BARBAROUS RUSSIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1074, 25 July 1912, Page 4

BARBAROUS RUSSIA.

A terrible story of the treatment that has been accorded an eminent Russian poet and man of science is told in tile current number of “Darkest Russia.'’ In January, 1881, .Nicholas Morosoif was condemned to penal servitude for iifo cn a cl large of having spread socialistic ideas among the peasants. lie was a young man, and his real offence lay in having written some articles that displeased the bureaucracy. Morosolf was confined first in a cell of the ill-famed fortress of bauds t’eter and Raul, hour years later ho was transferred to the terrible Schlusselburg fortress, where ho was kept for twenty-one years. The prisoner was dangerously ill on many occasions and he was brought to the verge of madness by long periods ot solitary confinement. But his courage was indomitable and lie gradually won 'the respect and even, the alteciion of his gaolers. During the last decade of his unprisoiunent lie was allowed pencil and paper, and ho plunged into scientific work. sfear alter year he laboured with tremendous energy, though his body was emaciated and feeble and death seemed always close at hand. “The greater __part of his life was already behind him,” wrote one of his fellow prisoners, “and before him was nothing but blank hopelessness and a, nameless gtave in a little plot near the walls of the fortress, where lay hid tnmids. once, like himself, full el energy and strength, but cut oil by consumption and scurvy. And yet how he worked! lie never ooasod to ihink and write, animated bv the undying hope that hi.-, ideas would some day see the light.” in 1905, when the .revolutionary movement had cowed tin, Russian autocracy for the moment, Morosolf ami several of his companions were set free. The wonderful man was then fifty-one years of age, with trembling hands aiid whitened hair, but, ho quickly .shewed that his life in a prison, cell had not been wasted. lie has published the valuable results of his scientific icacarcJics in the domains of chemistry and physics. Incidentally he issued in 1906 a little volume of poems containing songs of freedom. Bast December ho was arrested as the author of “seditious writings.” The poems were produced as evidence, and MorosofT was sentenced to another term of confinement in a fortress. The day of the pantile, s awakening is long delayed in Russia.