However, I had got the war fever, and was altogether at a loose end; so I resolved to serve my time in the Russian Army as a volunteer, although it was a year sooner than was necessary. Doubtless I was moved to this partly by the consideration that as a soldier I should have opportunities of continuing my propagandist work, and also by the thought that military training might be of use to me hereafter.

According to the then existing regulations I had only six months to serve as a volunteer of the second class. Thus it came about that in the end of October, 1875, I became a private soldier in the 130th regiment of infantry at Kiëv. But it also happened that only four months later I had to leave the service, as I will now explain. One of my friends, a student named Semen Luryè, implicated in the “Case of the 193,”[[38]] was at this time imprisoned at Kiëv. The all-powerful adjutant of gendarmerie, Baron Gèhkin, had borrowed large sums of money from the parents of Luryè, and thanks to this circumstance the prisoner was allowed opportunities for escaping. I rendered him some assistance in his flight, and suspicion falling upon me, my dwelling was searched by the gendarmes. My arrest seemed imminent; and being a soldier, I should have been brought before a court-martial, which in those days of heavy sentences would have sealed my fate, so I went into hiding until the intentions of the gendarmerie should become clear. In a few days it was evident that Baron Gèhkin (who might come in for a good deal of blame, as he had allowed the fugitive many favours) would be sure to hush the thing up, so far as possible. It therefore seemed my simplest plan to report myself again on duty, when I should be punished for five days’ absence without leave, but at worst not very severely. Things, however, turned out differently. My regiment belonged to the 33rd division, at the head of which was Vannòvsky, later Minister of War, and subsequently of Education. He hated the volunteers; and I, who by no means took kindly to subordination and discipline, was not in his good books. As ill-luck would have it, just at the time of my absence the General had ordered up my battalion of volunteers; so when I now reported myself I was taken straight to him, and he sent me off at once to headquarters for trial. I was accused of desertion; and over and above that I had brought upon myself a charge of insulting an officer on duty, because I had objected to being called “thou” and roughly handled by the officer on guard. The affair looked rather bad for me, and flight seemed the only remedy. I succeeded in making good my escape with the help of two of my comrades, who brought me civilian’s clothes into the bath-house. I dressed myself in them, and passed the sentry at the door unrecognised. This was in February, 1876, from which time until the autumn of 1877 I was free, but an “illegal,” as I have already said. In the autumn of 1877 I was again arrested, as related in chapter i., and in the following spring I once more escaped.

To return to my present narrative. I made two protests against the magistrate’s decision to send me before a court-martial: one directed to the president of the Military Court in Odessa, and one to Nabòkov, the Minister of Justice. I called Bogdanòvitch to witness that the Government of Baden had only surrendered me on condition that I should be brought before an ordinary court, and tried by civil, not martial law. If a military court were to try me for desertion and insulting an officer, that would be against the conditions of the treaty, which laid down that I should only be answerable on the Gorinòvitch count.

As was to be foreseen, my petitions were set aside without further parley; and soon after, my indictment, signed by the Public Prosecutor of the Courts-martial, was put before me. This indictment left me in no doubt as to what kind of trial I was to have. Certainly the facts relating to the assault on Gorinòvitch were given; but nothing whatever was said as to the motives, nor as to the circumstances that led to it. Of course, the prosecutor had not failed to make use of the most stringent articles in the Russian Criminal Code. The heaviest punishment authorised therein (for parricide and such-like crimes) is penal servitude for life, and it was the very article dealing with that sentence which was cited in my case. According to the law this penalty is capable of various degrees of mitigation under certain extenuating circumstances: e.g. it may be reduced to twenty years’ penal servitude when the victim of the assault survives, even though against the intention of his assailant; and further, the term of years is to be shortened by a third if the perpetrator be under age at the date of the crime. In accordance with this, the Public Prosecutor asked for thirteen years and four months as my sentence, that being the maximum penalty to which I could be liable under the terms of the extradition treaty. Even then, the proclamation made at the time of Alexander III.’s accession might come into consideration; by it judges were authorised to remit the punishments for any crime committed before the date of the proclamation. In my case there was no hope of this permission being used; and I looked upon this whole travesty of justice as a formality which had to be gone through, but otherwise of no significance. I therefore declined the assistance of the advocate assigned to me (some candidate for a military post), and prepared to endure the unpleasant ordeal as best I could.

The day of the trial came. A great van with barred windows rumbled into the prison yard. I was put into it, a sergeant of police took his seat beside me, and the door was fastened outside with a mighty padlock. The gendarme who had been so long my companion in captivity mounted the box; a company of infantry escorted us, and the cortège was finally surrounded by Cossacks on horseback. The Chief of Police led the van, and a commissary of police formed the rearguard. It might have been supposed that at least a dozen robber chiefs, each with his horde of banditti, were being transported through the town. As we passed along the streets this unusual procession aroused the attention of the public, and I saw people crowding to the windows. Meanwhile I chatted quietly with the police-sergeant. It seemed that he had been on duty in Kiëv twenty years before, and knew my family.

“Who would have thought that little Deutsch I often used to see would ever come to this!” said he, and began following up old recollections, talking of my father and our house. My thoughts flew back over the years, and scenes of my childhood rose before me.

The court was filled with a carefully selected “public,” consisting of officers and their womenfolk, people connected with the law, and other representatives of the official world. The examination of the witnesses produced nothing of any interest. Most of those originally called were either dead or had disappeared, and those few who did attend made inconclusive statements, their memories being vague after the lapse of eight years—some, indeed, refused to answer on that account. The principal witness, Gorinòvitch himself, for some reason did not appear, but his deposition was read. I on my side took little part in the proceedings, and had renounced my right to call witnesses for the defence. But I was moved and excited; the large audience, mostly hostile, that gazed on me worked on my feelings. I sought for a familiar face, but saw nobody I knew except the Public Prosecutor of the Civil Courts, who had conducted my examination in prison.

After the hearing of witnesses the Military Prosecutor took up his parable. His speech was a verbal reiteration of the formal indictment which I had already seen. All my interest was to hear what motives he would assign. As he could impute to me neither “selfish ends” nor “personal hatred,” he gave “revenge” as the reason of the assault; but of course he had to abstain carefully from suggesting any motive for this “revenge,” as he dared not mention the word “political.” The order to keep dark at all costs the political character of the case led to perfectly irreconcilable accounts of what happened. The Public Prosecutor informed the court that I had been arrested in 1877, and had made such and such admissions in the course of examination, but that I had subsequently “withdrawn” from justice. He dared not say that I had escaped from prison at Kiëv; and it was still funnier when he had to explain that I had “withdrawn” from my military service.

I began my defence by the declaration that I had no desire to plead for any mitigation of sentence, as was proved by my not denying that I had fully intended to kill Gorinòvitch, though there was no proof of this save my own avowal.[[39]] I was ready to face the consequences, and my only wish was that the story should be truthfully told, that things might appear in their true light. With that in view I would put clearly before the court the reasons why my comrades and I had come to the resolution of putting Gorinòvitch to death. Scarcely, however, had I uttered the words, “We had formed a ‘circle’ in Elisavetgrad,” than the presiding general, Grodèkov, interrupted me with the observation that under the conditions of the trial I must refrain from any allusion to political offences.