JOURNEY TO GERMANY—IMPRISONMENT IN FREIBURG—EPISODES FROM THE PAST OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

In the beginning of March, 1884, I travelled from Zurich, through Basel, to Freiburg in Baden. The object of my journey was to smuggle over the frontier a quantity of Russian socialistic literature, printed in Switzerland, in order that it might then be distributed by secret channels throughout Russia, where of course it was prohibited. In Germany a special law against the Social-Democratic movement was then in force. The Sozialdemokrat was published in Zurich, and had to be smuggled over the German frontier, where the watch was very keen, rendering most difficult the despatch to Russia of Russian, Polish, and other revolutionary literature printed in Switzerland. Before the enactment of the special law in August, 1878, the procedure had been simple. At that time the publications were sent by post to some town in Germany near the Russian border, and thence, by one way or another, despatched to Russia. Later, however, it became necessary to convey them as travellers’ luggage across the German frontier, in order to get them through the custom-house, after which they could be forwarded to some German town nearer the 2Russian border. It was on this transport business that I was engaged.

My luggage consisted of two large boxes, half-filled with literature, and their upper parts packed with linen and other wearing apparel, that the Customs officers might not be suspicious. In one trunk I had men’s clothes, in the other women’s, supposed to belong to my (non-existent) wife; and for this reason there really was a lady present at the Customs examination in Basel,—the wife of my friend Axelrod from Zurich. She offered to take further charge of the transport, thinking she would run less risk than I if the police became suspicious. As, however, the examination of the luggage went off quite smoothly, I declined the offer, hardly thinking any further trouble probable.

Besides Frau Axelrod a Basel Socialist was with me at the station. He had advised me how to carry out my perilous mission, for he was experienced in such business, having managed many transports of forbidden literature. Only a few days before, accompanied by a Polish acquaintance of mine, Yablonski, he had been to Freiburg, whence they had despatched some Polish literature. He now recommended to me a cheap hotel in Freiburg, close to the station; and in good spirits I climbed into a third-class carriage. It was a Sunday, and the carriage was filled with people in gay holiday mood. Songs were sung, and unrestrained chatter filled the air. The guard was pompous and overbearing, as often happened then on German lines; I do not know if it is so still. When he saw that I was smoking, he told me very rudely, with a great show of official zeal, that this was not a smoking carriage. I answered politely that I had not been aware of it, and at once threw away my cigarette. He insisted peremptorily, however, that I must change carriages. “A bad omen,” thought I, and still recall the sensation. I was out of temper, and felt irritated and uncomfortable. The weather, too, grew overcast, and a cold drizzle set in, which worked on my nerves.

3The train moved off, and before I had got over my grumbling humour we were at Freiburg. It was between seven and eight in the evening. Landed on the platform, I looked out the porter of the Freiburger Hof, and gave him my luggage-check. He noticed at once that it showed the unusual weight of my boxes, and expressed his surprise thereat. To quiet any suspicion I told him at once unconcernedly that I was a student, and intended to study at Freiburg University, and that it was my books which made the trunks so heavy. The hotel was soon reached, and a room engaged, after which I betook myself to the restaurant for supper. As I passed by the buffet I saw the porter whispering earnestly with another man, apparently the landlord. Directly I had finished my meal the waiter brought me the visitors’ book; and as I had a Russian passport, lent me by a friend at the time of my flight from Russia, I at once signed myself in my friend’s name, “Alexander Bulìgin, of Moscow.” I then ordered writing materials and went to my room, but had barely shut the door behind me when there came a knock. At my “Come in!” there appeared, instead of a servant with writing things, as I had expected, a policeman, accompanied by a gentleman in civil dress. “I am an officer of the secret police,” said the latter; “allow me to examine your trunks.” Instantly I thought, “As Freiburg is so near the Swiss frontier, the police (to whom the porter must have announced the arrival of a young man with unusually heavy luggage), may think I have contraband goods; or they may take me for an anarchist, and suspect me of conveying dynamite.” I tried, therefore, to look as harmless as possible, although I felt that things were awkward. Busied with the unlocking of my boxes, I let fall the remark that one of them contained the belongings of my wife, whom I expected shortly. No sooner, however, had the men begun to turn over my things, than I saw that my guess as to their search for contraband was incorrect; the detective was on the look-out for neither 4contraband nor dynamite, but for books, and he immediately began to examine mine. I then concluded he was looking for German Social-Democratic literature; and I was astonished when, at sight of a little book bound in red, my gentleman cried triumphantly, “Ah, here we are!”

It was the Calendar of the Naròdnaia Vòlya,[2] a book that had come out about a year before this, and was openly sold by German booksellers.

“I must now have you searched,” said the police agent.

Besides a notebook, a letter, and a pocket-book containing several hundred-mark notes, there were in my pockets a dozen numbers of the Zurich Sozialdemokrat, which I had brought with me to send to a Russian friend in Germany.

“Here at least is something that we can read!” said the detective in a satisfied tone; “now, I arrest you!”

“Why? What for?” asked I, much astonished.

“That you will soon find out; come along!” was the answer.

The procedure of the police agent was extraordinary in every way: no attempt was made to fulfil the legal enactments for the protection of personal safety; the domiciliary search was instituted without legal warrant; there were no witnesses. I insisted on the officer’s counting over in my presence the money in my pocket-book, which they had confiscated, though of course that was not much guarantee for the security of my property.

As I was descending the steps of the hotel, a prisoner between my two guardian angels, a young lady carrying a small travelling-bag met us. The detective asked me if this were my wife, and, notwithstanding my reply in the negative, tried to seize hold of her. She evidently thought she had to do with some Don Juan, and fled screaming into the street; whereupon the detective ordered the 5policeman to lead me on, and himself followed the unknown lady.

The policeman now tried to take me by the arm, and so conduct me through the streets, but I hotly resisted such treatment, declaring that I had committed no crime, and that he had no possible justification for putting me in such a position.

We arrived at last at the House of Detention. Here I was searched again, and for the first time since my arrest was questioned by an official as to my personal identity.

My detective soon appeared, bringing the lady, who, weeping bitterly, protested her absolute innocence, and indignantly demanded the explanation of such an insult. Coming on the top of all my own experiences since my arrival in Freiburg this scene put me into a state of fury.

“What is all this?” cried I to the police officer. “How can you take upon yourself to insult this lady? I repeat again that I do not know her; she is not my wife, and I have never set eyes on her in my life before.”

“Well, we shall see about that. It is my business. It is no affair of yours whom we arrest,” declared he; and I thought to myself, “This is a nice state of things! We might as well be in Russia.”

I was then told to follow a warder, who took me up to the first floor. The lock of a cell-door turned, grating, and I found myself installed in the Grand-Ducal prison of Baden.

When the warder had withdrawn with his lantern absolute silence reigned, and the chamber was perfectly dark. Lights were not allowed here either in the cells or passages. I took my bearings as well as I could, groping along the walls, and, having found a bed, I lay down fully dressed as I was. My mind was in a state of chaos; I could follow no clear train of thought, nor form any conclusions about what had occurred. The sense of fate weighed me down; my strength seemed broken. 6Sinister dreams left me no peace all night, and consequently I awoke from slumber in a dazed condition, not knowing where I was or what had happened to me. When at last with an effort I realised my position, despair seized on me. Extradition to Russia stared me in the face; I could not banish the fear of it. True, at that time there was no extradition treaty between Germany and Russia which applied to political refugees.[3] But I had special reasons for fearing that I might be treated exceptionally; and that the significance of my position may be clear to the reader, I must now give some details of my earlier career.

In 1874, just ten years before the events described above, as a youth of nineteen I had joined the “Propagandist movement,”[4] which at that time engrossed a great number of young students throughout Russia. Like most of the young Propagandists, I was led to this chiefly by sympathy with the sufferings and endurance of the people. According to our views, it was the sacred duty of every reasonable and upright human being who really loved his country to devote all his powers to the object of freeing the people from the economic oppression, the slavery, the barbarism, to which they were subjected. The young generation, always most prone to pity the misfortunes of others, could not remain indifferent to the miserable situation of the newly enfranchised serfs. An entire social revolution in Russia appeared to the Propagandists the sole means of altering the existing wretched material conditions, and of removing the heavy burden on the people; following, therefore, the teaching of the Socialists of Western Europe, they set before themselves as their ultimate object the abolition of private property and the collective ownership 7of the means of production. The Propagandists felt entirely convinced that the people would instantly embrace their ideas and aims and join them at the first appeal. This belief was an inspiration to them, and spurred them to unlimited self-sacrifice for the idea that possessed them. These youths and girls renounced without hesitation their previous social position and the assured future that the existing order of things offered them; without further ado they left the educational institutions where they were studying, recklessly broke all family ties, and threw their personal fate into the balance, in order to live entirely for the idea, to sacrifice themselves without stint for the idea, to make every faculty and possibility serve in the sacred cause of the people’s deliverance. Any personal sacrifice seemed to these young enthusiasts scarcely worth speaking of when the great cause was in question. The common ideal, the common aim, and the enthusiasm of each individual drew the Propagandists together into one great family, linked by all the ties of affection and mutual dependence. Fraternal relations of the most affectionate intimacy grew up among all these young people; a complete altruism governed their actions, and each was prepared for any sacrifice on behalf of another. Only in great historical moments, in the time of the early Christian martyrdoms, and the founding of religious sects, have proselytes manifested such personal devotion, such exalted feeling.[5]

In this elect band, however, there were found (as has happened in every such movement) individuals not capable of this unselfish fervour; there were among them some paltry spirits, and even some who proved traitors. Certainly the number of these latter was infinitesimally small; but the history of revolutionary movements shows sufficiently that hundreds of the most 8able secret or public agents of a government can never do a tithe of the harm to a secret society that can be effected by a single traitor in its own ranks. In this manner did treachery become pregnant with evil results for the Propagandists, and it gave to the movement a character it might otherwise never have developed. Early in the year 1874 the young revolutionists, men and women, went out “among the people,” according to the plan they had formed; they distributed themselves among the villages, where they lived and dressed like peasants, carrying on an active Socialist propaganda. But scarcely had they begun operations when treachery made itself apparent; two or three of the initiated denounced the organisation, and delivered over hundreds of their comrades to the authorities. Searches and arrests took place without number; the police pounced on “guilty” and innocent alike, and all the prisons in Russia were soon filled to overflowing. In this one year more than a thousand persons were seized. Many of them suffered long years of imprisonment under the most horrible conditions, some committed suicide, others lost their reason, and in many cases long terms of incarceration resulted in illness and premature death. Under these circumstances the reader can conceive the bitter hatred kindled in the ranks of the Socialists against the traitors who had sacrificed so many lives. The knowledge of the victims’ terrible sufferings would naturally incite their friends to avenge them; inevitably, too, the thought would arise of punishing treachery, in order to put a stop by intimidation to the trade of the informer. But the Propagandists were in the highest degree men of peace, and it was not easy for them to harbour thoughts of violence. When such ideas were first mooted, they long remained only subjects of discussion.

Not till the summer of 1876 did the first attempt to put the terrorist theory into practice take place. The circumstances were as follows. The members of a revolutionary 9group well known at the time—the Ki?v Buntari[6]—had assembled at Elisavetgrad. I belonged to this organisation. Many of the members were “illegals,”[7] and for some time past the gendarmerie had been making captures among them, acting on the information of a traitor named Gorinòvitch. This Gorinòvitch had been imprisoned in 1874, and being in the greatest danger had saved himself by telling everything he knew about the Russian Socialists. His revelations had injured many; yet, as in numerous other cases, not a hair of this renegade’s head would have been touched, if he had kept clear of revolutionary circles. But about two years after his release from prison he tried again to insinuate himself among us, and he managed to get into the confidence of some inexperienced young people, who of course had no notion of the part he had formerly played. From them he learned that the Ki?v Society had assembled at Elisavetgrad; he came there at once, and sought to find out what the persons he had before betrayed were doing. We recognised him, however, and it soon became evident to us that he was playing the spy, and preparing some fresh treachery. So I and one other comrade resolved to put an end to his life.

Our determination could not be carried into effect in Elisavetgrad itself, or it might have resulted in giving the police a clue for the discovery of our organisation. We therefore asked Gorinòvitch if he would go with us to Odessa to find the persons he was in search of, and he agreed. There in a lonely spot we attempted to execute our mission, and left Gorinòvitch lying, as we thought, dead, with a paper fastened on his breast bearing 10the inscription, “So perish all traitors!” But he was only severely injured, was found by the police, and survived to give information concerning his attempted assassination. Searches and arrests followed in due course, and although at the time I succeeded in avoiding capture, in the autumn of the following year I was arrested, together with other comrades, on account of the famous Tchigirìn case.[8]

I was imprisoned in Ki?v, but in the beginning of 1878 I escaped[9] in company with Stefanòvitch and Bohanòvsky.

Those who were concerned in the attempt against Gorinòvitch were prosecuted for the first time in November, 1879, at a period when both the “red” and the “white” terrorism[10] had blazed up. After a series of attempts against different representatives of the Government, the revolutionists had concentrated their entire strength on the endeavour to assassinate Alexander II. The Government combated the terrorist movement by means of special enactments, martial law, and death penalties, to which large numbers of people were sentenced who were perfectly innocent of complicity in the above deeds. On November 19th, some days before the beginning of the Gorinòvitch case (and after the accused had been acquainted with the facts alleged against them, 11for which they were only liable to comparatively light sentences), the Terrorists blew up a train on the Moscow line, believing the Tsar to be in it. In consequence of this the Government determined to revenge themselves upon the accused in the Gorinòvitch case. Of these only one had been directly implicated, and as all had been imprisoned two or three years already before the beginning of the terrorist agitation, they could under no circumstances be supposed answerable for that agitation. In spite of this it was decided to “make an example” by inflicting a heavy sentence. Three of the accused,—Drebyasghin, Malinka, and Maidansky—were condemned to death by hanging, and were executed on December 3rd; two—Kostyurin and Yankovski—were sentenced to penal servitude; and the traitors Krayev and Kuritzin were set free. If I had been in the power of these judges my fate would have been sealed. However, early in the year 1880 I effected my escape from Russia, and I had been living in Switzerland up to the time of my going to Freiburg as previously described. From all this it will be clear with what feelings I contemplated the possibility of extradition to Russia.