Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/216

190 These figures merely show that in the year 1907 there was a great increase in murders. If we examine the data relating to murders and murderous assaults in previous years we find that the increase in murders cannot be explained as the outcome of the revolution. In the year 1904 there were sentenced to death for murder 2,800 persons, whilst 3,778 were sentenced for murderous assaults. During the period 1884 to 1893, the average annual number of trials on account of murder and murderous assaults was about 5,000. Thus the only exception that remains to be explained is the year 1907 with its greater number of murders (during this year there actually occurred a smaller number of murderous assaults). The probable explanation is that while during 1905 and 1906 the workers' organisations and revolutionary committees were still functioning, there was no notable increase in the number of murders, but that the suppression of these organisations and committees had as its consequence the murder of many manufacturers, captains of industry, landowners, and their managers or stewards. This was the upshot of the anarchy inaugurated by the government, which day in and day out provided the spectacle of murders and murderous assaults—for the government hoped to increase the effect of its death sentences by carrying out executions in public.

The reader can study all these cruelties in Kropotkin's record. I will content myself here with referring to the letter from Lomtatidze, the duma deputy imprisoned in Sevastopol, a translation of which was published in the "Daily News" 'of April 13, 1909. This simple report of what was personally seen and experienced, influences our imaginations more powerfully than such a work as Andreev's widely circulated The Seven that were Hanged. In his pamphlet entitled The Hanging Tsar Tolstoi stigmatises the cruelties of tsarist repression.

What explanation can be given of the massacre in April 1912 at the Siberian gold mines of the Lena company, when the soldiers killed 270 workmen on strike and wounded 250 others? In earlier days, it is true, even more persons were executed. Under the father of Peter the Great, Alexis Mihailovič, the executions of coiners alone numbered 7,000. If we turn to England we find that during the reign of Elizabeth there were more than 89,000 executions. The executions under Nicholas have not yet attained so high a figure, but (even if we leave