RUSSIAN WOMEN AND THE LIBERTY REVOLT

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3072, 7 May 1917, Page 3

RUSSIAN WOMEN AND THE LIBERTY REVOLT

"THE LITTLE GRANDMOTHER.'"

The first official act of the Minister of Justice in tho Provisional Government at Petrograd, was an order for tho recall from Siberia of tho aged Catherine Breshkovsky, the "Little Grandmother of the devolution." , In that act (states a writer in tho NewYork "Evening Post") the culmination of a people's war for freedom during half a, century found its apropriato symbol. To how many of those who liavo read that the Constituent Assembly, which will lay, the foundations of democratic government in Russia, is to be chosen by universal suffrage the men now in charge at Petrograd really mean universal? The women of Russia are to have their share in th'o upbuilding and operation of Slav -democracy. Every liberal mind in Russia takes that as a matter of course. It is not a question of sentiment or abstract justice. It is the recognition of an accomplished fact. In no other country has the comradeship of men and women taken such firm root. Partly tho., reason lies in tho national temperament. More directly it arises from tho history of tho nation's efforts for freedom. In that struggle tho women of Russia have contributed their full share to tho partnership of labour and martyrdom.

It has been bo from the beginning. When the movement was as yet a missionary movement in the period immediately following upon the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, women and men alike went out from the universities, the technioal and professional schools, and from prosperous homes, in the guise of school toachers. doctors, midwives, house servants, and factory hands, to bring the doetriijei of social and politioa! freedom to the people. When time demonstrated the futility of this elaborate experiment in settlement work, in the face of Government repression, on the one hand, and the inertia of tho ignorant masses, on the other, women were ns readily converted as men to the gospel of force. Among the first outstanding figures in the history of militant Russian protest is Vera Zasulitch, tho daughter of a family of the nobility, who in 1878 shot and wounded General Trep'off, Prefect of Petrograd. .So strong was the current of liberal thought at that time among all sections of society that Vera Zasulitch was acquitted by a jury. Within the next two years there were attempts, successful and j unsuccessful, on the lives of. high offij cials in the capital and in tho provinces. i No less than three, attempts wore made on the life of Alexander II before tho j successful coup in March, 1881, unclsr the leadership of Sophia Perovsky. She was the daughter of a former GovernorGeneral of Petrograd; but, in accordance with the common practice of the time, had devoted herself to the social welfare through the humdrum profession of school-teaching before she graduated into terrorism. Sho was tho first woman revolutionist to' undergo death penalty.' Deatli in prison, or exile at an early age has been the fate of a long succession of women) fighters from Sophia Perovsky to the victims of the revolution of ten years .ago. Only to few has it been given to live to' see the victory of the cause for which they offered life and freedom so cheerfully. Among these is Vera Kgner, who was condemned to death in 1884, had her sentence commuted to life imprisonment, and spent twenty i.ears in the Schlusselburg bastille. She was released after the revolutionary outbreak in 1905, and now lives, broken in health, outside of Russia. Most fortunate of all has been "Babushka" Bresh- i kovsky, in whom long years of imprisonment, of exile and defeated hopes, have not shattered that'indomitable, buoyant spirit which her_ American friends know so well. "Passionate and prophetic Breshkovskaia," so Stepniak calls her ih hi3 v momoirs of tho Russian revolution written thirty-five years ago. In that timo there has been no change in the spirit of Russian women. Young girls went into the sailors' resorts at Croustadt in 190G when it was a question of winning over tho garrison of that great raval port to the revolution. Somewhere in a Russian prison up till the events of a fortnight ago there was still living Mario Spiridonova, who in 190G assassinated the Lieutenant-Gov-ernor of the province of Tamboy. People will recall tho horror with which the outsido world read of tbo indescribable iniquities' to which tin's girl was subjected before sentence was passed on her.