The trial of the Russian terrorists [Grigori Andreyevich] Gershuni and his comrades has only now reached its end, after attracting so much attention in Germany and elsewhere. Various rumors about the trial did the rounds through the press. First, we heard that the leader of the sentenced group, Gershuni, had begged on his knees for mercy. We then heard that the man responsible for the assassination attempt on Count [Ivan Mikhailovich] Obolensky, [Thomas] Kachura, had made strongly incriminating statements about his comrades.† These were refuted, and finally the execution of three of the accused was reported as having already taken place. It now turns out that those who were supposedly put to death, as the Berliner Tageblatt felt its business to report, actually had their sentences commuted to “life imprisonment.” Before the Russian government is able to patch its lies together for its official report, we can draw closer conclusions for ourselves by using the unabridged official text of the court indictment, which [Pyotr] Struve’s own journal Osvobozhdenie [Liberation] has published.
The court case, chaired by Judge von Osten-Sacken, was held at the Petersburg Regional War Court this year from March 2 onward. Five people were accused: a pharmacist, Hirsh Gershuni (erroneously cast in the German press as a doctor and staff captain from Lithuania);‡ Aron Weizenfeld from Zhytomyr (Volhynia); Michael Melnikov; the artillery lieutenant Eugen Grigoryev; and Miss Ludmilla Remyannikova.§ The state prosecutor accused these five individuals of participating in three terrorist attacks carried out in 1902 and 1903. The killing of [Dmitry] Sipyagin, the Minister of the Interior, by a student, [Stepan] Balmashov, on April 15, 1902, is well publicized, as is the attempted shooting of Governor Obolensky by a worker, Kachura, in Kharkiv in August of that year. Finally, in May 1903, [Nicholas] Bogdanovich, the Governor of Ufa, was shot dead by two unknown persons in a municipal park. In addition, the accused were also charged with preparing to assassinate [Konstantin] Pobedonostsev in April and May 1902.
Before we proceed, we should note that the indictment creates a profoundly embarrassing impression. It is principally based on a betrayal committed by two members of the terrorist group—Lieutenant Grigoryev and Kachura, the worker. The former was the first in the group to be arrested, on February 21, 1903, and the conditions of his arrest were rather favorable—the only evidence they had against him was some Socialist Revolutionary Party* literature found in his possession, since he had in fact not participated in any terrorist attack. Despite this, he immediately began to provide the most thorough and meticulous information about his comrades, named all of his contacts and described in full detail meetings and conversations, and also singled out his comrades in the photographs that the gendarmes laid before him. In short, he betrayed absolutely everything that he knew, clearly hoping that in sacrificing his comrades he could buy himself clemency from the gendarmes† and the court. He received the best possible support in this from his wife, [Zoe] Yurkovskaya, whose brother—i.e., the prisoner’s brother-in-law—had, just to top it all off, denounced the remorseful sinner to the gendarmes. (Incidentally, Yurkovskaya and her brother have not been charged as part of this trial.) This couple’s confessions have proven disastrous for Melnikov, Remyannikova, and especially Gershuni. Melnikov had already been arrested prior to Grigoryev, on February 8, 1903, but under a false name, so that the police couldn’t determine his identity. It was only through Grigoryev’s statements that the authorities gained insight into the whole range of his activities. However, Remyannikova and Gershuni were arrested as a direct result of Grigoryev’s statements, on February 25 and on May 26, 1903, respectively.
Kachura, a cabinet-maker by trade, functioned as the second witness for the prosecution at the trial and received a death sentence on November 8, 1902 for his attack on Count Obolensky. He was pardoned “by decree of Count Obolensky,” who commuted his punishment to forced labor. During both his detention period and when in front of the court, Kachura acted with great self-assurance, writing a farewell letter to his comrades—in which he laid out his views on terrorism and his personal motivation for attacking Obolensky. This made a big impression in revolutionary circles at the time, even among those who judged his personal confession to be politically immature. “I joined the terrorist organization,” wrote Kachura, “because I am convinced that it will be successful in altering the government’s habit of fighting us with a lash and its bare fists. I am convinced that it will be successful in opening up new spaces that will be used by the workers’ and peasants’ movements. No sacrifice is too large for such a purpose, and if it is necessary to offer my life for such a holy cause, then I count myself lucky to be permitted to do so.” Evidently, the man who wrote these words was soon after so pulverized by tsarist thugs in a dark dungeon that he was prepared to submit a remorseful confession in July of last year—if, that is, you choose to believe what’s in the indictment. He now came out with everything he knew, incriminating his comrades Gershuni and Weizenfeld in the process. The latter, who until that point had succeeded in avoiding the attention of the police, was arrested immediately afterwards in Dnipropetrovsk, leaving the reins of the case firmly in the gendarmes’ hands.
It is of course a commonplace that traitors like Lieutenant Grigoryev and cowards like poor little Kachura have always existed and will continue to exist in all revolutionary struggles. But this is particularly so when it comes to the terrorist struggle in Russia, which places the greatest demands on the strength of souls and the capacity for self-sacrifice of its participants.
Yet this court case, based as it is on mindless betrayals, leaves us with the indubitable impression that terrorist activities in Russia are imbued with a major internal weakness. When you attempt to form an overall and detailed picture of the activities of the terrorist organizations, you are forced to conclude that really only one man, gifted with extraordinary charisma, really mattered—and that was Gershuni. He surrounded himself with what was essentially a revolutionary illusion, as opposed to a serious movement and organization. In the indictment, all five of the accused were charged with belonging to the much-talked-about “Boyevaya Organizatsiya” or “Combat Organization.” But, by the prosecution’s very own documents, it is clear that the fact that Grigoryev, Kachura, and Weizenfeld “belonged” to this “Combat Organization” only means that they communicated regularly with Gershuni—and with him alone—who sometimes turned up in Petersburg, sometimes in Kiev, and sometimes in Kharkiv. Yet aside from that, they didn’t have the faintest clue as to the composition, function, or methods of this mysterious “organization.” Perhaps this whole “organization” did not consist of much more than Gershuni himself. The material weakness of these undertakings is evident in the fact that Gershuni could commission a man like Lieutenant Grigoryev—utterly lacking in moral backbone—to assassinate Pobedonostsev, Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod;* and, indeed, in the fact that Grigoryev could be directly pressured into doing so. The same Grigoryev who, after all his mindless betrayals, fell on his knees in court and begged for the tsar’s mercy. Just as with Grigoryev, Gershuni utilized all the influence of his obviously fascinating personality to induce Kachura into carrying out the attack on Obolensky. Yet, in both cases, the heroism evaporated as soon as Gershuni’s personal influence was removed from the equation. This corresponds with the rumor that Gershuni dictated Kachura’s moving farewell letter directly into his quill before the assassination attempt—and then immediately copied the finished product. Gershuni used precisely the same tactics with Grigoryev, forcing him, come what may, into penning a political declaration with terrorist sentiments before he carried out the planned assassination attempt on Pobedonostsev.
Overall, the trial of Gershuni and his comrades leaves us with a distinct impression of the extent to which the terrorist movement in Russia has lost the ground beneath its feet, and is hanging, disconnected, in the air. It can hardly be doubted that the first assassinations by [Michael] Karpovich and Balmashov in 1901 and 1902 were anything more than spontaneous and isolated acts of bitterness and of self-defense. The first eruptions that harnessed oppositional and revolutionary energy in Russian society occurred by themselves, like the shot fired by Vera Zasulich at [Fyodor] Trepov in 1878;* these were simple reactions, necessitated by nature, against the inhumane and unbearable bestial acts that various servants of absolutism were committing. Society was not expecting them, yet they worked immediately like a liberating act of standing on our own two feet and of salvation from the coarse atmosphere of slavishly holding our tongues and tolerating all the impertinences of an animalistic and animalizing regime.
We also believe that such spontaneous actions of self-defense will be entirely understood by all civilized humans who have as much as half a clue about Russian absolutism’s atrocities—that is, all people who don’t see the world from the perspective of a member of the Prussian government, for whom only ruling-class persons are sacred and only their dignity is inviolable. Our Privy Councilors know only too well how to hound the African Hereros† and the “pigtailed Chinese,” calling for “revenge campaigns” for the death of every German colonial adventurer to be “atoned” by not one but by thousands of foreign lives. They understand their screams for revenge as being for “German honor,” as soon as someone in Honolulu or Patagonia dares as much as look at the Germans disapprovingly. They simply do not understand that the Russian people—whose well-being and human dignity is trampled upon daily by their government in the most horrific way—will vent their spleen from time to time, in isolated, violent acts.
We, on the other hand, entirely grasp these incidents. It is however quite a different matter how such terrorist acts should be judged in terms of a method of political struggle. And we must say that the rise of terrorism in Russia is always a sign of the revolutionary movement’s weakness, even if this sounds paradoxical. The need to vent stored-up bitterness and torment against individual supporters of absolutism only occurs during those moments when no serious mass movement is expressing itself in a normal manner. It acts as a safety valve for revolutionary energy and oppositional spirit. The use of terrorist tactics actually arose from the disappointments caused by the failed attempts to bring a peasant mass movement to life in the 1870s.
Viewed from still another perspective, the terrorist struggle conveys the proof of its internal weakness as a political undertaking. To reiterate—Russian terrorism’s plan is to intimidate absolutism through fear of an invisible and secretive revolutionary power to force it to grant concessions, or even to abdicate. Yet it is highly naive to believe that any government would capitulate to an invisible enemy that does no more than lead a half-mystical existence. It will only capitulate to a visible, tangible, and real power that can justifiably strike awe and respect into it. And such a power can only be a fully class-conscious people’s movement, which enters the stage as an expression of historical necessities ripened over time. In contrast, as so strikingly demonstrated by the Gershuni trial, a tiny circle of people suffices for a terrorist movement. We have here individuals who operate totally disengaged from the country’s social development and its social movements. Absolutism can divine its weakness only too easily.
Yet the same trial also clearly shows how much Russia’s social sphere has developed and how much circumstances have changed. Today, not only have all of the terrorist’s bygone theoretical preconceptions and articles of faith been ceaselessly washed away by Marxist critiques—so has their old talk of the [imagined] historical mission of the rural peasant commune [obschchina], and the significance of the peasantry as the future bearer of socialist revolt. Today, there is also a serious, growing mass movement of the industrial proletariat in Russia that naturally absorbs the country’s revolutionary energy and unites its hopes around itself. And, in this movement, systematic terror has no chance of catching hold, as there is no suitable atmosphere in which any serious terrorist movement—even one that would function only as fatal experiment for a number of years—could establish itself.
The working classes’ daily political struggle will only be severely damaged and endangered by terrorists, as terror would nonetheless succeed in sucking power away from the workers’ movement and stoking false illusions. Even from its own point of view, terror cannot draw fresh energy from the workers’ movement in Russia today. Quite the contrary. When influenced by the atmosphere of the workers’ movements, terror naturally loses its inner bearings, its inner sense of self-belief, and its appeal to new recruits.
Individual terrorist acts will continue to occur in Russia, and will probably continue to occur for as long as tsarist absolutism exists, because—and we allow ourselves to say this to Messieurs [Bernhard von] Bülow, [Karl Heinrich von] Schönstedt, and [Oswald von] Richthofen, as they hunt down scroungers, conspirators, and anarchists—absolutism in Russia produces spontaneous terror, in a manner identical to how the bourgeoisie’s class hegemony in Western Europe produces anarchy. Yet just as Social Democracy is here the only real bulwark against the mad joke of anarchy, so has the Russian workers’ movement—that has grown in the spirit of Marxism—shown itself to be the safest method against the illusions of terrorism. The period of systematic terror in Russia is over, and it is precisely this that is made evident by the profoundly tragic trial of Gershuni and his comrades.