VERA SASSULITCH.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LI, Issue 9138, 10 July 1906, Page 6

VERA SASSULITCH.

The report that Vera Sassulitch has been killed calls to mind of the most dramatic incidents in the history of the Russian revolt against oppression. In January, 1878, the police discovered that a certain I group of young men met in Odessa to propagate Socialistic doctrines. Under the orders of Torepoff, the Police Perfect of St. Petersburg, one. of the propagandists was axreeted and knouted. This brutality raised a perfect storm of exasperation, which, ripened into desperate action in the case of a young girl -who knew neither Trepoff nor his victim, and who had never had anything to do wi«.- politics or political ~p£s?aganda. That young girl was Vera Sassulitch. Erom her distant home in one oi the Volga provinces, Vera Sassulitdh travelled to St. Petersburg, and, without hinting at .her intentions, went to Trepoff 'c office and shot the dreaded Perfect, severely wounding him. She made no attempt to escape, and, after arrest, explained that she had determined by shooting the Police Perfect to compel those in authority in Russia to note and ponder over the inhuman atrocities which, were being daily and hourly enacted in the Government's name. The deed caused enormous excitement. Vera ' Sassulitch was arraigned before the ordinary criminal court. The place of trial was crowded, *- and the counsel for the accused made a slashing attack on the ruling system and its tools like Trepoff. Amid a humicane of applause the girl was acquitted, released, and the moment she passed out of the court was carried off by friends Who concealed her so weH that the Third Section, though they searched St. Petesburg through and through, could not succeed in discovering her whereabouts till ihey, and a-i the world, were told that she tad escaped to Western Europe, via England. Vera Sassulitch has since that time lived chiefly in Switzerland. The Trepoff whom she shot was the father of the General Trepoff who so recently was dictator of St. Petersburg.