In Russian and French Prisons | Page 9

verbal
"offenees against the Sacred Person of his Majesty the Emperor," under
which head 2500 people were arrested in 1881 in the course of six

months; in short, all those cases which might tend--to use the official
language--"to the production of excitement in the public mind" were
they brought before a court.
As to political trials, only the early revolutionary societies were tried
under the law of 1864. Afterwards, when the Government perceived
that the judges would not send to hard labour those political offenders
who were brought before them, merely because they were suspected of
being acquainted with revolutionists, the political cases were tried by
packed courts, that is, by judges nominated especially for that purpose.
To this rule the case of Vera Zassoulitch was a memorable exception.
She was tried by a jury, and acquitted. But, to quote Professor
Gradovsky's words in the Golos (supressed since)-"It is an open secret
in St. Petersburg that the case would never have been brought before a
jury but for certain 'quarrels' between the Prefect of the Police on the
one side, and the Third Section and the Ministers of Justice and the
Interior on the other,--but for certain of those jalousies de metier
without which, in our disordered state of existence, it would often be
impossible for us so much as to breathe." In plain words, tbe courtiers
quarrelled, some of them considered that it would be advantageous to
discredit Trepoff, who was then omnipotent in the counsels of
Alexander II., and the Minister of Justice succeeded in obtaining
permission from the Emperor that Vera Zassoulitch should be sent
before a jury: he surely did not expect that she would be acquitted, but
he knew that the trial would render it impossible for Trepoff to remain
Prefect of the Police at St. Petersburg.
It is, again, to a like jalousie de metier, that we were indebted for a
public trial on the most scandalous affair of Privy Councillor Tokareff,
General-Lieutenant Loshkareff, and their accomplices: Sevastianoff,
chief of the Administration of Domains in Minsk, and Kapger, chief of
Police in the same province. These personages, of whom Tokareff was
Governor of Minsk, and Loshkareff was a member of the Ministry of
the Interior "for peasants' affairs," had contrived to simply steal an
estate of 8000 acres belonging to the peasants of Logishino, a small
town in Minsk. They managed to buy it from the Crown for the
nominal sum of 14,000 roubles (1400£.) payable in twenty yearly

instalments of 700 roubles each. The peasants, robbed of land that
belonged to them, applied to the Senate, and the Senate recognized
their rights. It ordered the restoration of the land; but the ukaze of the
Senate was "lost," and the chief of the Administration of Domains
feigned ignorance of the decision of the Senate. In the meantime the
gorernor of the province exacted from the peasants 5474 roubles as a
year's rent, (for the estate which he had bought for twenty yearly
payments of 700 roubles each). The peasants refused to pay, and sent
their delegates to St. Petersburg. But as these delegates applied to the
Ministry where General Loshkareff was powerful, they were directly
exiled as "rebels." The peasants still refused to pay, and then Governor
Tokareff asked for troops to exact the money. General Loshkareff, his
friend, was immediately sent by the Ministry at the head of a military
expedition, in order to "restore order" at Logishino. Supported by a
battalion of infantry and 200 Cossacks, he flogged all the inhabitants of
the village until they had paid, and then reported to St. Petersburg that
he had crushed an outbreak in the Western provinces. He did better. He
obtained the military cross of Vladimir to decorate his friend Tokareff
and the Ispravnik Kapger.
Well, this abominable affair, widely known and spoken of in Russia,
would never have been brought before a court but for the Winter Palace
intrigues. When Alexander III. surrounded himself with new men, the
new courtiers who came to power found it desirable to crush with a
single blow the party of Potapoff, which was intriguing for a return to
power. It was necessary to discredit this party, and the Loshkareff affair,
more than five years old, was brought before the Senate in November,
1881. All publicity was given to it, and we could then read for several
days in the St. Petersburg newspapers the horrible tale of spoliation and
plunder, of old men flogged nearly to death, of Cossacks exacting
money with their whips from the Logishino peasants, who were robbed
of their own land by the governor of the province. But, for one Tokareff
condemned by the Senate, how many other Tokareffs are still
peacefully enjoying the fruits of their thieving in the Western and
South-Eastern provinces,--sure that none