Mr. Sala’s Indictment of the Russian Police—Their Wide-reaching Functions—Instances of Police Stupidity—Why Sala Avoided the Police—Von H—— and his Spoons—Herr Jerrmann’s Experiences—Perovsky, the Reforming Minister of the Interior—The Regular Police—A Rural Policeman’s Visit to a Peasant’s House—The State Police—The Third Section—Attacks upon Generals Mezentzoff and Drenteln—The “Paris Box of Bills”—Sympathisers with Nihilism: an Invaluable Ally—Leroy Beaulieu on the Police of Russia—Its Ignorance and Inadequate Pay—The Case of Vera Zassoulich—The Passport System—How it is Evaded and Abused—Its Oppressiveness.
Mr. Sala’s Indictment of the Russian Police—Their Wide-reaching Functions—Instances of Police Stupidity—Why Sala Avoided the Police—Von H—— and his Spoons—Herr Jerrmann’s Experiences—Perovsky, the Reforming Minister of the Interior—The Regular Police—A Rural Policeman’s Visit to a Peasant’s House—The State Police—The Third Section—Attacks upon Generals Mezentzoff and Drenteln—The “Paris Box of Bills”—Sympathisers with Nihilism: an Invaluable Ally—Leroy Beaulieu on the Police of Russia—Its Ignorance and Inadequate Pay—The Case of Vera Zassoulich—The Passport System—How it is Evaded and Abused—Its Oppressiveness.
FORTYyears ago a well-known writer summed up the Russian police in the following scathing words: “As grand-masters of the art and mystery of villainy, as proficients in lying, stealing, cruelty, rapacity, and impudence, I will back the Russian police against the whole world of knavery.”
This tremendous indictment seems to be fully justified by past experience, and it is to be feared that many of the worst charges can be still maintained. Recent writers tell new stories that fall little short of the old. Russia is still absolutely given over to the police. It is the most police-ridden country in the world; not even in France in the worst days of the Monarchy were the people so much in the hands of the police. From first to last the Russian citizen is deemed incapable of looking after himself. Not only is he forbidden to take an active part in the management of public affairs, but in the most private matters he must submit to the interference of the police. “The Russian police has a finger in every pie,” wrote the acute observer quoted above.[15]“They meddle not only with criminals, not only with passports, but with hotels, boarding and lodging houses, theatres, balls,soirees, shops, boats, births, deaths, and marriages. The police take a Russian from his cradle and never lose sight of him till he is snugly depositedin a parti-coloured coffin in the great cemetery of Wassily Ostrow. Surely to be an orphan must be a less terrible bereavement in Russia than in any other country; for the police are father and mother to everybody—uncles, aunts, and cousins too.”
TYPES OF RUSSIAN POLICE. Officer. Mounted Sergeant. Foot Sergeant.TYPES OF RUSSIAN POLICE.Officer.Mounted Sergeant.Foot Sergeant.
Nothing can be done in Russia without police permission. A person cannot build a bathroom in his house without leave. A physician cannot practise without it; he must have leave even to refuse to attend to night calls; he cannot prescribe anæsthetics, narcotics, or poisons without special permission; and no chemist would make up a prescription containing any of these drugs unless the doctor’s name were on his special list. No new journal can be established without permission, no printing office, no bookshop, no photograph gallery; special police leave is needed to sell newspapers in the streets; a reader at one of the public libraries who wishes to consult standard works on social subjects must be armed with a permit; no concert forcharitable purposes can be organised without leave from the police, and the proceeds must be handed over to them to be passed on to the recipients or embezzled on the way. All freedom of movement within the empire is checked by the police. A native Russian must have leave if he wishes to go fifteen miles from home. A foreign traveller is forbidden to enter the country without leave, he must have leave if he wishes to remain more than six months, and must ask for leave to go away again; every change of residence must be notified to the police. The passport system, although at times unevenly and unequally administered, is a potent weapon in the hands of the police, by means of which they can control the movements of everyone within the empire.
To give some idea of the wide-reaching functions of the police, the power assumed in matters momentous and quite insignificant, we may quote from the list of circulars issued by the Minister of the Interior to the Governors of the various provinces during four recent years. The Governors were directed to regulate religious instruction in secular schools, to prevent horse-stealing, to control subscriptions collected for the Holy Places in Palestine, to regulate the advertisements of medicines and the printing on cigarette papers, to examine the quality of quinine sold, and overlook the cosmetics and other toilet articles—such as soap, starch, brilliantine, tooth-brushes, and insect powder—provided by chemists. They were to issue regulations for the proper construction of houses and villages, to exercise an active censorship over published price-lists and printed notes of invitation and visiting-cards, as well as seals and rubber stamps. All private meetings and public gatherings, with the expressions of opinion and the class of subjects discussed, were to be controlled by the police. In a word, quoting one high authority,[16]the Russian police collect statistics, enforce sanitary regulations, make searches and seizures in private houses, keep thousands of “suspects” constantly under surveillance, reading all their correspondence, and, of course, violating the sanctity of the post office. They take charge of the bodies of persons found dead; they admonish those who neglect their religious duties and fail to partake of the Holy Communion; they enforce obedience to thousands of diverse orders and regulations supposed to promote the welfare of the people and guarantee the safety of the State. There are 5,000 sections relatingto police in a Russian code of laws, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say, as Mr. Kennan puts it, that in the peasant villages, away from the centres of education and enlightenment, the police are the omnipresent and omnipotent regulators of all human conduct—a sort of incompetent bureaucratic substitute for Divine Providence.
PREFECTURE OF POLICE, PETERSBURG. Photo: Daziaro, Petersburg.PREFECTURE OF POLICE, PETERSBURG.Photo: Daziaro, Petersburg.
Before, however, dealing further with the Russian police of to-day, it will be interesting, for purposes of comparison, to look back for a moment into some of the less recent stories of police proceedings. Travellers who visited the country fifty years ago or more give it as their deliberate opinion that the Russian police was “more stupid, more dishonest and corrupt than can well be conceived.” Even in those days they had enormous powers; everything was submitted to their superintendence, and they carried out their orders just as seemed good to them. Their too literal interpretation of the letter of the law was often productive of the most serious consequences. Thus it was a strict rule that no one might pass the Neva when the breaking up of the ice had set in, and police were stationed on the banks to insist upon its observance. But the rule was also madeto apply to any unfortunate persons who were already on the ice when the thaw began; no one was allowed to cross, and therefore no one could be allowed to land. The humane intention of saving life was thus set at naught by the intense stupidity of subordinates, and many accidents happened.
A worse case occurred at the burning of the Lehmann Theatre, about 1840, during the Carnival, a period of great festivity known as Maslinizza. At the time in question the most popular of the many entertainments was that of a German pantomime company, which performed in a temporary theatre erected upon the Admiralty Square, St. Petersburg. This pantomime was the rage, and the theatre was constantly crammed. At one morning performance the alarm of fire was raised, almost instantly flames burst out from behind the scenes, and the whole edifice, of wood, was in a blaze. The audience, wild with terror, rushed to the doors, and found exit altogether forbidden. These doors opened inwards, and the pressure of the frantic crowd closed them as effectually as if they had been barred. A workman, who was on the far side, and who had assisted in the erection of the theatre, called for an axe, saying that he knew what was wrong, and that a way must be cut open for the crowd. But there was a policeman on duty, and he refused to allow any steps to be taken without superior authority. When, at last, his fatal obstinacy was overcome, and admission was gained, it was found to be too late. The whole of the densely packed audience, men, women, and children, were dead; they had been stifled by the smoke that filled the building, and not a single soul was saved.
The extortions of the Russian police have been at all times unblushing. Their rapacity knows no bounds, and it appears to be exhibited by every rank, from the highest to the lowest. George Augustus Sala, in his “Journey Due North,” admirably summed up the situation in his day. He had been struck by the appearance of a man in uniform, seated in an admirably appointed droschky behind a priceless stepper, driven by a resplendent coachman, and he thought that he was gazing upon the Czar himself. The master was not, perhaps, of prepossessing appearance; he was stout and flabby, with pale, trembling cheeks, and close-cropped, shiny black hair, but he was in a smart uniform, with a double-eagled helmet, buckskin gloves, and patent-leather boots. “Who is it?” Sala asked of a Russian friend. “Field-Marshal? Prince Gortschakoff? General
“THE MAJOR ... SITS AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM.”“THE MAJOR ... SITS AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM.”
Todleben?” “No, he is a Major of Police.” “Has he enormous pay or a private fortune?” “That dog’s son,” replied the Russian, “has not a penny of his own, and his full pay all told is a sum of £40 a year.” “But the private carriage, the horse, the silver-mounted harness, the luxury of the whole turn-out?” “Il prend; he takes.” And later on Sala proceeds to tell us how the “taking” is done. The Major in his handsome office sits at the receipt of custom; everybody must bribe him—all those who seek for licenses, for privileges. As we have seen, police permission is needed for everything under the sun, and all who come seeking it must pay. They bribe the Major, his employees, even the private policeman at the doors. “It is a continual and refreshing rain,” says Sala, “of grey fifty-rouble notes to the Major, of blue and green fives and threes to the employees, of fifty-copeck pieces to the grey-coats.” And then the writer goes on to give specific instances of robbery on a large scale, telling us how this police body, “organised to protect the interestsof citizens and watch over public order and morals, to pursue and detect and take charge of criminals ... simply harasses, frightens, cheats, and plunders honest folk.”
During the course of a one month’s residence in St. Petersburg Sala was robbed four times; first of a cigar-case, then of a purse, fortunately not very well lined, next of an overcoat, and lastly of a drawerful of nondescript articles, including shirts, cigars, and a pair of opera-glasses. This last robbery had been effected by breaking through a seemingly secure lock, and the victim suspected a certain chambermaid who attended to his room. He was on the point of laying the whole case before the police when a friend, a Frenchman who knew Russia by heart, interposed and strongly advised Sala to accept his loss; he would certainly recover nothing, and would as certainly be obliged to spend more than double the value of the property stolen, with the additional inconvenience of being nearly worried to death. The gist of this shrewd advice was that he should grin and bear it, buy new articles, but never complain. “Complaints will lead to your being replundered fourfold, hardly to the recovery of your possessions.”
This was no new experience. An earlier traveller, Herr Jerrmann, gives a curious instance of the extraordinary faculty the Russian police exhibited of retaining what came into their hands. It was always considered, he said, that the person robbed had never less chance of recovering his property than when the police had actually got the thief. The general feeling, in fact, was strong that thefts would be seldom if ever reported were it not that the law imperatively requires it to be done.
A certain nobleman, Von H——, lost some plate, silver spoons, knives and forks, which were abstracted from his plate-chest. A few weeks later one of his servants came and told him that he had seen the stolen property exhibited for sale in a pawnbroker’s shop. Von H—— went and identified his plate, then, calling the police in, required the silversmith to produce the goods. There could be no doubt as to ownership, for Von H——’s arms and initials had not been erased. The silversmith willingly admitted Von H——’s claim, and would have surrendered the property to him at once. But the police interposed, and declined to allow him to take away his property until he had formally proved his ownership. For this it was necessary to draw up a formal statement of the case, andsubmit it to the lieutenant of police, accompanied by a specimen article from his plate-chest in corroboration of his claim. While this was being done the police took charge of the pieces that had been stolen, and soon acquired more. Von H—— was apparently a novice then, for, in order to recover the few articles he had lost, he submitted the whole contents of his plate-chest for police inspection at the police bureau. From that time he never saw a single article again!
UNDER EXAMINATION IN A RUSSIAN POLICE OFFICE.UNDER EXAMINATION IN A RUSSIAN POLICE OFFICE.
Jerrmann tells another story within his own experience. A silver table-spoon was stolen from his kitchen; his suspicions fell upon the baker who brought him bread, and the same day the thief was captured, and the spoon traced to a receiver’s shop. Justice was prompt in its action; the thief was duly punished, the receiver’s shop was closed. But the police took possession of the spoon! Herr Jerrmann valued the spoon, which was a christening gift, and he was determined to spare no pains to recover it. He was, however, referred from one person to another, hunted from placeto place in the most vexatious way, and all without result. At last a commissary who was the custodian of the spoon asked him frankly why he was so persevering; the value of the spoon was trifling, and he must have spent more money in droschkies than the thing was worth, while he might confidently expect to be much more out of pocket still before he got back his property. Jerrmann, seeing how the land lay, suddenly decided upon a daring ruse. He told the commissary that he meant to have the spoon the very next day, and when he was asked mockingly what he proposed to do, he answered simply that he was going to dine that evening with Perovsky, the Minister of the Interior. “And I mean,” added Jerrmann, “to ask him a riddle, namely, how to recover one’s property when it is temporarily held by the police. If you will come to breakfast with me to-morrow morning I promise you that you shall make use of that very spoon. But whether you wear uniform or not will entirely depend upon how Perovsky deals with my riddle.” The commissary again laughed, but a little uneasily. He accepted the invitation to breakfast, and when he came the spoon was on the table; he had sent it in anticipation. The best part of this story is that the dinner with Perovsky was purely imaginary. But that famous Minister’s name was ever a terror to faithless officials.
This Perovsky, a man of singular ability and of the most straightforward character, had been appointed head of the police by the Czar Nicholas I. when that sovereign was roused to the consciousness that his police was a shame and a scandal to the empire. Perovsky did something, no doubt, towards reforming the most crying abuses, but he met with the most determined opposition from the great army of police officials, who bitterly resented his interference. Many stories are told of his methods of calling his subordinates to account. There was one occasion when he drew the attention of the chief of police to a certain mansion where gambling at prohibited games of chance was constantly carried on. He desired the police to surround the house and to depute two of their number to enter it. The officers were to make their way to a room indicated, and if they there found a party of gamesters at a faro table arrests should be made. All fell out as planned; the gamblers were caughtin flagrantewith piles of gold upon the table, sufficient proof of what was going on. But just as the players were about to be removed to the police
CONVICTS IN A RUSSIAN PRISON. (From a Photograph.)CONVICTS IN A RUSSIAN PRISON.(From a Photograph.)
station one of them took the police officers aside and assured them that it was all a mistake, that they were not playing for the gold upon the table, which merely served as markers. Still, if the police officers cared to try their skill atécartéfor a thousand roubles a game, some of those present would be glad to give them a chance of winning the money. This was only another excuse for making it a present to the officers of the law, who presently withdrew with their pockets well lined to inform their chief that there was nothing wrong in the house they had visited. This report was carried in due course to Perovsky, who summoned the two police agents before him, and, assuring them that he was not their dupe, opened another doorand disclosed to view the very same gamblers of the night before sitting at a green table in the same order, playing the same, prohibited game. The whole affair was an artfully executed plot to entrap the police.
The police, it has been contended, is an indispensable wheel in the organisation of absolute monarchy. That power pretends to be paternal as well as repressive, and as long as it forbids the people to share in government, or express opinions on current events, it must be aided by some organ that replaces the public voice, speaking either in elective assemblies or in the Press. The police, acting for the central power, is supposed to control everything, to criticise conduct, to protect as well as correct, and it thus becomes possessed of very considerable power. In Russia, under Nicholas I., the police was well styled the mainspring of the State machinery; and although under Alexander II. more liberal principles obtained, the growth of Nihilism led to reaction, and the police recovered all its old authority. Great pains have been taken to perfect its processes, to give it increased strength and enlarge its action. With this in view an organisation was planned which lasted for some years, and which consisted mainly in the separation of all police into two principal and distinct branches—
1. The ordinary, everyday, regular police.
2. The political, or State, and for the most part secret police.
Let us consider these in turn.
1. The regular police is on the whole organised as in many other European countries, with the difference that the police officer often predominates in Russia over other local functionaries. For purposes of illustration it may be noted that where in France asous-prèfetwould act under the prefect of a department, the official in Russia next to the Governor is theispravnik, with whom lesser members of the police hierarchy are in direct relations.
A great army of unofficial and unpaidattachésassists the regular police of the towns. This force was obtained through the clever device of enlisting the services of every house porter, the Russiandvornik, who answers to the Frenchconciergeand the GermanHausknecht, and discharges much the same functions in an emphasised and more arbitrary fashion. Thedvornikis bound to see and examine the papers and passports of all inmates of the house he serves, and especially of all visitors and new arrivals. The policeregulation requires everydvornikto carry the passport to the police station within three days of the arrival of a new person, and to lodge it there in exchange for a ticket of residence. The same process is followed on departure. Thus thedvornikbecomes a sort of permanent detective; he has not only to watch over all in the house, but he is held responsible that no revolutionary proclamations are posted on the external walls, no dangerous articles thrown out of the windows, and he is expected to lend a hand to the police if they make an arrest or give chase to a fugitive. Although he gets no pay from Government, he is expected to give much service under irksome conditions. He is forbidden to leave his post at any time during the long night watch, sixteen hours, from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. next day, and he is liable to severe punishment if he fail in these duties. For all this the house proprietor really pays, and he may be still further mulcted, for he is held responsible for all illicit acts committed in his house, which may be sequestrated on proof of secret meetings held within it, or on any discovery of weapons, ammunition, explosives, or forbidden literature.
The police in the provinces is represented by a force of 5,000 or more, who were first appointed in 1878, were armed, mounted, given good pay and many rights. Each officer had his own beat, in which he ruled supreme, and he was thought quite a delightful institution. But within a year or two the police had developed into abominable petty tyrants, who held the country folk at their mercy, a prey to their exactions and brutality. They became, in fact, a perfect scourge in their districts, and even governors and high officials denounced them as brigands. It became clear that a bad police was worse than no police at all. Thus, an institution intended to help and protect the people soon degenerated into a new and terrible instrument of vexation and oppression. No name was too bad for the rural policeman, theuriadniki, who were nicknamed thekuriatniki, or “chicken stealers,” by the peasants, and likened by the better informed to the dread bodyguard of Ivan the Terrible.
A graphic picture has been painted by the famous Vera Zassoulich, in her Memoirs, of the visit of a rural policeman to a peasant’s house in company with the tax collector of the district. Vera, a young lady of high birth and much beauty, spent, in pursuit of the Nihilistic propaganda she was preaching, long periods under the roofs of villagers, and she was working as anordinary seamstress in one house when a descent was made upon it. “I was sitting,” she writes, “at the door of the one room of the hut when the policeman appeared, accompanied by an old soldier in a dirty grey greatcoat, and followed by two peasants.... I was called upon to give my name, produce my passport, and state how long I meant to reside in that place.... Then, in reply to my questions, I was told that the police had come to back up the tax gatherer, and I saw what happened if the payments were in default. The stove of the hut was smashed, then smeared with tar, so were the walls, the furniture and wearing apparel; after that every piece of crockery in the place was broken and the pieces thrown out of the window. The horse and cow were taken out of the stalls and carried off to be sold.”
WHIP AND MANACLES USED IN RUSSIAN CONVICT PRISONS. (In Possession of H. de Windt, Esq.)WHIP AND MANACLES USED IN RUSSIAN CONVICT PRISONS.(In Possession of H. de Windt, Esq.)
2. The political or State police was the invention of Nicholas I. Alexander I. had created a Ministry of the Interior, but it was Nicholas who devised the second branch, which he designed for his own protection and the security of the State. After the insurrection of 1865 he created a special bulwark for his defence, and invented thatsecret police which grew into the notorious “Third Section” of the Emperor’s own chancery. It has been said, with reason, that no Russian, in the days of its most dreaded activity, could mention its name without a shudder. It has been likened to that other secret tribunal, that so long oppressed Venice, the Council of Ten. It was the most powerful instrument an absolute Government ever called to its aid. The terrors it inspired were heightened by the mysterious silence that overshadowed its proceedings. It worked secretly, but struck with unerring severity; its methods were dark and devious; it was unjust, unfair, illegal, respecting neither caste nor sex. Women, ladies of rank and beauty and fashion, were said to have been seized ruthlessly by its unscrupulous agents, tried in secret conclave, and punished then and there with the whip. Many people were hurried away to Siberia without any form of trial at all—the first application of the system known as “administrative process,” which became very common in after years, when the publicity of the Courts would have been inconvenient, or convictions uncertain in due course of law. The Third Section, while it lasted, was the most dreaded power in the empire. It was practically supreme in the State, a Ministry independent of all other Ministries, placed quite above them, and responsible only to the Czar himself.
The Third Section had its prototype in the privileged bodyguard of Ivan the Terrible, which laid the whole country under contribution. Another Czar, Alexis, had his secret police, and his son, Peter the Great, invented a police system of a most formidable kind. It was known as the Preobrajenski, from the place where it had its headquarters, and was in fact a modern civil Inquisition, more terrible, more powerful even than the religious Inquisition of Spain. Peter the Great very likely felt that, with the many changes he introduced into national life, which so often roused the most obstinate resistance, he ought to have ready to his hand an instrument of coercion supported by espionage. It was in effect the Third Section, as we have seen it since, and although it was solemnly suppressed by Peter III. in 1762, it survived in that Third Section, just as the latter survives in the existing organisation of the Russian police.
For many years, under Alexander II., the Third Section was much more than a State police; it was a power apart in the Government, exercising independent authority, having many privileges, placed
HOW PRISONERS USED TO BE DEPORTED TO SIBERIA.HOW PRISONERS USED TO BE DEPORTED TO SIBERIA.
outside and above the laws. Its chief, who was also called the Head of the Gendarmerie, was by right a member of the Council, and he was the most confidential servant of the Emperor, with whom he was ever in the most intimate relations. He exercised something like absolute power; his veto could in effect control all appointments, because he could adduce police reasons based on police knowledge against any person. He had, in fact, complete control over everyone and everything in the empire; he could arrest, lock up, exile, cause anyone he liked to disappear.
Photo: Bergamasco, Petersburg. COUNT SCHOUVALOFF, CHIEF OF THE “THIRD SECTION.”Photo: Bergamasco, Petersburg.COUNT SCHOUVALOFF, CHIEF OF THE “THIRD SECTION.”
Under the enlightenedrégimeof Alexander II., it seemed for a while as though the Third Section had lost much of its authority. But the first attempt upon the Czar’s life in 1866 at Kara Kossoff restored it to full activity, and one of the most prominent men in the empire, Schouvaloff, was placed at its head, thus restoring it to its ancient prestige, for the chief of the Third Section had invariably been a person of great consequence, as indeed the important functions he exercised demanded. But the revival of the Third Section was not justified by any subsequent success; in the years immediately following it proved itself singularly inefficient, unable either to prevent or to put down the outrages committed in broad day. It showed itself useless at St. Petersburg, at Kieff, at Odessa, at Karkoff, in all the great cities; it neither was able to defend itself against the conspiracies, nor could it detect or capture the conspirators. The first acts of the new revolution had been directed against the Third Section, and these attacks preceded those upon the Czar and his throne. The two last chiefs, General Mezentzoff and General Drenteln, fell victims to the Nihilists. The first was stabbed by some unknown person in the streets of St. Petersburg, the second was fired at in broad daylight by a young man on horseback, who was not arrestedfor a number of years. These attempts are to be placed to the credit of Nihilism, for they practically ended the Third Section.
Nominally this redoubtable office was abolished, but that did not mean that the arbitrary surveillance of the police was ended. Alexander II. hoped, perhaps, that he was wiping out a symbol of despotism, but he retained the substance while discarding the shadow. The change meant no more than the fusion of his private palace police with the ordinary public police. There was no longer a head of the Third Section, but there was a Minister of the Interior; it was the consolidation and concentration of power in one hand, and there it has remained.
There was good reason for the change; the various classes of police, instead of helping, hampered and interfered with each other. There were three police forces in the capital and all large cities; that of the Minister of the Interior, the city police, and the Third Section, already described. They were perpetually getting in each other’s way, and it was said that the State confided to their care was in as bad a way as the baby with five nurses. Often enough, like the famous detectives of the French farce,Tricoche et Cacolet, policemen hunted policemen; they were all suspicious of people who seemed too much on the alert, and the consequence was that much time and trouble was wasted in mutual surveillance. Sometimes it happened that the agents of the Third Section, fancying they had made an important arrest, found to their chagrin that they had only caught their comrades; meanwhile, the Nihilists had a practically free hand and terrorised the whole country.
The absolute incompetence of his protectors appears to have been brought home to Alexander II. by the incident known as the “Paris box of pills.” A parcel arrived one morning labelled “Pills for asthma and rheumatism: Dr. Jus, Paris.” It was addressed direct to the Czar, who was reported to be suffering from these complaints. Alexander handed the box over to his private physician for examination, and the moment it was opened one of the pills exploded. More care was shown in verifying the remaining pills, and it was found that they were filled with dynamite.
There have been times when the police of Russia were stirred to the utmost activity. After the murder of General Mezentzoff in broad daylight and in one of the principal squares of St. Petersburg, such profound dismay prevailed that the police were unceasinglyon thequi vive. The perpetrators of the deed, nevertheless, had disappeared, leaving no trace, and the police in their frenzied eagerness turned the city upside down. Searches innumerable of all suspected houses were made, and the most arbitrary arrests took place on the slightest whisper of anything wrong. Reports at the time put the numbers taken into custody at quite a thousand.
Yet “illegal” or “irregular” people, as they were styled by the officers of the law, came and went, moving about with impunity under the very noses of the police, and, as a rule, escaping scot-free. They found shelter in houses of friends and sympathisers—persons of all classes, some of them least likely on the face of it to assist the Nihilists. Stepniak tells us in his “Underground Russia” that theselikrivateli, as they are called in Russian, or “concealers,” were to be found among the highest aristocracy as well as in the ranks of Government officials, including even members of the police, all of them people who, for some reason or other, hesitated to give active support to the conspiracy, but who were nevertheless well disposed towards it, and proved this by hiding individuals for whom there was a hue-and-cry. Stepniak describes various types of this very numerous and varied class.
One of these sympathisers with Nihilism was known among the conspirators as thedvornik, because in his anxious care for the safety of his companions he ruled them as tyrannically as the doorkeeper, whose functions as an unpaid assistant of the police have been already described. This man made it his business to impress caution on his comrades, and so strictly, that when anyone was known to be under surveillance he would arrange for his concealment, and insist constantly on changing the hiding-place. Thedvornikwas quite a specialist in the business of circumventing the police. He knew them by heart and all their ways. On one occasion he hired an apartment exactly opposite the house in which the chief of the secret police lived, and watched it so closely day after day that he became acquainted with numbers of persons employed by the Police. He knew half the spies in St. Petersburg by sight, and had made a study of their peculiar methods, their manner of watching, the way they started on a hunt, how they pursued their quarry. After a time he could “spot” any new spy, could penetrate the cleverest disguisesof the old hands and detect small signs that betrayed them to him, but were quite unseen by others. In the same way he had thoroughly mastered St. Petersburg: he knew his way all over the city, was acquainted with all sorts of places of refuge and with every house that had two outlets, so that he was invaluable in helping anyone to escape. A fugitive placed under his guidance could be conveyed with absolute safety from one part of the city to another, so clever was he in covering up his tracks.
Photo: Bergamasco, St. Petersburg GENERAL BARANOFPhoto: Bergamasco, St. PetersburgGENERAL BARANOF
Speaking on the general question, Leroy Beaulieu in his monumental work on Russia says: “The police has been at all times a sink of abuses and extortions, because, of all departments, it enjoys the greatest facilities for indulging in them. In spite of the particular attention of which it has always been the object, this department, on which all the rest lean for support, has always been so far one of the most defective. In the cities, especially in the capitals, where they are under the eyes of the highest authorities, the force leave—externally—little to be desired. They are attentive, courteous, helpful, if not always honest. A foreigner who, in St. Petersburg, judged them from the outside only, would think the service perfect. Yet the long unpunished daring of the Nihilists has revealed only too clearly its incompetence and carelessness. The astounding powerlessness which the police displayed on these occasions is traceable chiefly to the habitual vices of Russian administration: ignorance, indolence, venality.”
General Baranof in 1881, when head of the police, found that a great number of his men could not sign their names correctly. Many more, even those of high grades, were supremely ignorant of the laws and regulations they were called upon to administer. The general tone was low, and the force was recruited from a very inferior class, for the police and their work are much despisedby respectable citizens. The pay has always been ridiculously small, thereby directly encouraging the dishonest practices, the more or less enforced contributions levied on the public in every direction, by which it has been eked out. The members of a force, driven by extreme penury into illicit earnings, could hardly be loyal, and it has been always easy for the revolutionists to buy relaxed watchfulness, and even complicity. So ineffective was the official police that in 1881 the city of St. Petersburg was invited to reinforce it by electing a council to co-operate in watching over the personal safety of the Czar. It was not the first time that well meaning loyal subjects had desired to assist the Government in the pursuit of its foes. The idea of thedroujina, an ancient secret society, was revived. It was a sort of Vigilance Society composed of special police volunteers, acting with the official police, but unpaid, and with no recognised status. The promoters thought that the best method of combating conspiracy was to meet conspirators on their own ground and with their own arms. Its organisation and action were secret. Among other measures it offered rewards to peasants and workmen who would inform the authorities of any plots in progress; another idea was to meet outrage by anticipation, to face the Nihilists with their own weapons, and blow them up with dynamite before they could use it to subvert existing authority. Thedroujinarejoiced in the epithets of “holy” and “life-saving,” but it achieved nothing tangible. It had the command of considerable funds, freely subscribed, and was carried on by a number of zealous persons, but it is not on record that they arrested a single conspirator, though, like the police, they sometimes took up the wrong people.
The well-known case of Vera Zassoulich showed conclusively how little the police were able to protect themselves. It was she who resolved, like a second Charlotte Corday, to call General Trépoff, the Prefect of civil police in St. Petersburg, to account for his cruel ill-usage of a prisoner, one Bogoli Ouboff. This man at one of Trépoff’s inspections did not remove his hat when the General passed. Trépoff not only struck him with his stick, but ordered him to be flogged. Corporal punishment had been abolished, and the order was therefore illegal; it caused great indignation in St. Petersburg, and nearly produced a serious outbreak in the prison. The story travelled far and wide, finally reaching the ears of Vera Zassoulichin a far-off province, that of Penza, seven months later. She started at once for St. Petersburg, and obtained admission to Trépoff’s presence on pretence of presenting a petition. But directly she saw him she drew a pistol from her pocket and fired at him point-blank. Trépoff was badly wounded in the side, but eventually recovered. Vera was seized and removed, but her demeanour was calm and self-possessed, and she only asked to be allowed to put on her shawl, which she had left in the waiting-room. It was thought that Vera’s attack was a part of a general conspiracy, but there seems to be little doubt that she acted altogether alone and on her own motion.
The sequel was curious, and showed how generally Trépoffs arbitrariness was condemned. Vera was brought before an ordinary tribunal, tried, and acquitted. Her friends then very judiciously got her out of the country, fearing, and with good reason, that this decision would not be allowed to stand. They were perfectly right, for the Government overruled the verdict, although given by a legally constituted tribunal, and ordered Vera to be re-arrested. Happily for her, she was already safe in Switzerland. After this the Government decreed by ukase that all political offences should be tried, not by a jury, but by a specially constituted tribunal. They were, in fact, to be brought before a court-martial having the same powers as in war-time, and inflicting penalties under the military code, which included deportation and the loss of civil rights.
The passport, by which every individual is, or ought to be, held and ticketed so as to be recognised and easily followed wherever he goes, is a terrible burden on a people half of whom are compelled by the climate and the poorness of the soil to spend six months of every year away from home. To be obliged to take out a passport before leaving home is at once a hindrance to movement and a tax upon the pocket. To abolish the passport would be a first great step towards according freedom to the whole population. As it is, no one can choose his own residence, nor follow his profession as he pleases; still less can people collect and group themselves in places where the productiveness of the soil would naturally encourage them to do so. Yet the obligation is by no means effective; it is constantly evaded. The fabrication of false passports is a very flourishing trade, which has been of immense service to the revolutionists in covering up their movements and concealing from the eyes of justice those “wanted.”
VERA ZASSOULICH SHOOTING GENERAL TRÉPOFFVERA ZASSOULICH SHOOTING GENERAL TRÉPOFF
A story is told of a Russian gentleman who was in a hurry to leave Odessa and travel to the shores of the Mediterranean. Not choosing to waste time in presenting himself at the Passport Bureau, he accepted the services of a commissionaire, who promised to get him the passport for a comparatively small sum, a little under £4. The would-be traveller accepted the offer, and next day started from home with the passport all in proper form.
Nor have the passport regulations reduced the number of vagrants for ever on the tramp, who can show no papers, and yet are seldom interfered with. When the authorities awoke suddenly to the need for enforcing the rules in some of the more remote towns, such as Tiflis and Odessa, there was a general exodus of the working population, and the well-to-do people were left without the servants, small tradespeople, and others who had ministered to their wants.
The passport regulations oppress all classes. The well-to-do Russian who would go abroad must pay for the privilege; the tax is at present ten roubles (about thirty shillings), but in the days of Nicholas I. it was five hundred roubles, and some are in favour of reviving this costly tariff. When the police are stirred up by some Nihilist outrage, a high price must be paid to obtain a travelling passport, but it can be got, as can almost anything in Russia, for money. The burden, however, weighs heaviest on the poorer classes, who are constantly liable to be bullied by the police to produce passports, and imposed upon by the communal authorities when renewal is sought. Passports are often lost by their holders, more often stolen from them. When this happens, the loser, if he is a stranger from a rural district residing in a city on sufferance, may find himself in sore straits. It is an expensive and tedious business to obtain another passport, and to be without one is to run perpetual risk of trouble with the police. The man without a passport is thus often thrown into the arms of the revolutionary party, who, if he will accept their tenets, readily obtain him a false passport, and find him the work he could not get without its production. Again, it is known that many peasants residing in towns suffer from the dilatoriness or unconcern of the authorities whose duty it is to renew their passports. Cases are on record where the fear of police persecution while passportless has driven men to suicide. A village girl killed herself in 1879 becauseshe could not get her papers renewed and the family in which she was working would not re-engage her.
The passport arrangements appear to be more stringent in connection with natives than with visitors, but the latter are denied the comparative freedom they once enjoyed. At one time a visitor might remain a month in the country without inquiry or interference; now it is necessary to register the passport for a stay of anything over three days; the document is lodged at the police office, and the hotel-keeper, landlord, or host becomes responsible for the traveller. It is the same with any driver of a post-chaise in the country districts, who has to produce his passenger at every station. Letters are only delivered after registration of the passport, and then on a certificate filled in by the chief of police of the district. Passports are taxed, and bring in a considerable revenue to the Government; at one time a visitor paid £12 for registration, but the fee has been considerably reduced. During the reign of Nicholas I. it rose as high as £40.