Chapter XII: The Death of Mademoiselle Vietroff

I did not like to interrupt the preceding chapter by reproducing in full the proclamation that was distributed among the public after the death of Mademoiselle Vietroff. I shall quote it now, believing that it constitutes an historical document worthy of remembrance in spite of the harrowing details it contains. It is remarkable because it had certainly a visible influence upon the subsequent events that led to the outbreak of the Revolution in 1905. It was very often mentioned as the first appeal of the student classes to the masses, who up to that time had not participated in the anarchist movement; and as such it may not be devoid of some interest for the reader.

This is the document. It was circulated, just as I reproduce it, by thousands of copies, without any signature:

“On the 12th of February of the present year (1897) died in the
fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, after two days of terrible
sufferings, a student of the Higher School for Women, Marie
Feodorovna Vietroff. According to the words of the Assistant Public
Prosecutor, on the 10th of February she threw the contents of a
paraffin lamp over her clothes and bedding and set fire to them
afterwards. As we therefore see, awful cases of people burning
themselves to death, among other terrible ways of committing
suicide, as the only means of escaping a doom more horrible than
death itself, are again occurring.

“The deceased lady was imprisoned not so very long ago (during the
night of the 22nd of December). She had been accused merely of
secreting illegal literature. The only punishment she could
legally have incurred, therefore, would have been to be sent beyond
the limits of the town of St. Petersburg.

“According to people who knew her well, she was a person of very
strong personality, and would not shrink from even penal servitude
in defence of her views. There was nothing in her disposition which
could have led one to think that she would have proved herself to
be such a coward as to feel frightened at the future that seemed to
lie in store for her. She was not at all of a melancholy
disposition. The letters which she wrote to her friends from her
prison, and the diary which she kept during that time, tend to
confirm that belief. It was also only latterly that the visits
which her sister had been allowed to pay had been interrupted; and
during these visits she was always very cheerful.

“What sorrow, therefore, and what despair could have led her to put
an end to her life in such a horrible way?

“She is the only one that could have replied to this momentous
question; she, or else those who were the direct cause of it. But
she has already settled her accounts with this life, and, of
course, neither the witnesses nor the instigators of her fearful
death will give a true account of the circumstances that brought it
about. It is only the few words that have escaped the lips of
fellow-prisoners of her (who since her death have been transferred
from the fortress to the house of preventive detention) which give
a faint inkling of the truth and from which we can surmise the
details of the tragedy of Marie Vietroff’s death, and of the
circumstances that drove this energetic girl to decide upon the
step which she took. We can only make shrewd guesses that this
death was but the final end to a moral tragedy of the most painful
and awful kind. Our presumptions are justified, if we take into
consideration the personality of the deceased on the one hand, and
the habits and customs in our prisons on the other. The tactics
observed by the authorities in charge of these establishments have
been sufficiently demonstrated in more than one case where
individuals have been driven to desperation, or tortured to within
an ace of death, and then sent out of prison to end their lives,
where the authorities could not be blamed for the result, thus
carefully evading the consequences that might have resulted had
their victims succumbed within prison walls.

“If, in the case of Mlle. Vietroff, the authorities could not
follow their usual tactics, it means that they must have been
directly responsible for the miserable end of the wretched
creature. If this had not been the case, why, during the two long
days that the unfortunate girl’s dying agony lasted, were her
parents, relations, and friends not informed of her fate? Why was
the mere fact of her death kept secret from them for two whole
weeks, and why were even books taken over for her in order to allow
her people to believe her to be alive? Why was the fact of her
death only revealed when the details of it began to ooze through to
the public from the tales of the prisoners who, after having shared
her captivity in the fortress for some time, had been released from
it?

“If the people to whom we have just now been alluding had no hand
in the death of Mlle. Vietroff, they would surely have advised her
family of it earlier. If they had not been the direct cause of her
suicide they would have allowed her to see her friends before she
died, to whom she might have explained the reasons which induced
her to take such a terrible resolution; and this alone would have
turned suspicion away from them.

“Nothing of the kind was done, and this points clearly the part
which the executioners of the Tsar have had in this tragedy. As if
we did not know their way of acting! As if we are so very far away
from the times when girls were beaten to death, and when they also
preferred suicide to an existence which would have been otherwise
spent in the shame of disgraceful remembrances! As if the tortures
invented by the Tsar’s janissaries were a mystery to us!

“We are convinced that only the feeling that she had been placed in
some position from which there was no escape could have driven
Mlle. Vietroff to the dreadful necessity of doing away with
herself, and to prefer suicide to a life tainted with unbearable
remembrances. We know not what was done to her by the mysterious
executioners who drove her to her death; and such a death--a death
the very mention of which sends a cold shudder through our bodies.
Such facts cannot be kept secret; they must be made public, if only
in order to avoid their recurrence; they must be proclaimed
everywhere, and in writing this letter we are deeply convinced that
thousands of people will be eager to assist at the funeral service
for the dead victim, Marie Feodorovna Vietroff!”

Thousands of people did assist at these prayers. The vast square
before the Kazan Cathedral was thronged with men and women, crying
and sobbing; and in spite of the repeated warnings of the police
the vast crowd would not disperse.

Such a manifestation, indeed, as followed upon the appeal that I
have just now reproduced had not taken place in St. Petersburg
since the troubled times which had preceded the assassination of
Alexander II. It created a deep impression on all those who chanced
to see it; it opened a new era in the history of modern Russia. It
was the forerunner of the great storm which a few short years later
nearly drove the Romanoffs from their Throne.