CATHERINE BRESHKOVSKY
In the year 1844 in Russia was born one of the most remarkable women of
modern times. Her full name is Ekaterina Constantinovna
Breshko-Breshkovskaya, but in America she is called Catherine
Breshkovsky, and as such she will be known in these pages. Both her
father and her mother were of noble birth, and when she was a little
girl her father had a large estate on which hundreds of serfs were held
in bondage.
While the negroes in the United States were kept in slavery, the
peasants in Russia were in almost as bad a plight. They lived on the
estates of the great nobles and formed a part of the nobles' property.
Toiling from dawn until far into the night with frequent floggings and
browbeatings from their masters they bore the burdens of the Russian
government that gave them nothing in return. While the noblemen feasted
on the fruits of the peasants' toil, the peasants themselves starved to
death. When war came it was the peasants who furnished the armies while
the nobles themselves seldom went to the front but remained behind the
lines in safety.
When Catherine was a little girl she saw many instances of injustice
and oppression, although the serfs on her father's estate were treated
far better than many others. She did not know why she herself had fine
clothes and delicate food, when the children of her father's servants
were ragged and dirty, and often had just enough to eat to keep them
from starving. She used to ask her parents what was the reason that
they had no work to perform, while others had to get up when the stars
were still shining and labor until long after the sun had set at night.
And why the ones who did not work were so much better off than the
others who did. And before she was eight years old, she had formed the
habit of giving away her own possessions to the children of the serfs,
who never had the pretty things with which she was surfeited.
Before she was nine, Catherine, we are told, had read a long history of
Russia in nine large volumes, and when she was a girl of sixteen she
had made an especial study of the French Revolution and the causes that
led up to it.
The Crimean war came, and soldiers went to the front in large numbers.
They were all taken from the families of the serfs, and while a certain
number of the noblemen went to the war as officers of the Russian army,
many others stayed at home safely, not being compelled to fight for
their country as the peasants were. And the injustice of the system was
very evident to the young girl, who even then was forming the idea of
devoting her life to aiding the suffering and oppressed people who
surrounded her.
About the time that the Civil War began in the United States a great
change came over the peasantry in Russia, but it was a change that
seemed to do them little good. The Russian Czar issued a proclamation
in 1861 in which he declared that all serfs in his dominions were at
liberty, and if they chose could leave the estates of their former
masters and seek work where they wished.
But the serfs were worse off than ever before, because in the
proclamation nothing was said about the land on which they had been
living and which belonged to the nobles. They knew no trade except that
of tilling the soil, and now that they were no longer the property of
the nobles, their land was taken away from them and they had no means
by which they could earn a living. Then terrible scenes commenced to be
enacted. The serfs were ruthlessly driven from their homes and when
they sought to remain were beaten in great numbers, being flogged so
severely with the knout that many of them died as a result. Most of
them were densely ignorant, and reading and writing were far beyond
their knowledge. They could not understand why the land on which they
had always lived and worked was taken from them, and why they were now
denied even the bitter bread that they had formerly been able to earn.
Among the Russian nobility, however, were many high minded young men
and women, who like Catherine felt the injustice of the serfs' hard lot
and desired to help them. These young people formed into philanthropic
bands, and went into the villages to teach the serfs, help them with
their labor, minister to them in sickness and to make their condition
better in every way possible. Thousands of boys and girls of gentle
birth flocked to the Russian Universities and from there went to
befriend the serfs. Throughout the younger generation a different
feeling existed toward the common people than ever before in Russian
history.
Catherine's father himself was liberal in his views and had already
done what he could to alleviate the sufferings of his former bondsmen.
When Catherine came to him and told him that she did not think that she
could endure living in idleness any longer, but desired to support
herself, he consented, and the girl who all her life had been used to
the greatest luxuries went away to become a governess in the house of a
nobleman, where she could live honestly by the fruits of her own labor.
Her father did not long consent to this, however, and helped her to
open a boarding house for girls, where she taught school until she was
twenty-five years old when she was married. Her husband was a young
nobleman who sympathized with her liberal ideas, and himself had done a
great deal to better the condition of the Russian people. He helped his
wife work for the peasants and began a cooperative banking scheme by
which they might benefit.
But Catherine grew more and more discontented with the terrible
conditions that surrounded her on every side. She happened to go to the
city of Kiev to visit her sister and she took her meals at a student's
boarding house. She heard a great deal of discussion of the condition
of Russia there and saw a great many young students who were interested
in public affairs. And one day she held a secret meeting of students in
her room to talk over what more could be done to make Russia a better
place to live in.
While the younger generation had been striving in every way possible to
help the serfs, the Russian Government did all in its power to hinder
them. This government was then an absolute autocracy, which means that
it was under the complete control of one ruler and a few advisors. The
Czar of Russia knew that when his people grew better educated and more
enlightened his own power would grow less, so he did all that he could
to keep them in the state of darkness and ignorance in which they had
languished for centuries. When young noblemen and girls sought to teach
or help the peasants, they met with obstacles on every side, and many
of them were treated with great severity by the officers of the Czar.
This naturally angered them, and they began to form plans to overthrow
the Czar's power, since they saw that any real progress would be
impossible so long as the regime that then existed remained in force.
In short they became revolutionists; and Catherine herself was well on
the road to becoming one.
When Catherine came home from Kiev she and her husband conducted a
series of meetings in which they made speeches to the peasants and
labored harder than ever to improve their condition, but this soon
brought them under the eye of the Czar's spies, and they were warned
that they had better discontinue their efforts and let the peasants
take care of themselves. And this was the final event that determined
Catherine to become a revolutionist and bend all her energies to
overthrowing the Czar's government.
She talked it over with her husband and asked him if he were ready to
throw in his lot with those who sought to change the government, saying
that she herself had resolved to do so. It meant suffering, poverty,
hardships and very probably prison or death. Her husband was unwilling
to take the risk and they parted forever. Soon after this Catherine had
a son, and on account of the life that she had chosen was obliged to
leave him with friends. It was a bitter moment for her when she gave
him up, but it only strengthened her in her purpose.
Many revolutionists were at work in Russia at that time, and were
scattered all through the country in various disguises. They were sent
from various revolutionary centers to preach revolution to the peasants
and to kindle the flames of revolt against the Czar. Others did social
work, and sought to educate the peasants to the point where they would
have sufficient knowledge to understand the revolutionary doctrines
when they heard them--and it was in this form of work that Catherine
first engaged.
At last, however, she entered into the more active work of the
revolutionists, and in person commenced to spread revolutionary ideas
among the common people. With two companions disguised as peasants, and
in peasant garb herself, carrying a pack crammed with revolutionary
pamphlets and literature, Catherine made her way to a little village,
where she took a small hut and pretended to be a woman who dyed
clothes. As soon as she grew to know the peasants she commenced to
preach to them and to incite them to revolution. She told them that the
Czar was an evil ruler, and that he and his nobles had always fattened
themselves at the peasants' expense; that the Russian people would
always be poor and miserable so long as the Czar remained in power;
that they had a right to the land that was taken from them, and were no
better than slaves who dared not call their souls their own--and
furthermore that their only salvation lay in rising throughout Russia,
overthrowing the Czar and establishing a government where all men
should be free and equal, and where every man would have a right to
earn his daily bread.
When the peasants in one village failed to respond Catherine and her
comrades moved on to another town, and little by little they brought
the doctrines of revolution to the mass of ignorant people, who were
looking for some means to better themselves and realize a little of the
happiness of life.
The life of a traveling preacher of this sort was filled with hardship.
Catherine, who had been used to every luxury, was forced to eat the
coarsest food and often to go hungry. She had to sleep in houses that
were filled with dirt and vermin. Her audiences were stupid in the
extreme, and were often as afraid of the revolutionists as they were of
the Cossacks and the Czar's officials. Moreover there was always the
danger of arrest and imprisonment, followed by exile to Siberia, or
death on the gallows.
One day in the town of Zlatopol, where Catherine was carrying on her
revolutionary work, a police officer stopped her and demanded her
passport. This passport was forged and when she showed it he suspected
her. Then, when he commenced to treat her with the indignities to which
the peasants were accustomed she resented it, disclosing the fact that
she was from the upper classes. Her pack was torn open and the
revolutionary pamphlets were found. The case against her was complete.
She was hurried to prison and thrown into a foul dungeon, where the
filth and suffering forced on her were indescribable. And here she was
kept for long, weary months until her case should come to trial.
It was in this prison that she first learned the secret code that
prisoners in Russia used to communicate with one another. One day, as
she lay on the bundle of rags that formed her couch, she heard a faint
tapping on an iron pipe that ran through her cell. She responded, and
on the pipe tapped out the alphabet, one tap standing for "a", two for
"b" and so on. From this laborous method she learned another code which
was the one generally in use among the imprisoned revolutionists; and
she spent long hours communicating with friends in different parts of
the prison who were in solitary confinement like herself, and whom she
had never seen.
At last Catherine was brought up for trial and was sentenced to exile
in Siberia. Because she told her judges that she refused to acknowledge
the authority of the Czar she was given an extra sentence of five years
at hard labor in the mines. She had already been in prison several
years awaiting trial--and out of three hundred who had been imprisoned
in the same jail more than one hundred had died or become insane.
Catherine then commenced a weary two months journey into Siberia, where
she was first to go to prison and later remain as an exile. The
prisoners traveled in covered wagons, that jolted and bumped endlessly
over the rough roads, and at night they were thrown into roadside
jails, filthy beyond description. For eight long weeks this journey
continued until Catherine reached the prison at Kara.
Here she was not compelled to work after all, but was forced to eat the
vilest food and wear out her soul in idleness, with no occupation
except to witness the sufferings of her companions. When her prison
term was ended she was taken to a little town called Barguzon near the
Arctic Circle, where the thermometer often dropped to fifty below zero,
and here she was kept under close guard for many years.
Words cannot describe the misery of the Siberian exiles as Catherine
saw them--men, women and children, sick and forlorn, compelled to march
for miles over the bleak countryside, surrounded by brutal guards who
prodded them on with their bayonets. After she had been for some time
at Barguzon she tried to escape with three men who were also political
exiles, and sought to gain the Pacific coast a thousand miles away,
where she hoped she might take ship for America. She was pursued and
recaptured, and given another term in the prison at Kara on account of
her attempt to escape.
Catherine was a young woman when she went into exile; she remained
until she was old and her hairs were gray before her term of punishment
ended. She had been in exile more than twenty years and in all that
time she had not seen one of her relatives or heard the voice of a
friend. At last she was set free.
When she arrived at her former home she spent several months in making
visits to relatives, and once again entered the work of the
revolutionists. She was now famous in their circles and known to great
numbers of peasants who loved her dearly and called her "Grandmother."
She had many narrow escapes from the police, but her friends always
succeeded in concealing her.
On one occasion she was hiding in a house, while the police officers
searched for her. It was the cook's day off, and Catherine, in the
cook's dress, was stirring the soup at the stove while the police
officers ranged the house to discover her.
In 1904 she came to the United States to do what she could to spread
the work of the revolution by gaining money from Russians in America.
She received a cordial reception and made many friends among the
Americans, some of them being the most prominent men and women in the
country. The Russians themselves received her most enthusiastically
wherever she went, and she returned with $10,000 for the Cause.
Through the double dealing of one of her supposed friends, Catherine
was arrested again in 1908 and sent once more to Siberia. She remained
there until after the outbreak of the World War, while the Germans
overran Belgium and Russia in turn. She remained, in fact, until the
revolution for which she had labored for so many years at last took
place, and the Czar was overthrown. Then she was invited to return by
the Government of Kerensky, who came into power when the Czar fell.
Her return from Siberia with the other political exiles was like a
triumphal ovation. At every stop the train made crowds thronged about
her carriage, cheering and shouting for "the little grandmother of the
Russian Revolution," as she was called on account of her many years of
labor for the cause. On her arrival in Moscow she was placed in the
Czar's former coach of state, and was driven in triumph through the
city to the assembly of the people called the Douma, which was then
sitting. At Petrograd she was given a sumptuous apartment in the Czar's
former palace. Everywhere her name was on the lips of thousands, and
everywhere she received cheers, kisses and handclasps. It may almost
have been worth the suffering she went through to receive a triumph so
generous as that afforded her by the Russian people, who realized that
she had been one of the chief leaders of the revolutionary movement and
that her heart was bound up in its ultimate triumph.
But the revolution did not succeed, and it was not long before Russia
was once more in the grip of a force even more deadly than that of the
former Czar. The Bolshevists soon organized and drove Kerensky from
power, and anarchy ruled throughout Russia. Catherine Breshkovsky was
declared a public enemy by the Government of Lenine and Trotsky. She
was in danger of her life if captured, as the Bolshevists were talking
of putting her to death. After an unsuccessful attempt to organize
resistance to the new government, Catherine was hidden by friends while
the Bolshevists sought her, and after traveling for six hundred miles
on horseback reached Vladivostok, where she found a steamer ready to
take her to America. Here she was again welcomed cordially and made
much of on every side, and here too she made many speeches against the
Bolshevist government. Although she is over seventy-five years old she
declares that she will still aid Russia to gain the freedom and peace
it craves and if given an opportunity she will no doubt take part in
the future development of her country.