Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia
An idea of the practical meaning of the regime of terrorism which the revolutionists in Russia have inaugurated since the failure of the recent armed uprising in Moscow and other places, may be gained from the following statements made by one who came closely in touch with the situation in the Russian city of Bielostok. He says:— I was a passenger in a street-car this morning. Men were going to business, and the car was crowded. At one of the corners a police commissioner entered the car. About half the passengers left the car at the next corner. By the time we had gone three blocks, the only persons left on the car were the police commissioner, the driver, conductor, and myself. I asked the conductor what was the matter. “O,” he replied, “the police commissioner is on the proscribed list. He’s had his notice that he will soon go on a journey to the other world. Everybody in Bielostok knows it, and everybody thinks he may be blown up at any moment if he happens to be near the commissioner.” The New York Sun, in which this account is printed, adds:— No one who has recently been in Bielostok has any doubt of the accuracy of this statement. The proscribed list number several scores of persons, and the dastards behind the movement have taken the trouble to make the list public. Their desire to create a state of complete terrorism has fully succeeded. These threats were not empty; there was grim business behind them. The Sun printed about two weeks ago the news that the new chief of police of Bielostok had been mortally wounded by a bomb. About twenty other unfortunates who were not proscribed, but happened to be near the marked man, were killed or wounded by the explosion. Several other police officials and a number of ordinary policemen had been previously murdered, and all were on the proscribed list. If the unfortunate man who emptied the street-car so speedily is having the experience of his fellow sufferers, he is shunned by the entire populace. If he enters a barber shop, no one will shave him until a police guard is placed at the door. Cabmen flee from him. His friends dare not talk with him in the street. One of the proscribed living in the suburbs has a fine well in his yard, from which the neighbors have long been permitted to draw water for table use. The well is no longer patronized, for every one fears it may be poisoned.