THE CZAR’S ESCAPE.
ON Tuesday, February 17th, at about six o’clock in the evening, Pavel and Makar were sauntering through the streets of the Vassili Island. Their conversation languished. While indoors they had had another discussion of Makar’s scheme, a heart-to-heart talk in which Pavel showed signs of yielding; and now that they were out in the snow-dappled night they were experiencing that feeling of embarrassment which is the aftermath of sentimental communion between two men. When they reached the Neva, Pavel cast a glance across, in the direction of the Winter Palace. The frozen river looked infinitely wider than it was. Dotted with lamps and crossed by streams of home-bound humanity, it lay vast, gorgeous, uncanny—a white plain animated with mysterious brightness and mysterious motion. The main part of the capital, on the Palace side of the Neva, was a world of gloom starred with myriads and myriads of lights, each so distinct that one almost felt tempted to count them; all this seemingly as far away as the gold-dotted sky overhead. Makar was huddling himself in his grey military cloak, his bare hands loosely thrust into its sleeves, looking at nothing. Pavel, his furred coat unbuttoned, gazed across the Neva.
“Come on,” the medical student urged, knocking one foot against the other. “It’s too cold to be tramping around like this.”
“One moment,” Pavel responded, impatiently. He had been visiting this point at the same hour every day for the past week or two. Makar, who did not know of it, relapsed into his revery.
Suddenly there came a dull rolling crash. It burst from the other side, and as Pavel and Makar looked across the river they saw that the lights of the Winter Palace which had been burning a minute ago, were out, leaving a great patch of darkness. The human stream paused. Then came a rush of feet on all sides.
“It’s in the Palace,” Boulatoff whispered; and seizing his companion’s hand at his side he pressed it with furious strength.
The next day the newspapers were allowed to state that the previous evening, as the Czar and a royal guest were about to enter the dining hall through one door and the other members of the imperial family through another, a terrific explosion had occurred, making a hole in the floor ten feet long and six wide; that eleven inmates of the guard room, which was directly under the dining hall, were killed and fifty-seven injured, the Czar’s narrow escape having been due to an accidental delay of the dinner. The explosion had shattered a number of windows and blown out the gas, leaving the palace in complete darkness. Traces of an improvised dynamite mine had been discovered in the basement. Three artisans employed in the palace were arrested, but their innocence was established, while a fourth man, a varnisher named Batushkoff, had disappeared. Now that Batushkoff was gone the Third Section learned that he was no other than Stepan Khaltourin, one of the active revolutionists its agents were looking for.
One week after the explosion the Czar signed a decree which practically placed the government in the hands of a Supreme Executive Commission—a body especially created to cope with the situation and whose head, Count Loris-Melikoff, was invested with all but the powers of a regent. Count Melikoff was neither a Slav nor of noble birth. He was the son of an Armenian merchant. He was a new figure in St. Petersburg, and when his carriage passed along the Neva Prospect his swarthy face with its striking Oriental features were pointed out with expressions of perplexity. Although one of the two principal heroes of the late war with Turkey and recently a governor-general of Kharkoff, he was looked upon as an upstart. The extraordinary powers so suddenly vested in him took the country by surprise.
He was known for the conciliatory policy toward the Nihilists at which he had aimed while he was governor-general of Kharkoff. Accordingly, his promotion to what virtually amounted to dictatorship was universally interpreted as a sign of weakening on the part of Alexander II. Indeed, Melikoff’s first pronunciamento from the lofty altitude of his new office struck a note of startling novelty. He spoke of the Czar as showing “increased confidence in his people” and of “public coöperation” as “the main force capable of assisting the government in its effort to restore a normal flow of official life”—utterances that were construed into a pledge of public participation in affairs of state, into an unequivocal hint at representative legislation.
Loris-Melikoff was one of the ablest statesmen Russia had ever produced. He was certainly the only high official of his time who did not try to prove his devotion to the throne by following in the trodden path of repression. He knew that Russia could not be kept from joining in the march of Western civilisation and he was not going to serve his personal interests by pretending that it could. Instead, he hoped to strengthen his position by winning the Czar over to his own moderate liberalism, by reconciling him to the logic of history. But the logic of history could best have been served by prompt and vigorous action, while the chief of the Supreme Executive Commission was rather slow to move. Nor, indeed, was he free from interference. The Czar was still susceptible to the influence of his unthinking relatives and of his own vindictive nature.
Chaos marked the situation. Loris-Melikoff’s first week in office was signalised by the most cruel act in the entire history of the government’s struggle against Nihilism. A gymnasium boy, seventeen years old (a Jew), was hanged in Kieff for carrying a revolutionary proclamation. The dictator’s professions of liberalism were branded as hypocrisy.