Arizona republican., 1918-11-06
Rx Thomas H. Bell

reported this week, the act, according to T. H. Bell, of this city, who is we'll in formed on Russian affairs, was one of inhuman brutality and savage fanat- icism.
 q knew the old lady we'll" MT, Bell says. "When she came to New York some F or 13 years ago to raise funds for the Russian revolutionary propa- ganda. as she did not speak much Eng fish then I acted often as her interpre- ter. She was then, should think, about | 65 though still with the courage ot | Youth. Her history had been an extra ordinary one. Born in high society she had grown tc' womanhood and been hapDily married before the sufferings of her country under the tyranny of autocracy reused her to an active part in the struggle. When once she began she realized more and more what II meant and became more and more de- termined to give herself to 1t entirely. She had then to make decision which tc. most women will seem an impossible one. The husband she loved was an intelligent man. in sympathy with liber- al ideas, but she saw finally that he had not the courage and devotion necessary to sacrifice everything in the cause of freedom. Ultimately she spoke to him, telling him that she had decided for herself and that if he would not go with her she would go alCne. He could not and she did. After that her history is one long record of propaganda among the peas ants, of constant danger, of arrests, i'm prisonment and exile, of escapes. re- newed activity and arrest again. When I knew her she had recently escaped from Siberia and was one of the eldest survivors, Everybody called her "Ba- b1shka" (Granny). It was she who was betrayed and arrested with Tchai- | koysky (the present president of north ern Russia); and I once before told l the readers of the Republican how when the two were accused in court of being leaders in the revolutionary l movement which had then just been defeated the shrewd and practical old man simply called upon them to prove it, was acquitted. allowed to live un- 1 molested in Russia devoting himself to | the development of the agrarian CO., operative movement till the revolution came again, while the cid lady would have not the slightest compromise and proclaimed herself an enemy of tyranny to the last breath she should draw. | l said then that she was packed off to Siberia, but I had forgotten. For a | long period 1 remember now, she was l imprisoned in one Of the worst dun geons of SS. Peter and Paul and not a word from her was ever allowed to reach the outside world. Finally some of her influential friends prevailed upon her son, whom she had left as a baby with her husband, to apply fer permis- | sion to see his mother. Unfortunately 1 the man had grown up more of a reac- tionary than his father. and though he did apply for permission and his posi- ton enabled him to obtain it, he made the mistake apparently of trying some- how to move the stubborn will of the prisoner towards submission, and to the disappointment of those who waited | eagerly for news he could only repart- that she had turned her back upon him.
 News after some' years did finally come from Siberia, from one of the most i wretched places in it, telling of her as suffering but still indomitable It looked as if the best that one could wish her was a speedy death.
 When the Russian revolution did take place at last all Russia turned towards the old woman in the wilderness; she was brought back with a few other survivors, and despite her protests lodged in one of the cZars own apart ments.
 Believing like her old friend Tchai- kovsky. now at the head of a great federation of cooperative societies, that some other things were more inn portant than politics, she devoted her self for a while entirely to matters of | education
 When, however, the bolsheviki sprang into power and soon began suppressing I 1aF-0 l,.1 T IT.; l both the old veterans of liberty felt themselves obliged to step once more into active service, and soon they were fighting as strenuOusly against the new tyranny as ever they had fought against the old. Before long they had once more to take to Underground Russia" and Tchaikovsky had to cut off his long beard and Babushka to put on the peas ants dress again.
 Americans generally assume some how that the bolshevi<i are the extreme radicals of Russia. As a matter of fact they are not, philosophically, anything of the kind any more than the Jacobir followers of Robespierre were the req radicals of the. French revolution Though Lenine first acquired a reputa- ton by his attacks on some of the most antiquated doctrines of the orthodox
 
 sidered very old stuff amongst radicals in Paris or in London. Breshkovskaya herself. with Tchaikovsky and Prince kropotl1in, the anarchist, were looked on as the most radical among the revo- lutionaries of Russia It is strikingly significant of the situation that these three have been as determinedly op- posed to the tyrannical dictatorship O the proletariat" as the most conserva tive among the bourgeois parties. Tht bOlsheviki were quite sure that they ant | they alone were right, that the econo mic question was the only question, tha the whole social problem would b, solved when once the proletariat ob tained full power the middle class mus be looked upon always as defeated enc mics to be kept down under foot, an. revolutionists who did not agree witt the bolshevik program were to be re garded as traitors or at least nuisance and to be suppressed without mere. lest they should weaken faith in the nev regime. Kropotkin, on the other hand for instance, however hopelessly i'm practical he might be in his dreams o communism, nevertheless as q man 0 science, a Sociologist and man wh
 had lived in western Europe am America, knew that there were prob lens to be solved besides that of tn belly, stood stoutly for the full right of the individual. full freedom of speech decent treatment of the minority what ever faults they had committed in tn past, and for the full acceptance o Russias's responsibilities towards tn allies who had joined her in the figh against the would be world -conquerors
 The excuse of history for the brutali ties of the Russian workers will be tn brutalities to which they were subjec themselves for so many centuries | Trcata CD t1o tn