Even escapes were skilfully organised when it was necessary for the Okhrana and its agent, Azeff, to spare some active fighting leader, only to hand him over later on to a Court Martial to be hanged in twenty-four hours. After that they paraded as the real defenders of autocracy; they obtained considerable rewards in money, proved the necessity of the Okhrana, obtained grants for it, and maintained the "Reinforced Okhrana," with its double pay to all its officers and officials, and its "extraordinary supplementary budget," from year to year.
In order to make sure of it, they also printed a special paper, the Tsarskiy Listok (the Tsar's Leaflet), for the personal perusal of the Tsar (one of the numbers of this paper, obtained from the gendarmerie Archives, was reproduced lately by Burtseff in his review, Byloye), every report about the activity of the revolutionists and every arrest of revolutionists being recorded there for the Tsar, who read it with great interest—everything being done to confirm him in the idea of the necessity of maintaining the state of siege.
Thousands of men are thus sacrificed every year, only to provide the agents provocateurs of the Okhrana with plenty of money.
But Azeff was not an exception. The late M. Pergament communicated in March last (to the Novoye Vremya) some facts from his political experience as lawyer, and these throw some light on the widespread system of provocation used by the Russian secret police. In one case an agent provocateur at Vilna, dressed in a soldier's uniform, complained to some young boys and girls of the bad treatment he had received from his officers. He suggested that the young people should kill the officers, and offered them explosives for the purpose. Happily, they mistrusted him, and did not follow his advice.
At a Court Martial at Vladimir, in February last, it was proved that Lieutenant-Colonel Zavarnitsky, head of the secret police of this city, had sent threatening letters, revolutionary proclamations, drawings of bombs, and even real bombs, to all the authorities, including himself.
During the trial which took place at Cracow, in consequence of an accusation brought by Burtseff against Miss Brzozowski of belonging to the secret police, one of the lawyers said that in Russian Poland he had several times seen agents provocateurs condemned to death for murders they had organised, and known them to be liberated afterwards and to appear as witnesses in other trials.[1]
- ↑ Novoye Vremya, February 11, 1909.
