RUSSIAN TERRORISTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 27 September 1924, Page 9

RUSSIAN TERRORISTS.

PERSONALITIES AND PORTRAITS.

(By A.L.W., in the Sydney Morning Herald.)

Accustomed to the impartial administration of justice and inheritors of centuries' old traditions of civil freedom, people of British stock are not always able to appreciate the difficulties of others not so happily circumstanced. Nor are they always ready to condone methods by which individuals in politically oppressed countries seek to rid themselves of their tyrants. Assassination is an ugly word, and an assassin a person from whom one recoils in horror. That prince of phrase-makers, Mr. Lloyd George, in deprecating suggestions for the making of friendly overtures to the Bolsheviks, expressed a. truly British abhorrence to “shaking hands with murder.” While in regard to the Soviet it was, and is, the case that the Government wages what amounts to a war against the Russian people, perhaps with an honest conviction that it is for the people’s good, there exists in England and the Dominions an equal reluctance to shake hands with those whose hands have become stained with blood in waging war against their own Governments. At times, when I have been lightheartedly narrating stories of my Russi. an revolutionary and terrorist acquaint, ances, I have become conscious of disapproval, none the less strong even if unexpressed by words. My hearers could not envisage terrorists and revolutionaries otherwise than as murderers, actual and potential, and my association with such was regarded more or less as a moral lapse. It is far from being my intention to attempt to prove that there are occasions when killing is no murder, but I do hold that, in relation to certain types of political crime, to know all is to forgive all, and more especially does that apply to those who put themselves within reach of the law in struggling against the Tsarist despotism, that Ghoul, that Old Man of the Sea hung about with Ikons, as the usually tolerant Joseph Conrad almost viciously described it in a chapter on Autocracies in Europe.

With one exception, the Russian re-

volutionaries and terrorists I met were as mild-mannered and gentle as could be imagined. Pacifist orators compared with them are as roaring lions to cooing doves. I recall one “terrorist” who in appearance was so bland, so childlike, for all his grey beard, that the appellation, it seemed, could only have been given by way of a joke. He looked the kind of person who would not squash a fly, and who would go out of his way to avoid treading on a worm, His voice was soft and low, and his whole attitude expressed humility. Yet he had participated in a plot which led to the “removal” of a personage, and for thirty-one years he was a prisoner in the grim fortress of Schlusselburg, which lies on an islet where the River Neva flows' out of Lake Ladoga. A cultured man, he devoted himself while in prison to. a study of the Apocrypha, upon which, so I wa,s told, he had written copiously and learnedly. Prince Peter Kropotkin, the philosopher of anarchism, whilst perhaps not a. terrorist in the accepted meaning of that word, was a whole-hearted revolutionary, who never faltered in the struggle against despotism. Member of a family, which was more ancient than the Romanoffs, he made enormous sacrifices by abandoning a career in -which he would have been protected by all the forces of the Tsardom, and, instead, espoused the cause of those oppressed by it. He was the hero of a famous escane from a St. Petersburg prison. Later he resided in England, where he acquired additional fame as a writer on the French Revolution and on scientific and sociological subjects Together with many other exiles, Prince and Princess Kropotkin returned to Russia, after the fall of 11, and he was an outstanding figure in the thrilling days in Petrograd before Lenin and Trotsky captured the successful revolutionary organisations. I met Prince Kropotkin in Moscow a week or two previous to the Bolshevist rising in November, 1917, and was charmed by his geniality and simplicity of manner. He was the gentlest and most interesting of men, and, though then elderly and disappointed at the “botching” of the revolution by the Bolsheviks, be was a great man in the eyes of the more responsible and intelli. gent workmen, who frequently sought his advice in those critical days. When the tumult and the shouting died, aiu the anti-Bolslieviks, who fought gaincl. in the streets of Moscow for. a week, laid down their arms, and it was rea sonably safe to venture outdoors, j hastened to Kropotkin’s apartment, ant was relieved to find him and the princess unharmed, though artillery fire had wrecked several buildings nearby. One thing above all others bad impressed him. A bullet had entered one of the windows and lodged in thccei'ling. He seemed almost stunned by the realisation that bullets found billets, but laughed heartily when I suggested that he would lose half his ■ reputation as a “dangerous anarchist” if he were known to be upset by such a trifle. The only terrorist I knew who conveyed a definite impression of great force of character and ruthlessness was Boris Sakinov, 'who, so very recent cables have informed us, has fallen into the hands of the Soviet, been tried by the supreme military' court, and sentenced to death. Because of a statement he made, in which he recognised the Soviet’s power, a recommendation to mercy resulted in the commutation of the death sentence to two years’ deprivation of liberty, in consideration of his promise not to fight against the Soviet in future, Sakinov is reported to have said, “I do not ask for pity.’ That, at least, was in keeping with hi: character; but, while it is perhaps eass for a person not standing within the shadow of the gallows to criticise one who is so placed, I nave a certain feeling of disappointment in Sakinov. A bold defiance of the Soviet to do it; worst would have been more in line with the role he has so long played. For many years, lie was the head of the terrorist organisation within the Sac.a Revolutionary Party, and he waged pitiless war against the autocracy, and against its even worse successors, the Bolsheviks. Savinkov organised and co-operated in the most important political assassinations carried out during the last twenty years of the Tsardom. An eerie feeling possessed me on driving into St. Petersburg on the occasion 'of my first visit, in 1909, when, a few hundred yards from the Warsaw station, my companion remarked, “This is where Plehve was blown to bits.” Sakinov arranged that assassination. Plehve, Minister of the Interior, and virtual dictator, was foremost in repression. Russia, at the time, was going through the severest reaction she had experienced since the reign of Alexander 111, and Plehve was the sternest and most significant of Russian administrators. The Okhrana (Department of Secret Police) was never more active, and, with its assistance, Plehve contrived to nip every revolutionary movement in the bud. He •’’med at keening dead silence everywhere. and he succeeded, but the

silence was shattered by the bomb which exploded under his carriage and ended liis life, on July 15, 1904. Sakinov was amongst the exiles who returned to Russia after the revolution of March, 1917. Kerensky sent him to the Galician front as Commissary of the 7th Army. He carried on an intense struggle against the Bolshevist tendencies, which were disrupting the forces, and, at the peril, of his life, he restored discipline in some of the most demoralised regiments. By his activity Sakinov contributed considerably to the success of the offensive at Brzezany, on July 1, 1917, a success which, alas for Russia, was soon after turned to disgraceful rout and defeat as a result of Bolshevik propaganda amongst the soldiers. In August of that year Sakinov became Deputy Minister for War. and as such he was very prominent in the Kornilov episode. Alarmed at the inaction of the Kerensky Government, in face of the grow-, ing menace of the Soviet, Kornilov, Commander-in-Chief, after failing to secure from Kerensky certain army reforms he demanded, led a revolt, which Kerensky was able to crush. Both men were playing at cross purposes, and, as. appeared afterwards, German spies pulled the strings. It was with somewhat of a thrill that I received an invitation to meet the chief of the terrorists. A small party, which included Mr. Somerset Maughan, the gathered at the apartment of Madame Lebedev, Kropotkin’s daughter, in Petrograd, in 1 the last days of Kerensky’s rule. The terrorist, appeared, and came quite up to expectations. Rather tall, of good carriage and figure, fair as to hair and complexion, and with direct-gazing blue eyes, Sakinov certainly looked the part of a relentless,, ruthless revolutionary. In a quiet voice he gave, in French, a- full account of the Kornilov episode, and Kerensky, from whose Ministry he had by then retired, did not come out of it at all well. For the rest of the evening Sakinov showed himself to ad-vantage-as a sociable, if, as was to be expected, a very serious person. A few weeks later came the Bolshevist deluge, and Sakinov did what Charles II determined not to do, started off on his travels again. He took up his old role of organiser of revolt, which, as we have seen, has led to a somewhat inglorious submission to his enemies.