A Romance of Nihilism.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6065, 4 February 1891, Page 3

A Romance of Nihilism.

-—♦ — The Times has published, from an occasional correspondent at Moscow, a detailed 'account of the circumstances, connected with the political trial of five Nihilists which was concluded a short time sinco in St. Petersburg, with the usual sentence of death pronounced against all but one of tht accused, The charges proved against the five revolutionists might, he says, be appropriately entitled the history of a scrap of paper. The whole fabric ol the accusation has been cleverly pieced together and built up on the accidental discover}' of a bit of papei four inches by two, scribbled over by one of the condemned. On the 2Gth of February 1889, a young woman bought tome cigarettes in a small shop on the fifth line of the Vasili Ostroff, St. Peter.-burg, and left her purse behind on the counter. The shopkeeper, a retired lieutenant-colonel, at once pried into the contents, as a Rnssian would always do. Finding it full of sedition, aud probably not unmindful of the possibility of a distinguished reward, he handed it over to the police, and assured the gill, who called for it three times, that he had never seen it. I have not heard what recompense he received for this prompt, display of loyalty, but I may mention that even a common dcornlk, or yard porter, who is a recognised spy under the police and legally extorts his wages from those whom he is set to spy, is rowarded with £3 for every successful denunciation produced. The purse contained I rouble 40 copecks in money, two pieces of paper bearing ciphers which nobody has been able to understand, and another scrap of paper, 4in. by 2in.— the (jravaman of the crime—on which was written in extremely small handwriting the draft or specimen composition of a Droclamation. It evidently referred to the supposed assassination of the present Emperor ; but where His Majesty's name should have occurred blank spaces had been left. Enquiries of the police in close proximity to the shop in question led to the discovery that only two doors off in tho same street a young woman of Swiss nationality, named Wilhelmir-a Braun, had mysteriously disappeared from furnished apartments three days after the loss of the purse. The police were at once on the right track. The name of Wilhelmina Braun turned out to be one of the many aliases of Sophie Giinzberg, who bad been wanted by the police in 1886 in connection with the discovery of revolutionary circles and gatherings among the military officers and cadets of St. Petersburg. Several of the latter were tried and condemned in 1887. Sophie Giinzberg then escaped abroad, leaving behind papers which disclosed the same handwriting as that on other papers left, by Wilhelmina Braun. Sophie Giinzberg alias Braun, frightened at not getting back her purse, quitted her lodgings at midnight ou February 27, and left St. Petersburg for the Crimea. She first begged a fellow lodger, who had not previously made her acquaintance, to go next day to one of her friends, Michael Stoyanofsky, living in the very same house in which the shop was situated, and ask him to cease his visits, as she, Giinzberg, had been suddenly obliged to leave St. Petersburg. This mission was fulfilled by the fellow-lodger, who told the police about it when questioned, aud the result was the arrest of Stoyanofsky. Experts found that the writing of the proclamation in Giinzberg's purs" was identical with that of Stoyanofsky. The latter's story. is that he first made the acquaintance of Giinzberg at tho theatre in 18S4, and entered into immoral intimacy with her. She came to him in his lodging, and asked him to pormise, on bis word of honor, to do a service for her without first saying what it was. He gave the promise, and then Guuzberg took out of her pocket a paper covered with pencil witing, and requested him to write from her dictation. This was the contents of the proclamation afterwards found in the puree." At first Stoyanofsky was so astonished and alarmed that he ofused to write anything at all ; but, as Guuzberg insisted upon keeping him to his promise, he wrote it out, omitting, however, tho name of the Czar wherever it occurred. When the secret police suddenly swooped down upon Simon Stoyanofsky, in his lodging at Kharkoff, in the mic'dlo of the night, he aud Freifeld, a friend with whom he lived, refused to open tho door until they had burnt up all their pacers, in doing which Stoyanofsky burnt tho palm of his hund, and" Freifeld singed his hair and burnt off his eyebrows. Simon Stoyanofsky declared he burned two revolutionary programmes, which he had bought of some :me in the street. ' He confessed co being a revolutionary Socialist; also to having had Sophie Giinzberg to live with him in Kharkoff while she stayed there to legalise ber new Swiss passport. Since his capture lie has gone mad, and therefore could not iippear in the present trial. Another of the culprits, Peter Dooshefaky, lieutenant of artillery at Oronstadt, was arrested in his lodging. Lieut. Dooshefsky's depositions a,re sadly interesting. He was engaged to a young lady at Cron&tadt, but could not marry for want of the necessary and legally required means. In March 188G he was ardered on duty to Odessa and Sebastopol by Major-General Mathias, commanding the fortress artillery of Oronstadt, in order to give him an opportunity, as the General observed, of freeing himself from the suspi3ion aroused by his acquaintance with persona of political uutrustw-rt-thinesst. He wn,i followed to the Black Sea by his fi/iaitcee, and returned to Oronstadt the next year. All this time he tried hard to scrape together money enough to got permission to marry, but without success An officer under the rank of colonel cannot obtain leave to marry without giving a guarantee for 3000-to 5000 roubles. At last, in May 1888, he forged a certificate purporting to ematiate from General Mathias, on the strength of which the Churol) authorities married him on June 22 of the same year. Soon after his marriage his wife went out of her mind. I hear (adds the correspondent) that the JDmneror lias already commuted the sentence of death against Sophie Giinzberg to one of deportation to Liberia. This of necessity implies the remittal of the capital penalty in all the other cases. Dooshefsky was acquitted by the Court, which is remarkable as being the only cue of a clear acquittal iv any of the Russian political trials. " Wljeu the Minister of Justice telephoned the sentences of the Court to the Czar at Gatschina, it is said his Majesty replied that he had read most attentively all the particulars, and that he did not wish to hear of any sentences of death. There had been enough.