Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/100

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
84
THE SHADOW OF THE GLOOMY EAST

side could produce such figures as Azev, Maria Spiridonova, Borys Savinkov, Kerensky, Malinovsky, and others.

The famous revolutionary publicist, Burtsev, made secret investigations and inquiries into the internal conditions of the revolutionary parties, and published in the French and Russian press a series of articles proving that these parties were rotten to the core, infested by agents of the Government, who, under various pretences, acted as spies, as informers, and succeeded in disorganising and demoralising the ranks.

I mentioned already the ex-Oberprocurator of the Holy Synod, Constantin Pobedonoscev. He was the dark and evil genius of Russia, the man who led the bureaucratic thought of the Government on the path of the most extreme repression for the purpose of keeping the nation perpetually in intellectual darkness and humility under the triple yoke of the Tsar, the Church, and officialdom.

Pobedonoscev crushed many a budding flower of healthy, enlightened political thoughts and led many of the most distinguished men to ruin. It was he who issued the decree of the Synod expelling Tolstoy from the Orthodox Church, and compelled several of the greatest men of science to leave their mother country.

He fully deserved the name "Grand Inquisitor."

The Metropolitans, the Bishops and Priors trembled before the man, who succeeded in making the Orthodox Church an annex of the secret police, destroying