R PUT ALP 
 
The 
 Russian Bastille 
 
 BY 
 
 SIMON O. POLLOCK 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. KKRR & COMPANY 
 1908 
 
COPYRIGHT 1908 BY 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 
"The blessed time will come 
 When from the martyrs' graves 
 Will rise a mighty nation 
 That will avenge all wrongs." 
 
 From a Russian Revolutionary Song. 
 
 M191495 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The truthful words about the Schlusselburg Po- 
 litical Prison should serve the cause of Russian 
 freedom. The story was written during the short 
 period of "Days of Liberty" in Russia, when 
 there was hope that the Fortress would no longer 
 be used as a political dungeon, when its doors 
 were thrown open and the friends of the released 
 inmates were enabled to visit the very cells where 
 Vera Figner, Herman Alexanrowitch Lopatin and 
 others spent scores of years in seclusion and where 
 Nicholas Morosoff wrote his Astronomical Inter- 
 pretation of the Apocalypse. 
 
 But since then the scale of Nemesis has turned 
 once more. The power of the autocracy is again 
 restored and the doors of the Schlusselburg Dun- 
 geon are closed to hide again from the world the 
 awful mystery of its solitary cells. The life of 
 the new inmates is again dribbling out slowly and 
 silently, drop by drop. 
 
 NICHOLAS TCHAYKOVSKY. 
 20th of July, 1907. 
 London. 
 
 NOTE Nicholas Tchaykovsky, who wrote the 
 preface, shortly after July, 1907, wen>t to Russia. 
 He and Catherine Breshkovsky, who also continued 
 her activity there, were soon arrested and are now 
 imprisoned in the Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress in 
 St. Petersburg. 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE. 
 I 
 
 "The history of mankind gives the 
 assurance that the principles of liberty 
 will ultimately triumph over oppres- 
 sion, and that human happiness will 
 in time cease to be only a dream. 
 But the road to liberty is covered with 
 so many martyrs and the pages of his- 
 tory are so soiled with so much of 
 humanity's blood, that one often de- 
 spairs of the cause of the human race. ' ' 
 
 Such are the words of Mr. L. Mel- 
 shin- Yacoubovitch, a Russian poet, 
 journalist and revolutionist in his book, 
 "The Schlusselburg Prisoners," re- 
 cently published in St. Petersburg. 
 They are words embodying thoughts 
 which inevitably force themselves upon 
 anyone who has acquired only cur- 
 
10 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 sory knowledge of the facts concerning 
 the prison near St. Petersburg, known 
 as the Schlusselburg Fortress, which 
 was abolished after the manifesto of 
 October, 1905, and restored in Septem- 
 ber, 1906, and which for years kept, 
 and still keeps within its walls, the 
 ablest and noblest pioneer offsprings 
 of the Russian revolution. 
 
 The Schlusselburg Fortress was not 
 an ordinary prison. It was a Bastille 
 a place for the arbitrary incarcera- 
 tion, torture and execution of political 
 offenders. It is situated on an island 
 on the Neva, fifty-four north of St. 
 Petersburg. In earlier days it had 
 been used as a prison, but not until the 
 summer of 1884, after a long disuse 
 and desertion, was it consigned to the 
 purpose which it so effectively served 
 for more than twenty-one years. 
 
 Before that time the Sts. Peter and 
 Paul Fortress, within the boundaries 
 of the capital, was the national Bas- 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 11 
 
 tille. The Alexeieff Ravelin and the 
 Trubetzkoy Bastion, towers within 
 this Fortress, kept the convicted revo- 
 lutionists in absolute seclusion. They 
 were well equipped for the confining 
 of the prisoners and well served all 
 purposes of the government. Here 
 Peter I. tortured and killed his son 
 Alexis. Here were buried alive those 
 who protested against the assassina- 
 tion of Paul I by the satellites of Cath- 
 erine II., his wife. In this Fortress 
 were imprisoned the Decembrists, the 
 first revolutionists during the reign of 
 Nicholas I., before their deportation to 
 hard labor, and here, five of them 
 Poet Beleieff, Count Pastel, Brothers 
 Princes Muravieff and marine officer 
 Bestuscheff Eumin, were hanged. The 
 Petropavlovka, as it has been other- 
 wise known, also kept imprisoned the 
 reformers in the cause of religion and 
 all patriots of minor nationalities, Pol- 
 ish or South Eussian, who demanded 
 
12 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 national autonomy and independence 
 from Eussia. It was a thoroughly re- 
 liable dungeon, even after its abolition 
 as a hard labor prison, when it became 
 a place for preliminary confinement 
 and detention. As such it numbered 
 the committee of Journalists and 
 Poets, consisting of Maxim Gorky, 
 N. F. Annensky, J. B. Hessen and 
 others, who, on the eve of the 
 workingmen's procession, on the 
 22d day of January, 1905, petitioned 
 the Secretary of Interior to prevent 
 the massacre then openly contemplat- 
 ed by General Trepoff. During the 
 same year, and shortly after the first 
 general strike, there were imprisoned 
 in this Fortress Leo Deutch, the well 
 known Social Democrat and author of 
 " Sixteen Years in Siberia," who re- 
 turned to Eussia after the manifesto 
 of 1905, Nosar Krustaleff, the chair- 
 man of the now historical "Council of 
 the Workingmen's Deputies in St. Pet- 
 
THE BTJSSIAN BASTILLE 13 
 
 ersburg" and many others 1 . The 
 causes which prior to 1884 prompted 
 the government to remove the "dan- 
 gerous" prisoners from the Fortress 
 in the capital to a more isolated place 
 were deeply rooted in the peculiar fea- 
 tures of the revolutionary movement 
 of those days. 
 
 1 Alexander S. Prugavin, St. Peter and St. Paul 
 Fortress, pp. 4-6 (in Russian). St. Petersburg, 
 1906. 
 
n 
 
 The period in Russian history fol- 
 lowing the emancipation of the serfs 
 in 1861 was marked by widespread dis- 
 content. The conditions then prevail- 
 ing and the movement resulting there- 
 from are described in the article 
 "Ekatherina Breshkovskaia and The 
 Russian Revolution" as follows: 
 "Many young Russian reformers had 
 soon realized that the emancipation, 
 instead of being a great reform was 
 but a means of deceit and a means of 
 enrichment for the nobility and the 
 government; that if the Russian peas- 
 ants had been enlightened upon their 
 rights and instructed upon the condi- 
 tions of their liberation, the reform 
 would have emancipated the peasantry 
 instead of enslaving it to the govern- 
 ment by the heavy payments it had 
 
 14 
 
THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 15 
 
 to make for the freedom and land it 
 had been given. The restrictions 
 placed upon the civic life of the peas- 
 antry, for the purpose of securing the 
 "payments" conclusively fastened on 
 it a new system of dependence on the 
 bureaucracy, and within two years 
 after the reform, in twenty-nine prov- 
 inces only, according to the report of 
 the Secretary of Interior, there were 
 1,100 peasants' uprisings. The peas- 
 ants opposed the "liberty." They 
 could not subsist under the new con- 
 ditions. The land allotted them was in- 
 sufficient for their maintenance and 
 they could not bear the burden of 
 the new payments. The uprisings were 
 suppressed by force of arms. The 
 freed serfs were killed and wounded 
 for their ingratitude to the Czar, "who 
 gave them freedom." These events 
 inaugurated the revolutionary move- 
 ment of those days, at first a movement 
 of education. The motto was: "Let 
 
16 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 us take a lesson from these o< .r- 
 rences; let us first educate the masses 
 and then with their own aid give them 
 true and just freedom and happiness. ' ' 
 The revealed poverty added to the ex- 
 alted devotion to the cause of the peo- 
 ple. Then the Paris Commune of 1871 
 with its tragic downfall followed. It 
 affected the revolutionary mind in 
 Eussia more than elsewhere and forced 
 to the front the problem of an exten- 
 sive revolutionary propaganda. "We 
 see in the beginning of the seventies 
 an influx of Eussian young men and 
 young women into Switzerland, where 
 they went to learn social science and 
 wherefrom they intended to return to 
 Eussia well equipped with the know- 
 ledge and experience necessary in the 
 impending revolutionary movement. 
 The lectures of the Eussian fu- 
 gitive journalists Peter Lavroff, 
 Bakunin, Tkacheff and others, as 
 well as the contact with many 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 17 
 
 c< .aunards, prepared the youth for 
 the struggle of the future days. The 
 Bussian government was alarmed. In 
 1873 it issued the famous Ukas to the 
 "Bussian men and women in Switzer- 
 land," ordering them to leave their 
 revolutionary studies and return to 
 Bussia. It threatened to deprive them 
 of the privilege to practice their pro- 
 fessions or vocations, if they would not 
 return within the time fixed in the 
 Ukas. But it was of no avail. The 
 men and women remained abroad and 
 returned only when ready for the work 
 of propaganda, which was carried on 
 in a manner most unique in the history 
 of such movements. Realizing the ex- 
 isting social iniquities, the youth con- 
 sidered it a crime to enjoy pleasures of 
 life, while the people were enmeshed 
 in complete poverty and utter igno- 
 rance. They believed that they owed 
 the people the duty of education and 
 revolution. They claimed that the 
 
18 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 wealth they and their fathers owned 
 was the property of the peo- 
 ple, of which they were deprived 
 by the strong and the unjust. 
 And the cry was: "Go among the 
 people and give back to them what has 
 wrongfully been taken from them." 
 And thousands of young men and 
 young women stripped themselves of 
 their homes, their friends, their com- 
 forts and their pleasures, and went 
 among the people. In the disguise 
 of laborers, apprentices, traveling men, 
 teachers, they go all over Russia, cover 
 every available village and hamlet 
 teaching, educating, preaching. This 
 great and until then unequalled move- 
 ment is known in Russian history as 
 the ' ' peasantist ' ' movement. When in 
 1875 Count Palen, then Secretary of 
 Justice, reported the result of his in- 
 vestigation of this crusade, he claimed 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 19 
 
 that it affected no less than thirty- 
 seven provinces. 1 
 
 At about this time, Professor Tan- 
 sen, in an elaborate book on distribu- 
 tion of lands and taxes in Russia, es- 
 tablished the fact that the allotments or 
 parcels held by the peasants were 
 hardly sufficient to pay the taxes and 
 because of that reason the peasants 
 were compelled to look for work in the 
 cities during the winter season. The cry 
 of land was taken up by the legitimate 
 liberal press. Notwithstanding all 
 this the demand was disregarded. The 
 peasants were kept in ignorance; the 
 appeals of the reformers were ignored 
 and the press was placed under a cen- 
 sorship similar to that under Nicho- 
 las I. 
 
 In the beginning of 1877 the political 
 case of "50," with many female de- 
 
 1 "Ekatherina Breslikovskaia and the Russian 
 Revolution," by this author, in the "Worker," De- 
 cember 25th, 1904. 
 
20 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 fendants, stirred the nation. During 
 the same year, the case of "193" fol- 
 lowed. It began in October, 1877, and 
 was finished in January, 1878. It was 
 a result of the arrest of over one thou- 
 sand men and women who were held in 
 preliminary custody for four years, 
 before "193" were singled out for 
 trial. Katherine Breshkovsky and 
 many others were sentenced to hard 
 labor in this case. 
 
 The Society "Semlia e Volia" 
 (Land and Liberty), to which most of 
 the popagandists belonged, was more 
 an educational than a political or- 
 ganization. But though the agitation 
 was peaceful, it was met by prosecu- 
 tion more severe than any previously 
 known in Russian history. The meth- 
 ods of oppression and persecution 
 which had been employed inflamed the 
 educated Russian youth and after a 
 discussion of the conditions at secret 
 conventions, held in 1879 in Woronesh 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 21 
 
 and Lipetzk, called by the "Land and 
 Liberty," the party "Narodania Vo- 
 lia" (People's Will), with terrorism as 
 its principal weapon, was organized. 
 Having been inaugurated by Vera Sas- 
 sulitch, who, in 1878 shot at General 
 Trepoff to avenge the flogging of Bo- 
 goluboff, a consumptive revolution- 
 ist, terrorism spread, not only as a 
 means of self defense, but also as a 
 method of attack. It was a policy of 
 "violence against violence," purport- 
 ing by a series of organized attacks 
 upon the government, to force political 
 and economical concessions from the 
 autocracy. The world then witnessed 
 a heroic duel between a small number 
 of men and women and an army of 
 gendarmes, prosecutors and spies. 
 The movement was bound to fail, since 
 it was one almost purely of "intellec- 
 tuals, ' ' having but little foundation in 
 the will of the masses. But until it 
 was finally crushed, in 1887, it kept the 
 
22 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 government in constant fear for its 
 existence. 
 
 The more dangerous revolutionists 
 whose lives were spared by the gen- 
 darmes, were thrown into the Sts. Pet- 
 ers and Paul Fortress in St. Peters- 
 burg. As a result of its regime, most 
 of the prisoners were soon attacked by 
 consumption, insanity or other dis- 
 eases. Among the first to perish dur- 
 ing the first two years of their impris- 
 onment in the Fortress, were Alexan- 
 der Mikhailoff, Obolesheff, Shiraieff, 
 Telaloff, all members of the "Narod- 
 naia Volia." Female revolutionists 
 were also incarcerated in the Fortress ; 
 among them were Terentieva and 
 Helfman, who died there shortly after 
 their term began, but the circum- 
 stances attending tlieir death have not 
 been disclosed. The fate of Helf man's 
 baby born in jail is altogether un- 
 known. There was fear that other 
 prisoners might soon follow. Through 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 23 
 
 a conspiracy between prisoners and 
 guards in 1881, however, some modifi- 
 cation of the grosser cruelties of the 
 dungteon was obtained and the lot of 
 the inmates was for a time made more 
 tolerable. 
 
 The head of this conspiracy was Ser- 
 gius Netchaieff, who had inaugurated 
 a revolutionary movement in 1869. 
 Escaping to Switzerland, he had been 
 extradited in 1872, on the false plea 
 that he was a felon and not a political 
 offender. Tried in 1873, he had been 
 sentenced to ten years at hard labor 
 and subsequent banishment to Siberia. 
 He was, however, imprisoned in the 
 Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress as a polit- 
 ical offender, and in 1877, before his 
 term had expired, had been tried for 
 a violation of the rules of the Fortress 
 and sentenced to life imprisonment. 
 He was the first revolutionist who 
 succeeded in winning over the soldiers 
 of the prison guard. These soldiers 
 
24 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 not only established for him a system 
 of communication with the Executive 
 Committee of his party, but they even 
 conspired to place the Emperor under 
 arrest on his visit to the Fortress. It 
 was during the time when the "Na- 
 rodnaia Volia" was bent upon the as- 
 sassination of Alexander II., and the 
 Executive Committee placed Netcha- 
 ieff in the dilemma of choosing the lib- 
 eration of all prisoners, including him- 
 self, or the assassination of Alexander 
 II. One enterprise excluded the other, 
 and there was fear that if all prisoners 
 were to escape from the Fortress, the 
 Czar would, in his fear, take extraor- 
 dinary precautions for his safety and 
 a new era of persecutions would fol- 
 low. 
 
 Without a murmur Netchaieff re- 
 fused to be liberated. Alexander II. 
 fell on the 1st day of March, 1881. Net- 
 chaieff remained in the Fortress. But 
 soon thereafter the police discovered 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 25 
 
 the garrison's conspiracy. Forty sol- 
 diers were arrested and tried in De- 
 cember, 1882. The fate of Netchaieff 
 was unknown until after October, 1905. 
 It has now been established that this 
 iron man died on the 9th day of May, 
 1883, in the Fortress, and that after 
 the discovery of the plot he was con- 
 stantly kept in a cell specially desig- 
 nated for disobedient prisoners, hav- 
 ing been deprived even of the limtied 
 privileges of the jail. 1 The govern- 
 ment then concluded to place the dan- 
 gerous political prisoners beyong pos- 
 sible reach, and Count Dmitri Tolstoi, 
 then the Secretary of the Interior, or- 
 dered the re-establishment of the 
 Schlusselburg Fortress. This jail had 
 been built in 1384. Its traditions fully 
 justified the choice of the secretary. 
 Here perished not only the enemies of 
 the old Czars from the ranks of nobil- 
 
 1 The Past (Biloie), monthly magazine in Rus- 
 sian, No. F, July, 1906, p. 170. 
 
26 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 ity, but even members of the Czars' 
 families not in favor with them, had 
 found their death in the Schlusselburg 
 Fortress. Among them were Czarina 
 Eudoxie Lopoukhin, the first wife of 
 Peter the Great, and Czarewitz Johan 
 Antonowitz, who was strangled there 
 during the reign of Catherine II. This 
 old dungeon and mainstay of autoc- 
 racy was hurriedly renovated and re- 
 paired and the Eussian Bastille was 
 founded. 
 
m 
 
 In August, 1884, the first barge with 
 twelve prisoners left the Eavelin for 
 Schlusselburg. On the barge the pris- 
 oners were not allowed to see one an- 
 other. Polivanoff relates that they 
 were all chained hand and foot and 
 were placed in separate cells in the 
 swimming prison. 1 This was the 
 gloomy prologue to the history of the 
 Bastille. 
 
 A long, narrow and dark corridor, 
 dimly lighted by lamps; small, damp, 
 half-dark cells on both sides of the cor- 
 ridor, barred and locked by iron and 
 steel; all about the corridors gendarmes 
 and wardens now and then looking 
 into the openings of the cell doors; 
 sentinels outside; towers and walls 
 
 1 Peter Polivanoff, "Alexeiff Ravelin," in Rus- 
 sian, 1904. 
 
 27 
 
28 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 surrounding the prison yards and cells 
 and water all around such was the 
 dungeon to which these prisoners were 
 consigned. 
 
 The question of who " deserved " 
 Schlusselberg was regulated by rules 
 embodied in the General Code of Laws, 
 which provided that only revolution- 
 ists, who after a trial were sentenced 
 to hard labor for lifetime or whose 
 death sentence was commuted to a 
 term of years at hard labor, were to be 
 placed in the Bastille. There were other 
 prisons in European and Asiatic Bus- 
 sia in which revolutionists were con- 
 fined. The Bastille, however, purport- 
 ed to serve as a permanent threat to 
 all Russia, and the final disposition of 
 prisoners was therefore left to the dis- 
 cretion of the Department of Police. 
 
 The Police Department, however, 
 used its discretion freely. Thus there 
 were to be found in the Bastille among 
 the life prisoners, men like Vasily Kar- 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 29 
 
 aouloff, who had been sentenced to 
 four years at hard labor and to subse- 
 quent deportation to Siberia. There 
 was also to be found there one Michael 
 Lagovsky, an army officer, who, having 
 been punished by administrative or- 
 der, was also to be deported to Siberia, 
 But after the expiration of his term of 
 five years, the Police ^Department, 
 without trial and with the approval 
 of Alexander III., ' ' prolonged ' 9 his im- 
 prisonment to a "life" term. 
 
 At the end of 1884 we find there thir- 
 ty-six men: Eleven immigrants from 
 the Eavelin (Frolenko, Morosoff, Tri- 
 goni, Grachefsky, Arontchik, Isaieff, 
 Yurii Bodganowitch, Polivanoff, Sla- 
 topolsky, Klimenko, marine officer 
 Bucevitch) ; eleven new arrivals from 
 the Kara prison in Siberia (Mishkin, 
 Popoff, Malavsky, Dolgushin, Stched- 
 rin, Buzinsky, Kobiliansky, Minakoff, 
 Gellis, Yurkovsky, Krishanovsky) ; 
 eleven participants in the Military 
 
30 TJffE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 case of Vera Figner; (Vera Figner, 
 Ludmilla A. Wolkenstein, Nemelov- 
 sky, Wassily Ivanoff, Surovzeff and 
 army officers Ashenbrenner, Pokhit- 
 onoff, Youvacheff, Tikkanowitch, 
 Stromberg and Rogatcheff, of whom 
 the last two were hanged immediately 
 upon their arrival) ; and four partici- 
 pants in the Kieff case (Karaouloff, 
 Shebalin, Pankratoff, Martinoff). Dur- 
 ing the following two years only a few 
 were added. Ignatius Ivanoff was 
 brought from the Kasan House for In- 
 sane, Manachuroff from Odessa, La- 
 govsky and Yanovitch and Varinsky, 
 participants in the case of "Proletar- 
 iat ' ' from Warsaw. In 1887 a new ar- 
 ray of victims, participants of the last 
 famous trials of the Narodnaia Volia, 
 were brought in, some of them for the 
 purpose of execution. Thus, five of the 
 seven "First March Men" Ulianoff, 
 Generaloff, Osiparoff, Andreiushkin 
 and Shevareff were hanged a few 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 31 
 
 days after their arrival. Novorouski 
 and Lukashevitch remained in the fort- 
 ress to serve their sentence. They were 
 charged with the attempt upon the life 
 of Alexander III. in March, 1887. 
 Nearly all of them were students of 
 Cossack families. Then came Herman 
 Alexandrowitch Lopatin and his com- 
 rades, Starodvorsky, Konashewitch, 
 Sergius Ivanoff and finally Borris Or- 
 gik. Lopatin and Orgik were the last 
 organizers of the Narodnaia Volia, 
 who fell in their attempt to reorganize 
 and re-establish their party. From 
 1887 on political trials in Russia 
 ceased, the government preferring 
 "administrative order" to a trial and 
 from that year up to the closing days 
 of the Bastille, for the period of sev- 
 enteen years, only eleven men and 
 women were added to the list of ' ' dan- 
 gerous ' ' ( Sophi e Ginzburg, Karpo- 
 witch, Balmashoff, Katchura, Ger- 
 shuni, Melnikoff, Sasonoff, Sikorsky, 
 
32 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 Hershkowitch, Wasilieff and Kalia- 
 ieff). Thus for the twenty-one years 
 of its existence prior to October, 1905, 
 the Bastille had kept sixty-seven men 
 and women. The amnesty, however, 
 found in the Bastille only thirteen out 
 of the sixty-seven originally impris- 
 oned (Popoff, Frolenko, Morosoff, No- 
 vorousky, Loukashewitch, Lopatin, 
 Ivanoff, Antonoff, Karpowitch, Ger- 
 shuni, Melnikoff, Sasonoff and Sikors- 
 ky). The fourteenth, Starodworsky, 
 was transferred to St. Paul and St. 
 Peter Fortress in September, 1905. 
 
 During these years only thirteen 
 men and women left Schlusselburg. 
 The fate of the rest of the thirty-seven 
 is most tragic. Thirteen were shot or 
 hanged within the walls of the pris- 
 on. 1 Four committed suicide in jail.* 
 
 1 Mishkin, Minakoff, Ulianoff, Generaloff, Osi- 
 panoff, Andreiushkin, Shevaleff, S'tromberg, Ro- 
 gatcheff, Ualmashoff, Hershkowitch, Wasilieff and 
 Kaliaieff. 
 
 2 Klimenko, Tikhanowitch, Grachef sky and 
 Sophie Ginzburg. 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 33 
 
 Three committed suicide after libera- 
 tion. 9 Fifteen died of consumption, 
 insanity and other diseases* Three 
 insanes were allowed to leave the Bas- 
 tille. 5 One of them subsequently died 
 in a hospital in St. Petersburg and two 
 are still hopeless inmates in the Kasan 
 House for Insane. 
 
 'Martinoff, Yanowitch and Polivanoff. 
 
 4 Netehaieff , Isaieff, Arontchik, Bogdanowitch, 
 Slatopolsky, Malavsky, Buzinsky, Buchevitch, Ko- 
 biliansky, Gellis, Dolgushin, Jurkowsky, Ignatius 
 Ivanoif, Nemolosky, Ludwig Varinsky. 
 
 5 Stchedrin, Konashewitch and PokhitonoflF. 
 
IV 
 
 All inmates of the Bastille began 
 their career as peaceful propagandists, 
 
 and only some of them subsequently 
 became terrorists. Many of the old 
 prisoners belonged to the so-called 
 Tchaykovsky circle, which was organ- 
 ized in the beginning of the seventies 
 of the last century with the object of 
 spreading the knowledge of popular 
 subjects among the factory laborers 
 and millmen. Except Ippolit Mishkin 
 and Herman Alexandrowitch Lopatin, 
 whose biographies are given elsewhere 
 below, the following men and women 
 are specially to be noted. 
 
 Alexander Dolgushin was the oldest 
 prisoner. In 1874 he was sentenced to 
 ten years at hard labor in Siberia for 
 the publication of three proclamations. 
 He had never taken part in terroristic 
 
 34 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 35 
 
 acts. On Ms way to hard labor in Si- 
 beria lie defended a comrade from an 
 attack made on him by an officer in the 
 Krasnoiarsk Jail, and for this inter- 
 ference he received fifteen years addi- 
 tional servitude without a trial. He 
 was transferred from Siberia to the 
 Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress in 1883, 
 and died in the Bastille in 1886. 
 
 Nicholas Stchedrin was twice sen- 
 tenced to death, once for organizing 
 the South Bussian Labor Union in 
 1881, and once for attacking a prison 
 official, while the latter was making in- 
 sulting remarks to female prisoners. 
 His treatment was exceedingly cruel. 
 For many years he was fastened to an 
 iron cart, which he dragged wherever 
 he went. In 1886 he became insane. 
 Up to 1891 the authorities would not 
 admit that he was insane, and they 
 even placed him in a cell specially des- 
 ignated for disorderly prisoners. Not 
 until 1896 did they transfer him to the 
 
36 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 Kasan Institution for the Insane. 
 
 Michael Trigoni was a friend of the 
 famous Andrew Sheliaboff, who, to- 
 gether with Sophie Perovskaia and 
 others, was tried in 1881 for the assas- 
 sination of Alexander II. Trigoni pro- 
 tected Sheliaboff against the police for 
 some time and kept him in his house, 
 where both were arrested. After 
 twenty years of servitude Trigoni was 
 deported to Saghalien, where he was 
 freed during the Japanese War. 
 
 Nicholas Morosoff, who was the ed- 
 itor of the revolutionary journal, 
 "Land and Liberty," took part in 
 several famous trials and was known 
 as the poet of the "Narodnaia Volia." 
 Jointly with Alexander Mikhailoff, 
 the organizer, and Andrew Sheliaboff, 
 the leader, he formed the most influen- 
 tial circle in the executive committee 
 of their party. While in the Bastille 
 he wrote a scientific research on the 
 "Astronomical Interpretation of the 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 37 
 
 Apocalypse. " Including preliminary 
 confinement lie served twenty-seven 
 years. After his release he published 
 a few of his other literary productions. 
 When he regained sufficient strength 
 he made a successful campaign for the 
 office of deputy to the third Duma and 
 was elected in Yaroslave province by 
 an overwhelming majority. His elec- 
 tion, however, was cancelled by the 
 government. 1 
 
 Michael Frolenko began his revolu- 
 tionary career as a peaceful propa- 
 gandist. He attended the conventions 
 in 1879 at which the "Narodnaia 
 Volia" was finally inaugurated. He 
 was a man of unusual daring and be- 
 came particularly known for the suc- 
 cessful rescue from jail of Leo Deutch. 
 He was a member of the Executive 
 Committee of his party. 
 
 Peter Polivanoff, author of the 
 
 1 "Tovaristcb," Sept. 26, Oct. 9, 1907, No. 331, 
 and N. Y. Evening i'ost, Nov. 9, 1907. 
 
38 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 "Alexeieff Ravelin" and of an "open 
 letter" to Secretary Muravieff, served 
 twenty-two years. He began his activ- 
 ity in the beginning of the eighties. 
 He soon discovered that most of the 
 revolutionists had been captured by 
 the government and he conceived the 
 idea of rescuing them from prison. In 
 one of such attempts he was arrested 
 and sentenced to death. His sentence 
 was commuted to life imprisonment. 
 In jail he many times attempted sui- 
 cide. After his release he was deport- 
 ed to Siberia, wherefrom he escaped to 
 France, where he committed suicide in 
 1903. In a letter left by him he wrote 
 that, having lo'st his health in prison, 
 he was unable to continue the work of 
 his younger days and concluded to die. 
 Yurii Bogdanowitch, who was 
 known as Koboseff, was one of the 
 shrewdest conspirators. In the seven- 
 ties of the last century he joined the 
 crusade of the ' ' peasantists. ' ' In 1881 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 39 
 
 he organized an attempt on Alexander 
 II. by the way of a mine, which he laid 
 from a milk store in one of the streets 
 in St. Petersburg. He successfully as- 
 sisted Prince Peter Kropotkin in the 
 escape from the Sts. Peter and Paul 
 Fortress. He died insane in the Bas- 
 tille, 
 
 Vera Figner had first taken part in 
 the organization of the "Land and 
 Liberty. " When the "Narodnaia 
 Volia" was established she promptly 
 joined it, was one of the trusted exeeiii 
 tive members and had taken part in 
 many terroristic enterprises. At one 
 time Figner was the only executive 
 member of the "Narodnaia Volia" re- 
 maining in Russia. Although she lost 
 all her friends during the years 1881- 
 1882, she continued her activity and 
 established the first military organiza- 
 tion in connection with the "Narod- 
 naia Volia. " Highly educated and 
 brave, she enlisted a few hundred 
 
40 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 army officers into the organization, 
 which was the strongest of its kind 
 ever since the plot of the Decembrists 
 in 1825. She was arrested in 1883, 
 tried in 1884 and sentenced to death. 
 Her sentence was commuted to hard 
 labor in Schlusselburg. She was re- 
 leased in 1904, but deported to the City 
 of Archangelsk in northern Eussia. 
 
 Ludmila A. Wolkenstein took part 
 in the agitation of the "People's 
 Will" party and was one of the de- 
 fendants in the Figner "Military" 
 trial. She was arrested in 1883, also 
 sentenced to death, which sentence was 
 commuted to hard labor. She was re- 
 leased in 1896 and sent to Saghalien. 
 She wrote her memoirs about the Bas- 
 tille, known as "Thirteen Years in 
 Schlusselburg. ' ' During the Japanese 
 War she was transferred to Vladivos- 
 tok where, in January, 1906, she was 
 killed in a street demonstration of 
 mutineers. 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 41 
 
 The military men who were convict- 
 ed with Vera Figner were only accused 
 of propaganda in the army and of 
 founding revolutionary military or- 
 ganizations. Lieutenant Baron Alex- 
 ander Stromberg and Nicholas Bogat- 
 cheff, whose death sentences were not 
 commuted, were not the most influen- 
 tial among them. The government 
 made "examples" of them for the rea- 
 son that they had been associating 
 with the leaders of Narodnaia Volia 
 much oftener than others. Baron 
 Stromberg was deported to Siberia in 
 1881, and while serving his term there 
 he was brought back for the Figner 
 case, convicted and hanged. Nicholas 
 Bogatcheff only intended to resign 
 from service and then devote his time 
 to the newly formed organization, but 
 was arrested before he had tendered 
 his resignation. The fact that his 
 brother, Dmitri Eogatcheff, was con- 
 
42 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 victed to hard labor in 1878 in the case 
 of "193," prompted his execution. 
 
 Colonel Ashenbrenner and Pokhito- 
 noff were the most brilliant men in the 
 military organization. Ashenbrenner 
 took leave of absence for a long term 
 and traveled all over Russia, organiz- 
 ing military circles. Their sentence's 
 were commuted in view of the splendid 
 record they made while in actual serv- 
 ice. Pokhitonoff went insane in the 
 Bastille. Ashenbrenner, as well as a 
 few of those who survived the impris- 
 onment, is now engaged in literary 
 pursuit's. 
 
 A remarkable feature in this case 
 was the conduct of Officer Tikhano- 
 witch. On the 17th day of August, 
 1882, one Wassily Ivanoff, a student 
 and revolutionist, escaped from the 
 Kieff Prison. Two prison keepers 
 were accused of complicity in the es- 
 cape, were tried and sentenced to hard 
 labor. The real accomplice, however, 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 43 
 
 was Tikhanowitch, who, at the time 
 of the escape, had charge of the prison 
 guard. As soon as the keepers were 
 convicted Tikhanowitch announced his 
 part in the escape and the keepers 
 were released. At the trial he showed 
 evidence of mental derangement, but 
 the court refused to examine into his 
 sanity. He was sent to the Bastille, 
 where he committed suicide two weeks 
 after his term began. 
 
 Starodworsky and Konashewitch, of 
 the Lopatin case, were convicted of 
 complicity in the assassination of Colo- 
 nel of Gendarmes Soudeikin. This af- 
 fair was noteworthy in Russian his- 
 tory. One, Sergius Degaieff, an army 
 officer, was arrested on a charge of 
 revolutionary propaganda in the army. 
 Colonel Soudeikin visited hi min jail in 
 Odessa and by a promise of immunity 
 and the assurance that if the revolu- 
 tionists on one hand and the reaction- 
 ists on the other hand, should be re- 
 
44 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 moved, the Czar would grant a con- 
 stitution, induced Degaieff to betray 
 his comrades and take up a position 
 with the Secret Police. To conceal De- 
 gaieff ? s treason an escape from jail 
 had been arranged for him and he be- 
 gan a wholesale betrayal. Hundreds 
 of men and women fell into Soudei- 
 kin ? s hands. Among them were Vera 
 Figner, Baron Stromberg, Colonel 
 Ashenbrenner and more than two hun- 
 dred others, mostly army officers. At 
 one time Soudeikin was in position to 
 lay his hands on almost all leading 
 revolutionists. The assurance of a 
 constitution held out to Degaieff was 
 only used to deceive this weak man 
 into treason. Soudeikin, ambitious 
 and jealous of the men at the Court, 
 whose intrigues prevented his further 
 promotion, planned to remove, with 
 the aid of Degaieff, Count Tolstoi, 
 Count Strogonoff and other advisers 
 of the Czar and thus reach the position 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 45 
 
 of Secretary of Interior. To enhance 
 his own importance, a fictitious at- 
 tempt upon his life had been made by 
 Degaieff, which act, at the same time 
 purported to remove all suspicion 
 against Degaieff among the revolu- 
 tionists. "When the unusual number 
 of arrests compelled the revolutionists 
 to suspect treason in their own ranks, 
 and suspicion fell upon Degaieff, he 
 realized the awful part he played un- 
 der Soudeikin's influence and com- 
 mand, confessed to the Executive Com- 
 mittee of the Revolutionary party, of- 
 fered to redress the crimes committed 
 by him and demanded that the party 
 impose on him such punishment as it 
 would see fit. The verdict of the party 
 was that Degaieff give all information 
 which he had about the plans and pro- 
 jects of the Secret Police, and thus 
 place the suspected revolutionists be- 
 yond its reach and that he do away 
 with tjie man whom he had intrusted 
 
4:6 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 with the names and welfare of hun- 
 dreds of men and women. It was stat- 
 ed in the manifesto issued by the par- 
 ty on this occasion that the circum- 
 stances compelled it to use Degaieff for 
 that purpose, and that it was done 
 with all reluctance and repugnance 
 that attach to deals with traitors. 
 After Degaieff shall have complied 
 with this resolution, his own punish- 
 ment was to be determined. Starod- 
 worsky and Konashewitch had been 
 directed to see that Degaieff carry out 
 this verdict. On the 16th day of De- 
 cember, 1883, Soudeikin fell by their 
 hands. After that Degaieff again de- 
 manded his punishment and begged 
 that if it should be decreed that his 
 life be taken, that he be allowed to 
 take it himself. The verdict, however, 
 was that his name be given to eternal 
 dishonor and that under a penalty of 
 death, he forever sever all connections 
 with the movement on behalf of Bus- 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 47 
 
 sian freedom. 1 Degaieff complied with 
 the verdict. His whereabouts are un- 
 known today. His family struck his 
 name from its roll. Starodworsky 
 and Konashewitch were arrested some 
 time thereafter, sentenced to death 
 and placed in the Bastille, where the 
 latter went insane. Starodworsky, 
 however, having gone through its hor- 
 rors, was released in 1905 to see life 
 again. 
 
 Antonoff and Pankratoff were work- 
 men engaged in propaganda among 
 working people, a crime most seriously 
 prosecuted in the seventies and eigh- 
 ties, if committed by one of the "low- 
 er" classes. Both had organized la- 
 bor circles and enjoyed great influ- 
 ene. Upon his release Pankratoff, who 
 had served thirteen years, published 
 his reminiscences about the Bastille in 
 
 1 "Messenger of the People's Will" (in Russian), 
 No. 2, 1884, and "Narodnaia Volia," No. 10, 1884. 
 Also Stepniak in London "Times," January, 1884. 
 
48 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 a book entiled "Life in Schlussel- 
 burg. ' ' Antonoff remained there until 
 October, 1905. 
 
 Ludwig Varinsky was the founder 
 of the Polish Revolutionary Party 
 "Proletariat." An able speaker and 
 organizer, he was expelled from Aus- 
 tria after the Krakow Trial in 1880. 
 Having arrived in Warsaw in 1881, 
 he soon organized the so-called "Labor 
 Committee" which led all labor dis- 
 putes. He wrote the programme of the 
 party and many of its appeals and es- 
 tablished its leading newspapers. In 
 1883 he laid the foundation for the co- 
 operation of the "Proletariat" with 
 the "Narodnaia Volia," which subse- 
 quently resulted in unity of action of 
 both parties. Having travelled in the 
 interest of his cause, he escaped arrest 
 many times, but finally fell into the 
 hands of the police on the 28th day of 
 September, 1883, after a fierce struggle 
 
LMi'SHMN 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 49 
 
 with the spies, who followed him. He 
 died in the Bastille in 1889. 
 
 The fate of Michael Popoff was par- 
 ticularly tragic. He was a "peasant- 
 ist." He was sentenced in 1879 and 
 sent to Siberia, From there he was 
 transferred to the Bastille with sixteen 
 others, who were charged with an at- 
 tempted escape, in which he took no 
 part. He survived all his comrades 
 and served the longest term. 
 
The younger prisoners, most of 
 whom belonged to the Eevolutionary 
 Socialists, were terrorists, although 
 they too began their career as peaceful 
 propagandists and educators. 
 
 The terrorism of these men originat- 
 ed under circumstances different from 
 those which brought about the tactics 
 of the Narodnaia Volia. "While that 
 party adopted this weapon as a means 
 of self defense and attack during a 
 time when the movement was purely 
 intellectual and had no footing among 
 the masses, terrorism of the Eevolu- 
 tionary Socialists sprang up at a time 
 when the government inaugurated a 
 system of white terror for the purpose 
 of crushing the movements then 
 spreading among the workmen and 
 peasants. It coincided with the 
 
 50 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 51 
 
 growth of the Social Democratic agi- 
 tation in the cities and Social Bevolu- 
 tionary propaganda in the villages. 
 Secretaries Sipiagin, Von Plehve, Gen- 
 eral Bogdanowitch, Grand Duke Ser- 
 gius and others all fell victims of the 
 system of the massacre of non-ortho- 
 dox nationalities and wholesale flog- 
 ging, deportation and execution of 
 workmen, peasants and intellectuals 
 inaugurated by them. 
 
 Peter Karpowitch, a student of the 
 Moscow University, was an ardent or- 
 ganizer of educational circles and so- 
 cieties for self-support, widely known 
 as ' ' Countrymen 's Organizations. ' ' In 
 this activity he soon met with persecu- 
 tion. For participation in the memor- 
 ial services over the victims of the so- 
 called "Khodin Affair," 1 he was ar- 
 
 1 It is an accident which occurred on the Khodin 
 Place in Moscow during the coronation of Nich- 
 olas II., wherein a few thousands were killed and 
 maimed as a result of a collapse of one of the 
 structures during the festivities. 
 
52 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 rested and expelled from the Univer- 
 sity. There have been more than eight 
 hundred students expelled for this of- 
 fense. He subsequently joined the 
 Dorpalt University, from which he was 
 again expelled, in 1889, for taking part 
 in a student meeting. He then went 
 to Switzerland, whence he returned to 
 Russia in 1901/ a full fledged revolu- 
 tionist. At this time Secretary Bog- 
 olepoff, who was responsible for meas- 
 ures of persecution against students, 
 adopted a new regulation by which 
 students had been thrown into invol- 
 untary soldiery for any complaint that 
 may have been made against them by 
 the ordinary or university police and 
 one hundred and eighty-six students 
 in Kieff were at once subjected to such 
 punishment. At the trial for killing 
 the Secretary, Karpowitch said: 
 
 "I was a student. Our aims and en- 
 deavors were legitimate. I was ac- 
 quainted with the life of the soldiers 
 
THE RUSSAIN BASTILLE 53 
 
 and realized what horrors would be- 
 fall the young students in the disci- 
 plinary regiments. I knew that many 
 could not adapt themselves to the dis- 
 cipline in vogue and I decided to pro- 
 test, but how? The press was muzzled 
 and then it would be useless and I de- 
 cided to shoot at Bogolepoff. I had no 
 intention to kill. My object was to di- 
 rect public attention to the unjust and 
 cruel treatment of the studying 
 youth. ' ' He was sentenced to twenty 
 years at hard labor. He took no ap- 
 peal from the verdict, although ad- 
 vised to do so. He was sent to Schlus- 
 selburg. 1 In 1905 Karpo witch was 
 transferred to a Siberian hard labor 
 prison in Akatoui, from which he es- 
 caped in 1906. 
 
 Stephen Balmashoff was born of ex- 
 iled parents in 1881 in one of the 
 northern provinces, where his father 
 
 1 Messenger of the Russian Revolution (in Rus- 
 sian), July, 1901, No. 1, Paris. 
 
54 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 was serving a term of deportation. 
 While a child young Stephen saw mis- 
 ery and injustice and witnessed night 
 raids upon his father's house made by 
 the Secret Police. When they were 
 allowed to return to Saratoff and 
 Stephen was about to enter a public 
 school or a gymnasium, an objection 
 was made to his admission, on the 
 ground that his father was politically 
 unreliable. He was finally admitted 
 only upon the urgent request of influ- 
 ential friends. 
 
 In school young Balmashoff devel- 
 oped a passion for reading. In the 
 higher classes he edited a magazine, in 
 which he popularized the views of well 
 known writers. The raids upon his 
 father's house continued, however, 
 even in Saratoff when Stephen was a 
 youth of eighteen. In 1899 he entered 
 the Kasan University. Here he organ- 
 ized educational circles, published a 
 students' magazine and lectured to 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 55 
 
 workmen during evenings. In 1900 he 
 sought and obtained a transfer to the 
 Kieff University, where he was imme- 
 diately elected a representative of the 
 Volga Circle to the United Council of 
 Students ' Organizations. 
 
 When in 1900 two students were ar- 
 rested for speaking at public meetings, 
 a protest demonstration had taken 
 place at a railroad station. A few 
 hundred students were arrested for it 
 and one hundred and eighty-six of 
 them thrown into soldiery, Balmashoff 
 among them. He escaped, was subse- 
 quently arrested and thrown into jail, 
 wherefrom he published a magazine 
 known as "From the Dungeon. " He 
 was at last taken into the disciplinary 
 battalion. During these days Balma- 
 shoff fostered the view that, unless 
 the political conditions are changed, 
 students, like other classes, would suf- 
 fer and that such a change could be 
 brought about only by a movement of 
 
56 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 the masses. For this reason, as soon 
 as he managed to obtain his release 
 from the regiment, he again gave his 
 energy to the organization of the 
 workmen in the cities. 
 
 The students' movement had, how- 
 ever, continued and in 1901 demonstra- 
 tions had taken place in all principal 
 cities. The whipping of the students 
 by the Cossacks in the streets of St. 
 Petersburg, had aroused general indig- 
 nation and the Union of Writers in St. 
 Petersburg protested to Secretary Sip- 
 iagin against the unwarranted be- 
 havior of the authoroities. 1 At about 
 this time the latter issued his famous 
 order forbidding private charity 
 among the famine stricken peasants 
 upon the ground "that it might lead 
 to public initiative, which is contrary 
 to our laws" and subsequently direct- 
 
 1 The "Union of Writers" was subsequently dis- 
 solved by kipiagin and more than 1,200 intel- 
 lectuals expelled from St. Petersburg, Peter Struve 
 and Roditcheff among them. 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 57 
 
 ed the open shooting of inoffensive 
 striking workmen in Batnm and Eka- 
 terinoslav. When new demonstrations 
 were planned and Sipiagin announced 
 that he would ' ' drown St. Petersburg 
 in blood and would make the writers 
 forget how to think if they dared to 
 protest again" and threatened an all- 
 Eussian massacre of the intellectuals, 
 the Fighting League, then a young or- 
 ganization, sentenced Sipiagin to 
 death. Balmashoff, who was the 
 youngest member of the League, as- 
 pired to the inevitable martyrdom in 
 this affair. It is well known how Bal- 
 mashoff, dressed like a lieutenant, 
 carried out the verdict of the League 
 on the 2d day of April, 1902, in the 
 office of the Council of Ministers. At 
 the trial he displayed an iron charac- 
 ter. When asked about his motives he 
 said : 
 
 "Ask all Eussian citizens why they 
 have not killed Sipiagin long before I 
 
58 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 did. Why I have done it should be 
 clear to all." 
 
 When asked about his accomplices 
 he said: 
 
 ' ' They are the Eussian Government 
 with the Czar at the head and I de- 
 mand that my accomplices be tried 
 here with me." 
 
 He was sentenced to death. On the 
 same day his mother appealed to the 
 Czar for clemency. Nicholas II. said 
 that he would exercise clemency if the 
 petition would be signed by Balma- 
 shoff personally. Durnovo, then As- 
 sistant Secretary of Interior, went to 
 Balmashoff and endeavored to induce 
 him to sign the petition. When Dur- 
 novo returned he said to his mother: 
 "Your son is a stone." Before execu- 
 tion Balmashoff wrote to his parents: 
 
 "Do not crush me with the burden 
 of your reproach. The cruel and re- 
 lentless conditions of Eussian life com- 
 pelled me to shed human blood, and 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 59 
 
 are responsible for your undeserved 
 suffering. How happy would I be if 
 I would not have the thought of your 
 grief! But though the satisfaction 
 caused by the consciousness of a ful- 
 filled duty is saddened by this thought, 
 I do not regret the deed. You have 
 long ago realized the importance of 
 the struggle with the most pronounced 
 and dangerous representatives of the 
 autocratic regime and that inevitable 
 are sacrifices in this war. But the con- 
 ditions now prevailing in our unfortu- 
 nate fatherland not only demand ma- 
 terial sacrifices, they make it impera- 
 tive for parents to give up their chil- 
 dren. I bring nay life as a sacrifice to 
 the great cause of the oppressed and 
 the persecuted and this I hope gives 
 me the moral justification for the cru- 
 elty which I heaped on you, my dear- 
 est. 
 
 1 S. V. Balmashofi, biographie, in Russian, 1903. 
 Switzerland. 
 
60 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 "Let this interpretation of my deed 
 appease your grief, and I ask you to 
 do one thing, though I know how hard 
 it is for you to comply with the re- 
 quest: Whatever may happen to me, 
 please be as cool and as firm as I am. 
 Perhaps your coolness will reach me 
 through the thick prison walls and 
 will lessen my anxiety for you." He 
 was twenty-one when executed in the 
 Bastille. 
 
 Gregory Gershuni was born in 1869. 
 He was one of the most conspicuous 
 figures in the revolutionary movement 
 of the recent days. He enjoyed all 
 opportunities which means and ed- 
 ucation could offer. He was a 
 chemist by profession. His first 
 activity covered a few years in the city 
 of Minsk, where he established schools 
 for the poor and participated in char- 
 itable institutions. "But," he said to 
 the Court during his trial, ' * as soon as 
 our educational activity spread and 
 
THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 61 
 
 we learned the conditions of the 
 masses; owing to the political regime, 
 we have come to realize that we could 
 not do much for them, and that the 
 most serious obstacle in our way was 
 the opposition of the government to 
 every legitimate enterprise. The pov- 
 erty of the workmen and the peasants, 
 the persecution of the Jews and other 
 nationalities, the prohibition of free 
 speech, free press, and of the right to 
 petition or protest, the flogging of the 
 peasants and the shooting of the work- 
 men, had soon aroused my shame and 
 my conscience, and I joined the ranks 
 of those who made common welfare 
 their only motive. ' ' 
 
 But even in the ranks of the revolu- 
 tionary party Gershuni at first devot- 
 ed most of his time to the education 
 and organization of the masses, believ- 
 ing that only on those principles a 
 movement that intends to change the 
 system in vogue could be successful. 
 
62 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 At this time one Soubatoff, Chief of 
 Gendarmes in Moscow, conceived the 
 idea to use the spreading labor move- 
 ment for the purpose of strengthening 
 the autocracy. His plan was to per- 
 mit some betterments in their condi- 
 tions, attract the intellectuals to such 
 a movement and thus weaken and de- 
 moralize the revolutionary ranks. 
 
 In 1900 Gershuni was arrested in 
 Kieff . He was taken to Moscow, where 
 Soubatoff, by various means, endeav- 
 ored to induce him to follow the meth- 
 ods adopted by the gendarmes in the 
 newly formed labor circles. Gerschuni 
 was offered freedom and permission 
 to lecture among the workmen on eco- 
 nomics, if he should promise not to 
 discuss politics. This incident once 
 more convinced him of the hypocrisy 
 of the government and its officials, and 
 that their only object was to remain 
 in power as long as it was possible. 
 His arrest, however, did not last long. 
 
THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 63 
 
 The Fighting League came soon into 
 existence and Gershuni became its 
 leading spirit. The object of this or- 
 ganization is well known. It was to 
 punish the officials for the brutalities 
 heaped upon the people and deter and 
 prevent the repetition of such occur- 
 rences. On the 2d day of April, 1902, 
 Secretary Sipiagin was shot. On the 
 29th day of July of the same year, 
 Thomas Katchur shot at Prince Obo- 
 lensky, Governor of Kharkoff, who 
 flogged peasants to death during a 
 famine strike and who had given over 
 the wives and the daughters of the 
 peasants to the Cossacks after the flog- 
 ging. On the 13th day of March, 1903, 
 Governor of Ufa Bogdanowitch, who 
 ordered soldiers to shoot into a crowd 
 of workmen who came to petition him, 
 was killed. The government was bent 
 upon capturing the leaders and mem- 
 bers of the League. Owing to a state- 
 ment which Katchur, while in a state 
 
64 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 of mental derangement, made to the 
 police, Gtershuni was again arrested 
 in 1903. Chained hand and foot, he 
 was taken to St. Petersburg. Such a 
 proceeding before trial was extraordi- 
 nary even in Russia. During three 
 years which passed after his first ar- 
 rest, he covered many cities, visited 
 Europe a few times, contributed to the 
 legitimate and illegitimate press on 
 politics and economics, and wrote 
 poetry. 
 
 The accusation against him was that 
 he led and conducted the acts com- 
 mitted by the members of the Fighting 
 League. In February, 1904, he was 
 brought to trial. The eyes of all Rus- 
 sia turned to this case. The honor of 
 the revolutionary movement was to be 
 upheld. Gershuni did justice to his 
 cause. The trial marked an epoch in 
 the history of the Revolution. The 
 days of the "Narodania Volia" were 
 recalled. Grershuni refused to give 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 65 
 
 testimony or call witnesses on his 
 behalf. He said: "We are de- 
 prived of an opportunity to prove 
 our case; our witnesses will be 
 condemned as accomplices. The sen- 
 tence of the Court is known before- 
 hand. Its session is an unnecessary 
 formality. You have the power and 
 yours shall be the triumph now, and I 
 speak here only because I want you to 
 know the conditions which, in spite of 
 the gallows and hard labor, force hon- 
 est men and women into the revolu- 
 tionary ranks. The problem of the 
 party is to prepare Eussia for the con- 
 vocation of the Semsky Sobor, which 
 should act as a constitutional assem- 
 bly, and to that end we are educating, 
 organizing, demonstrating and taking 
 part in all protests. But the feeling 
 of indignation and the thirst to punish 
 the cruelties heaped on us, caused ter- 
 ror, and terror will follow whenever it 
 will be provoked, whether our party 
 
66 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 wants it or not. For the party terror 
 is not a means by which it expects to 
 change the system. It is not invoked 
 for love of violence. It is used in self 
 defense and as a deterring method, 
 with all the reluctance and opposition 
 to violence, which civilized men and 
 women must entertain. I know what 
 awaits me here. My road is to the gal- 
 lows. I knew it in Kieff, when your 
 lackeys chained me hand and foot. 
 Nine months have passed. The time 
 has come! Finish your work ! But if 
 you think that your proceedings will 
 remain secret, you are in error. The 
 death knell for me will be a signal for 
 renewed activity in behalf of liberty! 
 Our people will learn at what cost your 
 government exists and will realize that 
 during such days it is a crime to sit 
 and look on. I know that it is 
 unpleasant for you to listen to me, 
 but if you have the courage to hang 
 a man for his convictions, then have 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 67 
 
 the bravery to listen to Mm before you 
 hang him. ' 9 
 
 Grershuni was sentenced to death. 
 The sentence was commuted to confine- 
 ment in the Schlusselburg Fortress for 
 life. Before he was taken there Plehve 
 visited him and endeavored to engage 
 him in a conversation. The object was 
 to induce him to petition the Czar for 
 clemency. Grershuni refused to speak 
 to Plehve. When the decision on the 
 commutation of sentence was brought 
 to him by the presiding judge, Ger- 
 shuni exclaimed, "I did not ask for 
 it." Before he knew of the change of 
 sentence he wrote to his friends apolo- 
 gizing for his refusal to escape, before 
 the anticipated arrest as they had 
 urged him to do. 
 
 "I had to remain in Russia. You 
 know that I always opposed desertion 
 of the battlefield. I know that my exe- 
 cution will be a hard blow to you, but 
 
68 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 it will serve our cause. It was hard 
 for the revolutionists of the seventies 
 and eighties to die, They were alone. 
 We are surrounded by a struggling 
 people. "We breathe with them and it 
 is so easy to die! You, however, unite 
 and continue the struggle." 1 
 
 Having remained in the Bastille for 
 over a year Gershuni was released in 
 October, 1905, and deported to the 
 hard labor prison in Akatoui in Si- 
 beria, wherefrom he escaped in 1906, 
 and safely reached the United States. 
 
 Here Gershuni aroused great inter- 
 est in the cause of Bussian Freedom. 
 An exposal of the methods of the Eus- 
 sian Government made by him almost 
 resulted in a serious financial embar- 
 rassment for that government, and im- 
 mediately thereafter an inquiry was 
 made from Washington as to the na- 
 ture of Gershuni 's career and agita- 
 
 1 Revolutionary Russia and Emancipation (in 
 Russian), 1904. 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 69 
 
 tion. Only a strong and proper ex- 
 planation of his activity prevented him 
 from being expelled from the United 
 States, an expulsion sought by the 
 Russian Government. 
 
 In the beginning of 1907, Grershuni 
 disappeared from the United States. 
 True to the "call of his army" as said 
 by him in one of his speeches, he went 
 back to Russia. There, under circum- 
 stances most unspeakable, he began 
 the hard task of uniting the scattered 
 forces of the Revolution, and on one 
 of his skirmishes was arrested. He 
 convinced the gendarmes, who failed 
 to recognize him, that he was a peace- 
 ful citizen, and was freed. 
 
 But the imprisonment in Schlussel- 
 berg and Akatoui, constant exposure 
 and travelling, improper food and 
 strained life began to tell. Having 
 contracted a pulmonary disease while 
 in prison, he failed to take care of his 
 health after liberation. On his last 
 
70 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 trip to Eussia lie broke down and his 
 friends compelled him to go to Switzer- 
 land for a rest. On the 18th day of 
 March, 1908, he died in Zurich, leav- 
 ing thousands of friends and admirers, 
 in the old and new worlds, mourning a 
 loss long not to be replaced. 
 
 In his last letter to his American 
 friends Gershuni wrote: "Do not lose 
 courage and do not despair at the con- 
 ditions in Russia. I tell you: have pa- 
 tience! Had you only known what is 
 going on in the heart of the people's 
 soul ! "What a change had taken place 
 in the people's views and attitudes! 
 There Stolypin is powerless and the 
 Revolution sings its triumphant song. ' ' 
 
 He was buried in Paris, escorted to 
 his grave by representatives of all rev- 
 olutionary parties of Russia and many 
 
 NOTE The biography of Gregory Gershuni has 
 been revised by the author before it went to press, 
 and added new facts, which could not be published, 
 if he were alive. 
 
THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 71 
 
 representatives of modern thought in 
 Europe. 
 
 Egor Sasonoff, a student, was twice 
 exiled to Siberia on a mere suspicion. 
 When he returned he joined the Fight- 
 ing League. He was one of the five 
 members of the League who had un- 
 dertaken to assassinate Plehve. In the 
 disguise of a cabman he followed 
 Plehve for three months and finally 
 carried out the verdict of the League 
 on July 27, 1903. The unmistak- 
 able widespread rejoicing caused by 
 Plehve 's death resulted in the commu- 
 tation of the death sentence imposed 
 upon Sasonoff by the Court, to a term 
 at hard labor for the limited period of 
 eighteen years. He served in the Bas- 
 tille until October, 1905, and he is now 
 in the Akatoui Prison in Siberia. 
 
 Ivan Kaliaieff was born in 1877 in 
 Warsaw. His father was a police ser- 
 geant. He was a pupil in the Warsaw 
 Gymnasium, where he studied under 
 
72 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 a regime particularly cruel in Poland. 
 In his young days lie had already con- 
 tributed to Russian and Polish maga- 
 zines. He studied history in the Uni- 
 versity at Moscow and in 1898 entered 
 the law school in St. Petersburg. In 
 1899 he served three months in jail for 
 a student affair and was exiled for two 
 years. In 1902 he was arrested again 
 for carrying a few forbidden pam- 
 phlets published for workmen by the 
 Social Democrat Organization and was 
 thrown into the "Warsaw Citadel. This 
 arrest changed Kaliaieff's policy. In 
 1903 we find him abroad and at the dis- 
 posal of the Revolutionary Party. He 
 was a member of the Fighting League. 
 A man of unusual education and abil- 
 ity, a poet and a speaker, he showed 
 great caution at the time he carried 
 out the sentence of the Fighting 
 League against the Grand Duke Ser- 
 gius. He twice met the Duke with his 
 wife in streets wherefrom he could 
 
Three of this group were not in Sclusselburg. Blinoff was killed in the 
 Zhitomir massacre. Sidortchuk was sentenced to death, but imprisoned at 
 hard labor in the Akatoni jail, in Siberia. Breshkovsky served four years in 
 Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress before she was sentenced in 1879. 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 73 
 
 have easily escaped, but he refrained 
 from throwing his bomb. The Grand 
 Duchess was not to suffer for her 
 reactionary husband. It was for 
 this reason that the Grand Duch- 
 ess visited him in jail after her 
 husband, who was the leading member 
 of the Court Camarille, was killed. At 
 the trial Kaliaieff recited the history 
 of Russia during the days previous to 
 the establishment of the Fighting 
 League and stated that the acts of the 
 League are a warning to autocracy. 
 When the death sentence was pro- 
 nounced, Kaliaieff said to the Judges: 
 "I am happy to receive your verdict, 
 and only hope that you will have the 
 courage to carry it out as publicly as 
 I have carried out the verdict of the 
 Revolutionary Party. Learn to face 
 the Russian Revolution ! ' ' He took an 
 oath from his mother not to seek clem- 
 ency. When, however, she informed 
 him that his sentence might be com- 
 
74 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 muted without a petition, he immedi- 
 ately wrote to the Secretary of Jus- 
 tice: "True to the testament of the 
 Narodnaia Volia, I notify you that I 
 consider it my duty to reject clem- 
 ency." 
 
 Zinaida Konopliannikova was a 
 school teacher among peasants and 
 knew the conditions from personal 
 observation. In December, 1905, 
 Colonel Min was sent to Moscow to 
 crush the uprising which then had 
 taken place there. He was the com- 
 mander of the Semonovsky Begiment, 
 which was brought from St. Peters- 
 burg because the Moscow Garrison re-- 
 fused to obey orders. The soldiers 
 were wrought up to a frenzy by drink, 
 and only while in this condition could 
 be induced to do> their deadly work. 
 
 Even after the rebellion subsided a 
 few hundred men and women were 
 
 A Ivan Platonowitch Kaliaieff, biographie (in 
 Russian), 1905. "Daily Telegraph," May 11-24, 
 1905, cited therein. 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 75 
 
 slaughtered without regard of their 
 guilt or innocence. For this work Col- 
 onel Min was promoted to the rank of 
 general. He was, however, completely 
 ostracised by society. The Fighting 
 League sentenced him to death and 
 Konopliannikova executed the sen- 
 tence in September, 1906. She met 
 the general at a railroad station near 
 St. Petersburg. He was there with his 
 wife. Konopliannikova, therefore, did 
 not throw her bomb at the general but 
 shot him, not wishing to harm the in- 
 nocent. The general was killed 
 but his wife was not injured. 
 At her trial she said that all, guilty 
 of atrocities against her people, will 
 sooner or later find their death at 
 the hands of the revolutionists for 
 that all tyrants had forfeited their 
 lives. She was sentenced to death and 
 executed in the Bastille in September, 
 1906. This execution opens a new 
 gloomy chapter in the history of the 
 
76 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 Bastille, winch has again been re- 
 stored after an enforced disuse which 
 only lasted about ten months. Short- 
 ly thereafter the cells of the Bastille 
 opened for the sailors and marines of 
 the Kronstadt and Sveaborg rebellion, 
 which broke out immediately after the 
 dissolution of the first Duma. Among 
 these new inmates we find Social Dem- 
 ocrats as well as Social Revolutionists. 
 Thus the Fortress numbers among its 
 prisoners men and women of all par- 
 ties and phases in the history of the 
 revolutionary movement, including the 
 sailors and marines these true sons 
 of the revolution of the later days. 
 
VI 
 
 The regime in prison during the 
 eighties, when at the head of the Rus- 
 sian Gendarmery stood men like She- 
 becco, Orjevsky and Plehve, may be 
 characterized as most atrocious. So- 
 koloff, the brutal warden of the Alex- 
 eieff Ravelin, was placed in command 
 of the new prison. He was an ignor- 
 ant, cruel soldier, and always ready, 
 he said, ' ' to kill his parents, if ordered 
 by superiors." Lopatin named him 
 "Herod." All communications be- 
 tween the prisoners, by knocking on 
 the walls, singing, whistling, rapid 
 walking, as well as interviews with rel- 
 atives or friends, were forbidden. The 
 enforced and continued silence, inac- 
 tivity and isolation were maddening. 
 The restriction of correspondence 
 with relations and the prohibition to 
 visit the prisoners, cut off the Bas- 
 
 77 
 
78 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 tille from all life. Novorouski relates 
 that at times the prisoners forgot ordi- 
 nary words of the Bussian language. 
 For violation of the rules disobedient 
 prisoners were beaten, bound and in- 
 carcerated in dark cells and deprived 
 of their daily promenade and of their 
 meals. The meals were worse than 
 those dispensed in the Bussian army. 
 Foul food was given even to sick pris- 
 oners. And only when, as a result of 
 such diet, almost all prisoners became 
 sick and there was fear that they all 
 might perish; those who were dan- 
 gerously ill were allowed a small por- 
 tion of milk and given more time for 
 promenade. But as soon as a prisoner's 
 health improved the milk would dis- 
 appear. Few books, except the New 
 Testament were allowed. There was 
 no hospital attached to the jail. The 
 iron bed in each cell was closed early 
 in the morning, and even the sick or 
 dying were compelled to lie upon the 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 79 
 
 cold floor, their expectorating making 
 the surroundings dangerous for the 
 rest. As an instance, the case of Aron- 
 tchik may be cited. Paralyzed and in- 
 sane, he remained in his cell for more 
 than two years. Judging from the 
 number of deaths in prison we may 
 say that this was not an exceptional 
 case. 
 
 For new arrivals and those who 
 were guilty of slight offenses in prison, 
 disciplinary cells were in readiness. 
 They were dungeons in a separate part 
 of the building, damp and dark, known 
 among the prisoners as the ' ' Stable. ' ' 
 They had been established by "Her- 
 od" in the Sts. Peter and Paul Fort- 
 ress and were subsequently introduced 
 by him in the Bastille. It is asserted 
 that once placed in the l ' Stable, ' ' the 
 revolutionists were subjected to such 
 extraordinary brutalities that as a 
 result few left it alive. In the Alexeiff 
 Ravelin there were a few isolated and 
 
80 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 extraordinarily guarded cells, wher&- 
 from no knocking could be heard 
 and no noise could reach and 
 the fate of the inmates of those 
 cells is hardly known. Alexan- 
 der Mikhailoff and Kletochnikoff were 
 placed in the "Stable" . after Net- 
 chaieff. Alexander Mikhailoff organ- 
 ized the most daring and complicated 
 enterprises. He secured for Kletoch- 
 nikoff a position in the Third Section 
 of the Police Department, which had 
 charge of political prosecutions. Klet- 
 ochnikoff served three years in the De- 
 partment and constantly advised the 
 Executive Committee of his Party of 
 all the movements of the Police. His su- 
 periors, however, did not suspect him. 
 They even honored him with the Cross 
 of St. Stanislaw. The members of the 
 Executive Committee joked when they 
 congratulated each other upon the 
 "promotion" of their member. Ow- 
 ing to Kletochnikoff, the Third Section 
 
THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 81 
 
 could not check the activity of the rev- 
 olutionists. It was suspected of polit- 
 ical unreliability and Alexander II. 
 charged it with treason. Kletochni- 
 koff's arrest, however, was due to a 
 mere accident. He visited a friend 
 after a house search and before he had 
 received word about it and was sur- 
 prised by members of the ordinary po- 
 lice, which kept watch in the house. 
 It is hard to imagine the anger of the 
 gendarmes when they made this dis- 
 covery. In February, 1882, he was 
 convicted to death. His sentence was 
 commuted to life imprisonment. He 
 was corked up in the Eavelin, then 
 transferred to the ' ' Stable, ' ' where he 
 was subjected to the most improvised 
 tortures and died in 1883. 
 
 The Schlusselburg regime continued 
 the deadly work begun in the Sts. 
 Peter and Paul Fortress. The heroes 
 of the "People's Will," one after the 
 other, descended into their graves. It 
 
82 THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 was the desire of those in power to 
 force these men and women to plead 
 for clemency or pardon. Orjevsky, 
 Shebecco and Plehve had cynically de^ 
 fended the system in vogue in the Bas- 
 tille, on the ground that it had for its 
 "good" object the breaking of the 
 will of the prisoners. But the history 
 of the Bastille does not record one case 
 of a " broken will, ' ' of a plea for mercy 
 or leniency! 
 
 They died in loneliness and helpless- 
 ness, forgotten and forsaken, but they 
 never submitted or implored and al- 
 ways remained proud and true to their 
 ideal. And when death arrived, when 
 the last suffering sigh subsided, the 
 noise caused by the gendarmes remov- 
 ing the body, would announce to the 
 inmates that one of theirs had per- 
 ished, leaving his cell for another to 
 fill. And what beauty of human soul 
 and great fidelity to the ideal are found 
 in the tragic images of these martyred 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 83 
 
 apostles of liberty! One can not read 
 without tears the incident described by 
 Polivanoff. When sick and on the 
 verge of insanity he contemplated sui- 
 cide, and so informed Kolodkewitch, 
 his friend in the adjoining cell, Kolod- 
 kewitch, who was dying, crawled on 
 his crutches to the wall, knocked words 
 of consolation and courage and dis- 
 suaded Polivanoff from committing 
 suicide. One morning, however, Pol- 
 ivanoff ? s knock to Kolodkewitch re- 
 mained unanswered. He soon heard 
 the familiar noise and thus learned of 
 the end of a friend, who, on the eve of 
 death, did not fail by word of courage 
 and hope to preserve the life of a de- 
 spairing comrade. 
 
 Of course, the system provoked 
 stormy protests by the incarcerated 
 men and women. General and individ- 
 ual hunger strikes frequently took 
 place. In one case Michael Shebalin, 
 as a protest against his unlawful im- 
 
84 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 prisonment in Schlusselburg, refused 
 meals during twenty-one days. He de- 
 manded his return to his wife and son 
 in Siberia. The unfortunate man did 
 not know that they had died long be- 
 fore in the Moscow Prison. In 1899 
 the entire prison starved for eleven 
 days in order to remove restrictions 
 placed upon their little library, en- 
 larged sometime before. But this 
 method of protest, agonizing for the 
 prisoners, was not very effective. The 
 prison keepers well knew that it was 
 hard to accomplish death in this man- 
 ner, as only a few could endure hunger 
 for any length of time. Then, too, it 
 was possible to feed by force those who 
 weakened. Such forcible feeding was 
 practiced many a time by the lackeys 
 in the Bastille, who bore the name of 
 physicians. The conduct of the prison 
 physicians was such that in 1884 Min- 
 akoff, in a fiat of anger, threw a dish at 
 Dr. Zarkowitch. For this act he was 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 85 
 
 court martialed and sentenced to be 
 shot. He had sought death and had 
 purposely committed the act. He re- 
 fused to petition for mercy and was 
 not allowed to communicate with his 
 parents before execution. On the 6th 
 day of September, 1884, the prisoners 
 heard a cry, "Good-bye, brothers, 
 good-bye, I am going to be shot!" 
 This was MinakofPs happy walk to 
 death. It happened three months after 
 his term of imprisonment began. 
 
 A few hours after the execution Kli- 
 menko was found hanging in his cell. 
 In October of the same year Lieuten- 
 ant Tikhanowitch had also committed 
 suicide. 
 
 Minakoff ? s insubordination was fol- 
 lowed by that of Ippolit Mishkin, who 
 invited capital punishment by strik- 
 ing another prison official. 
 
 While a youth, Mishkin was a re- 
 porter for the reactionary Moscow Ve- 
 domosti. In 1871 he was sent by Kat- 
 
86 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 koff, the editor of the paper, to report 
 the trial of the so-called Netchaieff 
 conspirators. Here Mishkin for the 
 first time became acquainted with rev- 
 olutionary ideas, and he soon after de- 
 termined to devote his life to the revo- 
 lution. In 1875, dressed like a gen- 
 darme, Mishkin went to Viluisk, in the 
 Yakutsk Province in Siberia, to res- 
 cue Tchernishevsky, the famous writer 
 and economist, who was at hard labor 
 there. Tchernichevsky had been the 
 hope of the revolutionists for a num- 
 ber of decad'es and many men and 
 women dreamed of his rescue and at- 
 tempted it at various times. Mishkin 
 presented to the local authorities an 
 order from the Irkutsk chief of gen- 
 darmes, directing them to place Tcher- 
 nishevsky in his custody for transpor- 
 tation to Irkutsk. Mishkin was, how- 
 ever, suspected and compelled to flee, 
 which he did in a boat and sailed north 
 on the Lena River. He was caught 
 
THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 87 
 
 and taken to Bussia, where he was 
 wanted for his agitation among the 
 peasants and for the establishment of 
 a secret printing plant. After a pre- 
 liminary imprisonment, which lasted 
 four years, Mishkin was tried in the 
 famous trial of "193," together with 
 Katherine Breshkovsky. His speech 
 in court was for many years consid- 
 ered the gospel of revolution. He was 
 sentenced to ten years at hard labor. 
 While in the Central Prison in Khar- 
 koff, awaiting deportation to Siberia, 
 he made an unsuccessful attempt to 
 escape by the way of an opening in a 
 wall, which he himself dug out. While 
 in the Irkutsk Jail Mishkin made his 
 famous speech at the grave of a revo- 
 lutionist, Dmoehovsky. Denouncing 
 the system which brought about the 
 early death of his comrade, he closed 
 by saying: "And upon the soil 
 drenched with the blood of the mar- 
 tyrs, the tree of liberty will rise!" 
 
88 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 For this speech Mishkin's term of hard 
 labor was prolonged. Katherine 
 Breshkovsky in her biography of 
 Mishkin comments upon these inci- 
 dents in his life as follows: "Two 
 speeches two hard labors." From 
 Kara he made a successful escape with 
 a workman named Krustchoff, and 
 reached Vladivostok. But aa insignif- 
 icant incident again placed him in the 
 hands of the police. It was then that 
 the government decided to imprison 
 him in the Bastille. 
 
vn 
 
 Knocking on the walls, although for- 
 bidden, was the only means of com- 
 munication between the prisoners, and, 
 of course, afforded great relief. The 
 unwritten rule among the prisoners re- 
 quired that every knock should at all 
 times be answered by the one to whom 
 it had been directed, no matter how 
 sick or exhausted he may have been. 
 But each knock and answer invariably 
 resulted in the incarceration of the 
 offender, male or female, in the 
 "Stable," and this innocent pastime 
 brought torture. "Sick and ex- 
 hausted," relates Vera Mgner, "with 
 tears in my eyes, and anxious for rest, 
 I would step to the wall and answer 
 the knock. But right here the door 
 would open and the gendarmes with 
 the yell, 'Do not knock,' would force 
 
 89 
 
90 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 their entrance into the cell and the 
 guilty would be dragged into the 
 ' Stable.' " 
 
 On one occasion Vera Figner said to 
 Herod : 
 
 "Why do you not drag me?" 
 
 Herod looked at the short figure of 
 th'e woman and said: 
 
 "Whom should I drag, you?" 
 
 And a moment later 'she was also in 
 the "Stable." 
 
 It should not be wondered at that 
 the prisoners refused all favors from 
 the gendarmes. When Chief She- 
 becco, on his visit to jail, entered the 
 cell of Madam Wolkenstein, the follow- 
 ing conversation took place : 
 
 "Your mother," said Shebecco, 
 "saw me and I could tell you" 
 
 "Are you General Shebecco ? ' ' inter- 
 rupted Madam Wolkenstein. 
 
 "lam." 
 
 "From you," continued the prison- 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 91 
 
 er, "I will not receive regards, even 
 from my mother. ' ' 
 
 Another method of torture, more 
 poignant than anything else described, 
 was the placing and retaining of in- 
 sane prisoners in the Bastille. Ignatius 
 Ivanoff, who was an inmate of the Kas- 
 an House for the Insane prior to the 
 re-establishment of the Bastille, was 
 brought to the latter place apparently 
 for the purpose of harassing the other 
 prisoners, since he had been declared 
 hopelessly insane in the institution 
 from which he was taken. Shortly 
 thereafter Stchedrin, Arontchik, Juva- 
 sheff, Pokhitonoff and Konashevitch 
 went insane. The latter could hard- 
 ly endure the three years of prelimi- 
 nary imprisonment in the St. Peter's 
 Fortress, and in expectation of a death 
 sentence, said to the Court: "I do not 
 ask nor do I want your leniency. ' J He 
 preferred the gallows to imprisonment, 
 but was sent to the Bastille. Insanity 
 
92 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 was the lot of many. Some were sub- 
 ject to quiet and harmless attacks of 
 mental debility. Some had violent at- 
 tacks; they laughed, they sang, they 
 cried, they shouted, and their wild 
 shouts shattered the nerves of the sane 
 inmates. The mania of some of the in- 
 sane was their successful escape from 
 prison, and that of others was perse- 
 cution or the mania of greatness. The 
 sane considered it the height of happi- 
 ness to see their afflicted comrades re- 
 moved to a medical institution, and 
 they often appealed to the authorities, 
 on their visits to the jail, to remove 
 the sick or insane, but mostly without 
 avail. 
 
 Last, but not least, of the horrible 
 incidents of this inferno, were the exe- 
 cutions. It was the rule to send those 
 who were sentenced to death to the 
 Bastille, there to be hanged within a 
 day or two after their arrival. The 
 inmates often learned of approaching 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 93 
 
 executions of newly arrived revolu- 
 tionists. The promenades would cease. 
 Tlie noise around the prison would in- 
 crease, the sound of the work about 
 the gallows would tell the rest. 
 
 On the 10th day of October, 1884, 
 Schlusselburg saw the hanging of 
 Army Officers Eogatcheff and Strom- 
 berg. During this period Mishkin and 
 Minakoff were shot. On the 10th day 
 of May, 1887, it saw the execution of 
 five young students accused of con- 
 spiracy against the life of Alexander 
 III. On the 3d day of May, 1902, Steph- 
 en Balmashoff gave up his life in the 
 Bastille. On the 10th day of May, 
 1905, Ivan Kaliaieff was hanged there. 
 In the same manner, Hyman Hersh- 
 kovitch and Alexander Wasilieff, both 
 minors, were executed within one hour 
 on the 20th day of August, 1905. On 
 the 10th day of September, 1906, the 
 Bastille was consecrated anew by the 
 blood of Zinaida Konopliannikova. 
 
94 THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 The young revolutionists triumphed 
 in their death. Balmashoff refused to 
 take the consolation from the priest, 
 saying to him: "I cannot be false 
 with you." Crossing the prison yard 
 on his way to the cell for his last sleep 
 on this earth, he removed his hat and 
 bowed in the direction of the cell win- 
 dows around the yard in the hope of 
 reaching and greeting the elder pris- 
 oners, as if inviting their blessing be- 
 fore death. 
 
 Kaliaieff was approached before ex- 
 ecution by the prosecutor with a prop- 
 osition to petition the Czar. The pros- 
 ecutor entered the cell eight times, 
 each time receiving Kaliaieff ? s stub- 
 born refusal. When before the gal- 
 lows Kaliaieff said to one of the offi- 
 cials : 
 
 "Tell my comrades that I die in joy 
 
 and that I will forever be with them." 
 
 Wasilieff coolly took leave of the in- 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 95 
 
 mates and with a bow to the witnesses, 
 ascended the gallows. 
 
 Hershkovitch enjoined his mother 
 not to petition for a commutation of 
 the sentence and when he reached the 
 place of execution he said to the sur- 
 rounding officials: 
 
 "You have come to see my death. 
 I die coolly and I know that the time 
 will soon come when the people will 
 avenge our death. 9 ' 
 
 Konopliannikova herself placed the 
 noose around her neck and with the 
 word "Beady!" gave the signal to 
 death. 
 
 The bodies of all victims were 
 thrown into graves dug in the prison 
 yard and chopped wood placed on the 
 graves. 
 
vm 
 
 Between 1887 and 1901, the Bastille 
 had only one new prisoner, Sophie 
 Ginzberg. Having been placed in a 
 secluded tower, the girl committed sui- 
 cide almost immediately thereafter, 
 and even before she had an opportun- 
 ity to communicate with her comrades. 
 In 1901, young Karpowitch, author of 
 the terrorist act against Secretary Bo- 
 golepoff, was brought in. He carried 
 life and hope into the Bastille. 
 
 During the previous years the fe- 
 male inmates, Vera Figner and Lud- 
 milla A. Wolkenstein, were the only 
 upholders of hope and courage. Many 
 a man owed his life to these women. 
 But still suicides continued. The 
 most horrible case was that of Grat- 
 chevsky. He soon tired of the regime 
 of torture and insult and decided to 
 
 96 
 
THE BUSSIAN BASTILLE 97 
 
 follow Mishkin's example. He as- 
 saulted one of the various wardens and 
 demanded a trial. Because of the de- 
 mand, a trial was refused him and he 
 was declared insane. He was not, how- 
 ever, removed to an institution. He 
 then attempted to starve himself, but 
 was fed by force. Thereupon he threw 
 kerosene from his lamp over himself 
 and set it on fire. It was a most agon- 
 izing death, and even those in the dis- 
 tant "Stable" heard his shrieks. Not 
 until after this tragedy, did the police 
 department grant privileges to the 
 prisoners. New books were allowed, 
 better meals introduced, work was per- 
 mitted. The prohibition of communi- 
 cation by knocks was not strictly en- 
 forced, and at times the prisoners were 
 allowed to promenade by twos. After 
 Sophie Ginzberg's suicide, the prison- 
 ers were permitted to take care of their 
 sick comrades. At the deathbed of 
 Yurkosky, the prisoners were allowed 
 
98 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 to watch in turn. Madam Wolken- 
 stein, describing this singular incident, 
 says that for a long time he refused to 
 disclose the fact of his illness, believ- 
 ing that no help would come. The 
 physician came to see him only upon 
 the urgent request of his fellow pris- 
 oners. It was then that the adminis- 
 tration, as if conscience stricken, made 
 a special effort to save his life, refus- 
 ing, however, to transfer him to a hos- 
 pital in St. Petersburg. During this 
 year (1896) while hopelessly sick, he 
 received a letter from his aged mother, 
 who wrote that she had given up all 
 hope to obtain an interview with him, 
 since her petitions have been declined 
 and she therefore sent him her last 
 blessing, her cross and her prayer 
 book, upon which she prayed during 
 the sixteen years of his imprisonment. 
 Before death he requested the warden 
 to permit him to take leave of the two 
 female prisoners. His request was 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTELLE 99 
 
 granted. His was the only death at 
 which prisoners performed their last 
 duty to a departing comrade. 
 
 The regime, was not substantially 
 affected by the new privileges. For 
 the slightest violation of a rule, the ad- 
 ministration still continued its arbi- 
 trary and cruel punishment. Thus 
 when Michael Popoff attempted to 
 send a secret letter to his mother, with 
 the aid of one of the guards, the en- 
 tire prison was deprived of books and 
 magazines, although only magazines 
 of previous years were at the time al- 
 lowed in jail. 
 
IX 
 
 The last thirteen inmates of the Bas- 
 tille, before October, 1905, consisted of 
 two parties. The first party of eight 
 were the remaining old prisoners Lo- 
 patin, Morosoff, Popoff, Frolenko, An- 
 tonoff, Ivanoff, Loukashevitch and 
 Novorouski; the second party of five 
 Gershuni, Sasonoff, Sikorsky, Melni- 
 koff and Karpowitch, were the young- 
 er prisoners. The five young prison- 
 ers, although ordered released from 
 the Bastille, were sent to Siberia and 
 placed in the Akatoui hard labor 
 prison. 1 
 
 The old prisoners served various 
 terms, ranging from twenty-one to 
 twenty-six years. Although their sen- 
 tences were definite, they could never 
 tell when their terms would actually 
 
 1 Gershuni, Melnikoff and Karpowitch escaped 
 from the priso-n in Siberia. 
 100 
 
THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 101 
 
 expire. It was a principle of the au- 
 tocracy to keep the inmates in ignor- 
 ance of the time of their release; and 
 even the imperial manifestos, which 
 were now and then issued, commuting 
 the sentence of convicts, did not al- 
 ways apply to them. 
 
 Peter Polivanoff addressed in 1903 
 an "open letter" 1 to N. V. Muravieff, 
 then Secretary of Justice in Russia, by 
 which he called his attention to the un- 
 lawful regime in the Bastille and thus 
 hoped to ameliorate the condition of 
 those who still lingered there. 
 
 Citing the 14th volume of the Code 
 of Laws and the Statute of ePnalties, 
 he proved that the regime in the Bas- 
 tille was a violation of all regulations 
 provided by the law, in that some in- 
 mates were illegally imprisoned and 
 that among others, Logavsky, who was 
 not tried at all and Karpowitch who 
 
 1 Revolutionary Russia (in Russian), No. 27, 
 July, 1903. La Tnoune Russe (in French), No. 
 11, February, 1904. 
 
102 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 was tried by an ordinary Court, should 
 have been sent to Siberia, but not to 
 the Fortress; that the Fortress was the 
 only prison where the inmates had 
 been deprived of the privilege to be 
 visited by their relatives and even on 
 the eve of death or execution, old pa- 
 rents had been refused the permission 
 to see their children; that the restric- 
 tion of correspondence to and from rel- 
 atives to two short letters a year, was 
 tantamount to actual prohibition and 
 that up to 1897, relatives could not at 
 all write to the prisoners and that some 
 of the prisoners have not heard from 
 their relatives for fifteen years, and no 
 inmate had ever received word from 
 his kin before he had served ten years ; 
 that the restriction placed on books 
 and the prohibition to receive contri- 
 butions for the purpose of bettering 
 the meals, have not at all been pro- 
 vided by the Statute, since books and 
 donations were permitted in other 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 103 
 
 jails. Polivanoff shows that the 
 Schlusselburg Fortress was the only 
 prison which was taken from the con- 
 trol of the general prison department 
 and placed under the supervision of 
 the Secretaries of Interior, who had al- 
 ways considered the revolutionists 
 their personal enemies, and that such 
 a change of the control has not been 
 provided by any law. He shows that 
 sections 299-310 of the Statute of Ex- 
 iles and section 341 of Volume 14 of 
 the Code of Laws, distinctly provided 
 that each sentence be reduced and that 
 prisoneers be kept in jail or at hard 
 labor only a certain part of their sen- 
 tence and should thereafter be sent to 
 settlements in Siberia and, that ac- 
 cording to these regulations, all pris- 
 oners except Karpowitch should have 
 been freed long prior to the date of his 
 letter, and that instead all had served 
 in excess of their sentences. Giving 
 more specific data, Polivanoff asserts 
 
104 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 that in 1903 Loukashewitch, Novo- 
 rouski, Antonoff, Lopatin, Sergius 
 Ivanoff and Starodworsky Lad al- 
 ready served sixteen years, of which 
 eight years were in excess of their 
 term ; Vera Figner, Ashenbrenner and 
 "Wassily Ivanoff had served nineteen 
 years, of which eleven years were in 
 excess of their term; Morosoff and 
 Frolenko had served twenty-one years, 
 of which thirteen years were above 
 their term and Popoff had then served 
 twenty-three years, of which fifteen 
 years were in excess of his term, and 
 with all that they were still subjected 
 to the regime which had existed at the 
 time they commenced their sentences, 
 for at the beginning of the nineties the 
 small privileges acquired by the pris- 
 oners, through years of sufferings and 
 struggling, had been taken away from 
 them by the officials without cause or 
 reason. He finally showed that in vio- 
 lation of the general rule, that a life 
 
THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 105 
 
 sentence meant twenty years without 
 the usual allowance, prisoners were 
 kept there a real life time and that 
 some of them who had served the law- 
 ful life sentence and who had been offi- 
 cially freed by various manifesto's, 
 were still in jail, and that others who 
 had served the full sentence and had 
 been freed by the manifestos, had died 
 in jail long thereafter. 
 
 Polivanoff's letter aroused wide- 
 spread indignation in Europe, but it 
 was ignored by Muravieff. 
 
One of the eight men released in Oc- 
 tober, 1905, was Herman Alexandro- 
 witch Lopatin. In 1896 his sentence 
 was commuted under a manifesto, but 
 Secretary Goremykin specially peti- 
 tioned the Czar that the commutation 
 should not apply to Lopatin. A sub- 
 sequent manifesto, known as that of 
 August llth, also failed to affect Lo- 
 patin 's status. Count Mir sky refused 
 to apply it to him for th<; reason that 
 "Lopatin could himself petition the 
 Czar." There was good reason why 
 Lopatin should have Veen kept in 
 Schlusselburg until freed by the revo- 
 lutionary wave, which resulted in the 
 amnesty of October, 1905. He was one 
 of those wonderful Russians who de- 
 vote themselves unreservedly to the 
 cause of his country. His biography 
 
 106 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 107 
 
 is a part of Russian revolutionary his- 
 tory. Born in 1845, in 1866 he had 
 already completed his university edu- 
 cation and was to become a professor 
 of biology in the University of St. 
 Petersburg. A man of science, he was 
 a friend of Karl Marx and Peter Lav- 
 roff. He translated into Russian the 
 greatest portion of the first volume of 
 "Capital." In 1866 he was for the first 
 time connected with a revolutionary 
 circle, known as the circle of Koroko- 
 soff. In 1867, he took part in the Gari- 
 baldi crusade in Italy. Upon his re- 
 turn to Russia, his first arrest took 
 place. A forcible speaker, witty and 
 energetic, he was the object of persecu- 
 tion for a number of years. 
 
 In 1870 he was in London, whence he 
 went to Siberia to rescue Tchernishev- 
 sky. It was the first attempt of its 
 kind, subsequently followed by that 
 of Mishkin and others. He thought 
 that Tchermshevsky would be in a po- 
 
108 THE KUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 sition to gather around himself all rev- 
 olutionary forces in Russia. Having 
 been discovered before he accom- 
 plished his task, he was arrested, but 
 escaped. Soon afterward we find him 
 in Zurich, assisting Peter Lavroff in 
 the publication of the revolutionary 
 mazagine, ' ' Forward. ' J In 1883, he as- 
 sisted in the publication of the ' ' Mes- 
 senger of the People's Will," pub- 
 lished in Paris. His last effort was to 
 reorganize the "Narodnaia Volia" 
 which had been crippled by the perse- 
 cution of the government, most of its 
 members having been either hanged 
 or imprisoned. In a short time he es- 
 tablished about three hundred circles 
 and organizations. In 1884 he was 
 recognized by an agent of the secret 
 police in St. Petersburg, and after a 
 struggle, he was overpowered. After 
 a preliminary imprisonment of three 
 years he was tried jointly with others, 
 the poet Melshin Jacoubovitch among 
 
THE EUSSIAN BASTILLE 109 
 
 them, in June, 1887. The gendarmes 
 made an effort to hang him. They ac- 
 cused him of organizing the assassina- 
 tion of Colonel of Gendarmes Sudeikin, 
 but even the Military Court, before 
 which he was tried, rejected this accu- 
 sation. In fact Lopatin opposed terror- 
 ism for a number of years and began 
 to advocate it only on his last journey 
 to Russia. He was, however, sen- 
 tenced to death as a dangerous revolu- 
 tionist, and his sentence was commuted 
 to life imprisonment in Schlusselburg. 
 Altogether he has been arrested twen- 
 ty-six times, and he has crossed the 
 threshhold of seventeen prisons. This 
 martyr, who is now sixty-two years 
 old, has served his cause for forty 
 years, twenty-five of which have been 
 spent in jails. 
 
 Such is the brief story of the Bas- 
 tille. We have omitted many of its 
 shocking details. They are beyond 
 the imagination of those who have not 
 
110 THE RUSSIAN BASTILLE 
 
 lived through them. Only the down- 
 fall of the Russian autocracy will 
 make the repetition of such a story im- 
 possible. 
 
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