SUSPENSION OF THE RUSSIAN GOLOS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 82, 3 April 1880, Page 2

SUSPENSION OF THE RUSSIAN GOLOS.

The following summary of the article for which the “ Golos ” has been suspended for five months is supplied by the St. Petersburg!! correspondent to the* ‘ ‘ Times,” who says there is hope that the time of be shortened if the “Golos” fiipSuses to behave better in future :—“ The diarist devotes his first entry on Sundaylast to an outburst of complaint regarding the enormous rise in the prices of all the necessaries of life. Life has become dearer, and still people do not value their lives any more. Nothing but suicides by drowning, shooting, or the knife are reported from every side. Even the tallow candle has become dearer. Everything develops and grows, why should not prices grow ? Monday’s entry constitutes a sarcastic protest, against the threatened abolition of the system of election of university professors and the substitution of that of appointment by the Government. On Tuesday agriculture is the butt of the diarist’s well-aimed sarcasm. More than a year ago new statutes were established for the lower agricultural schools, but, as usual, they never emerged from the region of project and theory. Materials enough were amassed by the commission to convince a blind man of the necessity of educating the agricultural classes of Russia. But this necessity was no novel idea. The commission also believes that it is possible to teach agriculture in our national schools, but the teacher of a St. Petersburgh school who once took it into his head to instruct his scholars in natural history brought down upon his head the wrath of the press and Territorial Assembly. It is also proposed to teach trades in national schools. The “Golos "next refers to the dishonesty practised in the pecuniary concerns of the commune authorities. The press also entirely ignores the malpractices and embezzlement which are so common in the rural commune. If all the deficits disclosed by the occasional revision of the communal funds were reckoned up they would amount to millions. Threats of torture have been used in certain districts as arguments for the conversion of Stundists to°orthodoxy. Refractory members were flogged. One woman, named Pruskowia Shimenko, was flogged to within a short chance of her life, as testified by medical evidence. No feeling was stirred in the breast of any of the one thousand witnesses of this barbarous scene, not even when the poor woman cried out in pain, “ Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This castigation was evidently premeditated, for many of the spectators were persons who had purposely come from long distances. Nineteen years will soon have passed since the emancipation of the serfs, and during all this time the whip and stick have not disappeared from the self-administration of the peasant. Such barbarism does not harmonise with the respect due to the individual man. What do we see ? The flagelation of Stundists, the burning of witches, the murder of a dumb man suspected of spreading rinderpest, the drowning of a drunkard who in his cups threatened to burn down a village—this is the way the commune exercises its authority over the individual. An elder directed the ‘auto da fe’ of the witch, and an elder ordered the cruel treatment of the Stundists. Who hold the whip more tenaciously in their hands than the elders of the first step in is to destroy this arbitrary pdWßfrSf individuals. Saturday’s entry is a narrative respecting the suspension of a Jewish paper called ‘ Hamelitz,’ which, however, is hardly to the point and of little interest. ”