The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-12-12
Man Who Is RevoIutionizing Russia
BY w. L. Brown

~ me- DIT tunes, during my life in
San Francisco, where we lived and
thought together, seems to me about
to reap its reward. All Russia. is
afame with the fever of revolt against
tyranny. Suffrage seems to be almost
within the grasp of the people. An up-
rising, with which nothing in the his
tory of the empire is liable to compare
Is now threatening Russia. The seed
that has been SO often sown is at last
sproutlng. L feel that my own labors
were not in vain. My pen is working
now more vigorously than for years
and my heart beats nervously as 1
anXiously yearn for that first hour of
freedom that all Russians will enioy
when that awful reign of tyranny is
destroyed"
Certain that the hour of emancipa-
ton of his countrymen is at hand, Dr.
Nicholas Russell, once prominent
resident of this city, and now work.
ing night and day in the Far East to
realize an ambition that he has fos-
tered for years, thus writes to fell
low practitioner in his former place of
abode.
The news from st. Petersburg lately
has frequently mentioned the name of
Russell. It has told of the secret issu-
ance of his propagandas that have
kindled the fire of hatred among his
countrymen and stirred them to revo-
lutionary action. First he was skirt
ing along the southern borders of Rus
STA. Next ne was compelled to seek
refuge in Japan, where we have since
learned of his work among the Russian
prisoners of war, who, thirty thousand
their sympathy for the revolutionists
in Russia by singing the ''Marseillaise''
and waving red banners bearing the
symbols of liberty, as they marched
through the detention camps.
Few of the readers of the dispatches
from the Far East have probably rec
ognized in this propagation of revolt the
same DR.. Nicholas Russell, a distin-
l
practiced for a number of years in
this city, with his offices in the
Phelan building, and was for time
foremost in a local fight against the
Greco-Russian church, that was pro-
ductive of a nasty scandal and result
ed in the recall of Bishop Vladimir.
He had probably been forgotten by all
but those with whom he continued to
correspond and those with whom he
was engaged in the Greco-Russian
church controversy in the early '9O's.
Then as now he was imbued with the
bitterest hatred for the Russian mon
arch and publicly displayed his feel
ings. He had been forced to suffer
some of the cruelties practiced by the
Government upon it's subjects and had
finally fed to escape imprisonment in
the dreaded bastile of Tyumen.
DR.. Russell is a nobleman by birth,
fact he concealed after his arrival in
San Francisco until the outbreak of
the troubles with the opposing faction
in the Greco-Russian church, Of which
he was at one time member. He had
been a graduate of the University of
Kieff, where as history has shown the
student body gradually absorbs the
theories of the free born man and on
nublic occasions vents it's feelings
against monarchistic government. DR..
Russell, as many others have done, in
Cured the anger of the Russian au- !
thorities by his seditious utterances |
AT a student meeting and his arrest |
was ordered. Aided by a sister, then |
but 16 years old, he escaped from Kieff |
one night, disguised as a Mahomme- j
dan, and fled to Roumania.
For her loyalty to her brother DR.. |
RussePs sister was condemned to i'm |
prisonment for five years, and when |
he next heard from home the estate
of his father who had turned against |
the authorities because of the brutal
treatment of his children, had been
confiscated. From Roumania the
young fugitive went to Bulgaria |
thence to Greece, where he married
the woman who has since shared with
him the perils attending his frequent
Journeys to the Russian borders, and
they then went to Paris. At the end
If several years practice as physi-
,ian in the French capital the doctor
and his wife came to San Francisco.
Mrs. Russell was an attractive woman, r
who rapidly surrounded herself with
oAv-made friends, who will readily
,ecau the happy social events they en-
loved as the guest of this entertain
ng hostess.
It was early in 1890 that DR., Russell
irst gained prominence through the
.barges he made against Bishop Vladl-
mir of the Greco-Russian church on
powell street They were preceded by
he withdrawal of the doctor and his
wife from the church and were fol-
owed by Russel's accommodation