Why did not Count Witte expose Comisaroff? Who can estimate the value to the government of a good Comisaroff trial? But Count Witte knew that he could not take this line and retain his place. He did not dare to combat influences which were more powerful than his own. M. Durnovo, who, reactionary as he was, confessed to Prince Urusoff that “this was not his way,” was equally impotent. Comisaroff, who had received a “decoration,” was quite recently living at large under an assumed name.
Prince Urusoff resigned office to become the assailant of the policy of massacre as a member of the imperial Duma. The ordinary bureaucratic comment on his speech was that “Prince Urusoff had betrayed government secrets.” General Trepoff said, on July 9, to a representative of Reuter’s agency, “Il mentit, et c’est tout.” But the prince did not speak at random. His speech was founded on intimate knowledge not only of the government reports already quoted, but of other documents equally important.
It matters little how much high officials of the Russian government in St. Petersburg and diplomatic representatives abroad deny governmental responsibility in regard to massacres, so long as there is abundant evidence of the guilt of lesser officials and these are allowed to go unpunished. The maximum rebuke that is usually visited upon any particularly conspicuous pogromschik is temporary suspension or transfer from one post to another—sometimes with advance in rank, sometimes with advance in pay, sometimes both.[14]
Governmental terrorism, however, does not cease with the massacres. Individuals are assassinated at official instigation, precisely as the terrorists select a bureaucrat or official for “removal.” A notable instance of this was that of Professor Hertzenstein, a dignified and honored professor in the University of Moscow. Mr. Hertzenstein had given a great deal of attention to the agrarian question in Russia during twenty years or more. His counsel and advice guided the members of the first Duma when they were framing their “agrarian program.”
Late one afternoon, Professor Paul Miliukoff, who was then editor of the “Retsch,” received word from Moscow by telegram that a semi-official Moscow newspaper
Seventy-two years old | Child four years old wantonly shot |
Youth and old age—Bielostok pogrom victims | |