Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/458

442 under arrest within a year, and the talented critic Mikháilofski was expelled from St. Petersburg last April. 2. — The character of the Russian revolutionists is a controverted question, and in order to state the case against them as strongly as possible, and at the same time to show in what manner and upon what grounds the Government proceeds in its dealings with them, I will quote a part of the authorized official report of a political trial.

In February, 1880, a young man named Arsene Boguslávski was brought before a court-martial in the city of Kiev upon the charge of belonging to the revolutionary party and distributing seditious books. General Strélnikof, the prosecuting officer of the Crown, in asking for the condemnation of the accused, made what seemed to be a carefully prepared address, in the course of which he reviewed the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia and expressed the same opinions with regard to the character of the revolutionists that I heard from Colonel Nóvikof and half a dozen other officers in Siberia. These opinions fairly represent, I think, the Russian official view. The latter part of the procureur's speech, which is the part that deals with the question of character and motive, is summarized in the authorized report as follows:

The procureur then referred to the personnel of the revolutionary party, and asked who were these people that had gratuitously taken it upon themselves to reconstruct society and change the whole order of things. He showed that, with a few exceptions, they were mere boys — often minors. The average age of the accused in the Ishútin case, for example, was only twenty-two and a half years, and in the Necháief case only twenty-three and a half, while the average age of the forty-nine political offenders tried by court-martial up to that time in Kiev was only twenty-four and a half years. The level of their education was extremely low. Out of all the political prisoners brought before the Kiev court-martial, not one had been graduated from the higher educational