FATHER GAPON AND AZEFF
George Gapon began his public career by joining one of those amazing
organisations which the bureaucracy in the last days of its decline
created for its defence. It came of an application of the method of
exorcising Beelzebub by Beelzebub. The principle and expediency of
borrowing something from the democratic movements of the west to
serve as a prop for the autocracy of the east had taken root in the
fertile brain of Plehve, the organiser, and he set scores of agents
working at various aspects of this fascinating problem. I met
several of them. One of these was a certain Zubatoff, who organised
the Moscow factory hands into a puissant association under the
unavowed supervision and direction of the secret police and in
opposition to the inchoate unions directed by the socialists. The
project was audacious, for it included the getting up of economic
strikes for higher wages and better conditions, which the authorities
generally brought to an end by taking sides with the workmen against
the employers. To such expedients was the autocracy reduced! I had
met Gapon once or twice when calling on Bishop Antoninus, who played
a part in the religious Philosophical Society, but I can hardly say
that I was acquainted with or impressed by him. I distinctly
remember, however, Witte's indignation at the immorality of
Zubatoff's expedient, and at the harm it was inflicting on industry.
From Moscow bitter complaints had been received from directors and
owners of factories, and Witte, appealed to as Finance Minister, took
their part unhesitatingly. "It is not for the secret police," he
once said to me, "to organise strikes which are forbidden by law. If
strikes are desirable, necessary, or permissible, they should be left
to the men whose interests are furthered by them." Gapon at first
worked under Zubatoff and later alone, and as he confessed to me
{159} when I pressed the question, he had accepted money from the
secret police, "but all the money advanced by the government," he
argued, "came from the people. And besides, if I had scrupulously
refused it, there would have been no great movement now against the
regime." His plan and justification, as he explained to others and
myself, consisted in his intention to get the factory hands into his
power, select the most gifted and trustworthy among them, make them
his agents for propaganda, and then when the auspicious hour should
strike, to lead the compacted working class to victory over the
autocracy. It was the scheme of a visionary who had no eye for
realities, the dream of an ambitious and eloquent greenhorn.
The dismissal of four artisans from the Putiloff Works at St.
Petersburg[1] was the occasion that led to the procession of Bloody
Sunday. Gapon proposed that a demand should be made not only for the
reinstatement of the men, but also for the punishment of the foreman
who had sent them away, and for guarantees that the existing abnormal
relations between employers and employed should be so reformed as to
render such abuses as that complained of impossible in the future.
If this reasonable request were not complied with, he would not, he
said, answer for the maintenance of public tranquillity. The working
men were as clay in his hands. His success whenever he addressed
them had turned his head and clouded his judgment, for vanity was his
besetting sin. In a few days his economic demands were reinforced by
political pretensions, and he at last exhorted the men to follow him
to the Winter Palace to see the Tsar and lay before him the needs of
the entire Russian people. The idea was not his own. Who suggested
it I do not know for certain, but I have some grounds for believing,
but not enough for asserting, that it had travelled from the far end
of the globe, whence money was also arriving.
I called on Gapon a few days before the historic Sunday[2] and being
myself acquainted with most of the prominent {160} liberals not only
in the capital but also in the provinces, I felt curious to ascertain
more than I then knew about his aims, means, qualifications, and
antecedents. The last-named subject was obviously distasteful to
him. He reluctantly admitted as much as he saw that I knew about
himself, but his answers generally, as well as the manner in which he
gave them, left an unpleasant impression in my mind to which I gave
utterance in my estimate of him published next day.[3] I felt that
such a man was not fitted to lead the people in a country like
Russia, where punishments for abortive revolutions was Draconian, and
I never could rid myself of the conviction that he was not to be
trusted.
On the eve of the great demonstration I spent the whole night in the
company of Maxim Gorky, Kedrin, and a number of liberals, who were
indirectly helping Gapon by endeavouring to get the government to
keep the troops in barracks on the morrow and to induce the Tsar to
receive, or send some one to receive, a delegation of the working
men. Witte, who, although not in power, was eager to canalise the
current and render it harmless, telephoned to the responsible
minister, his friend and mine, Prince Sviatopolk Mirsky, and besought
him to intercede with the monarch. To no purpose. Mirsky, who was a
humane, straight, honourable man, did everything he could to have the
request complied with, but without result. I well remember Witte's
last words to Mirsky at the telephone an hour after midnight: "Are
you really aware how serious the movement is, and how tragic the
consequences of your refusal may be?" And the answer came: "I am
alive to all that, but I can do nothing to prevent it. The matter is
not in my hands." The delegation then withdrew. Nobody in authority
could be discovered in the capital that night who would confess to
having any voice in shaping the events of the morrow. Blind fate
seemed to be standing at the wheel.
On the Sunday morning I went out to see the demonstration and was
very nearly shot by the Cossacks who fired on a body of working men
and women a few yards from Witte's {161} house after having hurriedly
warned me to vacate the ground between them and the crowd. The
people, who were unarmed and peaceful, but excited and wound up by
Gapon, were fired upon without ruth.[4] It would have been possible
for the Emperor or a grand duke to conciliate them, or for a few
hundred policemen to disperse them with truncheons, but counsels of
wisdom were rejected, possibly because Witte who tendered them was
disliked by the Tsar.
Military specialists afterwards assured me that if the workmen, who
reached the neighbourhood of the empty Winter Palace, had been led by
a resolute chief they might have occupied it without the loss of a
man and perhaps turned the riot into a revolution.[5] I do not share
this view, which I record as interesting. For the demonstration was
a mad freak. The working men were unarmed, their leader was
self-seeking and pacific, the groups, scattered all over the city,
could not be concentrated, and the attitude of the crowd was such
that the soldiers were certain to disperse it without a serious
effort. This was known to Gorky, Kedrin, and myself the night
before. The priest failed to realise it.
The Cossacks stationed near the bridges and at other points fired
upon the advancing groups and a massacre ensued. The number of
victims as given by some English and foreign papers amounted to
thousands; in reality the killed did not exceed seventy odd, nor the
wounded 240.
Father Gapon in person led a numerous body of men from a part of the
city far distant from the Winter Palace, and before they had made
much progress they were stopped by the troops who opened fire.
Gapon's life was in danger for a while, but he lay flat in the snow
enveloped in his heavy fur coat during the firing. One of his
friends fell dead by his side. Having escaped the same fate he was
taken to a place of safety by a devoted friend, the engineer
Ruthenberg, a member of a revolutionary society. It came about in
this way.
After the third volley the silence was broken only by the {162} cries
and moans of the wounded, who lay wriggling or wincing in the mottled
snow. Ruthenberg raised his head cautiously, looked round at the
prostrate bodies, and seeing beside him the burly figure of the
cleric curled up in the snow, nudged him violently. From the
capacious fur mantle Gapon's head was lifted slowly. "Are you alive,
father?" "Yes." "Shall we get away from here?" "By all means."
And they went. Hardly had they entered a courtyard hard by when
Gapon theatrically exclaimed, "There's no longer a God, there's no
longer a Tsar." And yet within a twelve-month he was secretly
assuring the authorities that his veneration for the Tsar was and
always had been profound--in fact it came immediately after his love
for God.
The engineer, eager to save the priest's life as the most precious
thing in that motley crowd, took away all the compromising documents
in Gapon's possession and asked whether he might also relieve him of
his long tell-tale hair. The priest assented. Ruthenberg then took
out his clasp knife for the purpose. It was the knife that contained
a pair of scissors and was to be employed once again on Gapon at the
close of his career and his life and by the same engineer.
Ruthenberg began the operation as though it were the ceremony of
conferring upon a novice the dignity of monkhood. And the working
men, who literally worshipped their leader, clustered round the pair
and stretched forth their hands for the locks of the precious hair
which they received reverently with bared and bowed heads as though
an awe-inspiring sacrament were being administered. And as they took
it, they muttered, "It is holy." Those locks of Gapon's hair were
treasured up by the working men and their families as sacred
relics[6]--for a twelvemonth and a day. From the moment Gapon rose
from the ground he was another man in more than one sense of the
term. Instead of the enthusiastic leader who had recoiled from no
danger he was in mortal terror of being arrested and hanged. Of
hanging he had a supernatural dread. It might have been a
presentiment.
I saw him that same evening. He came disguised to the {163} Economic
Society where a meeting was being held of the intelligentsia, and his
unbridled vanity moved him to deliver an address, having first had
himself introduced to the audience as a friend of Father Gapon's. He
had nothing of interest to tell his audience, but if I remember right
he asked that the workmen should be supplied with firearms in order
to rebel with success. The historic procession imparted new vigour
to the popular movement and the massacre of the unarmed citizens
inflicted enormous damage on the cause of the autocracy.
The remainder of Gapon's history had best find a place here. His
friend, the engineer Ruthenberg, who saved his life near the Narva
Gates, stood by him helpfully with counsel, money, refuge, friends,
until he had him safe in Geneva. There and in Paris Gapon's vanity
was fed and fostered by the reverence with which the Russian colony
received him. He formally joined the socialists, expecting to rise
to still greater fame and break the record he had already attained.
A lady who had been in Petersburg and on her return from Russia found
Gapon still idle and fretting, cheered him up with the information
that the workmen of his party in the capital literally adored him and
were about to open a subscription to raise a monument to him during
his life. These tidings completely upset his mental balance. He
communicated them to every one he met, generally with the comment:
"It is without parallel in history." His personal magnetism, which
drew and captivated many of those who came under his influence,
enabled him to live in idleness abroad, supported either by the party
or by individuals, until he published the story of his life, for
which he is said to have received a thousand pounds. A measure of
his powers of suggestion was afforded by the ease with which he
talked over a certain Russian with whom he became acquainted abroad
into making him a present of fifty thousand francs[7] "to organise
the workmen of {164} Petersburg." This money he is alleged to have
spent entirely on himself, and as soon as the party to which he now
belonged heard of what he had done and how he had accomplished it
they asked him to resign. It is worth noting as a characteristic of
the man that about that time, and before six months had elapsed since
the events of Bloody Sunday, Gapon had again resumed secret relations
with the Russian Department of Police.[8] When in Finland later on,
a certain captain remarked to him, "Russia has had her Gapon, but now
she needs a Napoleon." He rejoined, "How do you know that that
Russian Napoleon is not standing before you now?"
I was once invited to dinner near London by a well-known Russian
revolutionist who enjoys an enviable reputation in the higher walks
of life. I accepted gratefully. Before the day had come, however, I
received another letter informing me that Father Gapon would be the
honoured guest of the evening, whereupon I begged to be excused, for
I felt an inexplicable antipathy to the man. Later on when he had
returned in secret to Russia[9] he sent a message to ask me whether I
would meet him. He also apologised for troubling one with whom he
could hardly say that he was acquainted, but my close relations with
the Prime Minister warranted him, he thought, in taking this unwonted
step. I declined to see Gapon on the ground that my intimacy with
the Premier would not allow me to enter into relations with an enemy,
real or alleged, of the government without first informing its chief
and obtaining his assent. Gapon sent again to request me to tell
Witte that he was back in St. Petersburg and had something of
importance to say.
I brought the matter up that same night after dinner. Witte and I
were talking about various people when I asked him his opinion of
Gapon, and then inquired when he had last heard of him. "And where
is he now?" I queried. "He is still abroad, I suppose." I remarked
that to my knowledge he was in the Russian capital. At first the
statesman {165} thought I was joking. When he saw that I could tell
where the priest was to be found he requested me to give him Gapon's
address. I did not possess it, nor would I have given it
unconditionally if I had had it. I told him, however, how he could
get into communication with him, but only after he had first promised
me not to allow him to be arrested. Witte apprised me subsequently
that he had met his colleague, Durnovo, Minister of the Interior,
next day, and that Durnovo had casually mentioned Gapon's name to
him. "Gapon is here," said Witte. "Are you certain?" "Quite
certain." "Then I must have the scoundrel arrested." "No, no, you
must promise not to touch him. I have given my word. I will see to
it that he leaves the country." Durnovo reluctantly agreed to give
Gapon twenty-four or forty-eight hours' grace, and Witte sent him the
necessary money from his own purse to enable him to quit Russia.[10]
I did not know exactly when Gapon entered into relations with
Ratchkoffsky, the head of the Political Police of all Russia, who,
after having been dismissed for sending a true report about the shady
antecedents of the Tsar's first favourite, the French table-rapper,
Philippe, was reinstated as the cleverest, most resourceful, and most
subtle organiser of anti-revolutionary counter-mines in the Tsardom.
And judging by what he actually accomplished he deserved this
reputation. I, who for years was Witte's most intimate friend, met
him two or three times at the statesman's house and was surprised to
note that he spoke Russian with a foreign accent and expressed
himself slowly, hesitatingly, as though he were seeking for words.
The minister, who was always outspoken to me when characterising the
people he received and had warned me in advance to keep clear of
several because he suspected them of being spies or blackmailers,
expressed himself thus about Ratchkoffsky: "He is well worth knowing.
He has an extraordinary, subtle mind. The way he gets round the
anarchists is simply amazing." But I fought shy of Ratchkoffsky, and
he of me. He probably remembered {166} my dossier. Anyhow, I have
no clear-cut impression of anything but his exterior and his small
talk and I found neither attractive.
I have since learned that Gapon had become Ratchkoffsky's paid agent
some time in the first half of February, 1906,[11] that he had
written a letter of repentance and promise of amendment to the Home
Secretary, Durnovo, and had undertaken to seduce and win over to the
secret service his friend, the engineer Ruthenberg; and that was his
undoing. Ratchkoffsky handled Gapon in a masterly way, flattering
him to the top of his bent until the priest began to imagine that he
was about to become one of Russia's greatest men. Gapon, on his
part, retracted all his former opinions, brand-marked his action of
Bloody Sunday, and announced his resolve to make amends for all his
former wickedness. That was exactly what the Police Director
wanted--to bedraggle the idol of the people with mud and to plunge
him in the lowest depths of degradation. It was with this object and
probably with the ulterior aim of sending the priest to his death
that Ratchkoffsky set him the task of disaffecting Ruthenberg to the
revolutionary movement and securing his services as a spy.
Ratchkoffsky well knew from Azeff that the engineer had nothing new
to reveal, and also that he would turn upon his tempter. Anyhow, it
was the persistent effort to achieve that impossible and useless feat
that ruined the fickle priest. There is something almost amusing in
the _naïveté_ with which Gapon, when seeking to lure his friend and
saviour, tells of the friendly turn he had done him in his talks with
the head of the political police. "At first, you know, Ratchkoffsky
did not trust you, but when I assured him that you were straight and
honest, and that I would vouch for you, he was easy in mind!" A
certificate of straightness and honesty from the traitor for the man
whom he hopes to render disloyal comes to a westerner with an
anarchist flavour.
{167}
Nothing is more characteristic of the degree of vice and corruption
to which the autocracy, and not the autocracy only, had sunk at the
beginning of the century than the cynicism with which assassination,
cold-blooded treachery, shameless perjury, and all the abominations
of applied Machiavellism pushed to its uttermost extremes, were
discussed and employed by the State and also by its foes. All
restraints and checks were gone. The Tsar's government employed
unprincipled scoundrels who, like Azeff, cajoled young men into a
secret society, set them to commit dastardly crimes, and then
delivered them up to death, penal servitude, or exile, and on the
other hand the revolutionary parties were served by the self-same
ruffians who proscribed and murdered grand dukes, ministers,
generals. And the imperial government, which knew that such murders
as those of Plehve and of the Tsar's uncle, the Grand Duke Sergius,
had been planned and organised by the well-paid State servant Azeff,
not only allowed him to remain in its employ, but continued to pay
him royally. These things enable one to gauge the depths to which
moral gangrene had eaten into the organism before it finally
collapsed. Tsarism was being developed to its extreme consequences.
What could be more artless or illuminating than the following entry
made by the engineer Ruthenberg in his diary? "February, 1906. I
found nobody in Petersburg. Having learned that Azeff was in
Seyversk I repaired thither. I arrived by the first morning train,
about 7 a.m. on the 11th or 12th February. I narrated everything to
Azeff[12] (about Gapon's treason). I told him that as a member of
the party I do not consider that I have the right to take any
measures on my own initiative, so I await instructions from the
Central Committee. Azeff was astonished and disgusted at what I had
recounted. It was his opinion that Gapon should be done to death
like a poisonous viper. In order to {168} accomplish this I must ask
him to meet me, drive out with him in the evening, taking my own
sleigh to the Krestoffsky Garden,[13] remain there to supper and stay
late--in fact until everybody is gone--then drive in the same
conveyance to the wood, plunge a knife into Gapon's back, and throw
his body out of the sleigh. The same morning ... Subbotin
arrived.... In essentials he shared Azeff's opinion that Gapon must
be killed." ... Another council of four was held next day and
opinions were divided, one member insisting on the murder of Azeff
alone and the others advocating a meeting of Ruthenberg, Gapon, and
Ratchkoffsky at which the engineer should also kill the other two.
Ruthenberg did not venture to assassinate Gapon, who was literally
idolised by the working men, until he could get their assent. In
order to obtain this it behoved him, in his own interest, first to
prove the priest's guilt. With this object in view he took Gapon out
in a sleigh, the driver of which was one of the factory hands
disguised, who was told in advance to keep his ears pricked, listen
to the conversation, and report it faithfully to his comrades. The
talk consisted of Ruthenberg's various objections to Gapon's proposal
that he should meet Ratchkoffsky and betray his party, and of Gapon's
detailed answers and persuasive pleas. The priest had at first
mentioned ten thousand pounds as the reward which the engineer might
expect for his treason, but was afterwards obliged to confess that
the head of the political police had refused to pay more than one
quarter of this sum.
Naturally the talk was very open, the names of persons being clearly
pronounced by Ruthenberg so that the driver heard enough to dispel
his doubts. He and his comrades having subsequently talked the
matter over, decided at the first opportunity to seize Gapon, disarm,
try, and execute him. And for these purposes a wooden house was
hired some ten or twelve miles outside the capital, on the way to the
Finnish frontier, into which he was to be inveigled. It {169} was
situated in a little village of wooden houses used as summer
dwellings by the poorer middle class of the capital and left empty in
winter. Gapon, however, at first refused to leave Petersburg under
any circumstances, but finally accepted Ruthenberg's invitation and
went without even taking the revolver which he had never before left
behind. After some conversation with the engineer the pair
approached the shanty, in which a number of workmen were secretly
waiting to discharge the functions of judges and executioners.
"Is there anybody in the house?" asked Gapon as they drew near to the
dismal-looking, frail, wooden structure in the deserted snow-covered
village. "Nobody," replied his friend. "Bravo!" rejoined the
priest, "you always manage to get a place where even a dog would not
scent your presence." The members of the improvised areopagus were
meanwhile waiting in a little backroom on the upper story, and by way
of disarming suspicion the door had been shut and a padlock hung
outside as though it had remained locked ever since the end of summer
when all these shabby "villas" are vacated. The plan was for
Ruthenberg and Gapon to enter this particular room where the priest
would be disarmed, bound, and tried. But Gapon, arriving first, went
into the larger room, took off his fur coat, flopped heavily down on
the sofa, and began to chatter away more cynically than ever before,
fancying that no one but his friend could hear him, whereas his every
word was audible to the men next door. "Why ever won't you come to
terms?" he began; "25,000 roubles is a respectable sum." "Yes, yes,
but in Moscow you told me that Ratchkoffsky had offered 100,000."
And so more and more compromising answers were elicited by the
engineer's tricky questions. For example, the latter objected that
if he betrayed his comrades they would be hanged and he therefore
recoiled from the act. Gapon urged that once the money was paid by
the authorities, the two could then warn their comrades to escape and
thus save the lambs and feed the wolves. His friend then insisted
that this was not feasible because they would be {170} "shadowed" by
Ratchkoffsky's detectives and all of them hanged. "Oh, well, we will
arrange their escape somehow," remarked the ex-priest. "Perhaps part
might get away," said Ruthenberg, "but they'll surely catch and hang
the rest." "That would be a pity," observed Gapon. And so the
fateful dialogue ran on.
In this way the wretched man was tempted and played with for the
space of about half an hour, until he had laid bare all his crimes
against the men who had followed him and braved death under his
leadership and had denied God and the Tsar at his bidding a little
over a year before. Towards the close of this oblique
cross-examination the engineer struck out a new line in order to
reach a climax. "What would become of you if the workmen, say only
those of your own section, got wind of your relations with
Ratchkoffsky?" "They know nothing about that, and if they heard
anything I would make them believe that I was doing it for their own
good." "Yes, but suppose they were to discover all that I know about
you? ... that you betrayed me and even undertook to seduce me and
enlist me among the provocateurs and through me to betray the
militant organisation, and that you sent a letter of repentance to
Durnovo? What then?" "Nobody knows those things, nobody can ever
find them out." "But suppose I myself were to publish them?" "Oh,
of course you would never do such a thing...." Then having meditated
a while, "And if you did I would write to the papers and say you had
gone mad and that I knew nothing of those things. Besides, you
possess no documents, no witnesses to bear them out. There isn't the
shadow of a doubt that it is I whom they would believe."[14]
After this they moved out of the room. Behind a door Gapon came upon
an ear witness, was terrified, and wanted to kill him on the spot.
Thereupon Ruthenberg went to the door of the little room, pushed it
open, and turning to the priest exclaimed, "Look! there are my
witnesses!" Gapon, turning his gaze upon the man whom he had been
{171} talking to as his second self, fell on his knees, and
exclaimed, "Martin,[15] Martin!" "There's no Martin here for you!"
exclaimed a voice. The workmen, who had with difficulty repressed
their fury during Gapon's unwitting self-accusation, threw themselves
fiercely upon him now and pinned him to the floor. Then they dragged
him into the adjoining room. Ruthenberg covered his face with his
hands and went out. The first impulse of the men was to shoot the
traitor. But he tore himself from their clutches in the strength of
his despair and adjured them to have mercy. "Brothers, brothers!" he
implored them. "We are not your brothers. Ratchkoffsky is your
brother." "Brothers, I swear to you that I did it for the sake of an
idea..." "Yes, we have just heard your ideas. We know them now."
"Comrades, in the name of the past, forgive me ... in the name of the
past." But the men went on tying his hands and feet in silence.
"Brothers! Spare me. Remember the links that bind us to each
other." "That's exactly why you deserve to die," one of the men
exclaimed. "You sold our blood to the secret police and you merit
death." ... And congruously with an unspoken accord they threw the
noose over his head on to his neck and pulled him over to an iron
hook which had been driven into the clothes-rack.
Gapon, already choking and gasping, croaked out, "Brothers ...
darlings ... stop! ... Let me say a last word!" "String him up!"
commanded one of the men who had walked with Gapon in the procession
of Bloody Sunday. But another comrade interposed, saying, "Let him
have his last word as he asks for it. Perhaps we may learn something
important." ... The pressure of the cord round his neck was eased and
Gapon spoke, "Brothers! ... Have mercy ... Dear ones ... Forgive me
... For the sake of bygone times." ... But the workmen jerked the
cord and Gapon hung powerless. A few minutes later he was dead. The
shadows of evening were falling. {172}
The workmen, gloomy and stern, went out of the room one after the
other on to the terrace where Ruthenberg stood, He was trembling all
over from an attack of nerves. "Is it finished?" he asked. All were
silent. "You should search him now," he said. And they all went
back to the room again where Gapon's corpse was hanging. They
searched him and found various papers in his pockets.... Ruthenberg
said, "You ought to cover his face. Cut the cord and cover up his
face." He took from his own pocket and handed me a clasp
knife--writes a workman--which contained a pair of small, collapsible
scissors. "It was with these very scissors," he remarked, "that I
cut his hair on that day ... the 22nd January ... and now it is with
the same scissors that" ... but he did not complete the sentence and
went out of the dismal room.[16]
In this dramatic manner poetic justice was done and the idol of the
people was covered with infamy.
Azeff, the paid spy of the government and unmatched organiser of
revolutionary murders, was a party to this execution. A word from
him would have stopped or retarded it. That he informed his chief
Ratchkoffsky of what was planned is most probable. For Gapon, after
his meeting with Ruthenberg at the fatal village of Ozerky, was to
have returned and given Ratchkoffsky an account of what took place.
And as he did not return the conclusion that he had been put to death
was almost unavoidable. Yet Gapon's body was allowed to lie for
weeks in the empty house where it had fallen, probably because
Ratchkoffsky was anxious that the crime should be discovered as late
as possible. From the outset the Police Director knew that Gapon had
nothing of importance to reveal and was perfectly useless as a spy,
because the revolutionists had long ceased to trust him. What he
wanted, therefore, was first to discredit the popular hero of Bloody
Sunday--which he had already done--and then to get the revolutionists
to give him a receipt for the work by putting their ex-hero to death
ignominiously. Conception and execution were worthy of the greatest
of Russia's {173} secret police organisers. They were also
characteristic of the government, the regime, and the epoch.
As soon as I received tidings of Gapon's death[17] I asked Witte
whether it was true. He seemed greatly perturbed and only said, "I
cannot credit it. But I will find out at once and let you know."
The next morning as he and I went in to lunch together he said, "I am
sorry to say that Gapon has been put to death. Your information was
correct. Please say nothing about it to any one. What a strange man
he was!" He then told me the whole story of Gapon as far as he knew
it and I wrote it down to his dictation.
Thus the system of government at the outset of the twentieth century
was essentially what Ivan the Terrible had made it in the
sixteenth--an agency independent of the nation, with interests and
aims of its own which often ran counter to those of the people, an
organism which had the strongest motives for keeping the bulk of
Russians in intellectual darkness, political subjection, and in the
plague-polluted gloom of moral degradation. And now that the girders
and joists of the State structure were bending and giving way under
the battering shocks of terrorists who lived and died for
abstractions, the props by which the fabric was being supported were
supplied by Ratchkoffsky, Gapon, Azeff, Tennenbaum, and such-like
beings whose very breath shed poison and from whose infamous deeds
some of the worst criminals of the west would have recoiled. By the
year of the abortive revolution, which foreboded the fall of the
autocracy, the soul of the ruling class in the Tsardom was encrusted
round with foul leprous stains and the moral atmosphere of the nation
permeated with corrosive vapour. Brother could no longer confide in
brother nor parents in their sons, so impregnated had the air become
with suspicion and mistrust.
Take as a typical example the case of the notorious Azeff. A great
clumsy, brawny fellow with a big Marat-like head, an uncommonly low
forehead, eyes that seemed starting from {174} their sockets, thick
lips, very high cheek bones, and a coarse, sensual look, he was early
taken in hand by the Department of the Political Police and
introduced into the holy of holies of the revolutionary party, there
to weave plots that made men shudder, to enlist intrepid, clever
young men--the pick of Russia's youth--to assign to them parts in
political murders, and to have them arrested on the eve of their
realisation and sent to the gallows, Siberia, or a horrible prison.
The police alone being unable to cope with the multitude of patriotic
lads who, stirred by the spectacle of their country's woes, and
inspired by the vision of its future bliss, rose up against the
accursed system, created the rôle of the agent provocateur.
Ratchkoffsky raised it to the dignity of an art. The number of
provocateurs was great, but the king of them all was Yevno Azeff,
known also as the "Fat One." The story of the exploits of this
miscreant would fill a large volume. The names of his victims would
suffice for a national martyrology. The authority he enjoyed with
the militant revolutionists on the one hand, and with the Tsar's
bureaucratic defenders on the other hand, constitutes a psychological
wonder. For although the man had no such charm of person or magic of
language as Gapon possessed, and was physically repellent over and
above, he was so highly esteemed and trusted by both sides that for
years the central committee of the revolutionists refused to
entertain the growing suspicions of certain of his colleagues, or to
take notice of the downright denunciations that came from the
Department of the Political Police itself, while the Tsar's
government, even after it had been proven that Azeff was the
double-dyed scoundrel who had organised the successful plot against
Plehve and the Grand Duke Sergius, not only refused to bring him to
trial or otherwise punish him, but continued to pay him largely and
to keep him in their employment. Azeff was a Janus, and each of his
two faces possessed the power of fascinating the beholder.
Azeff accepted two influential posts in the revolutionary camp: he
was a member of the central committee of the Social Revolutionary
Party, and he was also head of the {175} militant organisation, so
that practically everything was thought out, organised, and its
execution supervised by him. For seven or eight consecutive years
all the threads of the revolutionary movement passed through his
blood-stained hands; he knew personally every leading conspirator in
the province, and shaped every great collective terrorist act. It is
self-evident that the revolutionists, whose watchfulness and
shrewdness need no eulogium, would not have maintained him in this
position of trust if they had not had absolute confidence in his zeal
for the cause and his resourcefulness. It is no less clear that he
must have justified this confidence by concrete acts. These two
conclusions are borne out by well-established facts. Of these
evidences of Azeff's devotion one of the most resonant and fruitful
was the death of Plehve, of which I by chance was a witness. This
versatile ruffian carefully laid his plans for the murder of the
minister in whom the brightest hopes of the autocracy were then
centred and who was paying him for protection against terrorist
plots. It is worth noting by the way that Plehve was one of the
highest types of the champions of Tsarism and a statesman of no mean
order. True, the material in which he worked and the conditions
which he was forced to accept made it not only impossible for him to
achieve great palpable results, but obliged him either to abandon the
task or to have recourse to the most infamous devices ever employed
by a civilised ruler of men. And yet ethically Plehve was neither
worse nor better than the common run of his class. Intellectually
indeed he was far and away their superior. But the system which he
had to bolster up was already so putrid that it could be upheld only
by communicating its rottenness to the forces that were preparing to
attack it. Any powerful shock would, it seemed to him and to many of
his fellow-workers, overthrow the dynasty, the regime, and the entire
ordering of the political community. The diversion which he had
striven to create by the Manchurian campaign was harming in lieu of
helping the autocracy. For the first time all Russia was combining
against the Tsarist State, and any day a far-resonant {176} crime of
the terrorists might prove the precipitating event that would lead to
its overthrow. To hinder this the surest way, as it seemed to
Plehve, would be to contaminate the terrorists with the canker from
which the State was suffering. In this way the system assimilated
its servants and stamped them with the hall-mark of its own ethical
quality.
Plehve was blown to pieces in my presence, and forthwith Azeff became
a demi-god in the eyes of his comrades and a future saviour in the
eyes of the government. Unable to satisfy both masters at once, he
soon afterwards plotted the death of the Tsar's uncle and had him too
blown to pieces. It is not surprising, therefore, that when in the
latter half of the year 1905 he was anonymously denounced to one of
the terrorists as an agent of the political police the revolutionary
committee dismissed the charge with supreme contempt. And yet the
denunciation had come in the shape of a letter sent[18] by an unnamed
official of the Department of the Secret Police[19] in Petersburg.
Moreover, it consisted not merely in an accusation uttered without
evidence; it made two definite statements of interest to the
terrorists, which on inquiry turned out to be true, and ought
therefore to have stimulated curiosity about the third. It alleged
that among the members of the committee were two agents provocateurs,
of whom one was T., who had recently returned from Siberia, where he
had lived in banishment, and that the other was commonly known by
either of his two nicknames, "the Fat One" or "Ivan Nikolayevitch."
The indictment actually specified some of the denunciations which
each of the two men had made against his comrades, and it also
described certain details by which they might be identified. It
asserted, for example, that "the Fat One" had recently spent a
fortnight in Moscow under the false name of Vilenkin. This last
allegation was both true and disquieting.
The member of the committee who had received this letter showed it at
once to Azeff, who grew pale and excited, {177} and exclaimed, "T. is
Tataroff, and A. is, of course, myself, Azeff." He decided to repair
to Moscow without delay, where he opened his mind to another member
of the party, who comforted him by expressing his implicit trust in
his loyalty and zeal. It was obvious, this comforter said, that
Ratchkoffsky and the government were burning to deprive the
revolutionists of the soul of their organisation, of the man who had
removed first Plehve and then the Grand Duke Sergius, and given an
irresistible impetus to things political which would carry Russia far
towards her goal. Another member of the party, however, brooded over
the accusation, and was deeply impressed by the fact that Azeff's
false name was known to the police--for that could only mean either
that somebody had informed against him--and then why did the police
not arrest him?--or else that he himself had informed the police, and
then he was their agent. Other explanation there could be none. And
yet... The second thing that struck this comrade was that the
inquiry opened into the case against Tataroff showed that the
anonymous writer had told the truth, for the accusation was proved
and the traitor was duly put to death by the organisation. Now if
one of the two denounced members was guilty, was not the presumption
grounded that the other was equally so? But the committee scouted
the notion as an insult. Had not Azeff planned the murder of Plehve
and the grand duke? And if so, what more need be said? No
government would keep an active terrorist like him in its employ.
In the spring of 1906 in revolutionary circles the rumour was rife
that an attempt would shortly be made on the life of Admiral
Dubassoff, with whom I was then and afterwards on friendly terms. A
fortnight before the date fixed, a female member of the revolutionary
party from Moscow sought out the mistrustful member of the
organisation[20] and narrated a curious incident. She told him that
the {178} conspirators were at their posts the day before when they
were suddenly encircled by spies, so that it needed all their
presence of mind and energy to make good their escape. Consequently
the police knew all about the conspiracy, and the conspirators were
in its power. The man to whom this fact was communicated ascribed
the laying of the spy trap to Azeff, who intended to make use of the
plot against Dubassoff's life for the ruin of a large number of the
hardiest terrorists. He was therefore in favour of an inquiry. But
the terrorists preferred to wait and see. Azeff was now on his
mettle, and eight or ten days later the attempt on the admiral's life
did take place; he was wounded and deprived of his hearing, and his
aide-de-camp, Count Konovnitzin, was killed outright. Azeff, who was
hard by during the bomb-throwing, was arrested by the police, but he
showed them his passe-partout and they set him at liberty at once.
It is difficult to realise that such infamies as these were
tolerated, nay, deliberately practised, by civilised Christian men as
methods of educating their 180,000,000 wards.
In the autumn of 1906 Azeff took offence at some remarks made by a
comrade, and laying down his functions for a time went abroad.
During his absence the terrorists improved the occasion and killed
more men of note in the administration in one month than they had
slain in six months of his tenure of office. And this difference was
duly noted by two suspicious comrades, who drew their own
conclusions. As soon as Azeff returned[21] he resumed his functions,
reorganised the central board, went to Finland, and left instructions
that every young member coming from the provinces for advice or work
from him should repair thither. These instructions, which aroused
surprise, were carried out. There the workers were cordially
received and told what was expected of them, and when they returned
they were arrested on the Finnish frontier by the Russian police and
handed over to the gaoler or the hangman. A large number of young
men were caught in this way and immobilised by imprisonment or death.
After a time the {179} provincial terrorist chiefs refused to repair
to Finland, even when Azeff himself sent for them. Some of his
mistrustful colleagues now felt surer of their ground.
But it was not until February, 1908, that the eyes of the committee
men began to be opened to the true nature of Azeff's activity. It
came about in this way. A young man in a provincial town learned
from an intimate friend who was in the service of the secret police
that there was an agent provocateur in the committee whose name was
Azeff. The youth at once set out for Finland and apprised the
committee of what he had heard. But he was sharply bidden to return
whence he had come and to mind his own business in future. A few
days later a large number of arrests were made by the government,
which was impolitic enough to announce that they had received
detailed information compromising all those who had been apprehended.
Who had given the information? was the question that naturally
presented itself to those who were most nearly concerned. "It must
have been Azeff," said one who knew him, but he honestly admitted
that he was merely guessing. The others refused to entertain the
thought. Then said the first, "As our young men are all falling into
the hands of the government, why does not Azeff at least suspend the
reign of terror until the danger is past?" For Azeff was known to be
opposed to any such suspension. He had said, "The terror must be
continued. The honour of Russia demands it." And it was continued.
His mistrustful comrades, and Burtzeff in particular, brooded over
these things and resolved to bide their time and watch for their
opportunity. As an agent provocateur one of Azeff's functions was to
hatch grandiose plots from time to time which required the services
of numerous conspirators, to assign to each one his part, and to
allow the preparations to be completed and generally the day to dawn
on which the execution was to take place. This was an essential
condition. Then, and not before, the secret police were to swoop
down on the conspirators, seize the ringleaders red-handed, track the
others to the houses of their {180} friends, and make an enormous
haul. In this way during the first four years that followed the
abortive revolution of 1905 the executioner was kept continually
busy. Thousands of young men, enterprising, fearless, and easily
led, were gathered together in groups and flung to the hangman.
Azeff would explain these mishaps to his comrades as consequences of
the clumsiness of one or other of the conspirators, of their neglect
to carry out his instructions, of their consequent imprudence in deed
or word. It was always they who were to blame, and it was his part
to feel grieved to death at their foolishness. His judgments on his
victims were invariably harsh. They themselves were always at fault.
His conduct towards the others was equally callous and cruel. In the
intervals between these frequent harvests of death, a number of young
terrorists, eager for something to do, would be informed that their
services were not required for the time being and that they must wait
and lie low until they received further instructions. These
instructions, however, would either not be issued at all or not for a
long period, during which these unemployed young men, who had no
means of subsistence, were left literally to starve. For many of
them had no profession, no trade, no training, and very often no
passports, so that even if employment were offered them they could
not profit by it. The funds of the revolutionary organisation were
enormous--to my knowledge one donation amounted to over a million
roubles, and the cabinet of the day intended to have the donor tried
and executed, when they learned that he had committed suicide. But
Azeff had the disposal of all moneys, and it was he who tightened the
purse strings when solicited to contribute to the support of the
starving executors of his sanguinary behests. So wide-spread and
intense were the hardships to which these wretched men were exposed
that special kitchens were opened in Finland, at which they could
obtain a meal gratuitously. In these ways Azeff, the revolutionary
genius, played the game of the government most successfully and
spread demoralisation whithersoever he went. And the {181} system of
which he discharged but one of the functions, hardened, narrowed, and
brutalised the thinking public throughout the Tsardom.
The Emperor has been held responsible for that system. And in a
sense he accepted the responsibility. He was aware of the infamous
nature of the services which Azeff rendered and was paid for.
Burtzeff had publicly accused Ratchkoffsky and Gerassimoff, who were
Azeff's superiors, of connivance at these abominable crimes and of
scattering social solvents broadcast for no object worth having. In
Paris, London, and New York he had published these accusations. The
Duma had taken the subject up and discussed it. The ministers had
read and answered questions about Azeff and his victims. I myself
had spoken of him to Stolypin, Witte, Durnovo, Schwanebach, Kurloff,
and several of their colleagues. They must, therefore, have known
and did know exactly for what kind of services he was being paid, and
also how he stood with the two hostile parties. Yet they made no
protest. The truth is that the atmosphere was impregnated with
mephitic gases to which most people had grown accustomed. Neither
Stolypin nor any other average minister could alter the state of
things. The circumstance required downright fierce resistance or
whole-hearted adherence. And they chose the latter.
The fact is that the whole system was essentially immoral. The
bureaucracy was an organism outside the nation, living upon it
parasitically, interested in obscuring its views, in clouding its
judgment, in impairing or even destroying its self-reliance, in a
word it resembled in fundamentals the opritchina of Ivan the
Terrible. The main structural differences between the Muscovy of
those early times and the Russia of the last two Romanoffs[22]
consisted in the insurmountable obstacle to centralisation which had
been raised by the emancipation of the serfs, coupled with the {182}
refusal of the government to allow part of the work of administration
to devolve upon the zemstvos, the changes necessitated by Witte's
efforts at industrialisation, and the increase in the number of
"intellectuals" from whom the bureaucracy and the revolutionary party
were recruited. Of one section of the intelligentsia the principal
occupation in the Empire was to spread foreign theories, to sow new
and dissolvent ideas, to seduce officials, soldiers, sailors, to
hatch conspiracies, and prepare a revolution. Another momentous
difference was supplied by the changed atmosphere of Europe which had
become much more favourable to the diffusion of democratic ideas.
But the spirit of the ruling class had undergone no modification.
The bureaucracy--now supreme and irresponsible--was solicitous about
its own interests which were taken to stand for those of the entire
community, and as opposition to these interests was intenser than
ever before, the old traditional methods were no longer efficacious.
The last vestiges of moral barriers had, therefore, been pulled down
and the agents of the State went to work with marvellous thoroughness
and absolute unscrupulousness.
The most perfect types of these latter-day defenders of the autocracy
were Plehve, and his agents Ratchkoffsky, Zubatoff, Gapon, and among
the consequences of the system were the meeting of the two extremes,
the effacement of the line of demarcation between the reaction and
the revolution, the employment of the same agents for crimes devised
for the support of the autocracy and for its overthrow, the
identification of heinous deeds and praiseworthy exploits, the
confusion of evil and good. Thus the State authorities shrank from
nothing. In the provinces and sometimes, it is said, in Moscow and
Petersburg, torture was resorted to methodically to extort
confessions. Several cases which occurred in the provinces came
under my cognisance at the time, one of which made a deep impression
on me because the central authorities, to whose notice I brought the
matter, could only assure me that they were not directly responsible
for the "hasty deeds of provincial agents working under {183}
constant fear of death." The chief of the district of Novominsk was
killed[23] and four men were arrested on suspicion. They denied all
participation in the crime. Then it was decided to put them to the
torture. Unable to hold out they made confessions which were used
against them and were put to death. It afterwards turned out that
they were not guilty of the deed. The real murderer was discovered.
He confessed and was executed. The ministers to whose notice I
brought these facts, which they could not deny, regretted them, but
found them explicable and excusable in the circumstances.
During the first days after Bloody Sunday the government intensified
the measures of repression. In particular it was strictly forbidden
to collect money for the surviving victims of the massacre. Harmless
literary men, professors, and journalists were imprisoned, and 500
cells were got ready in the fortress. General Trepoff was appointed
to be a sort of dictator with his residence in the Winter Palace, and
everybody expected a reign of terror. Gapon, who had received a
false passport, succeeded in escaping. But with true Russian
suddenness, Trepoff reversed the machine and did exactly what
everybody thought he would never think of doing. In a jiffy he
became more liberal than the liberals, set free the men of letters,
journalists, professors, and others who were interned in the
fortress, and left the 500 newly prepared cells empty. Nay, more, he
persuaded the Tsar himself to open a subscription in aid of the
widows and orphans of the slain with a donation of fifty thousand
roubles. People thought he had gone mad. He was only moved by one
of the hidden springs that play such a large part in Russian
psychology, which knows not finality and recks not of coherency.
Public feeling against the Tsar and his advisers now ran high. The
Zemsky Assembly of Kharkoff in an address plainly told him that the
violation of the nation's elementary rights was unchaining a tempest
of bloody civil war which would subvert his throne. "Do not trust,
sire, to negligent {184} and wily servants, but repose confidence in
the elected representatives of the nation." From all corners of the
Empire came petitions, addresses, resolutions in the same sense. In
the meanwhile, the secret revolutionary committee condemned General
Trepoff and the Grand Duke Sergius to death, and published the
sentence in leaflets, one of which I received.
Police, gendarmes, detectives, and spies were unavailing to save the
grand duke, who, perhaps because he anticipated their powerlessness,
took the wise precaution of driving and walking without his consort.
He knew he was doomed to die by violence, and he faced his doom like
a man. He had been for years the embodiment of the vital principle
of the autocracy. Therefore he was first on the list of the
proscribed. He had misruled Moscow with a rod of iron; he had
persecuted the Jews with a degree of hatred akin to mania. Nothing
that he said or did seemed inspired by ethical motives or shaped by
considerations of justice. He despised soft-heartedness, ignored
scruples, and went straight to the goal regardless of consequences.
One of his last acts was to give currency to the statement that
Japanese gold had bribed the Russian people to cease work, hamper the
government, and co-operate with the public enemy. The accusation was
badly worded. The gold was but a help, not a stimulant. His
adjutant, Djunkoffsky, took the telegram containing that terrible
accusation to a newspaper office in Moscow, strove hard to have it
accepted, and finally caused it to be circulated in St. Petersburg,
where, although not printed, it was used to envenom public feeling
against him. That the Japanese had money distributed among Russian
revolutionists of a certain grade and that considerable sums were
laid out in this way is, I am bound to say, certain, just as German
money has been circulating among them ever since August, 1914. I
know the names of some of those who distributed it.
The degree of responsibility that weighs upon the Tsar personally has
often been debated, and the consensus of opinion, Russian and
foreign, was that he was kept in {185} ignorance of what was being
done in his name and was not only weak-willed but feeble of intellect
as well. Against this view my articles in the years 1904-7 were
directed. For I knew personally many of the persons who unfolded to
him in great detail the condition of the country and the changing
moods of the people during most of the crises that marked his reign.
I also read and copied hundreds of the annotations which he himself
scribbled on the State papers laid before him for cognisance or
signature. I had seen and described the manuscript journal which was
diligently prepared for him every day and which contained adequate
accounts of the various political and other movements of the time.
And I had the corroborative testimony of a number of his ministers.
From these and other sources I drew the conclusion that Nicholas II.,
who was nowise devoid of intelligence but only of social sympathy,
was profoundly convinced that he was the vicar of God upon earth, and
the spiritual leader, not merely of the Russian people, but of the
civilised races of mankind to whom he had given light and leading at
The Hague. Flatterers at home and abroad, along with a rare faculty
for self-hypnotisation, confirmed him in that belief.
Much of his time he spent in his cabinet at what he termed work,
which consisted in signing replies to addresses of loyalty elicited
by his own agents and penning comments on the various reports
presented by ministers, governors, and other officials. His
courtiers encouraged him to believe that all these replies and
desultory remarks were words of wisdom to be preserved for future
ages, and he had some grounds for believing them, seeing that even
such trivial remarks as, "I am very glad," "God grant it may be so,"
were, when possible, published in large type in the newspapers,
artistically glazed over in the manuscript, and carefully preserved
in the archives like the relics of a saint. But the most interesting
were never published; and to these there was no end. Here is one.
During the Manchurian campaign a report of the negotiations
respecting the warship _Manchur_ was laid before him by Count
Lamsdorff. The tenor of it was that the Chinese authorities had
summoned {186} the _Manchur_ to quit the neutral harbour of Shanghai
at the repeated and urgent request of the Japanese consul there. On
the margin of that report his Majesty penned the words, "The Japanese
consul is a scoundrel."
When I was with Witte at Portsmouth (U.S.A.), the statesman sent a
telegram to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Lamsdorff,
suggesting that Japan's claim to retain half of the island of
Sakhalien and to receive a certain money compensation for the other
half should be seriously considered. This telegram was laid before
the Emperor, who, as I afterwards learned, wrote upon it: "Neither a
rood of land nor a rouble shall Japan receive. From this position
nothing will ever make me recede."
I possess a large collection of these childish remarks as well as
copies of many of his letters to ministers and others on public
affairs, and it was partly from these, coupled with his public acts,
that I drew my estimate of his character. Some of his comments on
the course of public justice when it was being systematically
deflected from its right course by the obsequiousness of court
flunkeys bear out the charge of a-morality and callousness which I
ventured to reproduce at the outset. One of these glosses, taken in
connection with the correspondence that preceded it, is an act of
protection extended to deliberate assassination, perpetrated for the
purpose of removing real or supposed adversaries of the autocracy. I
fear it is not possible to acquit the monarch of this damaging
charge. Into this amazing action of the Tsar I inquired all the more
fully because, as already stated, the third assassination--two men
had been successfully murdered, of whom one was an old friend and the
other an old acquaintance of mine--would have sent me also to the
shades had it been carried out.
All that need be said here is that the Emperor intervened personally
in writing--I possess his exact words among my documents--to ward off
the sword of justice from the criminals-in-chief.
[1] In December, 1904.
[2] The procession took place on 22nd January, 1905.
[3] In the _Daily Telegraph_.
[4] I described the events of these days in telegrams of many columns
in length which appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_.
[5] The _Novoye Vremya_ also put forward this thesis.
[6] Cf. _Byloye_ (in Russian), Nos. 11-12, p. 35.
[7] The man who gave the money was Sokoff. There were other wealthy
Russians who, belonging to no revolutionary party, replenished the
funds of the social democrats or social revolutionists, and at least
one of these gave as much as a hundred thousand pounds.
[8] Cf. _Byloye_ Nos. 11-12, p. 44.
[9] I have forgotten the date and my diaries are inaccessible owing
to the war.
[10] This would go to show that Gapon's relations with the police had
not yet been regulated, or else were not known to the minister.
[11] Gapon and Ratchkoffsky had met in January once or twice, and
also in early February, 1906. Whether the Minister Durnovo was aware
of this I am unable to say.
[12] Azeff was the notorious revolutionary organiser and at the same
time the great police spy--a living synthesis of contradictions.
What Ruthenberg told Azeff were the suspicious admissions made to him
by Gapon who had already begun the work of seduction.
[13] A place of amusement on one of the islands, where officers and
_bons vivants_ used to sup, listen to gypsy songs, and spend most of
the night.
[14] Cf. _Byloye_, Nos. 11-12, p. 89.
[15] Martin was Ruthenberg's adopted pseudonym in the revolutionary
society. The story of Gapon's last moments I have told in the exact
words of Ruthenberg himself and of one of the workmen who executed
the priest.
[16] Cf. _Byloye_, Nos. 11-13, p. 119.
[17] As my diaries are no longer accessible, I am unable to determine
the exact date.
[18] In August, 1905.
[19] Okhranka.
[20] I am quoting from his own account, cf. _Byloye_, 9-10, p. 191,
also from a pamphlet entitled "The Responsibility of the Tsar," by
Vlad. Burtzeff (in Russian), 1910, pp. 11 fol.
[21] In the beginning of 1907.
[22] The house of the Romanoffs became extinct after the death of the
Tsaritsa Elizabeth I. The house that reigned since them is that of
Holstein-Gotthorp. Elizabeth's nephew, Peter III., was the first
sovereign of this dynasty.
[23] In 1906. Trustworthy evidence of torture for political purposes
in Petersburg I had none.
{187}