RUSSIAN LETTER

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2031, 16 March 1907, Page 1

RUSSIAN LETTER

UNKNOWN MURDERERS

ST. PETERSBURG, Jan. 17. Tlio most disquioting thing about, tho present Terrorist campaign in Russia is the refusal of the Terrorists to give their names. In any other country in the world a man who is himself convinced that he dies a martyr for his pooplo is buoyed up

principally by tho liopo that' that pooplo will nover let his namo die. In ancient Groeco and Romo, during the French Revolution, and during tho various troubles that have taken place in Ireland, this fact is very noticonblo, and I think that history in general would have fowor political martyrdoms to ehroniolo if tho martyrs knew beforehand that, once the breath left their body, their names would ho consignod to complete oblivion. If thoro over was a set of men who might bo legitimately expected to shout out their names from the house-tops, to make speoclies from the dock, and to leave memoirs behind them, it would surely bo the Russian revolutionists, who do not believo in a hereafter, and whoso only reward is, therefore, tho fame they can achiove among their follow fanatics. Yet tho terrorists are now dying, one after nnothor, without allowing their names to become known. Ono of them is inscribed in tho official records as “the murdorer of Count Ignatieff,” a second as “tho murderer of General Pavloff,” a third as “the murderer of General von der Launitz,” and so on. It might' be supposed that tho Russian Government was partly responsible for this owing to an easily comprohensiblo dislike to adding the names of new “heroes” to a list already sufficiently long, but, on the contrary, the police are always extremely anxious to got the names of these murderers, inasmuch as their history, particulars of the company they frequented, etc., might enable the authorities to get some information about the Terrorist organisation, and the sources which supply the funds for carrying on this dreadful civil war. In fact the police attach such importance to this point that they take the most extraordinary measures for the identification of Terrorist murderers. The first thing they do when they seize a murderer is to photograph him from many different points of view. As such photographs are rarely successful, owing to want of co-operation on the part of the subject, the latter is frequently photographed while asleep and after death. Such photographs being also of little use, the head of a political murderer is now severed from the body immediately after death, and placed in a glass jar filled with a peculiar mixture of spirits, selected by the best chemists in this land of great chemists, and said •to possess the property not only of preserving the features, but of—so to say—reanimating them. These jars are stored in the headquarters of the Secrot Police on the Moika, a stone’s throw from the house in which this article is being written. On tho other hand, the Revolutionary organisation takes precaution against tho names of its emissaries being discovered. It orders a man to come to St. Petersburg from, say, London or Genova. He comes; ho repairs to a certain house whero he strips off all his foreign clothing and dons a new suit, in the pockets whereof are only revolvers and cartridges ; he is then instructed minutely as to the habits of his victim, after which ho leaves to do his work. When his work is done, he is captured as a mattpr of course, but ho proudly refuses to give his name. “It’s of no consequence,” said tho murdorer of Count Ignatieff, on regaining consciousness after an unsuccessful attempt at suicide, “my w,ork is done.” In the old days, when the police had a murderer on their hands for months, they invariably managed to persuade him to break silence, but in these days of “military field courts,” with the execution coming 24 hours after tho crime, the police have not enough time to bring their weighty arguments to bear on tho condemned man. IVhat with the photographing, the trial, and other formalities tho police-inquisitors have no chance now of a nice quiet interview with the murderer in some subterranean dungeon.

The cour.t-martials,largely the work n of the late unlamented General Pav- t loff, are grim affairs. The only p representative of the imblic is a ] police inspector, and the proceedings s end with the signature of the death- c warrant) by the military commander 1 of the district wherein the crime was a committed. This is done so that the v Tsar’s name will appear in none of 1 these documents, and that the Tsar i will not know of the execution, and t cannot, therefore, exercise his prero- r gative of mercy. The defect of this c arrangement is that sometimes inno- I cent men and boys are condemned : to death by a handful of officers, in- t flamed with vodka and with loyalty, £ and that, after sentence is pro- c nounced by the local military Bumble, t it is immediately carried out. It is * officially admitted .that this horrible 1 mistake has been made more than > once. ( The system of execution is strangely < primitive and barbarous, possibly be- I cause up to a few years ago capital punishment might' almost be regard- 1 ed as unknown in Russia, and that there are not, therefore, to be found ' here functionaries possessing a traditional or hereditary knowledge of 1 how tho dreadful thing may be done : in the swiftest and least revolting manner. One night last month a friend of mine was returning at a very late hour from a dinner to which he had been invited by some Russian friends in a famous restaurant on Krestovsky island, near St. Petersburg, when ho suddenly met a weird procession. It consisted principally of Cossacks, who were escorting three carriages, tho first containing several military and one police officer; the second, a condemned man, manacled, smoking a cigarette and surrounded by guards, and tho third the executioner. The condemned man was a nameless political murderer, and, so far as I am concerned, his victim is also nameless, for I have quite forgotten him. The murderer looked as sereno as n saint, and I am told that his bearing was, throughout, extremely bold and contemptuous. Tho executioner, on the other hand, was in a horrible state of collapse, and had evidently been drinking. I 'was afterwards told that he had been serving a long term of imprisonment for a disgraceful crime, and was getting it very much reduced by consenting to act as executioner. The procession went to Sestroretsk, on the Finnish border (political prisoners are now, for some reason or other, executed and buried at a distance from the capital, generally at some place on the Gulf of Finland), but, at the last moment, ■ the executioner refused to do his work, and was only made to give way by being reminded that under martial law liis absolute refusal would 7 be punished by death. Tho prisoner, still calmly smoking his cigarette, .was then made to stand on an empty soap-box while the executioner wont

to work in a most clumsy and amateurish way, passing the ropo over tho branch of a troo and finally kicking tho soap-box from underneath the prisoner. It is disgusting and almost incredible how much tho work is bungled sometimes, but it is impossible in theso columns (even if I wero willing, which I am not) to go into details on this subject. Christchurch Press.