Kronstadt on the eve of mutiny—Influences encouraging uprising—Make-up of the garrison—Wild rumors—A grand plan for general army and navy uprising—A successful beginning—Silence—A momentous telegram—A sudden signal—Mutiny—Trapped!—Slaughter—Illuminating lessons of the Kronstadt fiasco—The terrible cost in life and liberty.
Kronstadt on the eve of mutiny—Influences encouraging uprising—Make-up of the garrison—Wild rumors—A grand plan for general army and navy uprising—A successful beginning—Silence—A momentous telegram—A sudden signal—Mutiny—Trapped!—Slaughter—Illuminating lessons of the Kronstadt fiasco—The terrible cost in life and liberty.
THE Kronstadt fiasco revealed the value to the government of theagent provocateur.[12]During the entire year 1906 there was no shrewder nor cleverer piece of work executed. It must be said at the same time, however, that the revolutionists themselves were somewhat to blame. They generally are. Some one is stupid, hesitating in the crisis, or recklessly premature, and the psychological moment is lost. This is the deepest tragedy of the revolution. There is always consolation in the wake of the inevitable, but when disasters are precipitated by unnecessary or preventable causes, by carelessness or inefficiency, there is only black regret. At the Kronstadt rising scores of lives were sacrificed, the careful preparatory work of months was undone, and the current of the revolution itself for the moment arrested.
When I attended a revolutionary meeting and listenedto the singing of theMarseillaisewithin the very walls of the fortress, there was large promise of a successful uprising when the time should come. This was the second week in June. Two days after my visit a committee of “sailors and soldiers of the St. Petersburg and Kronstadt garrisons” forwarded to the Group of Toil in the Duma a telegram of support and appeal, closing with the following sentence:
“Though you are in the Duma in the minority, still you must firmly remember that you express the will of the whole peasantry and laboring class; that is, all of the toilers of the land.
“But if on account of small numbers you are not able to carry through and realize all these reforms which are indispensable and which you are empowered by the people to obtain, then you must sound a call to the people and army, calling them to rise for the struggle.
“Your call will not be a voice in the desert, but, on the contrary, it will sound like thunder through the whole land and all as one will arise—all of the enslaved and oppressed—for the defense of their trampled rights, for land, and for freedom.”
Coming when they did these were foolish words. As subsequent events proved “all of the enslaved and oppressed” did not rise, nor were they in a position to rise at that time. The publication of this telegram did not advance the cause one iota, but it did put the government on guard. Kronstadt was doubly watched from that moment.
The Duma was dissolved just one month later, and three weeks after the dissolution Kronstadt tried to rise—a costly, futile effort.
In early June the garrison consisted of about twenty thousand sailors, four thousand heavy artillery, and twothousand infantry. In August the sailors and artillery numbered approximately the same, but more infantry had been brought down from Peterhof. This alone should have been a warning to the military organization, but the roster of the revolutionary sympathizers was apparently so long, the outlook so encouraging, that the force of the loyal men was hopelessly under-estimated. In this particular bad generalship was to blame.
The Sunday preceding the mutiny I visited Kronstadt. Near the center of the island is a summer garden in which a military band plays each Sunday afternoon. Ordinarily this garden is crowded with visitors. I found it as desolate as a cemetery. The band was there—playing manfully to deserted groves and empty benches. Here and there a soldier strolled with his sweetheart. But the absence of the usual gala throng was ominous. The streets, too, were still. Houses were closed. Veritably it was an evacuated city. Upon inquiry, I was told that a rumor had been circulated during the previous two or three days that all of Kronstadt had been mined, by the government, and a warning issued to the soldiers and sailors that if mutiny did break out the mines would be exploded, blowing sailors, soldiers, ships, and town into Kingdom Come. This sounded to me like a ridiculous fiction. And I still scout the idea. But the Russian people have learned by costly experiences that the wildest tales of the government often prove true in Russia. A panic had, therefore, possessed the town, and all of the townspeople who could had fled. Extraordinary as this report sounds, it would unquestionably have been a safer thing for the government to do than to allow Kronstadt to become a revolutionary stronghold. Wandering about the town I could discover no signs of an imminent uprising. I even failed to find any of my acquaintancesamong the military organization, which made me wonder a good deal. And indeed, as I learned later, at this time, four days before the actual outbreak, there was no thought of attempting the mutiny immediately, on the part of the revolutionary leaders. In reality it was planned for several weeks later, when the peasants would have gathered their scanty harvests and be ready to fight: when the railroad, postal and telegraph strikes were planned to come off simultaneously; then, as an adjunct to these national movements, the army and navy mutinies were to begin. The plan was an elaborate one and looked thrillingly good on paper, but as has happened before theagent provocateurof the government had not been taken into account. Upon signal, Sveaborg, near Helsingfors, was to rise, then Reval in the Baltic provinces, then Sebastopol on the Black Sea, and finally Kronstadt. With these four important strongholds captured it would seem that the fight was won. The month of September, or possibly October, was the time selected to set in motion the attacks upon these centers—in conjunction with a general strike and multitudinous peasant uprisings—jacquerie—all over the empire.
A plan of this magnitude necessarily depended for execution upon a great many different people, and, despite all the care that was supposedly exercised, every detail was early reported to the government, with the result that the whole thing was not only forestalled, but precipitated, and at the moment when everything was most favorable to the government.
Violent reaction followed the dissolution of the Duma. The American mind can scarcely conceive of the degree of suppression employed by the Russian government. Nearly every liberal newspaper in St. Petersburg was immediately confiscated and many permanently suppressed. Not only radical journals, but moderate newspapers, like those edited by Professor Paul Miliukoff and Professor Kovalevsky, newspapers of dignity and spirit, untainted by commercial or ignoble motives, such as we in America cannot appreciate. Foreign newspapers,—from England, from France, from Germany,—were so rigidly censored that nothing about Russia worth reading escaped elimination. This aspect of the censorship was most farcical. The men who wrote the telegrams and articles remained in St. Petersburg. The things they wrote were lamp-blacked in every individual paper that entered the country. Personal correspondence was demoralized. The letters of private individuals were ruthlessly opened and frequently confiscated. And as for arrests, it seemed as if nine out of every ten men who had ever expressed a liberal opinion were marked for prison. It was estimated that six hundred political arrests were made in St. Petersburg alone during the week of the Duma dissolution. These wholesale arrests continued for weeks all over Russia. The governmental troops seemed to be in absolute control everywhere. The atmosphere of St. Petersburg was at first tense with expectancy that some change would come and turn the tables, but as days passed and the iron heel of the bureaucracy only pressed the harder over the land, liberal sympathizers became utterly discouraged and despairing. This was the situation when I went to Kronstadt on the Sunday of the fatal week. On that day all was quiet. So was it on Monday. Tuesday there were a score of rumors in the air, most of them wild and fantastic, but yet seeming indicative of something. Wednesday news of the Sveaborg mutiny reached St. Petersburg. The reports were hysterical. The Sveaborg fortress was reported fallen, and ships sent to recapture the batteries had themselves fallen under mutiny. Fighting was next reported at Reval, and at the same time from Sebastopol. All telegrams were favorable to the revolutionists. All eyes turned to Kronstadt. Kronstadt awaited the signal. Suddenly all communication was cut off between St. Petersburg and the centers of activity. Even the railroad to Helsingfors was broken—the bridge dynamited. The last reports that got through were entirely favorable to the mutineers, and, therefore, the assumption was that the telegraph, telephone, and railroad lines were held by the revolutionists.
Some of the foreign correspondents in St. Petersburg hastened toward Sveaborg, but I, knowing Kronstadt so intimately, went there, to be on hand for the fight which seemed so imminent. The regular boats between St. Petersburg and Kronstadt were discontinued Wednesday afternoon. This seemed an indication of something brewing, so I hurried over the course I had so hastily come a few weeks earlier when “escaping” with Pasha. I reached Orienbaum by train, and there secured a boat across the mile-broad stretch of water to the fortress.
It was just sunset when I reached the island and made my way through the deserted streets of the town. A remote hill village could be no lonelier. No one seemed to know who had disturbed the connections with St. Petersburg.
The first information of importance I gleaned was that nearly all of the ships stationed at Kronstadt had just put out to sea, and that of those remaining all but one or two had been dismantled. That is to say, their guns had been dismounted and most of the sailors disarmed. The effect of these precautions upon the men was precisely what any reasonable and logical person would have supposed—discouragement from immediateaction. I found a small government boat lying at a quay with about twenty sailors and heavy artillerymen lounging about the decks. There was no officer near, so I boarded the ship and sat talking with the men for half an hour or more. After the first few minutes they opened up and told me that they knew almost nothing of what was going on at Helsingfors as the government had prevented their seeing any newspapers. They admitted that there were plans for a mutiny—“but not yet.” All agreed to this: “Not now.” The artillerymen said: “If any ship flying a red flag comes along it will not be fired upon by us. But we don’t want to start the affair.” I spent the remainder of the evening going from point to point and talking to sailors, soldiers, and young men about the town. Nearly all told me the same thing. “We know we must rise. There is no other way. But we must not be hasty. We will wait and rise together with other garrisons and with the fleet.” The men seemed all to have learned well their lesson of restraint from the workers of the military organization, for I knew absolutely that this was what they had been instilling into the Kronstadt garrison for weeks.
By ten o’clock I was satisfied that Kronstadt would remain serene for the present. There was no indication whatever of movement anywhere on the part of either sailors or soldiers. Returning to the quay I found the regular ferry-boat running to Orienbaum as usual. I boarded the one which left at ten-thirty. We were delayed a few minutes at starting by a brawling sailor. This was the only enlivening incident I had witnessed. Midway to the mainland a search-light on a warship, which had just crept in close to Kronstadt, began sweeping the water. Round and round, now slowly, now fast, now near, now far. Once the great white path caughtour little boat and fastened upon us. Then it turned and flashed toward the sea. The night was wonderful, still and calm, with a clear sky and brilliant stars above, and a soft summer breeze drifting pleasantly across the distant waters of the gulf. Perfect peace seemed to brood over Kronstadt. When the circling search-light fell upon the grim fortress walls they stood out in frowning silence which seemed set and lasting—like eternal verities, great hopes of struggling men, and all things which endure.
I vaguely framed the telegrams I had promised to send for other correspondents, according to the coöperative arrangements made under the stress of many points of interest simultaneously claiming attention—telegrams to London, to Paris, and Berlin. Their substance was: “Kronstadt promises to remain quiet for the present, although ships flying red flags will meet with no hostile reception.” We were twenty minutes in crossing. We had not fairly landed when the great guns of Kronstadt boomed and the mutiny was on.
Inasmuch as I was nearer to it than any one else, I believe I was the most surprised—unless, perchance, the very men who took part in the affair. The Kronstadt uprising of August, 1906, was a bolt from the blue to the men who participated, to the workers of the military organization, and to every one who was supposedly familiar with the situation there. The flash-light from the warship playing on the fortress seemed a sort of confirmation of this.
The explanation throws a white light on the question “Why the army does not rise.”
Just before the departure of the boat for Orienbaum a telegram had been received by the central committee of the military organization. The wires having been interrupted for some time, the arrival of this telegram was accepted as evidence that the lines were in friendly hands. The telegram purported to be from Helsingfors. It stated that Sveaborg was captured and also Reval; that Sebastopol would presently fall. Further, two warships in the hands of the revolutionists were at that moment on the way from Helsingfors to Kronstadt and would arrive about daylight. In the meantime Kronstadt must rise so as to be in the hands of the revolutionists when the ships arrived in the morning.
This meant immediate action. A small number of sappers and miners were gathered together and certain outer batteries captured. Two heavy shells were fired, and these guns signaled the garrison to rise. The sappers and miners were soon reinforced by artillerymen and sailors, but nearly all of these were unarmed, having had their arms taken from them a few days before. They therefore advanced upon the arsenal. On the way the officers’ quarters were invaded and six officers killed, including an admiral. The arsenal was captured against small resistance and the men rushed up-stairs to where the guns were stored. They pulled the doors from the gun-cases, and then for the first time suspected that the telegram and the whole signal to rise was a hoax. The guns were there, but the locks had all been removed!
Unarmed sailors are no better than an unarmed mob. When the mutineers poured out into the street from the arsenal they were received by a regiment of loyal troops brought down from Peterhof that very afternoon and now hurried into action. They poured volley after volley into the men coming out of the arsenal. There was some bayonet-fighting, but the rattle of gatling guns speedily forced a surrender. The actual casualties of this night will never be known. They cannot be reckoned fromwithout, and the government will not disclose the figures. Horrible scenes followed the slaughter. Bodies of the dead were pitched into the sea and with them some wounded who still lived. One or two of these survived, being carried by the current across the narrow stretch of water to the mainland and there washed ashore.
Several hundred arrests followed. A Duma deputy, named Anipko, a member of the Group of Toil, was taken on this occasion, and with him my friend Paul. I could never learn why these two were not executed, but instead they were both sent to Siberia. A few days later there were nineteen men shot, twelve sent to hard labor for life, one hundred and twenty others to the mines for varying terms, and four hundred and twenty-nine to prison. These five hundred and eighty men, together with those killed outright, were supposed to be the leading members of the military organization in Kronstadt at that time. Doubtless they were. A régime of repression was naturally promptly established.
Every time there is an incipient mutiny there is a renewal of oppression. Again and again during the last few years have mutinies, like the Kronstadt affair, been precipitated by the government, and always with results as disastrous to the men as satisfactory to the government. The fact that the army does not rise is no indication at all that the men are loyal to the Czar. As a whole they are not. The difficulty comes in their not being able to rise simultaneously, and in their inability to save their leaders from execution or exile long enough to lead them into battle.
The failure of Kronstadt, of Sveaborg, and of Reval did not make any appreciable impression upon the men. More of the best leaders were taken, a few hundred more lives given up, but the spirit of unrest remained. The
The Kronstadt insurrection
The Kronstadt insurrection
The Kronstadt insurrection
Loyal troops sent to quell Kronstadt mutiny
Loyal troops sent to quell Kronstadt mutiny
Loyal troops sent to quell Kronstadt mutiny
hugeness of Russia makes the revolutionary movement unwieldy. Every man, or woman, who is educated, or who shows liberal tendencies, is liable to be marked, and at the first opportunity, reasonable or unreasonable, clapped into prison, or exiled. The best disciplined army in the world would fall asunder if practically all of the officers were suddenly snatched away. It is only the great underlying principle of the revolution which now moves the masses on. The reign of anarchy which threatens Russia to-day is a far more terrible menace than the bloodiest revolution fought out on a civil-war basis. When a whole people become utterly lawless, each man striking blindly, and all striking, the result is chaos for the time being. The existing weak government is rapidly bringing Russia to this. For the government, while able to demoralize the ranks of the revolution, is yet unable to administer, to rule, or to guide. The great mass of the people are against the government. Many, especially of the middle classes, are silent because they dare not openly fight. But the very moment the tide of success turns into the channels of the revolutionists, the ranks of the government’s enemies will swell enormously. The number of people all over the country who are as it were “on the fence” who will join the revolution as soon as the propitious moment seems to have arrived is inestimably large. So it is with the army. The percentage of the men favorable to revolution is large, but for their own necks’ sake they refrain from premature revolt. When the wave of success finally sweeps high over the existing order, the army will turn by regiments and brigades. The officers know this perfectly well, and are straining every resource to put off the day when this cataclysm will overtake them. But it is coming as surely as night follows day. Discipline in the army is such thatit can be stayed but it cannot be ultimately avoided. Men now have no other alternative than to obey. For example, when an execution is to take place and there is the slightest doubt about the soldiers who are to do the shooting, a file of infantry are ranged at a given spot; directly behind the soldiers a file of, say, marines; directly behind these again a file of Cossacks. The command is given to the front rank to fire. Every man whose gun doesn’t go off is shot by the man behind him; if any man in the second rank fails, the Cossacks in the rear—who can always be depended upon—shoot.
Paul and Pasha, and all of the other ardent men and women whom I saw working in Kronstadt in June, were either killed, imprisoned, or exiled, in August. But by September there were other Pauls, other Pashas, established in Kronstadt, working just as earnestly and fearlessly, and just as hopeful of the ultimate outcome. They all believe in this revolution with the same gloriously blind faith, for they recognize revolution as the inevitable result of the anachronous and rotten social, economic, and political conditions which have for so long sapped the vitality of Russia.
Arrived in Bielostok—First impressions—Stories of the injured—The crucifix as a weapon of death—The hospital fired upon—Children victims—Failure of government to place responsibility—Mass of evidence proving governmental complicity in massacres—Other massacres officially instigated—Prince Urusoff’s speech—The assassination of Professor Hertzenstein—A celebrated Moscow physician murdered—Warsaw horrors—Upon whom rests the responsibility?—Arrest of Pasha—Shooting a girl in prison—Bureaucracy guilty of murder and assassination—Placing the responsibility on the Czar—The arch-terrorist and assassin of Russia.
Arrived in Bielostok—First impressions—Stories of the injured—The crucifix as a weapon of death—The hospital fired upon—Children victims—Failure of government to place responsibility—Mass of evidence proving governmental complicity in massacres—Other massacres officially instigated—Prince Urusoff’s speech—The assassination of Professor Hertzenstein—A celebrated Moscow physician murdered—Warsaw horrors—Upon whom rests the responsibility?—Arrest of Pasha—Shooting a girl in prison—Bureaucracy guilty of murder and assassination—Placing the responsibility on the Czar—The arch-terrorist and assassin of Russia.
THE sixth week of the Duma session apogrom, or massacre, was instigated in the town of Bielostok, in Grodno, on the edge of Poland. I hurried to the scene as fast as I could, arriving shortly after the slaughter had ceased and before the wreckage and debris had been cleared from the streets.
My train was late. Bielostok was wrapped in midnight quiet when I alighted at the station. The first impression was that I had been set down in the midst of an armed camp. Soldiers were bivouacked in and around the station. A little bridge a few hundred yards down the line was held by a force of fighting strength. Sentinels patroled the deserted streets.
The station lies a mile or more outside of the town, and as I had not been there before I at once engaged a manto guide me to the center of the town, where I might find a place to sleep. (There was not a cab anywhere.) We trudged through arbored, deserted streets, turning out for piles of wreckage, and sometimes jumping over obstructions. Suddenly my escort stopped short with an exclamation.
“What is wrong?” I inquired.
The fellow began to blubber. It was not till I had coaxed him several minutes that he was finally able to blurt out:
“It was at this very spot that they killed our school-master—”
“Who did it?” I asked.
“Three gendarmes. I stood right there”—and he pointed to the middle of the road. “The teacher was coming along the street, annoying no one. Then three gendarmes appeared and caught hold of him and began pounding nails into his head.”
The next day I secured a photograph of the man’s corpse with the nails still in the skull.
The evening of the first night of the massacre the police gave to the world the report that a Jew had thrown a bomb into a religious procession, and for the moment the world believed this.
As a matter of fact, according to the unanimous testimony of the townspeople, and the report of the investigating committee, no bomb was thrown in the whole town on the day of the religious fête, and no Jew in any way disturbed the procession. This was an out-and-out fabrication of the police who inaugurated the massacre, designed to protect themselves.
The first man wounded told me with his own lips what actually transpired. He was standing by the bedside of his wife, who had that hour given birth to a child. Hearing a procession passing the house he stepped to the window to look out. A soldier deliberately raised his rifle and fired at him—the bullet hitting him in the shoulder. That shot was the signal for the beginning of the massacre which continued in the shape of a murderous riot for three days. Not a hand was raised during those three days to put a stop to the deeds of horror, although the governor of the province knew about it and had at his disposal troops sufficient to quell a dozen such affairs. The police led in the massacre, assisted by the flotsam and jetsam of the town known as the Black Hundred, while the military acquiesced by refraining from interference. As I passed one cot in the hospital a voice called to me in broken English:
“You speak English?”
I turned in surprise and saw a man of about middle age, almost wholly swathed in bandages.
“How do you come to know English?” I inquired.
“I lived five years in London,” he answered, adding quickly, “Do you want to know what happened to me?”
I told him I did.
“Well, you see, I had worked hard and saved five hundred rubles ($250.00), and I thought I would take my family to America. I went to Warsaw to buy the tickets. I was coming back with the tickets in my pocket. I got off the train at Bielostok and saw a crowd coming down the street. I did not know what it was, but I was not frightened. Then, all of a sudden, the man with the cross came at me and began to beat me, and that is all I remember.”
I wondered what the “man with the cross” could mean, and the hospital surgeon explained that the man who marched before the religious procession carried a gold cross with an image of the crucified Christ upon it,andthatsacred symbol was used as a weapon of butchery and death!
Among all civilized nations hospitals are respected, even in war times. But the gendarmes stood before the Bielostok hospital and deliberately poured volley after volley into it, with no other object, apparently, than to throw the patients into a panic. Some of them threw themselves under the beds, others climbed up the chimneys. One man remained three days in a chimney, and then dropped down through the exhaustion of hunger.
When the firing upon the hospital ceased, a gendarme entered the hospital and asked if one of the doctors would come into the street to attend to some wounded men. Afeldsher(a doctor’s assistant) gathered some bandages and antiseptics together and hastened out of the hospital-yard. As he passed through the gateway a gendarme shot him. He lay dead where he fell until night.
A young boy of twelve whose face had been slashed with a sword told me how the police had carried him to the local gendarmerie, after he had been cut down with the saber stroke. He recovered consciousness shortly and not being seriously hurt was perfectly able to walk home. Instead of permitting this the gendarmes threw him into a cart and then piled a number of corpses above him, and sent him out to where the dead were being buried. The grave-diggers were compassionate and allowed him to escape.
The story of Bielostok is the story of nearly every massacre of recent years in Russia that has been inaugurated by local authorities, with or without the connivance of higher authorities in St. Petersburg.
From Bielostok I ran over to Vilna, the old Lithuanian capital, picturesquely situated on the river Vilia.Immediately after the Bielostokpogromthe Vilna police circulated the rumor that on Sunday there would be a massacre of the Jews in Vilna. On Sunday the rumor was corrected. The massacre was set for Tuesday. On Tuesday it was put off till Thursday and for two weeks and a half the Jews of Vilna lived in a state of perpetual panic. Those who could fled the city, but the most were imprisoned there through their poverty.
Governmental terrorism in one form or another is employed by Russia to terrify the people of a given locality into submitting to certain impositions, or to quiet seditious gossip, or to coerce the people into voting for a Duma deputy whom they disapprove of, but who is the representative of the government.
In Russia no official of the government can be prosecuted at law without the approval of his official superiors. The prosecution of an official is popularly supposed to threaten the prestige of the Emperor, consequently any prosecution is very rare. The right of the Emperor to promulgate “exceptional laws,” which take precedence over all other laws in the empire, reduces to an absurdity every form of law-making in Russia. The right of the Emperor to place a certain official in supreme command of a given locality, removing him for the time without the pale of all civil and military authority, makes possible the greatest abuses which culminate from time to time in organized massacres. These massacres are sometimes arranged by the police and the gendarmes, as at Bielostok; sometimes by a single official, sometimes by the organization of the Black Hundred, as at Odessa. There are famous instances when massacres have been secretly planned by local authorities with the knowledge and consent of St. Petersburg. General Trepoff’s attitude of tacit consent and approval is well known.
The complicity of the Russian government in massacres and other barbarities that are periodically visited upon the Russian people is familiar to most people in Europe, but America seems very reluctant to accept the facts. We are loath to believe that a government, having dealings with civilized nations, does condone the monstrous crimes which incontrovertibly do belong to Russia.
A volume of evidence on this issue could easily be prepared. My present task is to tell of the things I saw with my own eyes, and the things I learned from unimpeachable sources. Recognizing, however, the seriousness of these charges, I feel justified in appending enough citations to official and authoritative reports to adequately support my most condemnatory statements.[13]
Senator Turau, an official investigator for the government, in reporting upon one of the Kieffpogromsstated that for purposes of defense the troops stationed in the city had been assigned to the four quarters of the town.
“Yet thepogromlasted for three days,” he goes on to state, “and stopped only when all Jewish shops and many Jewish houses had been ransacked. The police were almost entirely absent. The troops walked slowlydown the middle of the street while robbery was proceeding on both sides of them. When private persons or officials asked for help from the troops, the answer was always: ‘We have no orders.’ Even the vice-governor, Raffalsky, though in uniform, had this answer from a squad of Cossacks. Generally a shop already ransacked was guarded by a sentinel, who thought it his duty to stand there, paying no attention to the pillage which was going on all around him.”
A bystander and a policeman were told by soldiers that they were only ordered to go up and down the street. One soldier said to a law official: “We are ordered not to mix with the crowd.” A policeman appealed to a patrol which was watching the pillage of a shop; they replied: “We are ordered to see that there is no fighting and that no Russians are hurt.” Some Cossacks told a policeman: “We are here that no one may fire on the pillagers from the windows and balconies, and that they may not quarrel among themselves.” A crown lawyer asked some policemen why they did not take stolen goods from the pillagers; they answered: “Now it is impossible, as the authorities are against it.” An officer of the reserve saw robbers with knives “literally cutting up two Jews”; ten yards away stood a squadron of cavalry “looking on quietly and not moving a step.” “To stop thepogromwas possible without special efforts.” The very soldiers who refused “to break their oath,” that is, to stop thepogrom, on the very next day, obeying orders, fired on the pillagers and arrested them. The pillagers then asked: “Where were you before? Why didn’t you shoot when the Emperor’s pictures were torn down?”
According to numerous eye-witnesses, including officials, some of the policemen and soldiers joined in the robbing and seized goods. “Many ex-soldiers in uniform took an active part”; “a lieutenant of artillery was leading the robbers on the Haymarket.” Police-captain Lyashchenko and his assistant, Pirozhkoff, were in charge of the ward in which most of the sacking took place. “These two,” says a lieutenant of the reserves, “were present during the pillage and took no measures, though policemen and patrols were close at hand.” Some say that on October 31 they shouted “Hit the Jews and rob them.” Two witnesses assert that Pirozhkoff directed the robbers against a certain shop.
Major-general Bezsonoff was in charge of the second district, in which nearly all the outrages took place. He stood nearly all the time in the square before the town-hall “quietly looking on and taking no measures.” “You may wreck,” he said to those near him, “but you may not rob.” The pillagers shouted “Hurrah!” and cheered the General. A shop near the town-hall was being sacked; a detachment of troops stood looking on. Bezsonoff joined them; when asked to interfere, he remarked that he would not allow force to be used against the pillagers, and remained a cold-blooded spectator ofthe scene (evidence of a crown lawyer). The chief secretary of the governor-general said to him, “Your Excellency, there is apogrom; no measures are being taken; how will you order me to understand this?” “Whatpogrom?” said the general; “it is a demonstration.” A woman picked up a cloth thrown from a window. “Do you call that robbery?” said Bezsonoff. “Why, it’s a find.” On November 1 two detectives heard him make a speech to the pillagers. “Boys,” he said, “you have already hit the Jews enough; you have shown that the Russian people know how to stand up for its Czar. Enough of rioting; if you go on wrecking to-morrow, then we will use force.” The robbers shouted “Hurrah!” and set about making the best use of their time. On that day General Karass summoned him and warned him for the last time that he must carry out orders and act with decision. The next day thepogromwas easily stopped.
Simultaneously with thispogromin Kieff was another in Odessa, carried out along parallel lines.
In both of these cases the Jews were the chief victims. It must be remembered that the Jewish question in Russia is the greatest governmental red herring in history. Whenever a really vital and serious question comes up the government diverts public attention to the Jewish question. But the Jews are by no means the only victims. It will be recalled that in the Caucasus the Armenians are the sufferers, while from time to time in the interior of Russia and in Siberia pure Russians have been massacred—as in Samara on the Volga, where there was a massacre of “intellectuals” in the autumn of 1905.
In January, 1906, the Gomelpogromoccurred. In connection with this affair a secret press for the printing of incitements to violence was discovered in the chief gendarme’s office. A similar press was unearthed in thecentral police department at St. Petersburg. Prince Urusoff, who was assistant minister of interior under Witte, described this discovery in the course of a speech in the first Duma—a speech which was probably the most important single speech made during the brief life of Russia’s first representative assembly. He said:
In January, 1906, one of the persons occupying a subordinate position in the ministry ... began to receive a large quantity of specimen appeals ... and also anxious protests against the organizing of massacres in Vilna, Bielostok, Kieff, Nikolaieff, Alexandrovsk, and other towns.... He used every means to avert any further massacres, which he also succeeded in doing.... At this time some light, though still of an imperfect nature, was thrown on the ... work of the artificers of massacres. A group of persons, composing a kind of fighting organization of one of our “patriotic clubs,” together with some who were in close touch with the editors of a newspaper—not in St. Petersburg—undertook to combat revolution.... The Russian population (of the frontiers), and in particular Russian soldiers, were invited to settle accounts with the traitors in tens of thousands of appeals with the most agitating contents.... There were strange results if one thinks of the preservation of the unity of authority. An assistant police-master (I merely give an example) circulates the appeals without the knowledge of his chief; ... or again, a police-captain, let us say, of the first ward, was considered worthy of a confidence which was denied to the police-captain of the second ward. Some one serving in the gendarmes’ office, or in the defense section, proved to be supplied with special sums of money. To him certain of the lower people began to resort.... Frightened inhabitants went to see the governor.... Telegrams from the ministry spoke of measures to be taken to secure tranquillity; and such measures were often taken.... In some cases the police quite earnestly supposed that the measures were taken simply for show, for decency, but that they were already acquainted with the real intention of the government; they read between the lines, and thought that they heard, beyond the order of the governor, some voice from far off in which they had greater belief. In a word ... the authorities became completely demoralized.Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, as early as the autumn of 1905, and, it would seem, before the October ministry came into office, in No. 16, Fontanka, in some remote room of the police department, a printing-press was at work; it had been purchased for the department by government money. This press was put under the control of an officer of gendarmes in civil dress, one Comisaroff, who, with a few assistants, assiduously prepared the appeals to which I have alluded. The secret of the existence of this “underground” press was so carefully kept, and the conduct of its organizers was so conspirative, that not only in the ministry, but even in the police department, there were but few persons who knew about it. Meanwhile, the work of the Union of Russian Men, whose organ the press was, was already meeting with success; for, when questioned by a person who happened to come upon the track of this organization, Comisaroff answered: “A massacre we can make for you, of any kind you please—if you like for ten men; and, if you like, for 10,000.” I may add that in Kieff a “massacre for 10,000” was arranged for February 20, but it was successfully prevented.The President of the council of ministers (Count Witte) had, we are told, a serious attack of nervous asthma when the facts I have just narrated were communicated to him. He summoned Comisaroff, who reported to him on what he had done, and on the full powers which he had received. In a few hours the department no longer contained either the press, or the appeals, or the staff; there was left only an empty room.
In January, 1906, one of the persons occupying a subordinate position in the ministry ... began to receive a large quantity of specimen appeals ... and also anxious protests against the organizing of massacres in Vilna, Bielostok, Kieff, Nikolaieff, Alexandrovsk, and other towns.... He used every means to avert any further massacres, which he also succeeded in doing.... At this time some light, though still of an imperfect nature, was thrown on the ... work of the artificers of massacres. A group of persons, composing a kind of fighting organization of one of our “patriotic clubs,” together with some who were in close touch with the editors of a newspaper—not in St. Petersburg—undertook to combat revolution.... The Russian population (of the frontiers), and in particular Russian soldiers, were invited to settle accounts with the traitors in tens of thousands of appeals with the most agitating contents.... There were strange results if one thinks of the preservation of the unity of authority. An assistant police-master (I merely give an example) circulates the appeals without the knowledge of his chief; ... or again, a police-captain, let us say, of the first ward, was considered worthy of a confidence which was denied to the police-captain of the second ward. Some one serving in the gendarmes’ office, or in the defense section, proved to be supplied with special sums of money. To him certain of the lower people began to resort.... Frightened inhabitants went to see the governor.... Telegrams from the ministry spoke of measures to be taken to secure tranquillity; and such measures were often taken.... In some cases the police quite earnestly supposed that the measures were taken simply for show, for decency, but that they were already acquainted with the real intention of the government; they read between the lines, and thought that they heard, beyond the order of the governor, some voice from far off in which they had greater belief. In a word ... the authorities became completely demoralized.
Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, as early as the autumn of 1905, and, it would seem, before the October ministry came into office, in No. 16, Fontanka, in some remote room of the police department, a printing-press was at work; it had been purchased for the department by government money. This press was put under the control of an officer of gendarmes in civil dress, one Comisaroff, who, with a few assistants, assiduously prepared the appeals to which I have alluded. The secret of the existence of this “underground” press was so carefully kept, and the conduct of its organizers was so conspirative, that not only in the ministry, but even in the police department, there were but few persons who knew about it. Meanwhile, the work of the Union of Russian Men, whose organ the press was, was already meeting with success; for, when questioned by a person who happened to come upon the track of this organization, Comisaroff answered: “A massacre we can make for you, of any kind you please—if you like for ten men; and, if you like, for 10,000.” I may add that in Kieff a “massacre for 10,000” was arranged for February 20, but it was successfully prevented.
The President of the council of ministers (Count Witte) had, we are told, a serious attack of nervous asthma when the facts I have just narrated were communicated to him. He summoned Comisaroff, who reported to him on what he had done, and on the full powers which he had received. In a few hours the department no longer contained either the press, or the appeals, or the staff; there was left only an empty room.
Why did not Count Witte expose Comisaroff? Who can estimate the value to the government of a good Comisaroff trial? But Count Witte knew that he could not take this line and retain his place. He did not dare to combat influences which were more powerful than his own. M. Durnovo, who, reactionary as he was, confessed to Prince Urusoff that “this was not his way,” was equally impotent. Comisaroff, who had received a “decoration,” was quite recently living at large under an assumed name.
Prince Urusoff resigned office to become the assailant of the policy of massacre as a member of the imperialDuma. The ordinary bureaucratic comment on his speech was that “Prince Urusoff had betrayed government secrets.” General Trepoff said, on July 9, to a representative of Reuter’s agency, “Il mentit, et c’est tout.” But the prince did not speak at random. His speech was founded on intimate knowledge not only of the government reports already quoted, but of other documents equally important.
It matters little how much high officials of the Russian government in St. Petersburg and diplomatic representatives abroad deny governmental responsibility in regard to massacres, so long as there is abundant evidence of the guilt of lesser officials and these are allowed to go unpunished. The maximum rebuke that is usually visited upon any particularly conspicuouspogromschikis temporary suspension or transfer from one post to another—sometimes with advance in rank, sometimes with advance in pay, sometimes both.[14]
Governmental terrorism, however, does not cease with the massacres. Individuals are assassinated at official instigation, precisely as the terrorists select a bureaucrat or official for “removal.” A notable instance of this was that of Professor Hertzenstein, a dignified and honored professor in the University of Moscow. Mr. Hertzenstein had given a great deal of attention to the agrarian question in Russia during twenty years or more. His counsel and advice guided the members of the first Duma when they were framing their “agrarian program.”
Late one afternoon, Professor Paul Miliukoff, who was then editor of the “Retsch,” received word from Moscow by telegram that a semi-official Moscow newspaper
Seventy-two years oldChild four years old wantonly shotYouth and old age—Bielostok pogrom victims
Seventy-two years oldChild four years old wantonly shotYouth and old age—Bielostok pogrom victims
Seventy-two years old
Child four years old wantonly shot
Youth and old age—Bielostok pogrom victims
just published contained an account of the mysterious murder of Professor Hertzenstein near his summer home in Terioki, Finland. No one could be found in St. Petersburg who knew of it, so Professor Miliukoff despatched a messenger to Finland to investigate. Professor Hertzenstein, while walking in his garden with his daughter, was fatally shot that night at a little before nine o’clock, or three hours after the governmental newspaper in Moscow had announced his murder!
The next morning the “Retsch” printed a concise statement of the facts—and the police instantly seized the entire edition.
Several weeks later it developed that the assassin was an ex-gendarme officer who was paid to do away with the one man whom intellectual Russia trusted to bring them through the thicket of the agrarian tangle.
Another famous instance was that of a prominent Moscow physician, named Vorobieff. About the time of the Moscow insurrection, Vorobieff’s house was entered by a party of police commanded by an ex-guards officer called Ermoleff. Ermoleff accused Vorobieff of “treating revolutionaries.”
“I am not a politician,” replied the doctor; “I am a physician, a surgeon, and as such I do what I can for whoever is brought to me without regard to political belief.”
“Have you a revolver in the house?” inquired the police officer.
“Yes,” said the doctor, “and I also have a government permit to own it and to carry it.”
“Where is it?” demanded the officer.
“In the drawer of my desk.”
“Get it.”
The doctor turned to obey—and the officer shot him in the back of the head.
“Oh, what have you done,” cried the doctor’s wife as she saw her husband fall.
“Hold your tongue and wipe up that mess on the floor,” retorted the officer as he turned to withdraw his party.
Owing to the outcry that was raised against this wanton murder the officer was arrested, but after a fortnight’s detention he was released.
The most cruel tortures are applied to prisoners in more than one Russian prison, but I think that during my year in the country I learned of no darker deeds than those perpetrated by the chief of the secret police in Warsaw, a man named Victor Green (a literal translation from the Russian). Green became dissatisfied with the number of arrests that were being made in the old Polish capital, so he ordered the arrest of many innocent men and women and then had them tortured to wring from them confessions implicating other people. I heard of his applying the most excruciating torture to young girls as well as to mere boys.
A Russian writer named Vladimeroff went to Warsaw shortly after my visit to investigate the case of a girl of eighteen, concerning whom certain terrible reports were then circulating. The following is a translation of his report on this case: