A Secret Service: Being Strange Tales of a Nihilist

A Secret Service: Being Strange Tales of a Nihilist

While writing for The Times a series of articles dealing with the Russian Revolutionary movement and the condition of political exiles in Siberia, I became acquainted with the original of Anton Prhznev. Strange as his stories chronicled in these pages may appear, there are nevertheless in London at the present moment many refugees from the Tzars empire who could relate facts of an even more startling character. Tzaricide is unfortunately as popular in Russia as it ever was, and the so-called Nihilists have, since the accession of Nicholas II., relinquished none of their activity. There was but little genuine mourning for Alexander III., and the feigned national affliction was speedily succeeded by joyful anticipations of a new and prosperous era. But Russia has already found that her golden hopes have faded. The powerful, unscrupulous officials surrounding the young sovereign, prompted by those evil principles that made Russia under Alexander III. a blot upon European civilisation, have, by painting in lurid[6] colours a rude and ungrateful nation whom to govern is now his thankless task, quickly succeeded in crushing any projected reforms. Thus the despairing nation continues to writhe under the oppression of corrupt officials, and those who dare lift their voices in protest are arrested and hurried without trial to far Siberia. The land is inundated with the swelling flood of the peoples sorrow as rivers in spring, abundant with water, overflow the fields, and it will always be as long as an irresponsible, cruel, and despotic autocracy holds and directs her destinies. The Tzar knows little of the horrors committed in his name. He has never been inside the tenth pavilion in Warsaw Citadel, where starving people have, times without number, been knouted to death. He knows nothing of the dark underground dungeons overrun with vermin in the Peter-Paul Fortress; he has never breathed their ftid, poisoned atmosphere. Even when he crossed Siberia the officials who surrounded him took every precaution to prevent him from witnessing the troops of wretched, shivering humanity trudging through trackless snows and driven to their gloomy tombs with knouts and butt-ends. Revolutionists are the creation of circumstances, of the general discontent of the people, of the striving of Russia after a new social framework. Discontent only grows the more when it is repressed. For this reason the places of slain and imprisoned Revolutionists[7] are constantly taken by individuals who come forth from among the people in ever-increasing numbers, and who are still more embittered, still more energetic. Truly the Imperial Autocracy is tottering towards its doom. By a special order issued from the Press Bureau at St. Petersburg copies of this book are prohibited from entering the Russian Empire, while, not content with the formal interdiction of my novel, Guilty Bonds, which deals with a political conspiracy, the Russian Government has also sent one of its emissaries to my house in London to inform me of the fact. This, I believe, is a personal attention received by no other English author. The methods of the agents of the Russian Secret Police in London and the measures taken by the Revolutionists to repress their activity will probably be a revelation to English readers, some of whom will doubtless recognise a few of the following chapters as having appeared in my Strange Tales of a Nihilist, now out of print. That I have been compelled to bestow fictitious names upon the actors in these dramas, add and suppress certain incidents, and change the scene in more than one instance, is obvious; nevertheless, I anticipate that many will recognise in Anton Prhznevs stories solutions of more than one sensational mystery that has startled Europe. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 67278
Author: Le Queux, William
Release Date: Jan 29, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
Publication Date: 1896
Publisher Country: United Kingdom