LADY ANARCHIST.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 67, 9 September 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

LADY ANARCHIST.

BURIED ALIVE IN A FORTRESS. { "Let the great Powers intervene and insist upon a comprehensive reform of' Russian monarchial methods in that unhappy country, and we shall hear no . more of anarchism, nihilism, nor of the | terror that turns men and women into murderers." And, like the writer of this paragraph, which is quoted from a London newspaper, many others since the terrible Stepney tragedy have pointed out that a great measure of the responsibility for the presence of anarchists in England lies at the door of Czardomistn. Russia breeds anarchists and nihilists—high-minded men and women Who have sacrificed their freedom and lives because of their hatred of the despots who grind down the common people with prison and the knout, and others who, having suffered cruelty and torture, pursue a systematic course of revenge on all society. We have a striking example of the manner in which Russians, are goaded into anarchism, in the fact that, according to statistics, 35 per cent, of all Russian revolutionists and nihilistk are women. Not ignorant, uneducated women, but in many cases women of culture, wealth, and good breeding, who arc so stirred by the wrongs suffered by their countrymen and countrywomen that they gladly join the revolutionists, well knowing that sooner or later they will be forced from a luxurious home and surroundings to a living death in Siberia. The death recently reported, for instance, of Vera Sussuliteh, a woman martyr, whose work and fate have inspired thousands of followers. She, together with Vera Figner, both young women of high ideals and education, were arrested as revolutionaries after the assassination of Czar Alexander 11.

For nearly twenty years they were confined in the solitary dungeons of Sehlusselburg, the Russian Bastile in the middle of the Neva, from which no one has ever escaped; and then tliey were sent to Siberia. Uutimately, when they were aged, grey-haired, and broken in health, Czar Nicholas gave them a pardon, and they were released. One of the most picturesque figures amongst women revolutionists in Russia is Vera Figner, whose father was one of the distinguished generals of the Napoleonic wars. Betrayed by a traitor, she was condemned to twenty years in the Schulusselburg fortress for alleged participation in every one of the attempts on the life of the late Czar. Those incarcerated in this fortress are considered as buried alive, no intercourse or communication with the outer world being allowed, not even with their own nearest relations. But Vera Figner survived the horrors of twenty years' solitary confinement and exile in Siberia, and is still working for the enlightenment of ignorant Russians.

A name revered by all Russian revolutionists is that of Mine. Sigida, who, aroused to a frenzy of indignation through seeing an invalid female prisoner in the Siberian colony of Kara, to which they had both been exiled, Hogged by a warder, was herself Hogged to death because she struck him. ju the prison records it is written, "Mine. Sigida committed suicide by poisoning herself," but truth, like murder, will out. and the crime of the warders at Kara has been fully proved.

Terrible, indeed, were the torture and cruelty meted out to .Marie Spiridonova, who three years ago shot Colonel j Lzhanovsky, who flogged the peasants when they were unable to pay taxes, or ordered the Cossacks to shoot down the strikers, and to torture their wives and children. She was condemned to death, but the inhuman treatment she bad suffered before her trial induced the authorities to commute the death sentence, although it would have been more merciful to have carried out the extreme penalty of the law, for bo-day she is working out a miserable existence in a Siberian mine, and is said to be the only chained women convict in Siberia. One of the most remarkable incidents in the history of the Russian movement was the. sentencing to Siberia of At Lopukhin, president of the I'olice Department until 1!)0G, who was accused of sympathising with the revolutionists. I lis wife, born a princes*, and a friend of the Czarina, followed her husband into exile, and the once lender of fashionable society in St. Petersburg is now a member of a colony of Siberian convicts. Then there is Miss Vera Xazarieva, a daughter of the president of the Supreme Court, and one of the most -admiral and fashionable young girls in high society in St. Petersburg. She was seized with a revolutionary spirit, piinted circulars, books, and proclamations, and circulated them as widely as possible, with the result that she was banished to Siberia. These are but a few of the women Nihilists of Russia, who, in the words of M. Prclsoker, whose book, "Heroes and Heroines of Russia," throws such a, startling light on the despotism of the Russian Government, "have given up their homes, sold their costly gowns and furs, and have, gone out. bravely to face death, and worse than death." Of these women, Catherine Brsehkovskaya is the honored leader. She is known as the "well-beloved grandmother of the revolutionists." For twenty-three years she incarcerated in various prisons in Siberia, sometimes with a few companions in an Arctic climate, surrounded by an eternity of snow, but undaunted in spite of [ all. ''We may die in exile, and our children may die in exile, but something will come out of it all at last," she says.