CHAPTER XXIII

ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER THE SECOND OF RUSSIA

(March 13, 1881)

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln leads up to that of the other great emancipator of the nineteenth century, Alexander the Second of Russia, which occurred on the thirteenth of March, 1881, and which filled the world with horror.

In one of Goethe’s most famous poems a magician’s apprentice, in the absence of his learned master, sets free the secret powers of nature which his master can control by a magical formula. The apprentice has overheard the formula, and has appropriated it to his own use; but lo! when the apprentice wants to get rid of the powers he has let loose, he has forgotten the magic words by which to banish them, and miserably perishes in the attempt. The poem is symbolical of the life and experience of Czar Alexander the Second of Russia. As a young man, enthusiastic and desirous to promote his country’s welfare, he set loose the turbulent and revolutionary powers slumbering in his gigantic empire, and they grew to such enormous proportions that even his power, great though it was, was insufficient to curb them; finally he paid with his life for his attempt to confer blessings upon his subjects. In order to comprehend the difficulties which confronted Alexander the Second on his accession, it is necessary to take a retrospect of the preceding reign.

The Emperor Nicholas the First died on the second of March, 1855. He had reigned twenty-nine years and nine months. During all these years he had ruled his gigantic empire with an iron hand and had stood before the world as the most brilliant as well as the most imperious ruler who had sat upon the throne of the Czars since the death of Peter the Great. He was the model for the other sovereigns of Europe, and his policy was adopted with almost servile humility by the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the former of whom he reinstated on his throne by overthrowing the Hungarian revolution, while the latter was allied to him by ties of marriage. His dislike for reform and “the modern spirit” was caused, it is said, by the sad experience he had made but a few weeks after his accession, when a rebellion of the Imperial Guards in his own capital compelled him to throw shot and shell into his own regiments, and to quell a widespread conspiracy by the severest measures. At that time cheers coming from the ranks for “Constantine and the Constitution” had made the very name of a constitution odious to him. He might not have taken the demonstration so seriously if he had known that the soldiers, on being asked by their officers to cheer for Constantine and the Constitution had asked: “Who is the Constitution?” and were told that she was Constantine’s wife, whereupon the soldiers cheered lustily. At all events, Nicholas, who had intended to introduce a number of Western reforms, took suddenly a great aversion to anything which deviated in the least from the most autocratic form of government; he punished the slightest disagreement in political opinion or the most timid opposition to his imperial will as an act of rebellion. The whole system of government had been fashioned upon a half Asiatic, half European model; it combined the absolute--almost divine--power of the Oriental ruler with a formidable and well-drilled bureaucracy blindly obedient to the Czar and knowing no other law than his will.

Nicholas the First was a man of superior intelligence, of indomitable will, and of great vigor of mind, which enabled him to pay strict attention to the different departments of the public service. His most effective instrument was the third section of the Czar’s personal bureau,--a secret political police by which he overawed the empire and whose very name caused terror in the heart and home of every Russian family. Whosoever was unfortunate enough to fall under the suspicion of this terrible Hermandad--more cruel and more vindictive than the Spanish Inquisition--might just as well resign himself at once to his fate,--life-long exile to Siberia or a secret execution, most probably by strangulation, in one of the prisons of Russia. It was the office of this secret police, which reported directly to the Emperor, not only to ferret out crime and bring criminals to justice, but to protect the subjects of the Czar from contact with hurtful foreign influences, to confiscate books and newspapers from abroad, to open and read letters, and to learn family secrets which might be used against the correspondents or their friends. Everything, in fact, which the imperial government could think of to cut off Russia from the current of European ideas, to prevent its subjects from receiving a liberal education at the universities, to expand their minds by travelling abroad, to become familiar with the great political and philosophical questions of the day by a study of literature and newspapers, was done with rigorous care by the police and approved by the Czar.

Occasionally the Emperor became indignant at the venality and corruption of high public officials; but he did not see that this venality and corruption were but the logical consequence of the system of despotism and Byzantinism which his will imposed even on the highest members of the aristocracy. His smile, his praise, was the highest distinction, the highest aim of the ambition of the aristocracy, and for this servile subjection to the imperial will they compensated themselves by unbridled licentiousness and beastly excesses, and by robbing the public treasury. Because it was well known that the Emperor looked with suspicion on the universities as nurseries of liberal or revolutionary ideas, the nobility did not send their sons thither, for fear that the young men might become infected with these ideas, and that transportation to Siberia might suddenly interrupt their studies. The nobility, therefore, deemed it more prudent to send the lads to court or to the military schools, where they were safe at least from the contagion of European liberalism. It is really a wonder that, with such an organization of society and with a system of police surveillance perhaps never equalled in the world, with a Damocles’ sword always suspended over their heads, there still remained a number of liberal-minded men, who never abandoned the hope of better days, never renounced their dream that the time would come for Russia, as it had come for western Europe, to enter socially and politically the family of enlightened nations, blessed with liberal institutions and freed from the despotism of semi-Oriental rulers. These liberal-minded men and true patriots--professors of the universities, literary men, and a very small number of young noblemen--lived mostly at Moscow, where the distance from the observing eye of the ruler and his court saved them from detection, although their secret influence pervaded the whole empire, and kept the flame of liberalism burning in the hearts of the intellectual élite. While Nicholas had thus succeeded in building up an Eastern despotism on the banks of the Neva, he endeavored at the same time to impress Europe with the idea of his unrivalled power. His army was considered one of the best in Europe, and the immense population of his empire--larger than that of any two of the other great powers--gave him almost unlimited material for recruits. The generals commanding these armies were also renowned throughout Europe. They had won their laurels in the battles against the revolutionary armies of Poland and Hungary, in conquering the warlike population of the Caucasus, and subjecting large territories in western Asia to the white eagle of the Czar. The Russian diplomats had the reputation of being the shrewdest in Europe, and had either by secret treaties or by matrimonial alliances succeeded in making Russian influence preponderant on the continent of Europe. The Emperor Nicholas stood, therefore, on a commanding height when he provoked the great western powers of Europe, together with Turkey, to mortal combat. It was a challenge born in arrogance and political short-sightedness, and it found its deserved rebuke in a total defeat of the Russian armies and a thorough humiliation of the Russian Emperor. Nicholas ought to have known that, in engaging in war with the western powers, he not only endangered his military prestige, but put to the test also his system of domestic administration, based entirely on his autocratic will, and silently, although reluctantly, submitted to by his subjects, as a tribute to his dominant position in Europe. When by the disasters of the Crimean War that position was lost, when it became clear to the Russian people that the Emperor was not absolutely the universal dictator of Europe, not only his military prestige was destroyed, but his system of domestic government lost immensely in public estimation. Nicholas felt this double humiliation so keenly that it was just as much personal chagrin as physical disease which caused his death even before the war was over.

It was therefore a heavy burden which his successor, Alexander the Second, assumed when he ascended the throne on the second of March, 1855. His first duty--and it was a painful and humiliating duty--was to terminate the Crimean War by accepting the unfavorable terms demanded by the western powers. In the exhausted condition of the Russian treasury, and after the disorganization of the Russian armies by a series of disastrous defeats, nothing was left to the young Czar but to submit to the inevitable. In doing so he also signed the sentence of death of the autocratic rule established by his father. A general clamor for reform, for greater freedom and more liberal laws arose, and Alexander the Second was only too willing to grant them. He was liberal-minded himself and kind-hearted, and he was anxious to let the Russian nation partake of the progress of European civilization. He opened the Russian universities to all who desired a higher education. He reduced to a reasonable rate the price for passports, which had been enormous under Nicholas, he rescinded the burdensome press laws, and modified the law subjecting all publications to a most rigorous government supervision; he issued an amnesty to Siberian exiles, including many who had been banished for political crimes; and he finally crowned this system of liberal measures by the emancipation of many million serfs, freeing them from their previous condition of territorial bondage and placing them directly under government authority. Important changes were also made in the personnel of the different departments of the public service; a thorough investigation of these departments proved that the grossest abuses existed throughout the empire. The army magazines were filled with chalk instead of flour, and officers who had been dead for twenty years still remained on the pension lists. Numerous other frauds and depredations were disclosed, which were eating up the public revenues, and which had been practised for years by high officials who had enjoyed the protection of the late Czar. The reforms which Alexander the Second introduced did not find favor with the officials, and the emancipation of the serfs fully estranged the nobility, whose interests were damaged by the loss of their slaves. The Czar therefore soon found himself between two fires: the Liberals were immoderate in their demands for still greater liberty, and the nobility attacked the government for having granted those liberal measures, predicting that the new policy would terminate in disaster, revolution, and assassination.

It should not be supposed, however, that Alexander was liberal-minded in the American sense of the word; he was not,--not even as liberalism is understood in the western states of Europe. What he tried to be during the first years of his reign was a liberal-minded autocrat like Frederick the Great of Prussia and Joseph the Second of Austria; but the slightest attempt to limit his authority by any constitution he resented as a personal insult. When the landed proprietors of the province of Tver sent him a petition worded in the most humble language, in which their desire for a constitution was expressed, he flew into a rage, and sent the two leaders of the meeting to Siberia. But he was inclined to grant as a personal favor what some of his subjects demanded as their right, which they wanted guaranteed by law. The system of police espionage and persecution ceased, because Alexander hated police denunciations. This change had almost immediately its marked effect on public life; the people commenced breathing easier. The nightmare of Siberian exile or perpetual imprisonment ceased haunting their minds.

After a few years Russian society seemed to have changed its character, its ideas, its manners; it showed its independence openly, and acted as though its liberties and rights were safely secured by a magna charta or constitution. Many thousands of Russian noblemen went to France and England, no longer simply to amuse themselves and to live well, but to study western institutions or to place their sons in the colleges; and no nationality has a greater faculty of assimilation than the Russian. The ideas of central and western Europe found ready and intelligent reception in their minds. Hundreds of newspapers, periodicals, and magazines were founded, and most of them found numerous and eager readers. Some of these papers became a real power and shaped public opinion to a remarkable degree. While direct criticism of Russian affairs and Russian institutions was prohibited, the newspapers nevertheless found a way to keep their readers posted on all public events and public men. They published sketches of every-day life in which every particular was true except the names, and in this human comedy, scarcely veiled by the transparent fiction, the governors of provinces, the generals of the army, and especially the directors of the police, and all the high government officials were exhibited in their true character; their frauds were exposed, their arbitrary actions, their abuses of power, and their excesses were denounced. The reading public were in the secret, and the daily and weekly newspapers became a regular _chronique scandaleuse_ without subjecting the editors or publishers to prosecution.

While these periodicals, published in Russia under the very eyes of the Czar and of Russian censors, did their share in undermining the authority of the government, there was another class of Russian periodicals, published at Paris, London, and Leipsic, which were free from the embarrassing observation of Russian censors, and which consequently could speak openly, mention names, attack high officials and the imperial family. The most famous of the editors of these periodicals (which were printed abroad, but had nearly their entire reading public in Russia) was Alexander Herzen, the famous editor and publisher of “The Bell” (Kolokos). Mr. Herzen was a man of great talent, and his newspaper soon gained an influence in Russia which became a real danger to the government. “The Bell” did more for the spread of socialism in Russia than all other publications combined. It was more active and more successful than all other newspapers in showing up the official wrong-doers of the empire and breeding among the masses contempt for the government and its officers, because every Russian who could read, read “The Bell,” and got his information about Russian affairs from Alexander Herzen. The mystery always was: How did “The Bell” get into Russia? since the government made a most relentless war on the paper. Nobody could ever tell; the most searching investigations of the secret police failed to discover the mysterious channel through which the dangerous paper found its way into Russia. As soon as it had crossed the frontier, secret printing establishments, unknown to the police, struck off many thousand copies and circulated them gratuitously throughout the empire. It was evident that a socialistic or revolutionary committee was identified with its circulation in Russia.

But the most notable result brought about by “The Bell” was the change of attitude in which the Russian government was placed, and (since the government was the Czar) the attitude in which the Czar suddenly found himself toward his subjects. The imperial government, under Nicholas, has been bold and aggressive; under Alexander the Second it was placed on the defensive; it was compelled to plead with public opinion in order to clear itself of the attacks made against it, and when these pleas failed to convince, it resorted again to the old repressive and despotic measures which were even more odious from having become obsolete for a number of years. Autocracy, which in the hands of a strong man like Nicholas the First had been a source of strength and protection, became in the hands of a weak and vacillating man a source of weakness and danger. Public opinion, which under Nicholas had been silent, because it dared not assert itself, turned openly against Alexander, who had removed the bars which kept it in check and the fear which repressed its utterances.

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It is time here to refer shortly to the origin and growth of a political doctrine which at this time appeared in Russia and which has had a great and pernicious influence on Russian history,--Nihilism. The name appears for the first time in the famous novel of Ivan Turgenieff, “Fathers and Sons,” and designates a political programme which has found its most numerous and most enthusiastic adherents among the young men and women of Russia, especially of the educated and professional classes, the students and professors of the universities. It first manifested its existence shortly after the death of the Emperor Nicholas, when, through the liberal measures of his successor, the high schools and academies of the empire were opened to the people, when the universities were filled with thousands of young students, eager to learn and imbibe philosophical and political principles which until then had been unknown to them. The Nihilistic party aimed at a total regeneration of society and at the destruction of its present organization in state, church, and social institutions, and it found its explanation and excuse in the widespread corruption, brutality, and despotism of the officials. It is a mistake to confound the Nihilists with the Liberals or even with the Socialists who are advocating reforms or the abolition of certain political or social abuses. The Nihilists are not aiming at reforms; they simply demand the overthrow and complete annihilation of the existing social system with all its institutions, until nothing (nihil) remains standing. The reconstruction of society, based upon principles of reason and justice, is their ideal; but they leave the realization of this ideal to future generations, and advocate for the present the employment of all means, even the most reprehensible, for the attainment of their immediate aim. The originators and great apostles of the new party were Alexander Herzen and Bakúnin, who imbued the young persons of both sexes with an implacable hatred for the present system of government and social organization. They made not only despotism but all authority odious.

The first public manifestation of Nihilism was Karakasow’s attempt on the life of Alexander the Second in 1866. It failed, and at the trial it appeared that the attempt was not founded on individual hostility, but on abhorrence of authority in general. The attempt on the life of General Trepow, minister of police, in 1878, showed the dangerous and rapid progress which the party had made. The assailant was an educated young woman, Vera Sassoulitch, who wanted to revenge official injustice by punishing one of its most prominent representatives. She was acquitted by a jury at St. Petersburg on February 5, 1878; and this acquittal, brought about by the ostentatious manifestation of the sympathy of the higher classes during her trial, caused a sensation throughout Europe. The Czar himself was enraged at the result of the trial, and devoted himself to the extermination of Nihilism by all means in his power. The issue had then been dearly made. Nihilism had by that time become very aggressive. It was no longer satisfied with preaching a philosophical doctrine, but it openly advocated a policy of murder and incendiarism, in order to frighten and disorganize society, and especially public officials. On the other hand, the government resorted to the most rigorous measures to exterminate the Nihilists wherever they could be found.

Alexander the Second suffered terribly when he became aware, too late for him to master it, of the new intellectual movement and its political results in his empire. The situation was the more painful to him, because his own conscience as well as the old Russian party held him principally responsible for it. It was he who had set free that liberal propagandism which had culminated in this terrible agitation for the destruction of society, and which had entirely outgrown his control. Alexander’s mental condition, on this discovery, would form an interesting subject for the psychologist. From the day when he began to reign as an enthusiastic, well-intentioned man of thirty-seven, to the days of his disappointments as a ruler and reformer, ending with one of the most terrible catastrophes of modern times, his career challenges, for adequate treatment, the genius of a Shakespeare. No wonder that he became despondent and thought of abdication,--a thought which reappeared with ever increasing force to the end of his reign.

Nor was this feeling of discouragement and weariness of life caused exclusively by the fear of personal danger; on the contrary, Alexander knew only too well that he was not the only object of Nihilistic persecution, but that all those dear to his heart and also those whom he honored with his confidence and friendship were equally exposed.

The attempt on the life of General Trepow had still another effect on the Czar. It effectually eradicated from his mind his previous predilection for liberal reforms and a paternal government; it stirred up a feeling of resentment and hatred against revolutionists, reformers, and liberals which had never been noticed in him before, and which manifested itself in the most severe measures of repression. To his great chagrin he saw soon that these measures were utterly unavailing to repress the spirit of rebellion in the empire and in his own capital. Nihilism spread with the unconquerable fury of a contagious epidemic and defied all measures of the authorities to check it. On the twenty-first of February, 1879, Prince Krapotkine, Governor of Charkow, was assassinated; and shortly after, attempts were made on the lives of General Drentelen, a great favorite at court, and of Count Lewis Melikow, Secretary of the Interior.

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Alexander himself was exposed to a number of murderous attempts. His escape from the one made by Alexander Sokoloff, a school-teacher of Toropetz, in the district of Pskoff, is almost miraculous. On the fourteenth of April, 1879, at nine o’clock in the morning, the Emperor, seated in an open carriage, was waiting in front of the palace of Prince Gortschakoff, his Secretary of State. Sokoloff approached the carriage without having been noticed by the attendants. He was well dressed, wore a military cap, and looked like a retired officer. Standing within a few feet of Alexander, he suddenly pulled forth from under his coat a revolver, and, in rapid succession, fired four shots at him, all of which, however, missed their aim. The would-be murderer was immediately overpowered by the Emperor’s attendants; but during the struggle he fired a fifth shot which severely wounded one of the servants. Sokoloff had two capsules containing poison, fastened with wax under his armpits. He succeeded in swallowing one of them before he could be prevented, but an antidote was immediately administered and saved his life. He was sentenced to death and executed without having confessed the motive of his assault or given the names of any accomplices.

After this attempt the most vigorous and ingenious measures were taken for the Emperor’s protection. When, in the summer of the same year, Alexander travelled from St. Petersburg to Livadia, he was taken to the depot in an iron carriage and escorted by four companies of cavalry. Moreover the depot was surrounded by several regiments of infantry and cavalry, and nobody was permitted to approach it. Similar measures of precaution had been taken at all railway stations along the route where the imperial train was expected to stop. At all railroad crossings police officers and detectives had been stationed to prevent even the possibility of a collision with the imperial train. Another train filled entirely with the body-guards and high police officials preceded, at a short distance, the Emperor and his family. A large detective force was stationed along the whole route, and scoured the country for miles on both sides of the railroad, making it impossible for anybody to approach the track without being closely observed. At night, the entire route was lit up on either side with immense bonfires built at short distances in order to make the surveillance of the road as complete during the night as during the day. In order not to delay the imperial train on the road, all other trains were stopped for days, and the most stringent orders were issued that no persons should approach either the depots or any part of the railroad.

That travelling under such circumstances was not a pleasure, and would make a man exceedingly nervous, if not absolutely ill, may well be imagined. But in spite of these and other precautions almost passing human belief, a new attempt on the Emperor’s life was made during his return trip from Livadia to Moscow. On the first of December, 1879, Alexander had arrived at Moscow safely; but about ten or fifteen minutes later a mine exploded, which had been established under the railroad track in the immediate vicinity of the depot. The explosion occurred at the moment when the second imperial train was passing. It demolished the baggage car and threw seven or eight passenger cars off the track. Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt. The Emperor and his suite were on the first train this time, while the Nihilists had supposed they would be on the second.

Less than three months later, on the seventeenth of February, 1880, the Czar was in much greater danger at St. Petersburg. At about seven o’clock P.M., on that day, as he was on the point of entering the dining-room of his palace, suddenly a terrible dynamite explosion occurred underneath the hall occupied by the Imperial Guards. The explosion was so violent that all the windows in that wing of the palace were shattered, the ceilings of the rooms in the lower story and of the hall of the guards were full of holes, and the floors torn to pieces, while the tables and the dishes in the imperial dining-room were hurled in all directions. Eight soldiers and two servants of the imperial household were killed, while forty-five were more or less seriously wounded.

This new attempt on his life, with the attending number of victims, impressed the Czar’s mind so deeply that it brought on a new attack of melancholy which his physicians were powerless to subdue. Domestic troubles added to his mental depression, and caused apprehensions of a total collapse of his mental faculties. His general health had also greatly suffered from the long continued strain of his nervous system. In June, 1880, his wife died after a lingering illness. She was a princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, very handsome and highly accomplished when he married her, in 1841. But the marriage was not a happy one. For quite a number of years the Czar carried on a liaison with the beautiful Princess Dolgorouki, and shortly after the death of the Empress he contracted a morganatic marriage with her, in spite of the energetic protests of the Czarowitz and his other children. The Princess had great influence over Alexander’s decisions as a ruler; and when he seemed to have made up his mind to abdicate and retire to private life, she prevented the consummation of this design by her emphatic protests. Alexander had formed the plan to transfer the crown to his son, but only on one condition: that the Princess, his wife, should always be treated by the imperial family with the same consideration as the deceased Empress, and that her children should also be treated as brothers and sisters by the Czar. But when he informed the Princess of this plan, she flew into a passion, rejected the proposition most angrily, saying that she knew the feelings of the Czarowitz toward her too well to place any confidence in his promises, and demanded, as a proof of his affection for her, that Alexander should forever renounce his plan of abdication. Alexander therefore remained, much against his own inclination, on the throne until the day of his death, the thirteenth of March, 1881.

On the forenoon of that day he returned from the residence of the Princess to the Winter Palace, driving along the St. Michael’s Canal. He was escorted by a small detachment of cavalry and an adjutant of the Director of Police. About midway between the residence of the Princess and the Winter Palace a man ran up to the imperial carriage throwing a bomb charged with dynamite under the horses. It killed two men of the Czar’s escort and wounded three others. In spite of the protests of the police officer and the driver, who insisted on taking the Czar as rapidly as possible to the Winter Palace, he alighted, unhurt as he was, to look after the victims of the attack. In doing so, he exclaimed: “Thank God, I was not hurt!” But the man who had thrown the bomb and been seized by the escort, hearing the Czar’s exclamation, replied: “Perhaps it is not time yet to thank God!” At the same time another person hurled a bomb at the feet of the Emperor. His legs were broken by the explosion, his abdomen was torn open so that the intestines protruded, and his face was badly disfigured. The Emperor fell to the ground, exclaiming: “Help me! Quick to the Palace! I am dying!” The explosion was so violent that the windows of a church and of the imperial stables situated on the opposite side of the Canal were shattered. Many persons were killed or wounded. The imperial carriage was also considerably damaged. The Emperor was therefore lifted into a sleigh, which returned to the Winter Palace at a gallop. The blood flowed in great quantity from his wounds, and as he was carried up the large stairway of the Palace he fainted. The surgeons found it impossible to stop the hemorrhage, and at thirty-five minutes past three o’clock in the afternoon he breathed his last without having recovered consciousness for a moment.

The assassination caused the most intense excitement in the capital. A shout of triumph went up from the Executive Committee of the Nihilists, and a few days afterward the people of St. Petersburg could read the following manifesto, which, in spite of the care of the police, had been posted in several conspicuous places:

“The Executive Committee consider it necessary once more to announce to all the world that it repeatedly warned the tyrant now assassinated, repeatedly advised him to put an end to his homicidal obstinacy, and to restore to Russia its natural rights. Every one knows that the tyrant paid no attention to these warnings and pursued his former policy. Reprisals continued. The Executive Committee never drop their weapons. They resolved to execute the despot at whatever cost. On the thirteenth of March this was done.

“We address ourselves to the newly crowned Alexander the Third, reminding him that he must be just. Russia, exhausted by famine, worn out by the arbitrary proceedings of the administration, continually losing its sons on the gallows, in the mines, in exile, or in wearisome inactivity caused by the present _régime_,--Russia cannot longer live thus. She demands liberty. She must live in conformity with her demands, her wishes, and her will. We remind Alexander the Third that every violator of the will of the people is the nation’s enemy and tyrant. The death of Alexander the Second shows the vengeance which follows such acts.”

These accusations were only partly true. Alexander, on ascending the throne, had honestly tried to introduce reforms, abolish abuses and pave the way for a progressive, liberal government. But his liberal policy did not satisfy the Nihilists. And when in self-protection he fell back on the former policy of repression, the Nihilists began a war of reprisals, and finally murdered the Czar.