UNKNOWN

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2936, 13 July 1878, Page 4

UNKNOWN

(teom the times cobbespondent.)

St. Petebsbubo-, April 16. All the world is at present talking about the trial of Vera Zasulitch, the young person who, about two months ago, made an attempt on the life of General Trepoff, the Prefect of the city. The trial was held on Friday, and since that time the political complications and the Eastern Question have been quite thrown into the background. The incident which gave rise to "the affair Zasulitch" happened on the 25th of July of last year. At that time a considerable number of young people of both sexes accused of revolutionary propaganda were confined in one of the St. Petersburg prisons. ■ Some of them wero already condemned and others were awaiting their trial. On the morning of July, General Trepoff visited the prison and found some of the prisoners walking about and talking with each other in the inner court. This seemed to him an infraction of the prison rules, and he asked explanations. One of the prisoners, Bogoluboff by name, replied that he was already condemned, and that he was not infringing any rule in talking to one who was not implicated in the same affair " v as himself. The answer appeared to the General impertinent,, and accordingly Bogoluboff was ordered to the career— that is to say, the cell for disciplinary punishment. On his way thither he again met the Prefect, and this time did not take off his cap. Irritated by this want of respect, the General raised his hand, apparently with the intention of striking. Whether he really struck or not is uncertain, but Bogoluboff's cap fell to the ground, and suddenly loud expressions of indignation issued from the open windows of the surrounding cells. As to how the disturbance was quelled reports differ, but it is quite certain that General Trepoff resolved to make an example of Bogoluboff, and, accordingly, ordered him to be flogged with birch twigs. The order was executed in one of the corridors, and gave rise to a new disturbance similar in kind to "the preceding one. From the prison the excitement and indignation soon spread to the friends of the prisoners, and from them to the public generally. I remember how the thing was discussed at tbe N time and how remarks were .made about" Bashi-Bazouks nearer home than Bulgaria" by people who could certainly rt be accused of any sympathy " ith revolutionary tendencies. A memoir -scribing the affair was sent to me nonymously, and several persons possessing special information volunteered their testimony; but the memoir was so evidently written in a biased spirit, and the evidence as a whole was so contradictory, that I determined to await the result of the official investigation which the officials assured me was already begun and would aoon be completed: Among the many who were indignant at the so-called " Bashi-Bazoukism " of the Prefect was Vera. Zasulitch, daughter of* an officer of the Line. Though only about 26 years of age, she had already considerable experience of "police discipline in its milder forms. At the age of 17 she had been arrested on suspicion of being implicated in revolutionary designs, and after two years' confinement, was liberated without having been brought to trial. A few days after her liberation she was again arrested and without any legal formalities was despatched to Krestsi, a small town in the province of Novgorod. On: arriving at that place with enly two roubles in her pocket, she was told she must live there under police supervision until further orders. This was in April, 1871. In.; June she was allowed to go' and live in Tver with a brotherrin-law, who was kept^there under police supervision in consequence of being implicated in revolutionary propaganda. Next year the brother-in-law was suspected of having given prohibited books to the Seminarists, and was accordingly transferred to a small town further eastward. Vera was brought to St. Petersburg to be questioned about the prohibited books, and wa> then despatched to her brother-in-law's new domicile. Towards the end of 1873 she

was transferred to Kharkoff, and remained there under police supervision till September, 1876, when she was at last liberated from all restraint arid allowed to live where she pleased: How. she formed the resolution of shooting General Trepoff may be described in her own words:—- ---" Having arrived in St. Petersburg I heard about the incident in. the prison from various •people whom 1 happened to meet. 'They related how the prisoners who had'made a disturbasce .were put into the career, and how they were maltreated by the policemen; About Bogoluboff I heard that he had been flogged till he stopped shrieking. Perhaps : jbhere was some exaggeration in the account. As I had myself experienced long-solitary confinement, I could imagine -what a frightful impression the -whole affair must have pro- - duced on all-the political prisoners, not to speak of those who had; been subjected to maltreatment. I know by experience the v morbidly excited.nervouß condition produced by solitary imprisonment, and the majority of prisoners in question had been already confined more than three years.. Seme of them had gone mad and others had committed ■ .acirie. What, crualty it wae to make '-■em bear all that, simply because •ie of them ihad not taken off his cap when he met an official the second time. On me is made the 'impression, not of a punishment, but of an insult inflicted from personal enmity. It seemed to me that such a thing ceuld not and ought not to pass unnoticed. I waited to see whether some one would take the matter in hand, but all were silent, and nothing prevented Trepoff or any other influential official from repeating such arbitrary acts. Seeing no other means of directing public attention to the affair, I determined, at the price of my own ruin, to prove that a human being may not be insulted j in that way with impuDity. It is a terrible thing to raise one's hand against a fellow creature, but I could find no other, means. \;» «, i . It was all the same to me whether \ I killed or wounded the Prefect; and when I \fir6d at him I did not aim at any particular -place." ■■•• ' .■.. . ' •-' -„._L wJ !lv , .; -.' ; i All these and many other details have b>en pretty generally known in St. Petersburg for some time, and accordingly the trial was awaited with intense interest. Some influential people/thought that, in order \to avoid a public-scandal, an exceptional course of procedure should be taken; but this opinion was not adopted by the authorities. The case was tried by a jury in the ordinary way, and full publicity was secured by sending tickets of admission tp the leading representatives of the Press. \p n the Bench behind the * Judges sat some, of the highest dignitaries of the realm, among others the Imperial Chancellor, Prince,Gortebakoff. At 11 o'clock thothree Judges—young

men in dark blue uniforms adorned with gold lace—took their places on the bench, with the Public Prosecutor on the right hand and the Clei*k of the Court on the left, in uniforms not easily distinguished from those of the Judges. The procedure need not be described in detail, for it eloscly resembles that of an English Criminal Court. The jury was duly empannclled and the witnesses examined. The Prosecutor showed good and sufficient reasons why the prisoner should < be condemned, while tho counsel for the defence showed good and sufficient reasons why she should be acquitted. Then the Judge summed up, and the jury retired to consider their verdict. All these are things with which English-, men are quite familiar, but there was one thing which could not but seem to an Englishman very strange: though the accused admitted that she had dangerously wounded General Trepoff, and was quite indifferent as to whether she wounded or killed him, the jury returned a verdict of " Not guilty," and the public, on hearing this decision, expressed their approval in wild, vociferous applause. From these facts some people may perhaps draw the conclusion that Russian juries must be utterly ignorant of the most elementary principles of evidence, and the llussian public singularly insensible to the distinction between right and wrong. This conclusion, however, is not justified by the. facts. The case was in many respects a peculiar one. In tho first place, there was a strong feeling of indignation at the way in which the prisoners had been treated, and especially at the way in which General Trepoff had acted towards Bogoluboff. In no country of the world, perhaps, is there such a strong feeling against corporal punishment of all kinds as in fiussia. In the country where 30 years ago the knout and the rod played a very prominent part in the judicial and administrative institutions, a school-boy would now consider himself disgraced for life if he were subjected to a little patriarchal castigation with the birch. There are instances on record of boys having committed suicide because their human dignity had received an indelible stain in that way. To those of us who have a -vivid recollection of the rod as an instrument of school discipline, and who do not consider that life-long disgrace was thereby inflicted, the prevalent Russian ideas on this subject may seem a little exaggerated ; but the Russians are a peculiar people who never do things by halves, and this exaggeration, if such it be, is at least in the right direction. When the counsel for the defence described the groans of Bogoluboff as " the groans of humiliated, insulted human dignity," his words called forth from the audience a burst of applause. In the second place, the appearance and bearing of the prisoner and some of the biographical details which transpired won for her the sympathy of the audience. Modest and unpretentious in manner and attire, and without any straining after.theatrical effect, she replied frankfully and respectfully to all the questions put to ner. Without ever having been condemned by a Court of Law, she had spent the best years of her life in; prison or under police supervision, and had resolved to sacrifice the remainder of it to an idea, for she had never seen the man whom she determined to avenge. In vain the Public Prosecutor pointed out to the jury that these considerations should have, little or no weight with them; that they were not called upon to judge General Trepoff or-the prison authorities ; that the prisoner had been herself guilty of the arbitrary, illegal ' conduct which she condemned in others. ! Exhortations of this kind bad ' very little influence on the jury or the public; For both the question at issue was whether glaring administrative abuses should be excused or condemned,' and the verdict was universally regarded as a public reprimand to a high-placed official who had arbitrarily overstepped the limits of his authority. Juridically speaking, the whole thing was, of course, a gross miscarriage of justice; but all Russians with whom I have spoken on the subject maintain stoutly that the thing cannot and ought not to be regarded merely from the juridical point of view. Whether the affair will influence the fate ;of jury trials in Russia remains to be seen. Certainly it will be used as a strong argument by. those who are hostile to the institution.