THE JOURNEY TO RUSSIA—IN THE CATTLE-TRUCK—THE FRANKFORT AND BERLIN
PRISONS—THE FRONTIER-STATION—THROUGH WARSAW TO PETERSBURG
When evening came I was sent off in a closed carriage, accompanied by
two policemen in plain clothes, who had been enjoined to use all
possible vigilance. The carriage was stopped at a branch of the railway
line some distance from the station, and here my companions and I were
put into an ordinary cattle-truck. As this truck was brought into the
station, where it was attached to a passenger train, I observed an
unusual commotion on the platform, and my guards, who noticed it too,
whispered together excitedly. From chance words that I caught I gathered
that an arrest was being made, and wondered if it could have anything to
do with me. Years afterwards I learned that it was indeed two of my
comrades who were seized on the platform at Freiburg, they having hoped
to travel by my train and be at hand to assist me if I could attempt an
escape. But this was another fiasco. My two friends were kept some days
in prison in Freiburg, and then sent back to Switzerland.
Towards morning we arrived at Frankfurt-am-Main, where for some reason
or other I was again put in prison. The governor of this gaol made a
great show of kindness and consideration towards me, but had his own
reasons for such tactics, as will subsequently appear. When I asked if I
might write a post card to my friends in Switzerland, he assured me most
obligingly that it should be forwarded at once, and furnished me with
writing materials. (Later I found that he had handed over the card to my
guards, who sent it to the Russian authorities; but, of course, it only
contained a few words of greeting.)
The cell to which he conducted me was very comfortable, and looked out
on a lively street; but he posted two policemen in the room to keep
watch over me. He then provided me with an excellent luncheon—or at
least it seemed very good to me, as during the last day or two
excitement had kept me from eating. Seeing that the journey threatened
to be tedious, I wanted to get some books, and the obliging governor
offered to buy them for me at a second-hand shop, where they would be
cheap. I remember choosing a few German and French classics, which he
procured for me at what I thought a reasonable price. Finally, he
invited me to go for a walk in the yard with him.
As soon as we were alone he began giving me a very prolix account of all
his experiences, and then suddenly asked me point-blank if I were not
really the famous Degàiev.[21]
Footnote 21:
Degàiev, a captain of artillery, was a prominent member of the
“Naròdnaia Vòlya.” Arrested and imprisoned in the beginning of 1880,
he soon turned informer, and betrayed many of his former comrades. By
this he not only gained his liberty, but also won the confidence of
the notorious persecutor of revolutionists, Colonel Soudyèhkin,
commander of the Petersburg _Ochrana_ (a body of secret police). Pangs
of conscience, or fear of the vengeance of the revolutionists, caused
him to make a full confession to them in 1883, and as amends for his
treachery he offered to stand by them in an attempt to assassinate
Soudyèhkin. The latter was difficult to entrap, being extraordinarily
clever and wary; owing to which qualities he had done more harm to the
revolutionists than anybody else. Degàiev’s proposal was accepted; and
in the winter of 1883 he managed to decoy Soudyèhkin, under pretext of
important business, into his house, where two revolutionists were
lying in wait, and shot Soudyèhkin down. They were both caught,
condemned to penal servitude for life, and imprisoned in the
Schlüsselburg fortress. Degàiev escaped to foreign parts, and
afterwards disappeared.
I could not help laughing heartily: the assiduous friendliness of this
worthy, who, as a matter of fact, was always looking out for his own
advancement, appeared now in quite a new light. Apart from the fact that
(as I heard afterwards from the policemen in my cell) he drew a
considerable profit, not only from my food, but even on the books he got
me, he also had his eye on the reward he would receive if he could
induce me to confess to being Degàiev. The Russian Government had put a
price of 10,000 roubles on that man’s head, and his name was in every
European newspaper.
I stayed in this prison until nightfall, when I was fetched away by
three policemen in plain clothes. Every time that my guards were changed
I was searched, but nothing was found. Before starting on our journey,
the Frankfort police put chains on me, not heavy or thick, and quite
inconspicuous, as they were attached under my clothes; but they hindered
any quick movement, and of course made running impossible. I protested
vehemently against this indignity; but they declared they had received
special instructions, and had no choice in the matter, so I had to
submit. Even this was not their final precaution. When we passed on to
the railway platform, one man, a giant in stature, took me by the arm in
a friendly way; another went a few steps in front, and the third came a
little behind, so that we must have appeared to the uninitiated like a
trio of boon companions. We installed ourselves in a carriage among the
ordinary travellers, and it probably never dawned on any of them that
they were sitting cheek by jowl with a fettered prisoner. I could not
help thinking of the proverb used by our Russian peasants to describe
German ingenuity:—“The Germans are too clever for anything; they’ve even
invented apes!” I must say that my guardians behaved very civilly to me,
although with formal strictness. So far as their orders permitted, they
showed me many little kindnesses. In the _Begleitschein_ with which I
was given into their custody I was entered as “the so-called Bulìgin,”
and by this name I went until I was handed over to the Russians.
There was no thinking of escape on this journey. My escort never let me
out of their sight for a second, never stirred from my side, and watched
my slightest movements. They did not enter into conversation with me,
nor had I any inclination to gossip with them. I felt heavy at heart,
enervated, and exhausted. My mind seemed dormant, nothing attracted my
attention during the whole journey; I seemed to hear and see nothing
that went on around me, but to lie wrapped in a dreary apathy. “What
must be must be,” I said to myself, if a thought of the future arose.
Reaction had set in after the painful excitement of the last days in
Freiburg.
The following day we arrived in Berlin, where I was at once taken to
prison. Which prison it was I do not know, but I remember what a gloomy
impression it produced upon me. The dark cell, (into which no direct
light could penetrate owing to the high wall opposite the window,) and
the sour-faced warders, who never seemed to look one straight in the
eyes, forced on me the thought that people who were compelled to inhabit
this place for long were much to be pitied. I have made acquaintance
with many prisons, both in Russia and Western Europe, but never felt so
thoroughly despondent as in this Berlin gaol. Everything seemed intended
to make one feel: “You are in Berlin, the capital of military Prussia,
where inflexible rule and iron discipline are the watchwords applying to
the smallest detail.”
The policemen who had brought me from Frankfort never left me alone even
in my prison cell, keeping watch over me by turns. And I must say that I
was glad of this. Their company was not exactly enlivening, but the
presence of another human being mitigated the dreariness of the prison
atmosphere. Fortunately I was not detained here long, and I was truly
thankful when evening came, and I was once more on my travels, attended
by the same escort. Next morning we were in Russia.
The frontier station where I was to be delivered over to the Russian
authorities is called Granitza, a place where three empires
meet—Germany, Austria, and Russia. As I was to be taken straight on to
Petersburg, this was a very roundabout way to have come, and I suppose
it must have been chosen from fear of a rescue being attempted at the
frontier. This is the more likely, as shortly before the Polish
Socialist, Stanislas Mendelssohn, had—aided by his friends—escaped from
the Prussian police at another frontier station (Alexandrovo, I think),
just as his surrender to the Russians was to be effected. He got safe
through to Switzerland.
I remember my sensations well. It was a lovely May morning, and the
sunshine gave me renewed strength. I had scarcely descended from the
train with my German guards, when I was surrounded by a crowd of Russian
gendarmes.
“Good morning, Deutsch! good morning, sir! Here you are at last! We have
been expecting you for ever so long!” were their greetings. I saw round
me the fresh, smiling faces of young Russian peasant lads, surmounting
the hated dark blue uniform. Their free, familiar bearing made me smile
back at them as if old friends were welcoming me.
“How do you know me?” I asked them, as we went towards the gendarmes’
quarters.
“Oh, of course we know you; we’ve heard such a lot about you!” cried
several. “Will you come and have some tea at once, or brush the dust off
first?” they asked, and vied with each other in doing the agreeable and
making me at home. It was a curious contrast to the manners of my German
guards. The Russians were frank and simple; there was something of even
friendly confidence in their behaviour. To the German police I was a
dangerous criminal, who went about under false names. They had their
orders, and followed them rigidly, not troubling themselves with
anything beyond that, hoping thereby to gain a reward (as I gathered
from their whispered talk when they supposed me asleep). To the Russian
gendarmes,[22] who never have anything to do with common criminals, I
was a “political offender,” a “State prisoner” (as we call it), whose
name they had heard so often that they looked on me quite as an old
acquaintance. I had not been in Russia for four years, and the first
persons I met from whom I heard my mother tongue were gendarmes. The
reader will be able to understand my mingled feelings. Any uninitiated
person glancing into the room where I sat before the steaming samovar,
refreshing myself with tea, and gossiping with the gendarmes standing
round, might have thought we were a party of old friends enjoying a cosy
chat.
Footnote 22:
See preface.—_Trans._
“Well, what’s it like in foreign parts?—not so nice as here, eh?” asked
the lads; and I related how in “foreign parts” it was ever so much nicer
than at home, in many ways. But that they would not allow to be
possible, and we disputed about it, till at last everyone present, ten
or twelve men, were all talking at once. When this topic was exhausted I
asked what was the news at home, what was happening? They then described
excitedly how all Russia had just been celebrating the majority of the
heir-apparent, the present Tsar.
The German police having fulfilled their commission and handed me over
with bag and baggage, had departed, probably somewhat disappointed, for
no reward had been given them—in Granitza, at least. After some hours an
officer of the gendarmerie appeared, and commanded some of the men to be
ready to escort me, as I was to go on by the next train. I saw that he
gave over to one of them the money that had been taken from me by the
German police. Unobserved, I immediately drew out the Russian money I
had concealed about me, and then handed it to the officer, for I feared
it might be discovered if I were carefully searched. He was greatly
surprised, and asked if I had never been searched in Germany. He then
ordered me to be searched again, which was done with every care; but all
the same, the rest of my German money and the scissors were not found.
Three gendarmes accompanied me on the journey to Petersburg. In Warsaw,
where we arrived during the night, a colonel of gendarmerie was awaiting
me. Like most of his kind, he was very polite and ready to converse.
“You were concerned in the Tchigirìn case?” he began; and when I
assented, he continued confidentially, “Ah, that was a long while ago.
Wasn’t it at the time of the Polish rising? Well, then, you will have
the benefit of the coronation amnesty; they won’t have much against
you.”
At the time of the Polish insurrection, in 1863, I was only eight years
old. This is an illustration of how much many of the officers of
gendarmerie know about the political trials which are supposed to be
their own special business. This friendly sympathy did not prevent him,
of course, from giving my escort the strictest orders about my
treatment, as I could hear when seated in the carriage. “Be sure you
don’t fall asleep!” he whispered. The gendarmes, however, did not allow
this to trouble their minds much, but continued to treat me in a very
easy-going fashion, and did not manifest any fear of my running away.
When we arrived in Petersburg a captain of gendarmerie met us, and took
me at once in a closed carriage to the Fortress of Peter and Paul.
[Illustration:
FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL, ST. PETERSBURG
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]