THE REVOLT IN RUSSIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 13949, 4 January 1906, Page 7

THE REVOLT IN RUSSIA.

REBELS AND COSSACKS. ANARCHY ON THE SIBERIAN RAILWAY. THE MOSCOW HORRORS. United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, January 2. Reuter states that there was many hours’ fierce fighting at Bakhout on Saturday between the Cossacks and the rebels. The latter were caught between two fires and finally routed, with 300 killed. The casualties of the troops were ten. Anarchy prevails on the Siberian railway. All the stations have been pillaged, and the military trains follow indiscriminately under the charge of unqualified engine-drivers. The rebels at Moscow on Saturday night attempted to escape across the river, and many were drowned, owing to the sappers having secretly cut thirty feet of a channel through the ice. FAMINE RELIEF WITHHELD, MURDER OF A HUMANE DOCTOR. LONDON, January 2. Count Durnovo, Minister of the Interior, is withholding famine relief from all villages implicated in the agrarian outrages. Thirty soldiers were killed and many injured in the collision of military trains at Lebedin. - The soldiers at Moscow on Sunday killed a doctor in his residence for refusing to cease tending thoi wounded. The rebels at Moscow crucified a policeman on a tram car, but he was rescued before death. DRAGOONS ATTACKED BY WORKMEN. DISTURBANCES IN POLAND. (Received January 3, 11.31 p.m.) ST PETERSBURG, January 3. Dragoons were grooming their horses at Riga, when 300 workmen, suddenly attacking them with revolvers and swords, killed eleven and wounded fourteen. Eight workmen were killed, and the rest withdrew. Reinforcements pursued and surrounded them. The bombs seized at Warsaw belonged to a Jewish Anarchists’ club, which had been terrorising Jewish business men. The revolutionises are shooting drivers of Polish trains. Three bridges have been destroyed. Insurgents destroyed the Government buildings in ten communes in the Kielce district. All tho Warsaw factories have struck. THE RISING IN THE BALTIC PROVINCES. REPRESSIVE MEASURES IN' PROGRESS. (Received January 4, 1.3 a.m.) LONDON, January 3. The “Times” states that General Sollagub has placed machine guns all over Riga. Warships are outside, and everything is ready for a repression as sanguinary as at Moscow. ■ General Bogdanovitch, Vice-Governor of Tambouff, has succumbed to wounds inflicted by an assassin. THE LIBERALS DESPONDENT. ASCENDANCY OP THE BE- ' ACTIONARIES. (Received January 4, 1,3 a.m.) ST PETERSBURG, January 3. Liberal circles in St Petersburg are despondent. They foresee the complete ascendancy of tho reactionaries. The Government announces further pains and penalties for railway strikers. It declares that the troops at Moscow, besides being faithful, suppressed the rebellion with vigour and conviction. It adds that the Government is determined to energetically crush the revolution still active in some places. RUSSIA FROM WITHIN. A WOMAN SOCIALIST DESCRIBES THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. Tho London “Chronicle” states that the appended article is a narrative of personal experiences in the stirring events of recent fateful weeks in Russia. The writer is a young Russian woman, gifted and educated, who holds Socialist opinions. She was imprisoned for preaching Socialism to the working classes, to whose welfare she devotes all her energies. She was recently released from prison on tho granting of an amnesty by the Czar: — We had no papers but although we were in prison cells away from the world we knew almost all about the political events of the day; our relatives who came to see us managed to tell ns nows through the double iron frame, and notwithstanding the eager eyes of tho inspector. Electricity went out and told us about the general strike; we lacked milk One night we heard distinctly the cheers and the songs of the procession passing before the prison ; but thearnest horrible signs that told us the plain truth were the soldiers stationed in the prison yard adjacent to. the one which wo used for our walks. Every evening while tho cries of our comrades in the streets came nearer and nearer towards the grey building of the prison, we saw the soldiers ranging themselves before the street gate, and wo heard the officer giving the order “To arms!” and we thought of the innocent blood that might be shed in the desperate effort to free us. PRISON PROPAGANDA. Wo could see the soldiers’ faces distinctly from behind our barred windows, and one day w T e could stand it no more; we opened the windows and spoke to them. Leaning on the cold iron frames young girls- harangued tho soldiers, imploring them not to fire on the people, but to join the cause of freedom. Things that could be hardly

said outside a prison were hoard here, and the prison authorities did not daro to repress us. The next day we recommenced our propaganda and kept it up ©very day. Early one morning w© were told by fcho ward mistress to prepare our luggage, for we wore to go out of prison. In the office, while getting back our books and our money, wo were told that an amnesty was ordered by his Majesty. It was a curious eight to see all these young girls and women treated so long as State offenders, their only crime being the preaching of the gospel of Liberty and the appeal to. fight for it. And now the very wave of protest which they tried to raise freed at last themselves from the iron grip of the tyrants. The Russian woman who was feared and persecuted as a dangerous enemy of the tyrants proved well that a sufficient amount of moral strength can stand against the brutal physical forces of the oppressors. But away with the prison walls! Be shut for ever those heavy gates that dosed from us all the broad world with all its happiness and misery! Welcome liberty, gained for us by a desperate effort of bur comrades! A red banner with, white letters on it , was waved by one of the girls the very moment she crossed the prison threshold, a banner that she 'had sewn in great secret from the ward mistress, using such materials as she could get in her cell, and concealed ' under her cloak while‘crossing the yard. What a joy it was for all her comrades to see that bit of red silk attached to a stock all made out of pieces of wood bound together! The prison was behind them, the freedom before, and the new life began with the waving of that sacred symbol of the noble fight. A DAY OF REJOICING. The first day of liberty was spent among friends and relatives. In the evening we fall met in the big ball, where the council of the workmen’s representatives had its usual sittings. Young men and women were released that day from the prisons, and friends and comrades recognised each other after a long separation. So much was Changed during their absence from life I To read the newspapers, discussing freely such questions that no one dared to raise openly but a couple of months ago. To see that parliament of workmen; —those brave, conscious, open faces—deliberating on political problems. For a moment I thought it was a mistake. I was abroad again, and saw a trade union congress sitting in the Holborn Town Hall in London, ox perhaps a sitting of the congress of the “parti ouvrier Beige” in th© Matson du Peuple at Brussels. But, no! my ears heard distinctly Russian words; my eyes recognised Russian faces, many of whom wore known to me personally. In th© interval several workmen, among whom I had worked in secrecy before my imprisonment, cam© to shake hands with, mo, conveying their hearty greetings. It was no dream, it was a reality. And the next morning they took me with them inside a big shipbuilding factory, where, standing on a high platform, I spoke to a crowd of several thousand workmen—yes, now preaching openly the gospel of Socialism and liberty.