At length the unhappy victims of such savage repression had recourse to a “hunger strike,” the last terrible weapon of the otherwise helpless prisoners. It is a strange and almost incomprehensible fact that the Russian prison authorities have always yielded to the pressure exercised by a number of prisoners resolutely determined to starve themselves to death. Our deepest sympathy must be accorded to the great courage that inspires this last appeal against intolerable cruelties. We admire and understand it, but are amazed that it should be so effectual with the brutal and otherwise insensible oppressors. When the much wronged politicals delivered their ultimatum, the authorities at first received it with indifference, but soon became anxious and at length despairing, as the refusal to take food was steadfastly persisted in. Not a morsel of sustenance was taken. “As day after day passed, the stillness of death gradually settled down upon the prison. The starving convicts, too weak and apathetic even to talk to one another, lay in rows, like dead men, upon the plank sleeping platforms, and the only sounds heard in the building were the footsteps of the sentries, and now and then the incoherent mutterings of the insane.”
Overtures were made and amelioration in their condition was promised; fears of flogging were ridiculous, the officials said, and nothing of the kind had been contemplated. But the strike continued, for the strikers had no confidence in the plausible assurances of the governor. On the tenth day of starvation, the state of affairs was desperate. The indomitable sufferers had reached the last stage of physical exhaustion, and release by death seemed close at hand. The struggle was anxiously watched from St. Petersburg. Telegrams passed daily between the local authorities and the minister of the interior, who could only suggest medical intervention, which does not seem to have been tried beyond feeling pulses and taking the bodily temperatures. The wives of the strikers were finally granted the unusual privilege of an interview, on condition that they would implore their husbands to take food. These loving entreaties, backed by fresh promises from the commandant, finally overcame the resolution of the politicals, and on the thirteenth day of abstention the great hunger strike ended.
The physical endurance called forth by a hunger strike has been well described by Leo Deutsch, who was driven to refuse food by his ill-usage in the Odessa prison in the early stages of his sentence. His well-known character for sturdy defiance had so disturbed the prison authorities that they had taken extraordinary precautions to secure him, by lodging him in a dark underground cell, with no bedding except straw infested with rats, and no ventilation. He decided to starve himself in protest. They threatened to feed him artificially; he retorted that he knew how to bring on sickness. Then they listened to his very justifiable protest, and on the fourth day he ended his strike. He says, “It was only when I began to eat that I realised how fearfully hungry I was. I could have devoured an ox.... During the two following days I felt very seedy, as though I had had a bad illness.”
Hunger strikes were more especially the weapon of the weaker sex, although there was no weakness among the women revolutionists, and the movement owed much of its vigour and vitality to their indomitable courage and unconquerable strength of character. In the days to come, when the great, patient people of a cruelly oppressed and misgoverned land have achieved its emancipation, ample justice must be done to the feminine champions, who entered boldly into the fray and fought strenuously for the vindication of the rights of their fellow countrymen to freedom and independence. Many of their names will then be honoured and revered with the greatest of those known to history. Russian women of all stations, and some of them of the highest rank, have won the admiration of the whole world, for their disregard of self, the sacrifice of all ease and comfort, and the braving of the worst dangers and the most poignant sufferings in their constant efforts to oppose political slavery. We may be inclined to quarrel with their methods, overlooking the greatness of their provocation, and believing that nothing could justify the violent means adopted, but we cannot withhold our sympathy for the ardent souls who have dared employ them.
Some of the most remarkable female revolutionists were concerned with the hunger strikes in Eastern Siberia and were victims of the methods inflicted in retaliation of outraged discipline. There were those who emulated the crime of Vera Zassulich, who in 1878 tried, but failed, to shoot General Trepov, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, for ordering the corporal punishment of a political prisoner. Madame Kutitonskaya fired at General Ilyashevich, the governor of the Trans-Baikal, to avenge the intolerable ill-usage of the political prisoners on the 11th of May, 1882. Madame Hope Sigida struck Colonel Masyukov in the face, to shame him into withdrawing from Kara, where he was commandant of the political prisons, and where his indignant female charges had boycotted him, insisting upon his removal. Madame Elizabeth Kovalskaya deliberately showed her contempt for the governor-general of the Amur, Baron Korv, by refusing to rise in his presence, and was in consequence removed to the central prison in Verkhni-Udinsk.
The lives and antecedents of some of these female exiles who suffered so bitterly for their opinions, merit special notice. Maria Kutitonskaya was a pupil in a girls’ school at Odessa and joined the revolutionists while still a young girl. She was arrested with Lisogub, a wealthy man who lived in extreme poverty in order to devote his fortune to the revolutionary funds, and she was condemned to four years’ hard labour. Madame Kutitonskaya was the uncompromising foe of the prison officials and constantly resisted the irksome rules imposed. With three other women, Mesdames Kovalevskaya, Bogomoletz[Bogomoletz] and Elena Rossikova, she was removed to Irkutsk and there got into contest with the chief of the police, against whom they organised a hunger strike in which they persisted for ten or eleven days, until the prison doctor grew alarmed and representation was made to the governor of the district who brought the police officer to reason.
Madame Kutitonskaya was a lady of great personal attractions, with fair face and winning manner, and was greatly admired. After her attempt to assassinate General Ilyashevich, she was closely confined on bread and water in a damp, gloomy dungeon. The ordinary convicts brought her food, fell at her feet and christened her “Cupidon Skaya,” as a pet name in recognition of her beauty. The story of her murderous attack is told in full by Kennan.
“Stirred to the very depths of her soul by a feeling of intense indignation” at the shameful ill-treatment of the politicals at Kara, she did not hesitate to sacrifice her life and that of her unborn child by committing a deed that must give publicity to the wrongs she and her companions had suffered. When interned in the town of Aksha in the Trans-Baikal district, she purchased a small revolver from a released criminal colonist, ran away from her place of banishment and made for Chita, where the governor resided. She was too pretty to travel alone without attracting attention and when she reached Chita she was arrested. At the police station she did not deny her identity but pleaded that she was eager to have an interview with the governor. Accordingly, she was detained in the reception room while a message was sent to Ilyashevich which brought the general to her. They had neglected to search her, and she held her revolver ready cocked under a handkerchief as the governor entered, shooting him forthwith through the lungs. The wound was not mortal, and the assailant was promptly seized and carried off to the Chita prison.
Her subsequent treatment was abominable. She was lodged in a “secret” cell, cold, dark, dirty, too short to allow her to lie down at full length, and too low to permit her to stand upright. Her own dress and underclothing were taken from her, contrary to the usual treatment of women politicals, and a ragged petticoat infested with vermin was given her in exchange. Despite her condition, she was obliged to lie for three months without bed-clothing on the bare floor. Serious illness seized her, and she begged at least for a little straw to sleep on; it was contemptuously denied her. But for the succour brought by her criminal comrades, she could not have survived until her trial. This at last took place before a court-martial, and she was sentenced to be hanged. Had she made known her pregnancy, it might have gained her a reprieve, but she forbore to speak, although she suffered bitterly at the prospect of becoming the murderess of her unborn child. The feeling was intensified by the dreadful thought that it might remain alive after she had died. The question was solved by the unexpected leniency of the government, by whom the death penalty was commuted to penal servitude for life at the creditable intercession of her intended victim. She was then removed in mid-winter to Irkutsk, and would have been entirely unprovided with warm clothing but for the charity of her criminal comrades, who gave her felt boots and a sheepskin overcoat. The immediate result of her treatment was the birth of a still-born child, and she herself succumbed eventually to lung trouble.
Madame Kovalevskaya is described by Deutsch, who knew her well, as one of the most notable women in the revolutionary movement. She was the daughter of a landed proprietor named Vorontsov, her brother was Basil Vorontsov, a well known political economist, and she married Kovalevskaya, a tutor in a gymnasium of Kiev. She had thrown in her lot with the advanced party in the early sixties, and she devoted herself constantly to the work. In appearance she was short in stature, gipsy-like in appearance, alert and energetic in manner, keen witted, ready and logical in speech. She took the lead in theoretical discussions, imparting life and spirit into debate without becoming personal or hurting people’s feelings. Her gifts were exceptional; she was a brilliant creature born to play a distinguished part in society. At an early age she had opened a peasant school and sought to improve the mental condition of the poorer classes. Her efforts soon drew upon her the attention of the police, and she was harried and thwarted by them until they drove her into the ranks of the revolutionary party. The circle in Kiev to which she belonged was broken up, its members were arrested and she and her husband were exiled to Siberia. Her fiery and uncompromising temper kept her in constant antagonism with the authorities, and her active protest against the ill-treatment of her comrade politicals brought her prominently to the front, with the fatal consequences already described.