The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1891-03-25
THE STORY OF A NIHILIST.
soPHlNs PLOT AGAINST THE GAR.
a Band OF Her Young Men Admirers Sworn
10 Do Her Bidding-The Girl Con-
demned to Death-A Moth
er's Distress.

high treason; for trial, in the English
sense of the term, there was none, writes
the st. Petersburg correspondent of the
London Daily Telegraph. l have just had
a long conversation with one OF the digni-
taries who played the part OF judge, jury
and counsel for the crown during the
brief ceremony, which began by accusa-
ton, was continued by voluntary confess
sion, and ended in condemnation to death;
and the details communicated by him
which are worthy of implicit credence-
throw a strong if lurid light upon Russian
nihllists in particular and the Russian
character generally, and if properly
worked up by a Zolaistic realist would
make q most sensational novel.
The ringleader of the conspirators, and
now the chief of the prisoners, is-as is
frequently the case in Russian politics.
woman; in this instance woman of eX-
cellent education, of iron will, of ravish-
ing beauty, and OF undaunted courage;
woman in many respects superior to the
celebrated Sophia Perovsky, who directed
the operations that eliminated in the foul
murder of the late emperor, whom she so
soon afterward followed to the grave. This
person, Sophia Gunsburg by name, mar
rated the eventful story of her checkered
life to her unsympathetic judges, and mar
rated it in a most calm, unimpassiOned,
objective way, which the most impartial
of historians might we'll envy.
She was Jewess by birth, she said, and
had been brought up in the pale OF settle
ID. q a.f, nj
lowed to wander at large. Her parents
had given her the best education that was
to be had under the unfavorab,e public
and private conditions in which their lot
was cast. Natural aptitude and the OPP
preston that stimulates when it does not
crush effected the rest, and in time Sophia
| Gunsburg became sort of Jewish Hypatia
of the pale. The religious and moral
principles, however, instilled into her by
| her mother and her early teachers were
soon washed away by the surge of daily
life as it rolled on in the narrow channel
of the pale, wrecking young hopes and
burying legitimate desires. She saw some
of the most estimable men and women OF
her nation compelled daily to barter their
religion for mess of pottage, or for still
less, the barren right to work Tor it. She
grew accustomed TO the sight, and in time
eaten into by the cancer of hatred-hatred
for the government, which she deemed re-
sponsible for this cruel persecution, UNI
paralleled since the days of the most
tyranuical of the Roman Caesars. After
having graduated in the ordinary estab-
lishments of intermediate education,
Sophia left her birthplace, to which she
refuses the name of fatherland, and went
| abroad to breathe the bracing air of free
dom.
In Geneva her vague inclinatlons and
tendencies were gradually nodded into a
perfect system of cruel, cold-biooded re-
venge, which has scarcely its parallel in
history. 1t was in that historic town that
she meditated and brooded over the
wrongs inflicted by Russia, until at last
she Matched a plot, the bare outlines of
which make one shudder, and which was
certainly more worthy OF fury in human
shape than of a beautiful maiden standing
upon life's threshold with all the joys and
pleasures of existence before her. Hold
ing the government responsible for the in
Vulnerable evils that deluge the country,
abe applied the autocratic principle to the
extent of admitting that the government
is the Garland the car she determined
| to slav Such was the object of the plot.
The means she intended to employ in
order to attain it were to the full as abom-
Unable as the end in view. She resolved
to gather together a select band of young
men, and, dazzling them by the almost ir-
resistible charms of her beauty, TO admin
lister to each, unknown to the other, sol
emn oath binding him to do her behests,
and to assassinate the emperor On a day
and in the manner fixed by her. She was
! determined that, if one failed, another
should take his place, and still another
after him, until at last the foul deed
should be done. The emperor successor,
too, unless he struck out new line of pol
icy, was to be stamped out of existence in
the same ruthless way, and thus Red Ter
ror was TO struggle with White until the
evils complained OF we're either abolished
or intensified to such an extent that the
most phlegmatic Russian peasant could no
longer endure them.
Sophia Gunsburg had no difficulty in
attracting sufficient number of love-sick
young Russians who were smitten by her
beauty and grace or made enthusiastic by
her eloquence. She sacrificed without hes
itation or regret all that pure woman
holds dearest in life in order to maintain
her hold over these young Catilines. She
was not, however, wholly a monster, nor
was she exempt from all human weak
nesses. She herself fell in love, eDerdument
in love, with an educated young Russian
whose paramount she became, but whom
she never initiated into her political plots
so that he continued down to the moment
of her arrest in complete ignorance of the
part she was playing as regicide. One of
the unsuccessful attempts on the cars
life. chronicled in the Daily Telegraph in
the early part of last year, was the work
of one of Sophia Gunsburg's body guards
and had she not been arrested when she
was, the present year OF grace would prob
ably have been the last of the reign of Al
exander III.
When the prisoner had finished the i'm
pressive discourse containing the history
of her lie and crime. which had been
occasionally interrupted by the questions
and rebukes of the presiding dignitaries,
the president asked her whether she felt no
compunction for the abominable deed she
resolved and attempted to execute, no re-
morse for the cynical way in which she
had Invested herself of all feminine mod
esty. Her reply was an emphatic mega
tive, which rang through the ball like the
peal OF musical bell tolling Cor the death
of youthful bride, and was quickly fol-
lowed by the solemn sing-song of the Judge
pronouncing the sentence of SYNONYMOUS
death. Her companions We're condemned
to various terms of hard labor in the