A VISIT TO MARIE SPIRADONOVA
A tyrannical régime--A young girl’s daring--Tortures and
outrages--Entertained by the governor--A kindly police-master--Grim
prison walls--Difficulties--Appeal to the governor--Shackled
prisoners--Marie Spiradonova--A terrible tale--Interruptions--A
Spartan mother--Letters from the fair prisoner--“Greetings to
France, to England, and to America.”
Adjoining the province of Saratoff, where I was arrested, is Tamboff,
another government within the famine belt, where the long northern
winters are more bitter because of the cruel ravages of starvation and
hideous disease; and where there is--worst of all--the living, stalking
dread of inhuman officialdom, martial law (which means Cossack
excesses), police brutality, and governmental impositions that warrant
the maddest crimes of men.
Here lived a young woman of twenty-one--a modern Charlotte Corday--who,
early in the year 1906, killed the lieutenant-governor of the province.
When her ghastly deed had been noised abroad--and the penalty she
paid--the peasants gathered in their churches to offer thanksgiving and
praise for using this girl as an instrument of His Divine Justice.
At the moment that I emerged from my Saratoff experience Marie
Spiradonova was the most talked-of person in Russia, and perhaps the
most notable prisoner in the world. The grim white-washed walls of
Tamboff prison held her securely, while newspapers in Russia that dared
to set forth the facts of her deed and the treatment she afterward
received were confiscated by the police, and a Spiradonova League in
France rolled up a lengthy list of subscribers. Correspondents from
Germany, from France, from England, were sent to Tamboff to penetrate
those stern walls and gather from the girl’s own lips the tragic story
that was then thrilling a nation and interesting a continent. But for
once neither diplomacy nor influence were of avail. Marie’s isolation
was absolute and no one save her mother was privileged to so much as see
her. In the meantime alarming reports of her precarious condition were
emanating from Tamboff and in many sections there was intense excitement
concerning her. It seemed well-nigh hopeless for me to reach her, yet I
greatly desired to interview this daring spirit and to verify the
extraordinary details of her ill-treatment that had kindled such intense
feeling throughout Russia. Through the merest chance I succeeded. No one
else has seen her or talked with her even up to the present time (she is
now at hard labor in the mines of Akatui in central Siberia).
The story of Marie Spiradonova, which I set out to examine, was as
follows: The lieutenant-governor of the province of Tamboff, one
Luchenovsky, was one of the most tyrannical administrators in all
Russia. His systematic cruelty and excessive severity spread terror
throughout all the district where his power extended. He ordered the
flogging of peasants and the burning of homes. It was said that he did
not rebuke, if he did not actually and openly encourage, Cossack
outrages; and all who knew of the inhumanities he practised and
[Illustration: Governor Xanugievitch of Tamboff]
encouraged declared that for so wicked a man this world had no place.
One day Luchenovsky was in a village where some Cossacks captured a
young peasant girl and kept her awhile for their sport. When they had
done with her they threw her dishonored body into a near-by lake. Marie
Spiradonova chanced to be in the village when this happened and she knew
that Luchenovsky was aware of this incident and that he took no steps
either to punish or to prevent further outrage.
A few days later Luchenovsky stood on a railroad station-platform
waiting for a coming train. With a Browning revolver in her hand, Marie
Spiradonova from a longish range took careful aim and fired five shots,
each shot taking effect, though Luchenovsky did not die till a month
afterward. During the time of his lingering death Marie wrote from her
prison-cell to her sister, “I gave him five bullets. I did not know he
was so thick as to need a cannon.”
She turned the sixth bullet toward her own breast, but not before a
crowd, mostly soldiers, closed round her, tore the revolver from her
hand, and began to beat her. They tore her clothing from her body. A
Cossack officer seized her by the plait of her hair--brown hair, dark
and wavy--and threw her forcibly to the ground. Consciousness left her.
Eye-witnesses told how the officer then grasped one of her ankles and
dragged her along the ground to a carriage in which she was conveyed to
a near-by gendarmerie.
In this temporary prison she was in charge of two men, the same Cossack
officer, Zhdanov, who had dragged her away, and a police officer of the
rank of _priestoff_, named Abramoff. These two men remained with their
prisoner and began drinking heavily of vodka. Then they stripped their
prisoner, stark naked, and even at the sight of her bruised and
bleeding body did not stop their hellish inquisition of sensuous
debauchery and torture. They scarred her quivering flesh with the
lighted ends of their cigarettes. They caressed and they pounded her by
turns. Immediately afterward all of these revolting details were given
to the world, yet no steps were taken by the officials, or by the
government, to in any way reprove or censure these two men--one an
officer of the police, the other an army officer. A writer in a
prominent Moscow paper dared to speak out against this shame, and
declared fearlessly that this girl had deliberately and thoughtfully
staked her life against the life of a tyrant in order that her people
might be saved from his administration of blood and suffering. For this
temerity the paper was at once suppressed, and not only the writer, but
the whole editorial staff, was forced to flee into hiding.
Marie Spiradonova was an assassin, therefore the military court decreed
that she should die. Such was the situation when I visited Tamboff. The
outcry which went up against taking the life of this girl eventually
became so loud that her sentence was commuted to twenty years at hard
labor. But at the time of my visit she was still under sentence of
death.
Before presenting my request for an interview to any official in
Tamboff, I decided to cultivate the acquaintance of the governor of the
province, to discover what manner of man I had to deal with. With this
in view, I called at the official residence the morning after my arrival
in the city, and in due time was presented to his excellency, Governor
Xanugievitch. For an hour we discussed the agrarian situation, the
famine, the Duma elections, and other topics pertinent to the hour, but
never a word of the real object of my visit. The Governor proved most
affable and hospitable, and he extended a cordial invitation to me to
dine with him.
At dinner we toasted the Czar, President Roosevelt, the Duma, and
ourselves. We talked politics, art, literature, travel, and
epicureanism. My host was a charmingly cultivated man and he impressed
me as a much more competent and conscientious administrator than other
governors whom I had met.
The next man below me at table was the police-master of Tamboff.
Casually he asked me if I knew about Marie Spiradonova. I was startled
by the abruptness with which he introduced the subject that was giving
me so much concern, but I answered carelessly:
“I have seen her name in the papers.”
“The papers say terrible things about our treatment of her,” he added.
“Newspapers are the same the world over,” I responded diplomatically.
After a pause the police-master went on: “It is very hard on an official
like myself. You see she is in a prison in my city, and many
people--revolutionists and fanatics--believe I am responsible for all
the cruelties that the newspapers say she has suffered.”
“Did you know the man she shot?” I asked.
“Yes--and while I cannot countenance assassination, I must say that he
was a very bad man and deserved all he got.”
This was the first time an official had ever been so outspoken, and I
was surprised. The next thing he said fairly made my heart thump.
“So many lies have been told about this girl that I wish some one who
would tell the literal truth would interview her and give the facts to
the world--up to now no one has seen her at all.”
“I should think you could easily find some one to do that,” I replied.
“No,” said he, “it is not easy to find one you can trust.”
With all the nonchalance I could command I then said:
“If you care to arrange for me to see her I will not only report
truthfully, but I will show you my report before I publish it.”
The man looked deeply grateful, and at once petitioned the governor to
grant me permission to visit the much-talked-of prisoner in her cell.
The governor hesitated at first, but finally consented; thus before I
had really begun the difficult task of securing entrance to the prison,
the whole matter seemed settled for me.
In the light of the revelations that followed I can only explain the
attitude of the police-master and the governor in one way. Both of them
are honest men, and neither had, up to that time, I really believe, a
true version of the story.
No attempt was made to prejudice me against Spiradonova. “I will grant
you permission to see her, and I shall be interested in learning your
opinion,” was all the governor said. The police-master offered to escort
us to the prison himself. I was to be accompanied by Mr. Nahum Luboshitz
of London, a photographer and interpreter. The rendezvous was at the
prison-gate at three o’clock in the afternoon.
We arrived first, Luboshitz and I. A soldier in a long, brown coat, with
a gun over his shoulder, paced slowly before the great iron gate that
joined the strong walls.
“Please don’t look so intently, sir,” he said approaching.
“Why?”
“The superior officer is very severe,” he answered. “He will punish me
if you look so sharply at the prison.”
As if mortal eye could penetrate those walls!
As the clock struck three a carriage drove up and the police-master
joined us.
A peep-hole cut in the small door of the huge gate was slipped back in
response to the heavy knock sounded by the chief of police. A pair of
eyes surveyed us, and the small door was thrown open. The chief bowed
his head to escape the low portal, and stepped in. We followed. Several
soldiers stood in the breach between the outer wall and the prison
proper. These saluted. We went directly to the _kontora_, or office,
where we found the prison-master--a burly, blue-eyed, sandy-bearded
fellow, who looked the bully.
Now, the rank of prison-master is equal with the rank of police-master,
and between these two men, as also with the commander of the military
forces in and about the prison, who again is of equal rank, is a
constant clash and friction. The police-master presented us to the
prison-master and told him we had come to see Spiradonova. The
prison-master greeted us pleasantly enough, surveyed us with obvious and
open suspicion, and replied that this we might not do without a written
order from the governor. The chief told him that the governor had
sanctioned our coming, and asked him to escort us. This made little
impression upon the little czar, whose kingdom is encircled with iron
bars and strong walls. It took a good deal of persuasion to get him to
yield even to the extent of telephoning to the governor to learn if it
was his wish that we should see Spiradonova. This was finally done,
however, and an affirmative answer received.
The prison-master, from the moment we entered the prison, put every
obstacle in our way that he could, and took advantage of every
opportunity to thwart our purpose--which was to get the true story of
the girl from her own lips. When the governor telephoned that he had
asked the police-master to accompany us to see that every courtesy was
extended to us, and to insure that we saw Marie Spiradonova in her own
cell, there seemed nothing else for the prison-master to do but to
yield.
Shackles, clamped round human ankles, clanked and rattled in the dark,
damp corridors down which we were led. At a turning stood a group of
“politicals”--beardless college boys in their student jackets. We
crossed a yard, passed the windows of a workshop where busy looms
rattled. A long, low workshop, from which issued noises of the forge, of
iron whelting and hammer strokes, stood in the center of the yard. We
passed round it and entered a court, at the end of which stood a
similar, but smaller, building of whitewashed stone and low roof, with
iron-grated windows. The door stood to one side and was approached by a
small, wooden porch. We entered the outer door and turned abruptly to
the left and stood before a barred door with a small peep-hole, crossed
by iron, cut at eye level. The chief of police headed our file; I
followed, and at my heels Mr. Luboshitz, behind him the prison-master, a
military officer, several soldiers and three prison officials. The chief
threw open the door and held it wide with extended arm for me to pass in
first.
I stepped over the threshold and stood face to face with the most famous
“terrorist” in Russia.
She was a delicate girl with soft, blue eyes that deepened to violet as
the pink in her clear cheeks deepened to a hectic red as she talked. Her
wavy brown hair was parted in the middle and draped over her temples to
hide hideous scars left by the kicks of the Cossacks. Her costume was a
simple, blue, prison dress.
She stood quietly awaiting our approach, a little mystified apparently.
The chief of police was the first to speak.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, removing his hat and addressing her with all
the courtesy of a gentleman approaching any lady in his wife’s
drawing-room; “Mademoiselle, these gentlemen are from America. They
would like to talk with you for a few minutes if you feel equal to it.”
“Certainly,” she replied, and turned with a grateful smile toward me.
With characteristic delicacy the very polite chief of police at once
withdrew, and as long as we remained with her he continued to pace the
outer court. Not so the prison-master, soldiers, and other officials.
“Do you speak French, mademoiselle?” I asked.
“Yes, monsieur, a little; or German.”
“What about English?”
“A _leetle_,” she answered, laughing nervously.
She was still standing. There was but one chair in the room, a wooden
chair. This I drew toward her and she sat down. As she did so her
handkerchief dropped from her hand. We all noticed it, for it was wet
and stained with blood.
Luboshitz picked it up and handed it to her. As he turned away I saw
beads of cold sweat standing on his brow, and he told me afterward that
he thought he was on the point of fainting.
“Once I knew all the languages, monsieur,” she went on, “but since my
head was hurt I find it difficult to remember.”
Her voice was soft and rich, even melodious.
“Are you comfortable--and well?” I asked--with awkwardness, I must
confess.
“_Je suis très malade._”
The prison-master interrupted.
“Speak only in Russian,” he said.
We knew it would be difficult to talk freely in a language which he and
the soldiers understood, and so Luboshitz began at once to photograph
her. While he was doing this I stood near her, and as frequently as
seemed expedient we exchanged sentences in French.
“Did you come to Tamboff expressly to see me, monsieur?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. Of course.”
“Then people are talking about me?”
“They are, indeed. And not in Russia only, but in other countries. In
France there is a Spiradonova League.”
“Speak Russian!” commanded the prison-master.
As she leaned against the white wall near her barred window, she said:
“That is what I mind most, monsieur--that soldier who is always looking
in at me.”
Her head rested against the cold plaster, and a half shadow fell across
her face. Her delicate mouth was drawn tight, but her eyes shot bright
glances toward us. She was so pathetically glad at our coming--probably
the first bit of cheerful change since her incarceration. In the room
was a dingy bed and a shaky table, which with the one chair comprised
all of the furniture. As she talked a beautiful expression played over
her regular features, and I thought of the word applied to her by the
police-master--“Exalté.”
“To see you, mademoiselle,” I ventured again in
[Illustration: Marie Spiradonova in prison--the girl who shot the
governor of Tamboff]
French, “one would think that you looked upon your situation here as if
it were the hour of your greatest happiness--”
“Ah, monsieur, in a way I am happy, but--”
A hand rested on my shoulder.
Once too often had we defied the authorities.
“Very well,” I answered. “Let her tell her story in Russian, from the
very beginning.”
“She may not speak further,” added the prison-master.
“But we came here to listen to her story.”
“That is impossible.”
“But we have the governor’s permission.”
“Have you it in writing?”
“The police-master is our cicerone.”
We called to him and asked him if it was not his understanding that we
were to hear her story from her own lips.
“Assuredly. It was the governor’s expressed wish,” he answered.
“I cannot permit it,” sternly returned the prison-master.
“You must. That is why I came with them, to see that they got every word
from her.”
“I am the responsible man here, and I cannot permit her to speak.”
The parley continued, but the prison-master was obdurate.
At last Spiradonova spoke: “Believe absolutely nothing unless you hear
it from me.”
She uttered the words slowly, distinctly, each syllable weighted with
meaning.
The situation was most uncomfortable. The police-master was deeply
embarrassed and annoyed. The prison-master grim. Spiradonova cool,
contained, and, in her attitude toward the prison-master, defiant and
scornful.
Turning to me, the police-master said: “The man is a fool--a beast! Does
he not see that here is his opportunity to clear away those awful
charges? What story can you report now? That he would not let you talk
to her! Fool!”
The prison-master was determined that the story of Marie Spiradonova
should not be told us by her. Recognizing the futility of further
parleying, I finally asked her if the letter she had succeeded in
smuggling out to a friend a little while before was true in every
detail.
“Yes,” she answered, “in every word!”
When the interview was forced to a conclusion, I extended my hand toward
her. Her fingers closed round mine with a firm and certain grip. She
looked me fairly in the eyes. I felt that I stood in the presence of one
whose inner calm was strong, and whose motives were as noble as pure. It
was Napoleon who said: “One may be deceived in a face. But in a hand
never.” The hand of Spiradonova is large and full. Her fingers are
slightly tapering, but strong--the hand of a strong woman.
“Monsieur,” she called, as I stepped over the threshold, “take my
greetings to France, to England, and to America.”
* * * * *
Her letter, describing the incidents which followed her shooting of
Luchenovsky, is a remarkable transcript of a present-day inquisition.
Here is the body of the letter:
When I had fired five times at him, the escort recovered
themselves. The platform was crowded with Cossacks, and there were
shouts of “Strike,” “Slash,” “Fire”! and swords were drawn. When I
saw this, I thought my end had come, and I decided not to give
myself up alive. With this in view, I pointed my revolver at my
head, when I was stunned by several blows, and fell flat on the
platform. Further blows on the face and head sent a thrill of pain
through my whole body. I tried to say “Leave me to be shot,” but
blows fell continuously. I tried to protect my face with my hands,
but they were pushed away with the butts of the rifles. Then the
Cossack officers seized me by my braid of hair, lifted me up
bodily, and with a great swing threw me down on the platform. I
lost my senses. My hands were unclasped, and the blows fell on my
face and head. Then they dragged me by one leg down the stair-case,
my head bumping on each step. Then they took me again by the braid,
and lifted me on to the vehicle of the _isvoschik_. They took me to
a house, and the Cossack officer asked me my name. When making the
attempt I had decided not to hide my name, but at this moment I
forgot my name. They beat me again on the face and breast. When I
was taken to the police station they undressed me and searched me,
and took me to a cold cell with a wet, dirty, stone floor. At about
noon or one o’clock, the assistant chief of police, Zhdanov, and a
Cossack officer, Abramov, came. They stayed in my cell, with short
intervals, till eleven at night. They examined me with refined
methods of torture that Ivan the Terrible might have envied.
Zhdanov would kick me into the corner of the cell, and then the
Cossack would throw me back to Zhdanov, who put his foot on my
neck. They ordered me to be stripped, at the same time preventing
the cold cell from being warmed. They flogged me with the
_nagaika_, with terrible oaths, saying: “Now, then ..., deliver us
a thrilling speech!” One of my eyes was quite closed at that time,
and the right side of my face terribly bruised. Pressing on that
sore place, they would ask: “Painful, dear?” with a sardonic smile.
“Now tell us, who are your comrades?” I was often delirious, but
had a sense of dread of saying anything, and I am sure there was
nothing in what I said but unconnected nonsense.
When I came to, I told them that I would answer the questions put
to me by the proper officials; also that I belonged to the town of
Tamboff, and that Procuror Kamenev and other gendarmes could
testify to this. This provoked quite a storm of indignation. They
pulled hairs out of my head one by one, and asked where other
revolutionists could be found. They pressed their lighted
cigarettes on my bare body, saying: “Cry out, then, you wretch!”
They stamped on my feet with their heavy boots, pressed them as if
in a vise, and shouted: “Scream, then, you ----. We have made whole
villages bellow, but you, miserable little girl, haven’t screamed
once, either at the station or here. But we will make you scream.
We will amuse ourselves with your sufferings. We will give you to
the Cossacks for the night.” “No,” said Abramov, “we will have you
for ourselves first, and then give you to the Cossacks.” Brutal
hugging followed, with shouts of “Scream, then!” But I am positive
that I did not scream once, either at the station or police office.
I only talked half-consciously. At eleven o’clock, they had
recorded my disposition, but they declined to produce it in
Tamboff, because I was delirious all the time.
Then I was taken by train to Tamboff. The train is moving slowly.
It is cold and dark. The air is thick with Abramov’s brutal oaths.
He swears at me terribly. I felt the breath of death. Even the
Cossacks felt uneasy. “Why are you silent, men? Sing! Let those
wretches die with our merriment.” Then shouting and whistling
began. Passions ran high. Eyes and teeth glittered, and the singing
was disgusting. I was raving “Water!” No water. Then the officer
takes me to the second class. He is drunk and very amiable. His
arms embrace me. He unbuttons my dress. His drunken lips mutter in
a beastly way: “What a velvet breast! What a magnificent body!” I
have no more strength to repulse him, no voice to call out, and
what use if I had? I would willingly dash my head against
something, if there were anything, but this brutalized scoundrel
will not allow it. He kicks me in order to disable me. I call upon
the police officer, who is asleep. The Cossack officer murmurs,
caressing my chin: “Why do you clench your little teeth? Look out,
you may break them?” I could not get a moment of sleep that night.
In the daytime he offers me wine and chocolate, and when people go
away he caresses me again. Just before reaching Tamboff I fell
asleep for an hour. I awoke because the officer’s arm was upon me.
While taking me to the prison, he said: “After all, I am embracing
you.” In Tamboff I was delirious again, and fell terribly ill.
When Marie was brought to trial her judges looked upon her youth, and
listened to the terrible recital of her tortures unmoved. She had killed
a man, an official of the bureaucracy, therefore she must die. An
opportunity was given her to speak, and she rose up and quietly said:
“Gentlemen Judges! Look around you! Where do you see the light faces of
the happy and contented? There are no such faces. Even those who seem,
now, to have the victorious hand, are afflicted by grief--they know
their hour of triumph is brief.
“I am about to be sent from this life. You may kill me--you may kill me
over and over again as you already have done. You may subject me to the
most terrible penalties--but you can add nothing to what I have already
endured. I do not fear death. You may, now, kill my body, but you cannot
destroy my belief that the time of the people’s happiness and freedom is
surely coming, a time when the life of the people will express itself in
forms in which truth and justice will be realized--when the ideas of
brotherhood and freedom will be no more empty sounds, but part of our
every-day, real life. If this is truth it is no grief to lay down one’s
life--
“I have finished.”
A few days later the following letter was received from her by some
friends in Tamboff, smuggled out through a chain of civil criminals:
MY DEAR COMRADES:
Turn over my money partly to Jennie, the balance, the greatest,
turn over to T. I often pass sleepless nights, but I feel
courageously and I know how to save my energy, which has
accumulated owing to idleness.
I dream of the time to hand. My wish is growing stronger and I fear
that I will commit suicide if the autocracy will show me clemency.
My death appears to me of such a value to my people that I will
receive any act of clemency from the Czar as an act of revenge and
insult.
If it will be possible and if they will not kill me soon, I will
try to be useful by gathering new followers.
I would like to know how things are in Tamboff. Have you sufficient
books for the peasants now in prison? Do your duty. It is important
that they should leave prison as revolutionists or near that.
I embrace all my old comrades and shake the hands of the new ones.
Send me your postals with your handwriting. They will be dear to
me.
My greetings to all.
Yours,
M.
P.S. The treatment is good. My health: Fever, cough, headache.
I forgot to say my comradeship in the party of the revolutionists
is taken by me, not only as an acceptance of its program and
tactics, but much higher. It means to me sacrifice of life, of
hopes, of sentiments, for the realization of its ideas. It means to
dispose of each minute of life in such a way that the cause shall
gain.
M.
Luchenovsky was succeeded by a wise and humane man, who valued human
life, even that of simple peasants. In the province of Tamboff Cossacks
ceased to riot through the villages, looting at will and preying upon
the helpless inhabitants. The taking of this one life, at the sacrifice
of her own, ended for the time, at least, an era of darkness in Tamboff
and saved the honor of untold women and the lives of many.
The two officers who so foully abused her went unpunished so far as the
Russian authorities were concerned, but after the lapse of a few weeks
Abramov was found dead in the street one night, and several weeks later
Zhdanov’s lifeless body was also discovered.
Hundreds of men in Tamboff had wished and prayed for the death of
Luchenovsky. But only a girl dared. Whether that girl had hysteria (as
some asserted), or not, is of small consequence. Joan of Arc was a
neurasthenic.
That night, after my visit to Spiradonova, when dark had settled over
Tamboff, I stumbled down a littered street not more than a hundred yards
from the prison to a poor little cottage, once painted red, now
weather-worn and shabby. Within sat a middle-aged woman with large,
dark eyes and creased, anxious face. I found her in an inner room,
sitting with folded arms by a low-burning lamp. “Yes, Marie Spiradonova
is my daughter,” she said. Then with quiet voice, not untouched with
pride, she told me about the childhood days of the girl now shut apart
from her by prison walls. She told me how from an early age Marie was
studious, and thought to study medicine. Her three sisters all turned
toward medicine, and two are dentists. Marie’s ambition was to be a
doctor. She studied very hard, but when her country fell under deeper
and darker oppressions, she could think of nothing but the sufferings of
her people, so she gave up everything to serve the movement that was
making for freedom.
I knew that two of Marie’s sisters were also in prison at that time, one
for merely having received a letter from Marie, and the other had been
taken as a suspected propagandist. There was no direct charge against
her.
“Madame,” I said to the mother, “how does it make you feel to have three
of your daughters in prison at one time on political charges?”
The old lady was thoughtful for a moment and then, in a voice fervent
and earnest, a voice I shall never forget, she replied:
“It makes me the proudest mother in all Russia.”
Shortly after my return to St. Petersburg I received the following
letter. Like the others it had been smuggled out of the prison, as I
afterward learned, through a chain of civil criminals:
I am very sorry that I could not speak more with you. The
conditions of my arrest are heavy, because I am isolated and the
soldiers are always at my window. During the three months of my
arrest I have not once slept without my clothes--the soldiers keep
looking in upon me all the time. I am embarrassed at each
movement. You can understand how such constant scrutiny amounts to
torture, for I cannot get rid of civilized customs to the extent of
undressing before the eyes of men.
The physicians find it necessary that I should be quiet, and to
walk continuously in the fresh air for one hour each day. The
government gives me this hour of freedom, but under disagreeable
conditions, owing to the curiosity of the soldiers.
If the people of America are interested in the fate of this Russian
girl, tell them that they must rather interest themselves in the
fatherland of this girl. The revolutionary movement here is now
making for liberty. I want for nothing personally because for a
long time I have not existed personally. My heart and my soul are
given to this movement--the movement which is in the service of the
people.
There is no basis for comparison, this solitude of the soul. The
feeling of shame makes me shudder. It will not leave my memory, and
can never be effaced. There is nothing with which to liken this
torture of the pride, of the self-respect. This suffering is as
poignant as the blows of my tormentors. The same hands that beat
the hungering peasants caressed and slapped me!... Still, the
government, with all its experience in lies, and its permission of
illegal actions among its servants, will not succeed in
rehabilitating these two men. They are condemned beyond recall,
branded with the scorn of the people.
I was glad to see free people, from a quiet, liberty-loving land,
to receive their salutations....
My spirit is now strong, and without fear I await deportation and
_catagora_. If the government does not succeed in killing me with
tortures during these years I believe I shall be free.
Good-by--I give you both my hands.”
(Signed) MARIE SPIRADONOVA.