The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-07-09
BURIED ALIVE IN TIRAsPoL.
Details of the Russian Fanatics Amaz-
 ing Fortitude

ing Fortitude.
 On reaching the end of a short but lovely vernal glade, the gleaming white walls of Fedor Kovaleff's dwelling sud- denly came into view in the brilliant sunshine. It naturally occurs to me that the cottage and it's pretty umbra- geous surroundings form picture more attractive for the pencil than the pen. My companion silently points to gap ing cavity, blacllly shaded within, near the base of one of the cottage gables. Down In this cellar cave were entombed alive the first nine victims including Kovalef's wife and two children, aged respectively four months and four years, and his sister. One marvels, on a closer inspection, that this horrible small black hole was made to accom- modate nine persons lying prostrate, even though two of them were children. The victims appear, however, to have assumed the most convenient pastures for economizing the limited space, lying very closely together, and alternately head to feet A curious evidence of the cramped position In which one of the victims here found himself is shown by & small cavity which he scooped out of the clayey wall with his finger nails in order to give room for the repose of the head and shoulders. In another and closely adjacent part of Kovaleff's premises I saw the still open and shal- low pit from which the remains of six other victims were exhumed. I then visited the places in Sukhoff's and Cor sins gardens where the two parties of six and four victims were unearthed. Many of the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition when exhumed, more especially those of the victims who were buried many months ago.
 may here state that the living inter ments took place on the following dates Gall Old Style): Nine persons were walled up alive in Kovaleff's cellar on December 23; six were buried alive In Gorsin's garden on December 27; six in Kovaleffs garden. including Vitalia and Kovaleff's mother, on February 9, and the last four in Sukhoff's garden on February g. Force, or even torture, would have availed nothing in the en- deavors to compel Kovaleff to disclose the burial places of the other victims after the discovery about three weeks ago of those walled up in his cellar. It was entirely through the humane, sym pathetic and persuasive advice and pleadings of the prison governor that Kovaleff finally consented to reveal the whole story and point out the three other hecatombs.
 One of the most striking and extra ordinary aspects of these tragedies Is that furnished by the marvellous moral resoluteness and physical hardihood of the fanatic zealots. In my last letter I referred to the self-starvation of those n %,I vagrants for refusing to satisfy the in quiries of the census enumerators. The prison governor Is absolutely convinced that they would have literally perished of hunger and thirst had he not re- leased them at the last moment, and when they were prostrate from exhaus- tion., But now comes 8 little more con- vincing proof of the marvellous force of misdirected will and unflinching deter imitation of the victims. All the living interments took place at night, In one or two cases in the presence of two of Kovaleff's companions, and on the oth- CT occasions in the presence of several passive co-religionist witnesses. All this is duly attested In the evidence carefully eHcited by the examining magistrates Tn each case the victims, previous to
 
 in their best garments, and over these enveloped themselves silently and re- signedly in their living graves, lying in close array, and always on the right side, and without uttering an involun- tary moan or cry, without so much as moving hand or limb they permitted themselves to be slowly buried alive by the covering earth deliberately show eled over them by the single spade wielded by Fedor Kovaleff One stands aghast and dumfounded at the bare thought, not only of the access of reli- gious fanaticism which impelled these wretched people to voluntary auto da-fe, but of the astonishing physical control displayed in the manner of their se1f-submission to a horribly cruel death There Is something inhuman in such martyr will and martyr courage as here manifested. Any one of the vic- tinls weakly relenting his resolution at the last moment, or unable to suppress the human and physical instinct which causes dying person to wrestle with the death agony, might have stepped out of the grave while the clods from Kovaleff's spade were still falling over him or her; but they made not resist ing movement, as is conclusively shown by the various photographic pictures showing the positions of the bodies when recently uncovered.
 No less strong of nerve and Of fanatic fortitude must have been Kovaleff, who performed the sexton like, or rather ghoulish, office of walling up and inter- ring alive the whole of the victims. Several portraits of Kovaleff have been shown to me here in Tiraspo1 taken af- ter his arrest The pockmarked face and the general expression of his Little Russian features are certainly by no means prepossessing, but all those per sons here in Tiraspo1 who were person. ally acquainted with his, and with whom I have spoken, give Kovaleff an excellent character as sober, industri- ous and thrifty agriculturist, and a gentle and affectionate husband and father. Among their Orthodox and Jewish neighbors the Beguni have ifl- deed always and generally enjoyed a good reputation. They are all well-to- do people, few of them cultivating less than hundred acres, that is, to each fanily.-Tiraspol Correspondence of the London Daily News.