COOL IMPUDENCE OF THE NIHILIST PLOTTERS IN RUSSIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5496, 28 June 1879, Page 7

COOL IMPUDENCE OF THE NIHILIST PLOTTERS IN RUSSIA.

According to a special correspondent of the Golos, the number of Nihilists arrested in Charkow within the last few weeks is upwards of 1,040. These enthusiastic revolutionaries are principally young people, students of both sexes. They are confined in two prisons, and some are also interned in the castles of Nowobele;orod and Nowoborissogleb. Of those who were incarcerated, a goodly number have already been bauished to the Eastern provinces of Russia, an official euphemism, this latter phrase evidently is, for the well-worn terra transported to Siberia. The newly-appointed Gorernor of Charkow—Adjutant-General Minkwitz—has inaugurated his period of administration by initiating and adopting a serie9 of rigorouß measures of repression against all social and political offenders of the Nihilist organisation. How little severity is likely to deter these secret agitators, and how far the precautions adopted are calculated to prove successful in combating the Nihilist hydra, the late assassinations sufficiently demonstrate. In connection with the recent attempt upon the life of General Drenteln, a curious story ia reported as authentic by the Wiener Tageblatt. It has often been asserted that the Nihilist conspirators find agents among the middle-class officials employed in tie Russian Government *ervice. When General Drentelu received the first of the threatening letters addressed to him he tore it into pieces, and, turning to the officials and friends who were around him at the time, contemptuously remarked, "This ' letter, which threatens me with deatb, has not even the merit of being grammatically written cr correctly spelled." Within a few hours, according to the account current, the General received another communication, irreproachable in style &nd orthography, containing, m addition to the threats fulminated in the previous epistle, the observation that " the writers, havim; been informed that the General had destroyed the preceding letter on account oi its bad spelling J.nd defective style, they ventured to forward him a notification of bis sentence to death by the Revolutionary Committee, which, so far an punctuation and literary merit was concerned, leave nothing to be desired." The truth of thin story is said to be fully authenticated.