removed the heavy wrap
pings in which she had enveloped it
and found it dead. With the shock of
this discovery she became delirious, and
wept, sang pathetic little nursery songs
to her dead child, rocked it in her arms,
and prayed and cursed God by turns.
In the courtyard of the Irkutsk for
prison, in a temperature of 30
degrees below zero, Mr.. CberniavSki
stood for half an hour waiting for the
party to be formally received, with his
wife raving in delirium beside him and
his dead child in his arms.
Mrs. Cherniavski lay in the prison
hospital at Irkutsk until she recovered
ler reason, and to some extent her
strength, and then she and her husband
we're sent 1000 miles farther to the
lortheastward under guard ofgendarmes,
md coloniZed in a Yakut settlement
known as the Bataruski ooloos, situated
n the "tiaga" or primeval wilderness of
Vakutsk, los miles from the nearest
own. There, suffering almost every
hardship and privation, they
ived until 1884, when the Minister of
he Interior allowed them to return to a
more civilized part of Siberia.
Mrs. Cherniavski, when l made her
was pale, delicate, hol-
ow-cheeked woman, whose health had
been completely wrecked by years of
Punishment, and grief.
She had two children, and had lost them
both in exile under circumstances that
made the bereavement almost intolera-
Die; for seven years she had been separ
ited by a distance of many thousand
miles from all of her kindred; and tn
future seemed to hold for her absolutely
nothing except the love of her husband
whose exile she could still share, but
whose interests she could do so little in
ner broken state of health to promote.
She had not been able to step outside
the house for two months, and it seemed
10 me, when babe her goodbye, that
her life of unhappiness and suffering
was drawing to close. l felt profound