[24]. The present Minister of Justice (1902).
[25]. See pp. [15] and [98], note, p. [210], and portrait, p. [112].
[26]. The present Minister of the Interior.—Trans.
[27]. I learned the following particulars later. In May, 1882, some of the political prisoners at Kara escaped. They were soon recaptured, and horribly severe measures were then set on foot in their prison. It was resolved to send away the “most dangerous element.” Thirteen men were chosen, on any kind of pretext, only four of them having been concerned in the escape, and they were all despatched to the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and afterwards to Schlüsselburg, the special prison for politicals. There the harshest régime prevails, and no one who enters is ever set free again. Kobiliànsky shared this fate, although he had not been one of those who had broken loose from prison. Nearly all these unhappy men met their death in Schlüsselburg: among them Butzìnsky, Gèhlis, I. Ivànov, Kobiliànsky, Shturkòvsky, and Shtchedrin. Only one survives (1902)—Michael Popov.
[28]. Nearly £5 10s.—Trans.
[29]. About £2 5s.—Trans.
[30]. Kùritzin was arrested in consequence of the attempt upon Gorinòvitch, and turned traitor unknown to his former comrades. He was shut up in a cell with the other prisoners, so that he might spy upon them; and through his information some of them were sent to the mines in Siberia, and many others delivered into the clutches of the law. I believe that he himself is now practising somewhere as a veterinary surgeon.
[31]. A noted Cossack chieftain of the seventeenth century, who has become a hero of Russian popular romance.—Trans.
[32]. While these pages are in the press comes the news (May, 1903) of[of] Bogdanòvitch’s assassination. Having risen to be Governor of Ufa, he had suppressed in a very brutal manner a strike at Zlatoust. Shortly afterwards he was shot in a public park, and his assailants escaped.—Trans.
[33]. Not long before this some political prisoners had got up a “hunger-strike” as a protest against unjust treatment; and the authorities becoming alarmed at their condition of weakness, the prison doctor, Dr. Rosen, had forcibly administered nourishment by means of the enema.