And then, after two decades of prison and Siberian exile, she sat with us and thrilled us with glimpses of the courage of those who answered the call. Lightly touching on her own share in the tragic drama, she carried us with her on the long road to Siberia among the politicals and the convicts who were their companions, through the perils of an almost successful escape with three students to the Pacific, a thousand miles away. She told of her recapture and return to hard labor in the Kara mines; of the unspeakable outrages, and the heroic measures her companions there took to draw attention to the prisoners’ plight, and how, despite these things, she looked back upon that time as wonderful because of the beautiful and valiant souls who were her fellow-prisoners and companions, young women who had given up more than life itself for the great cause of liberty.
Her visit to America in 1905 was made at a time when the long-cherished hopes of the revolutionists had some promise of realization. It was deemed necessary to gain the utmost sympathy and support from the comrades here, and she did indeed reawaken in the hearts of our neighbors their most passionate desire for the political emancipation of a country so well beloved from a government so well hated.
I accompanied Madame Breshkovsky to a reception given in her honor by her fellow-countrymen, and her approach was the signal for a great demonstration. They lifted her from the floor and carried her, high above the heads of the people, to her chair. They sang “The Marseillaise,” and the men wept with the women. Love and deference equally were accorded to her noble character and fine perceptions. In addition to her clear and far-sighted vision, her gift of quick and accurate decision and her extraordinary ability as an organizer gave her, I was told, remarkable authority in the councils of her party.
When I last saw her, at the close of her stay in this country, she implored me never to forget Russia and the struggle there, and said, as we separated after a lingering embrace: “Should you ever grow cold, bring before your mind the procession of men and women who for years have gone in the early dawn of their lives to execution, and gladly, that others might be free.”
Upon returning to Russia she was arrested, and after almost three years’ imprisonment in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, “that huge stone coffin,” was sent to Siberia “na poselenie,” as a forced colonist. The first letters that came to her friends from Siberia told of the journey to the place of her exile in the Trans-Baikal, two or three hundred miles northeast of Irkutsk. They traveled by train, on foot, in primitive carts, or “crowded like herrings in a barrel” in boats that floated with the current, having no other means of propulsion, and, finally, after nearly three months spent on the way, reached the little island town of Kirensk, surrounded by two rivers, “the immense and cold Lena and the less majestic Kyrenga.”
A letter from a fellow-exile, written in August, 1910, tells of her passing through his village in a company of two hundred and fifty political exiles and criminals, surrounded by a numerous guard. “Among the crowd in gray coats, under gray skies and rain, her imposing figure struck everyone.” He notes how her first thought, after days of travel through the pouring rain in a miserable cart, and nights spent in barracks or around a bonfire in the open air, was for others, “our unfortunate comrades.” “Their sufferings,” he adds, “do a terrible sore at her heart.... She formed the center of the party and the object of general attention, not only of her political comrades, but also of the criminals and the soldiers of the convoy. When I had traveled under escort to our exile some months before everywhere we heard ‘Babuschka is coming. God grant us to see her!’ The prisoners and the exiles in Siberia waited with reverence to see the miracle woman. She kissed us all and cheered us all.”
Her attempted escape from Kirensk, recapture, and sentence to the Irkutsk prison in the winter of 1913 are known to all the world. Her letters to American friends from her Siberian exile revealed the heroic soul. Her physical sufferings were only incidentally alluded to, as in one letter where, in the quaint English acquired in America and by study during her last imprisonment, she said: “My gait is not yet sure enough, and it will take some time before my forces and my celerity rejoin me to the point as to let me exercise my feet without the aid of anyone.” Nevertheless, she continues quite undaunted, “I hope to restore my health and to live till the day I see you again.”
“Babuschka, Little Grandmother”
The sufferings and deprivations of the young political exiles caused her the greatest sorrow. It was, indeed, the only suffering she acknowledged, although she deplored that reasonable conversation was impossible, with the spies always within sight and hearing, and expressed her “disgust” that they accompanied her whenever she went out.