by | August 5, 2016 · 7:58 pm

Joseph Verey, “Vera Sassulitch” (1880)

VERA SASSULITCH.
Joseph Verey

If any asked the student, which
He thought the prettiest among
A score of Moscow school-girls, “Young
And gentle Vera Sassulitch,”
He answered with a ready tongue.

Netchaieff was the student named,
And Vera and his sister moved
In the same social grade, and loved
Each other, and the student claimed
The heart of Vera unreproved.

But oft Netchaieffs mind was bent—
With passion which to youth belongs—
Upon the many cruel wrongs
Of a despotic Government,
Deriding it in tales and songs.

And some of these to Vera given,
Around her drew the fatal coil
Of eager spies, whose hateful toil
Already had the student driven
For ever from his native soil.

And Vera, only seventeen,
A maiden spotless as the snow—
Still troubled by the heavy blow
Of broken love, which youth is keen
To feel, in all its bitter woe—

Suspected by the grim police,
Despite her innocence, her tears,
To satisfy a despot’s fears
Was dragged from home and love and peace,
To pine in prison two long years.

There time rolled, like a viewless sea,
In breaking waves of nights and days,
And dull, monotonous prison ways;
And not a face did Vera see
Save the stern jailor’s sphinx-like gaze.

The clanking of the shouldered gun,
The sentinel’s unfailing stride,
The wind blown through the courtyard wide,
Free, while of freedom there was none
For any human soul inside:

The striking of the fortress clock,
Making the weary prisoner weep-
So many hours remained ‘ere sleep
Would come, her sinking heart to mock
With dreams of home, in slumber deep—

Such was her life; and Vera strove
To guess what purpose there could be
In robbing her of liberty,
And gentle friends, and holy love—
And when the jailor turned the key

At night and morn to bring her food,
From day to day, from year to year,
She questioned him with many a tear—
“If you are human flesh and blood,
Tell me, why am I lingering here?”

But silent as the blocks of stone
Of which the fortress walls were built,
Where many a patriot’s blood was spilt,
He answered not a single tone,
And left her ignorant of guilt.

At length (in secret, as of old
They brought her to the dreary cell)
One night, when the slow prison bell
The Janitor’s approach foretold,
On her astonished ears there fell

The magic sentence, “You are free!”
No reason could her tyrants find
Longer a simple girl to bind;
And Vera gained her liberty
To pacify the public mind.

Soothed by a tender mother’s care,
A glimpse of happiness returned—
New life within her bosom burned,
With wholesome food and pleasant air;
And not a cloud could be discerned

O’er those brief days of freedom, rich
In love and tenderness, and blest
With simple joys and needed rest,
When fated Vera Sassulitch
Once more was taken in arrest;

But a “paternal Government,”
Fearing the wrath of honest men,
Or sting of democratic pen,
Resolved upon her banishment
Afar beyond the public ken.

Therefore, one leaden wintry day—
Giving no time for fond caress,
For parting word, or change of dress—
They bore her many a league away,
To spend her days in loneliness.

The frost was keen, she scarce could stir,
And might have perished of the cold,
But pity, dear to Christ of old,
Touched the rude soldiers guarding her—
Would that in characters of gold

I might the simple record tell!
How, with pure, sacred, human love—
Love such as cynics scarce reprove,
Love which, from earth whereon we dwell,
Doth many a heavy yoke remove—

A soldier covered Vera warm,
In his own furs, against the blast,
As o’er the frozen wastes they passed;
And, after weeks of snow and storm,
They reached the exile’s home at last.

A rouble and a book in French,
A tiny box of homely sweets—
A remnant of her school-girl treats—
Was all her store. Well might she blench,
Thus cast adrift in lonely streets,

Beneath a wintry northern sky,
Ill clad, to wander o’er the snow,
And watched wherever she might go
By sleepless iron tyranny,
Indifferent to human woe.

Thus Vera, friendless and unhoused,
With bitter want and bitter tears,
In exile passed eleven years,
Until her very soul was roused
To trample on her woman’s fears.

Her own distresses she had borne
As meekly as a cloistered nun,
And her unhappy fate had won
Pity from people as forlorn
As any underneath the sun.

But Vera had an honoured friend
With whom, when youth was in its flower,
She often passed a blissful hour;
He, daring boldly to contend
With some extreme abuse of power,

Soon with authority at odds,
And marked by the detested race
Of spies, was in a public place
Scourged, like the vilest slave, with rods,
And scarce survived the foul disgrace,

Not woman, but avenger now,
Vera appeared to feel the blows
Dealt to her friend, and fiercely rose,
With sacred wrath upon her brow,
The cruel tyrants to oppose.

The instigator of the wrong,
Of which none dared to speak aloud,
Was Trepoff, insolent and proud—
Ever with fetter, brand, and thong
Striving to quell the timid crowd.

Without a thought, or plan, or plot,
None giving counsel or advice,
Without considering the price
The act might cost her, Vera shot
The hated chief of the police!

He was but wounded—Vera’s aim
Was not intended for his heart,
She only sought in hovel, mart,
And palace, to awake the claim
Of justice, and thus bore her part;

And made no effort to obtain
Her freedom when they came to seize
Their victim, binding her with ease,
And to the gloomy cells again
Taking her by the law’s decrees.

But, spite of despots, holy truth
Had pierced the sullen prison wall,
And bolder tongues began to call
For justice. Vera’s wrongs, her youth,
Her provocation, touched them all.

And when, to the Tribunal brought,
Her advocate the story told
With simple truth and accents bold,
And swiftly, eloquently wrought
Upon the hearts of young and old,

Telling the poor excuse for which
(When little older than a child)
A jealous Government exiled
Unhappy Vera Sassulitch,
Into the chill Siberian wild:

The jurors, through oppression bold,
Acquitted her, and students leapt,
And workmen cheered, and women wept,
As through the streets the tale was told,
When Vera from the prison stept,

Quitting the fortress that glad morn,
Welcomed by thousands, rich and poor;
Yet ‘ere she reached her mother’s door,
Again she was from freedom torn,
And saw her peaceful home no more!

What dreams of vengeance since have filled
The heart of Vera few can tell;
Yet this we know, that freedom’s spell,
Until life’s latest pulse is stilled,
Will strife with tyranny compel.

Whether amid Siberian snows,
Or exiled far beyond the sea,
She yet may wander sad but free,
Or in the grave may find repose,
Her name a household word will be!

Poems: Grave and Gay (London: Tinsley, Brothers, 1880): 65-74.

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by | June 30, 2016 · 8:10 am

The Anti-Anarchist Bomb-proof Clockwork Substitute Ruler (1898)

Screen Shot 2016-06-30 at 1.08.31 AM

Punch (October 29, 1898): 203.

IN the gallery of the Fine-Art Society may be seen a number of drawings made in Spain by Mr. E. George, the able architectural etcher and draughtsman. As might be anticipated, they are almost entirely architectural. They are brilliant and broad, limpid in their tones and pure in their tints, but somewhat hard and over-defined even for sunlit Spain. The most artistic of them seem to be No. 10, ‘The City Gate, Salamanca’; ‘A Convent, Salamanca’ (17); ‘San Pedro, and Old Houses, Vitoria’ (21); and ‘The Golden Tower, Seville ’ (44). In the same place the firm has collected nearly two hundred drawings in black and white, made by Mr. E. T. Reed for “Mr. Punch.” These include not only personal satires with queer names, such as we reviewed with much, but qualified admiration when they were republished in a volume, but a large proportion of more witty examples and designs made in a strain of genuine humour, such as that delicious piece which shows the Duke of Devonshire listening to the reading of speeches of the Marquis of Hartington (4) and ‘Britannia a la Beardsley’ (22), which is no caricature. ‘The Anti-Anarchist Bomb-proof Clockwork Substitute Ruler’ (55), a dummy President wisely put forward by the police of Chicago to receive any bombs and bullets that might be going, is first rate; so is ‘Irish Members at Windsor, in Armour’ (64), and ‘The Rev. Arthur Balfour at the Foreign Office’ (72). Mr. Reed is understood to be preparing a large series of illustrations of the ways and manners of the County Council, the Asylums Board, and the School Board of London, each on a field day.

The Athenaeum no. 3743 (July 22, 1899): 138.

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by | June 27, 2016 · 2:58 am

Leon de Tinseau, “A Beautiful Nihilist” (fiction, 1892)

A BEAUTIFUL NIHILIST.

From the French of Leon de Tinseau; V.E.T., Chateau Bange, Bordeaux.

In 187-, somewhat before the tragic death of the least Czar, one of the most notable men of the Russian Empire was Prince Michael ——-, whose family name, an illustrious one, reasons of the highest importance forbid our giving. During a visit to France after the war, while at one of the receptions of the Princesse Lise, he met that superb daughter of General de Contremont, whom the Parisian world, springing to life again from its ashes, knew already as “la belle Madeleine,” a girl as poor as she was lovely. Michel was subjugated in spite of his forty years, his avowed intentions of celibacy, and the case with which, for fifteen seasons, he had resisted the attacks of all the maidens and young widows of the Russian aristocracy. All their efforts produced as little effect as though they had opened fire on an ironclad with bouquets of lilies and roses; but now, he surrendered at a glance.

“Mother,” said Madeleine one evening to the window of the hero of Gravelotte,” will you be satisfied if I become a princess?”

“Not completely, for you are beautiful enough to be a queen.”

And as a fact, I do not remember ever having met so completely perfect a type of human beauty, I see her yet, adorable creature, a certain night at the opera, a few weeks after her marriage. There were in the orchestra fifty spectators who were, or had been, more or less desperately in love with her. You can imagine how they listened to the music. Mireille could have been given instead of the Huguenots, without one of them perceiving the substitution. That was, and. will be, probably the most memorable evening of Madeleine’s youth. She felt revenged, as it were, upon a sex who inspired her only with rancor. Among those men who now would have impoverished themselves for her smiles, not one but formerly would have found her too poor to become his life companion.

Alone in the vast stage box with her husband, proud, scarcely smiling, but in reality vibrating in every nerve with the excitement of triumph, sparkling with admiration as her diamonds sparkled in the light, she was a living superlative, for she could say to herself: “I see here twenty-five women who are beautiful, but it is I who am the most beautiful.”

That evening an American woman, wealthy in the millions but not pretty, exclaimed in her loge: “I do not ask to be like the Princess Michel—that would be expecting too much—but only to own her teeth. I would give my hotel of the Champs-Elyses with all its contents, even to my jewel casket. “With such teeth as those one does not need to be pretty. One smiles or one yawns, according to circumstances, and the world at is one’s feet.”

“That is to say, at the feet of your teeth,” added an old diplomat, “ and I greatly fear that the Princess is destined to yawn more than to smile. His Excellency, her husband, looks anything but amusing or easy to manage. More than once in her life la belle Madeleine will regret Paris.

The Prince, truly, was not easy to manage, not even at first, and several I years after his marriage still less tractable, as the Princess learned to her cost. To the coquetry of his wife he owed his becoming jealous as a tiger, and to the favor of the Czar he owed his post of Minister of the Police. It must be acknowledged that these two qualifications are not calculated to make a man amicable. Nevertheless, he found means to utilise his public functions in the service of his private jealousy. It is thus, in France: A young attaché of the ministry sends a cuirassier armed to the teeth, and even higher, to notice the favor two seats at the hippodrome.

It was not cuirassiers that Prince Michel employed, though he had any number at his disposition. He found it more simple to choose, among the most expert of his detectives, the coachman who drove his wife, and the door-keeper of his hotel. Then, to make matters quite sure, he had his department where all suspected letters were opened and investigated. At first, the unfortunate minister had read by dozens passionate declarations addressed to his wife, in every note of the scale of love. Then these letters became somewhat less frequent, not that the Princess grew less seductive, but the lovers become suspicious that all was not as it should be. Those who had confided to his Majesty’s postal service their hopes and fears, had almost always seen bad luck follow their every step thereafter under the most unexpected forms and in unaccountable ways. It was said the victims were enough to make one believed the Princess had “the evil eye,” or the Prince had eyes too good.

Let it be well understood that the replies to these letters passed also under inspection, and His Excellency was thus convinced that he was the husband of a desperate coquette, but nothing worse, which gave him but slight satisfaction. It is a relief for one who hears the cry of fire in his house to learn that a badly swept chimney is the only difficulty. The poor Prince had no time, however, to play chimney-sweep, for preserving the life of his Czar from the Nihilists gave him quite as much anxiety as the Princess and her adorers. Judge, therefore, of his stupefaction when he read, one day, the following letter in a handwriting he knew but too well, although, it was signed by a single initial only:

“It appears that the Emperor will leave for Warsaw sooner than was thought. Be ready, therefore, to start on the first intimation, for who knows when we shall again find such an occasion. I have not hidden from you the difficulties of the undertaking; in consequence, make your arrangements to succeed at once and without hesitation. You will present yourself at my home as a friend of my family, travelling in Russia for pleasure. Go to see your mother before leaving: she will give you some sort of commission for me that will serve you as an introduction, if needful.”

The unhappy prince fell his brain reel on finishing this horrible reading. This conspiracy that he was combatting day and night by irons, prison and exile; this war, without pity, of a whole army of monsters against one man, was found sheltering at his own fireside. It was his own wife, his beautiful Madeleine, who said to the assassin: “It is the hour, be ready!”

Of what use to struggle longer? What fatality armed against his unfortunate sovereign even a woman from another country? That woman had everything for her own—youth, beauty, luxury, admiration. She a Nihilist! Why? What wrongs had she to avenge? What drove her, even her, to commit such a crime, at the risk of bruising her lovely form on a dungeon-bed of straw, of a cord to gall that ivory throat, of Siberian snows to freeze her little feet, white even as they?

“Ah!” thought the unfortunate man, “I have not known how to make her happy! I have shown jealousy too often. She hates me, and her hatred has found this refinement of torture, sublime in its impossible horror!”

What must he done? He thought of killing his wife, himself after, letting the public believe it was some love trouble—his wife faithless—for the loyal subject preferred even that dishonor to the other. Then he longed to throw himself at the Emperor’s knees and tell him all, after which he would disappear forever with the guilty woman. A sense of duty alone prevented this course. He held the thread of a plot; he must unravel it, and for that it sufficed to let the letter go to its destination. The assassin would then deliver up himself. Already the Minister had the name of this man—Nicholson, some Englishman, or American, perhaps, expert in the use of dynamite, or simply a Russian student having taken a false name. The letter was sent, and that evening the prince and princess, in their box, listened to un opera—he pale, consumed with fever, aged many years since morning: she more charming and more surrounded than ever.

“Are you ill, Michel”” said Madeleine, smiling at her husband in the carriage which bore them home.

“Why do you say that?” said he in a strangely sombre tone.

“Why? Because you have not been jealous once this evening! “

At the end of a week the Minister of Police said to his wife, without seeming to attach the slightest consequence to his remark:

“It is Thursday that the Czar leaves St. Petersburg?”

“Really,” said she, scarcely affected by what she heard; the newspapers give another date.”

He replied, deceiving with design, the accomplice of Nicholson, for he had his plan: “Yes, they wish to frustrate those who may have guilty projects.”

Then he spoke of other matters, while forced to admire the strength of character of the despicable creature. The same day he knew his ruse had succeeded for the telegraph company communicated to him this dispatch, addressed by the princess to Nicholson; “It is for Thursday. Be punctual.”

Of course Thursday passed by without either the Czar or his Minister having left the Capital. Madeleine became suddenly very anxious on learning of this pretended change. On the morrow, in the afternoon, a personage, richly attired and ornamented with a large button-hole rosette presented himself at the palace of Prince Michel.

“What do you wish, sir?” asked, with a very low bow, the doorkeeper loaned by section 5.

“To pay my respects to the princess, and give her a message from her mother. I am Dr. Nicholson.”

“Very well, sir,” said the man; “you are expected, but my lady, the princess, is paying a visit to a friend, and left orders that we conduct you to her. In five minutes the carriage will be ready.”

Nicholson had barely time to admire several fine paintings, which decorated the reception room, and he was a connoisseur, before he was asked to get into a coupe, which the man who had received him entered also, and sat down beside him without even asking permission.

“Strange custom,” thought Nicholson “he might have gone outside with the driver.”

It is needless to say that a quarter of an hour later the supposed doctor was in the best, which means the strongest, prison of St. Petersburg, and that if he were expected there, it was not by the princess.

In a dreary sort of office, lined on all sides with armed policemen, a person unknown to him, but who was the prince himself, questioned poor Nicholson with a roughness of manner to which he was unaccustomed.

“This is infamous!” said he, indignantly. “I arrived from Paris this morning only. I have not said three words to any one, and, when I present myself at the hotel of the princess, I am picked up and carried off like a thief!”

“You know the princess,” coldly questioned the Minister.

“Do I know her? Why, almost from her birth! Here is a letter from her mother, the widow of a great general; besides, I am an American citizen, and I protest——”

“Search this man thoroughly,” interrupted the high functionary without seeming to have heard, “and with all precaution.”

Nothing suspicious was found upon Nicholson save a very pretty little box carefully enveloped.

An engineer from the Torpedo School, attached to the Ministry for such occasions, opened the box with all the caution and precautions prescribed by science. The greater number of those present wee more or less uneasy, expecting some terrible explosion. Nothing abnormal occurred, but the engineer had a singular smile when he held out the open box to the prince, who, after a hasty glance, hurried it into his pocket, then addressing Nicholson, he said: “So you are——”

“An American dentist, sir, and much pressed for time. I wish to return to Paris as soon as possible. My patients need me.”

Five minutes after, Nicholson was once I more in the coupe, having this time as his companion the prince, who overwhelmed him with apologies.

“But,” said the husband of “la belle Madeleine,” “ how is it that I never noticed anything?”

“If your Excellency had perceived the least thing,” proudly replied the American, “the Nicholson Artificial Teeth would be unworthy of their reputation.”

“Then the teeth of the princess are——-”

“All false, Prince. When very young, Mademoiselle do Contremont was thrown from her horse, and shattered her jaw. I then made for her one of the finest sets of teeth that ever left my office. Everything, however, wears out in time, and I came, during your absence, to adjust for her a new set.”

The details of this adventure have never before been made public. It has nevertheless, been remarked that the prince appears less in love. O, human heart!

Geelong Advertiser no. 14,047 (March 5, 1892): 2.

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by | · 2:52 am

Gesya Gelfman (1852-1882)

220px-G_Gelfman[aka Jessy Helfman, Hessy Helfman, Hesse Helfman, Hesia Helfman]

JESSY HELFMAN, THE HUMBLE MARTYR

[From Stepniak’s Underground Russia]

There are unknown heroines, obscure toilers, who offer up everything upon the altar of their cause, without asking anything for themselves. They assume the most ungrateful parts; sacrifice themselves for the merest trifles; for lending their names to the correspondence of others; for sheltering a man, often unknown to them; for delivering a parcel without knowing what it contains. Poets do not dedicate verses to them; history will not inscribe their names upon its records; a grateful posterity will not remember them. Without their labor, however, the party could not exist; every struggle would become impossible.

Yet the wave of history carries away one of these toilers from the obscure concealment in which she expected to pass her life, and bears her on high upon its sparkling crest, to a universal celebrity. Then all regard this countenance, which is so modest, and discern in it the indications of a force of mind, of an abnegation, of a courage, which excite astonishment among the boldest.

Such is precisely the story of Jessy Helfman.

I did not know her personally. If I deviate, however, in this case from my plan of speaking only of those whom I know personally, I do not do so because of the fame which her name had gained, but because of her moral qualities, to which her celebrity justifies allusion. I am sure the reader will be grateful to me for this, as her simple and sympathetic figure characterizes the party which I am depicting, better perhaps than an example of exceptional power; just as a modest wildflower gives a better idea of the flora of a country, than a wonderful and rare plant.

Jessy Helfman belonged to a Jewish family, fanatically devoted to their religion, a type unknown in countries where religious persecution has ceased, but which is very common in Russia. Her family regarded as an abomination everything derived from the gentiles, especially their science, which teaches its disciples to despise the religion of their fathers. Jessy, excited by the new idea, and unable to bear this yoke, fled from her parents’ house, taking with her, as her sole inheritance, the malediction of these fanatical believers, who would willingly have seen her in her coffin rather than fraternizing with the “goi”. The girl proceeded to Kiev, where she worked as a seamstress.

The year 1874 came. The Revolutionary movement spread everywhere, and reached even the young Jewish seamstress.

She made the acquaintance of some of the women who had returned from Zurich, and who afterwards figured in the trial of the fifty, and they induced her to join that movement. Her part, however, was a very modest one. She lent her address for the Revolutionary correspondence. When, however, the conspiracy was discovered, this horrible “crime” subjected her to two years, neither more nor less, of imprisonment, and a sentence of two more years’ detention at Litovsk. Shut up with four or five women, confined for participation in the same movement, Jessy for the first time was really initiated into the principles of Socialism, and surrendered herself to them body and soul. She was, however, unable to put her ideas into practice, for, after having undergone her punishment, instead of being set at liberty she was by order of the police interned in one of the northern provinces, and remained there until the autumn of the year 1879, when, profiting by the carelessness of her guardians, she escaped and went to St. Petersburg. Here, full of enthusiasm, which increased in her all the more from having been so long restrained, she threw herself ardently into the struggle, eager to satisfy that intense craving to labor for the cause which became in her a passion.

Always energetic, and always cheerful, she was content with little, if she could but labor for the benefit of the cause. She did everything: letter-carrier, messenger, sentinel; often her work was so heavy that it exhausted even her strength, although she was a woman belonging to the working classes. How often did she return home, late at night, worn out, and at the end of her strength, having for fourteen hours walked about all over the capital, throwing letters into various places and corners with the proclamations of the Executive Committee. But on the following day she rose and recommenced her work.

She was always ready to render every service to any one who needed it, without thinking of the trouble it might cost her. She never gave a single thought to herself. To give an idea of the moral force and boundless devotion of this simple, uneducated woman, it will suffice to relate the story of the last few months of her revolutionary activity. Her husband, Nicholas Kolotkevich, one of the best known and most esteemed members of the Terrorist party, was arrested in the month of February. A capital sentence hung over his head. But she remained in the ranks of the combatants, keeping her anguish to herself. Although four months pregnant, she undertook the terrible duty of acting as the mistress of the house where the bombs of Kibalchich were manufactured, and remained there all the time, until, a week after March 13, she was again arrested.

On the day of her sentence she stood cheerful and smiling before the tribunal which was to send her to the scaffold. She had, however, a sentence more horrible, that of waiting four months for her punishment. This moral torture she bore during the never-ending months without a moment of weakness, for the Government, not caring to arouse the indignation of Europe by hanging her, endeavored to profit by her position to extract some revelations from her. It prolonged, therefore, her moral torture until her life might have been endangered, and did not commute her sentence until some weeks before her confinement.

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by | June 26, 2016 · 10:10 pm

Cruel Punishments (Goukoffski, 1979)

The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that official details now published confirm the astonishment which has been felt at the terrible severity of the sentences on the Odessa political convicts. The official publication states that all the 28 prisoners were found guilty of having belonged to an illegal society, which called itself the Social Revolutionary party. No further accusation was brought against Lissogoub, a gentleman aged 29, who had already been hanged; against Bolomeze, aged l8, condemned to 20 years’ hard labour; against the lady Levandovski, aged 25, and condemned to 15 years hard labour; or against Popko and the merchant’s son Kravitsoff, condemned to hard labour for life. No overt acts are charged to any of the above, or to the gentlemen Eithner and Stohepansky, the student Rakoff, or the peasant Komoff, condemned to 15 years’ hard labour. The girl Goukoffski, aged 15, who was condemned to banishment in Siberia for an unfixed term, is specially charged with having on July 21, 1878, on the condemnation of Kovalski, cried out, “Kovalski is condemned to death!” It is reported from Vienna that all the officers of the Russian army at Odessa have been placed by secret orders of the Government under the surveillance of the police. These orders having become known, ill-feeling has, it is stated, been engendered between the two forces, and some disturbances have occurred.

The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW) 36 no. 4018 (November 13, 1879): 7.

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by | · 9:49 pm

Russian Revolutionary Heroines (Sophia Bardina, 1881)

RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY HEROINES

THE weight of a woman’s brain in Slavonic races is greater than that of a man’s. Among the Germanic peoples the brain weight of the sexes is equal, and in the Latin nations the brain of the man is heavier than that of the woman. Quantity does not necessarily imply quality, but in this case worth follows weight. “For intelligence and resolution,” says M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, the most recent and; the most fascinating of writers on Russia and the Russians, “as well as for education, and the rank she holds in the family, the Russian woman is already the equal of the man. Among the Slavs man ‘is ‘often mobile, flexible, ductile, and impressionable to an excess, but, as if in compensation, woman, in mind and character, possesses so much strength, energy—in one word, virility—that without losing either her grace or her charm, she exercises often a singular and irresistible ascendency.” This ascendency, frequently remarked in diplomacy, is not less remarkable in the revolutionary movement which at the moment supplies many of the youth of Russia with a terrible substitute for religion, which is well-nigh extinguished in the Orthodox Church beneath the superincumbent load of ritual, formality, and officialism. No one can have paid even the most cursory attention to the numerous criminal processes which shed a ray of such grimly lurid light upon the fermenting mass of Russian discontent without being impressed by the prominent part played by women in the work of revolution. Turgenieff, whose admirable novels are far too little read in this country—they appreciate them better in the United States—was, as usual, true to life when, in the Nihilist romance of “Virgin Soil” he made his heroine Marianne the central figure of his picture, and contrasted her decision, self-control, and common sense with the wild, unhealthy, impracticable dreams of her lover, who begins by longing to regenerate society and finishes by blowing out his brains. The plain-looking girl with the round face, short-cut chestnut hair, and an expression made up of strength, passion, and impetuosity, who studied the natural sciences and was aflame with a generous, self-sacrificing enthusiasm for all the oppressed and disinherited, which made her indignant and ready to revolt, especially when irritated by the presence of “calm, plump, self-satisfied people,” embodies in fiction the leading traits of character to be found in many a Russian woman now in Siberia, or fast hastening on the road which leads thither or else to the gallows. Of Sophie Peroffski, the latest and for the moment the most famous of the Charlotte Cordays of Russia, we may have something to say another time. At present it will suffice to notice two or three of the more notable members of the class of which Sophie Peroffski is the most distinguished type.

Sophie Bardin, of Tamboff, a young lady of noble birth, was the first to familiarize the public with the spectacle of a Russian revolutionary heroine. She had not finished her studies and passed her final examinations when she had decided to dedicate her life to the service of “her brothers.” At eighteen years of age she went to Zurich to study the labour question in Switzerland and in Germany, and to sit at the feet of Bakunin, “the apostle of universal destruction” and the prophet of anarchy. She soon returned to Russia confirmed in the faith as to the necessity for remodelling society, and resolved to lose no time in setting to work. She assumed the name of a soldier’s widow, and began to work at daily wages in a factory, the better to be able to carry on the work of proselytism among the disinherited of the world. The self-devotion and self-sacrificing enthusiasm which lead a woman reared in the midst of luxury, and educated as Russian women only are educated, to don the coarse garments of the factory hand and spend her life among the illiterate vulgar, not from any belief in a divine command, but solely from “love for the others,” are by no means unfamiliar in Russia. Sophie Bardin, or rather the twenty-two year-old widow Zaizeff, was not long permitted to conduct her propaganda in peace. A year after her descent among the workers she was arrested. The authorities took two years to prepare her indictment, and she was not tried before the spring of 1877. She conducted her own defence, and surprised every one by the courage and passion with which she pleaded her cause. Thousands of copies of her address were sold in St. Petersburg, and the fate of the eloquent speaker gave force and emphasis to her closing words: “The association will avenge me, and its vengeance will be terrible. Let your hangmen and judges massacre and destroy us now, during the short time that force is still on your side. We set against you our moral might, and that will triumph. Progress, Liberty, and Equality fight for us, and through these ideas no bayonet can thrust.” Her eloquence availed not, and Sophie Bardin was sent to labour in the Siberian mines for. nine years—a dreary expiation for one year’s propagandism of revolutionary doctrine.

Sophie Bardin was the first, and Sophie Peroffski the third, of the popular heroines of the Russian Revolution. The second place was occupied by Vera Sassulitch, whose name is perhaps even more familiar in the West than that of either of the others. Vera, who achieved notoriety by the shot she fired at General Trepoff to avenge the chastisement inflicted on a prisoner, Boglaiouboff, who was personally unknown to her, was four years older than Sophie Bardin at the time of her, trial. Her troubles, however, began even earlier. When only seventeen years old she was flung into gaol as the friend of the sister of Netchaieff, the well-known conspirator. She lay there two years without trial, and after her release she spent three years in exile, being passed on by the police from town to town as a suspect. Oppression drives even the wise man mad, and no one can be surprised that such treatment drove the victim into the ranks of the active conspirators, and at last led her to shoot General Trepoff. She made no attempt to escape, and justified her deed in court as being necessary to call attention to the cruelty which was practised under his control. All other means of publicity being denied her, she resorted to the revolver. Her plea found favour in the eyes of a Russian jury, and her acquittal, which was applauded by almost every newspaper in St. Petersburg, startled Europe. Immediately after her acquittal amid a scene of riotous enthusiasm she disappeared. It was said she had been arrested by “Administrative order” and banished to Siberia. After a short time it was discovered that she had only been in safe hiding, and soon afterwards she was feted as a heroine by the revolutionary refugees of Geneva and Paris, among whom she continues to eke out a livelihood to this day.

Sophie Bardin is in Siberia; Vera Sassulitch is in exile; Sophie Peroffski is dead. But although the three leading actors in the tragic drama are thus accounted for, there are many others whose names appear and reappear in the blood-stained annals of Russian sedition. Of these we catch but passing glimpses, some of which, it must be admitted, are by no means calculated to attract. Olga Rassoffski, who sent a bullet through the head of a police-sergeant; Anna Makharevna, who fled with a passport forged by two other revolutionary women from’ the punishment due for her share in the vitriolization of the spy Goronovitch, and Achristoff, the seventeen-year-old priest’s daughter who made love to the detective Lavroffski in order to betray him into the hands of the Nihilists, who cutoff his ears and sliced off his nose, are among those who, ruthless as destroying angels, keep up the Red terror in Russia. Of others, such as the daughter of Major-General Herzfeld, who was arrested at Kieff, of Vera Panyutin, Larissa Sarudneff, and Olga Shilinski, little more is known than their names and their fate. The case of Julia Krakoffski, the daughter of a university official of Kieff, who was remotely implicated in the affair of Tchigirinski in 1877, was brought to memory the other day by the confirmation of her sentence of banishment to Siberia for the heinous offence of having destroyed compromising papers instead of handing them over to the police, and of being in possession of the forbidden “Story of a Peasant,” by MM. Erckmann-Chatrian. “She was only twenty years old, but all Kieff,” says an admirer, who predicts that ere long her statue will rise upon the site of the fortress of her native city, “knew her charming smile, and the immense treasure of her charity towards the poor.” Still more remarkable was the case of Victoria Goukoffski, daughter of a medical dispenser of Odessa, who, on hearing that the Nihilist Kovalsky had been sentenced to death, created a riot in which two persons were killed by the soldiers, led a mob of red-bloused men through the public streets, and addressed them with revolutionary eloquence from a seat in the middle of the boulevards. She was arrested; but was rescued by the crowd, and made her escape, only to be arrested again the following month and sentenced to Siberia for life. This week, however, the news reaches us that she has terminated her misery by suicide. Whatever may be thought of the madness, or even of the criminality, of these revolutionary heroines of the nineteenth century, it is impossible not to recognize in their sublime devotion to the cause of the downtrodden and disinherited members of the human family a spirit which is nearly allied to the disinterested devotion of the martyrs whose blood was the seed of the Church.

The Pall Mall Budget (June 17, 1881): 7.

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Mentioned in passing

  • “Achristoff, the 17-year-old priest’s daughter, who made love to the detective Lavroffski, in order to betray him into the hands of the nihilists…”
  • “Victoria Goukoffski, daughter of a medical dispenser of Odessa, who, on hearing that the Nihilist Kovalsky had been sentenced to death, created a riot…”
  • “the daughter of Major General Herzfeld, who was arrested at Kief…”
  • “Jude Krakoffski, the daughter of a university official at Kieff, whose banishment to Siberia for having destroyed certain compromising papers in 1877, was confirmed only the other day…” (1881)
  • “the lady Levandovski, aged 25, and condemned to 15 years hard labour…”
  • “Anna Makharevna, who fled with a forged passport for her part in the vitriolization of the spy Goronovitch…”
  • Vera Panyutin
  • “Olga Rassoffski, who sent a bullet through the head of a police sergeant…”
  • Larissa Sarudneff
  • Olga Shilinski

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May Beals-Hoffpauir, “Sketches of Russian Heroines. I. Vera Figner”

Sketches of Russian Heroines. I. Vera Figner

BY May Beals-Hoffpauir

Screen Shot 2016-06-26 at 12.55.14 PMTwenty-two years, nearly one-third of the expected three score and ten, spent in a black prison cell with no glimpse of passing cloud or starry skies; no message for thirteen of these years from friend or relative; no hope, in all that dreary time, of any change but death—such is the record of nearly one-half of Vera Figner’s life. It is not strange that her recent appearance in London aroused the wild enthusiasm to which she was already accustomed on the continent.

Few can survive twenty years in a Russian prison, and those few are usually utter wrecks both physically and mentally. Vera Figner is an exception to this rule. London Justice describes her, in her white robe, as appearing youthful and beautiful as of yore; and her public lectures are ample proof of her mental vigor.

At the time that Alexander II reverted to his reactionary policy, Vera Figner was a young and lovely girl who seemed destined by birth and education to move tranquilly in the highest circles of Russian society. Her parents were aristocratic, prosperous and independent and there seemed to be no reason why their daughter should disappoint their expectation of a brilliant future. But the persecution of the press, the suppression of free speech, the increasing number of exiles, roused the latent fires of the younger generation, and the socialistic doctrines beginning to spread in Russia fanned them to fever heat.

Although for a time Vera Figner was too young to take an active part in this movement she came in contact with many advanced thinkers of different schools while she and her older sister were studying natural science at Zurich in 1872. She attended the meetings of the different groups, Socialist and anarchist, and listened with great interest to their debates.

Her active work began when her elder sister, Lydia, her friend Sophie Bardina, and others were arrested and thrown into prisons; where, during their long suspense while awaiting judgment, many fell ill and died or became insane, or committed suicide. Vera joined the society formed for relief work among the prisoners—dangerous and strenuous work in which her personal charm, physical endurance and strength of character were of great service to those unfortunates. It was after several years of this work, and after her sister had been sentenced to Siberia, that Vera decided to join the ranks of the revolutionists.

During the fiery years before the assassination of Alexander II, while her friends were being sentenced to death and exile, and her work was carried on amongst constant perils. Vera Figner and her friend Sophie Perovskaya were tireless propagandists of the “Narodnaya Volya” (People’s Will Party). Vera’s genius for organization and her fearless earnestness made her influence widely felt, especially in her favorite work of spreading the cause in the army, which in Russia, as elsewhere, is the main bulwark of tyranny. Even the officers were often converted by her, and she commanded the respect of all she met, even her enemies. The famous Russian writer, N. Mikhailowsky, says of her:

“It is difficult to say in what exactly consisted the force and charm emanating from her, and attracting those around her so much. She was certainly both intelligent and fair to look at, but intelligence was not everything in her case, and as to beauty, that did not play any great part in her circle; she had besides, no specific talents. She fascinated by the great unity and harmony of her whole being; her entire self appeared in every word and gesture; hesitation and doubt were unknown to her. She was, however, quite free from the ascetic austerity so often to be observed in characters of this type. On the contrary, when the party’s affairs were going well, she was as sprightly and full of fun as any child.” The Narodnaya Volya group believed that when the crisis came the rest of the educated classes would join in their revolt. Their disappointment and sense of isolation when, after the assassination of Alexander II and their betrayal by the spy, Degaieff, they found that they were mistaken, has been vividly described by Vera Figner since her release. They were sentenced to death but the agitation against the execution of Russian political offenders, started by Victor Hugo and others in France, influenced the authorities to commute her sentence and that of some others to one of life imprisonment in the terrible fortress of Schlusselburg.

The following account of her life in prison is from a private letter that has been published instead of a preface, in a volume of her poems.

“Only a real poet could express in words all the phases of rage, trenchant despair, and the soul’s agony passed through in a period of twenty-two years. And what a variety of spiritual moods there was during all this time! Now it was the mood of a woman martyr in the early days of Christianity resigned to suffer everything with the gentleness of a lamb…. Now it was the fury of a panther striking with her chest and claws at the rails of her cage in her irrepressible desire to get free…. And now the mood changed to one of utter indifference without moods at all, when the soul became chilled as if covered with a mantle of snow. Then a state of lingering mere existence began, in which one ceased to suffer from a consciousness of either the strength still left or of an utter helplessness. In such moments it seemed that everything was finished, that death was approaching, bringing the only comfort of being laid down to rest by the side of comrades who have gone before and deserving the same warm feeling as I myself have cherished toward the dear departed.”

“…And suddenly! Again a knock at the closed door… This time it is a knock of life itself with its voice: “Arise and go! . . Oh what a tragedy! When one has already given up everything, refused to live any longer, and reconciled oneself to one’s fate, then suddenly to be awakened again by the call: “Come and live. Is not all this a whole tragedy, an anguish of which I cannot free myself even at this moment?”

The poems that she wrote while in prison, of course, without hope of ever seeing them published, reflect these moods with great realism and pathos. I give Jaakoff Prelooker’s translation of “The Best Have Fallen,” dedicated to the comrades who had died in prison:

The best have fallen. Swallowed by the earth
Unknown their resting place remains.
No tear fell o’er their lifeless frames,
Borne to their graves by strangers hands
No cross, no rail, nor e’en a tablet
Is there the glorious name to honor.

The humble grass and moss alone
The spot caress—its mystery cover.
The whirling waves as only witness,
Raging, foaming, the shores attack.
But awful as their roar may be
The tragic tale they ne’er can tell.

May Beals-Hoffpauir, “Sketches of Russian Heroines. I. Vera Figner,” The Progessive Woman 3 no. 28 (September, 1909): 4.

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Joaquin Miller, “Sophia Perovskaya” (1881)

Sophie Perovskaya,

220px-S_Perovskaya

LIBERTY’S MARTYRED HEROINE.

Hanged April 15, 1881,

For Helping to Rid the World of a Tyrant.

Down from her high estate she stept,

            A maiden, gently born

And by the icy Volga kept

            Sad watch, and waited morn;

And peasants say that where she slept

            The new moon dipped her horn.

                        Yet on and on, through shoreless snows

                                    Stretched tow'rd the great north pole,

                        The foulest wrong the good God known

                                    Rolls as dark rivers roll.

                        While never once for all these woes

                                    Upspeaks one human soul.




She toiled, she taught the peasant, taught

            The dark-eyed Tartar. He,

Inspired with her lofty thought,

            Rose up and sought to be,

What God at the creation wrought,

            A man! God-like and free.

                        Yet e'er before him yawn the black

                                    Siberian mines! And oh,

                        The knout upon the bare white back!

                                    The blood upon the snow!

                        The gaunt wolves, close upon the track,

                                    Fight o'er the fallen so!




And this that one might wear a crown

            Snatched from a strangled sire!

And this that two might mock or frown,

            From high thrones climblng higher,

To where the parricide looks down

            With harlot in desire!

                        Yet on, beneath the great north star,

                                    Like some lost, living thing,

                        That long line stretches black and far

                                    Till buried by death's wing!

                        And great men praise the goodly czar —

                                    But God sits pitying.




The storm burst forth! From out that storm

            The clean, red lightning leapt!

And lo, a prostrate royal form!

            Like any blood, his crept

Down through the snow, all smoking warm,

            And Alexander slept!

                        Yea, one lies dead, for millions dead!

                                    One red spot in the snow

                        For one long damning line of red;

                                    While exiles endless go —

                        The babe at breast, the mother's head

                                    Bowed down, and dying so!




And did a woman do this deed?

            Then build her scaffold high,

That all may on her forehead read

            Her martyr's right to die!

Ring Cossack round on royal steed!

            Now lift her to the sky!

                        But see! From out the black hood shines

                                    A light few look upon!

                        Poor exile, see! from dark deep mines,

                                    Your star at burst of dawn !

                        A thud! a creak of hangman's lines —

                                    A frail shape jerked and drawn !




The czar is dead; the woman dead.

            About her neck a cord.

In God's house rests his royal head —

            Here in a place abhorred;

Yet I would rather have her bed

            Than thine, most royal lord!

                        Yea, rather be that woman dead,

                                    Than this new living czar,

                        To hide in dread, with both hands red,

                                    Behind great bolt and bar —

                        While like the dead, still endless tread

                                   Sad exiles tow'rd their star.

Joaquin Miller.

Joaquin Miller, “Sophie Perovskaya, Liberty’s Martyred Heroine,” Liberty 1, no. 1 (August 6, 1881): 1.

 

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George Barlow, “Sophia Perovskaia” (1895)

SOPHIA PEROVSKAIA.

Blue-eyed, fair-haired, a girl in outward seeming,
With lips, men held, that only cared to sing,
When thy foot passed along the meadows dreaming
Soft dreams and tender of the gold-haired Spring—

When other maidens dreamed with longing wonder
Of love, thou crowned with Spring’s most loving light
Beneath blue skies wast dreaming of the thunder,
Beneath the morn wast dreaming of the night .

High-born, thou didst forsake the lordly places;
Thy young heart thrilled at Freedom’s trumpet-call:
Thou wanderedst forth, a light for poor men’s faces;
Love, wealth, repose,—thou didst surrender all.

And has not yet from our free isle resounded
One song, one hymn of passionate love for thee,
Who, when the tyrant’s red-stained deeds abounded,
Didst say, “One soul in Russia still is free”?

When thou didst strike, were all our singers staggered
At thy vast force of soul that none could say,
“A strong god at a touch turned pale and haggard,
A Czar before a girl’s stroke passed away “?

I would not die without one true word spoken
Whereby, if but for one short moment’s space,
The English chill grim silence may be broken:
I love, who never looked upon thy face.

Singing, I hail thee from a land that never
For all its errors, countless though they are,
Stooped to endure, nor will it stoop for ever
To endure, the smile or sceptre of a Czar.

The message of our English ringing fountains,
The message of the fells, to thee I bear:
For thee speaks once again from cloud-crowned mountains
The voice at which world-tyrannies despair.

The greeting of our English oaks and willows,
The greeting of our flowers, I send to thee;
The royal love-song of our kingless billows,
And our sun’s song, wherewith he loves our sea:

The solemn kiss of England’s pure-souled daughters
That should have been, that one day will be, thine;
The song of stars that gleam o’er English waters;
The song that makes the enchanted night divine:

The song of English cliff and gold-flowered hollow;
The chant of poet-souls as yet unborn,
Whose stronger footsteps on my step shall follow;
The love-song of the winds that woo the morn:

All these are thine for ever.—When Love hearkened
With listening heart and tearful eyes to thee,
Thou then didst choose the loveless road that darkened;
Beloved by Time, didst choose Eternity.

Behind, a thousand flowers of varied pleasure;
In front, the scentless air, the starless gloom!
A life that might yield joy in sumptuous measure,
Glad rainbow-hopes, behind. In front, the tomb!

Yet thou didst choose the tomb. With stern lips firmer
Than hers by whom foul Marat’s fate was planned
Thou chosest death. Thou diedst without a murmur,
Thy white hand locked in Charlotte Corday’s hand.

George Barlow, From Dawn to Sunset (London: Roxburghe Press, 1895): 190-191.

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