Petersburg.
Because they rioted? No! Because they wished to offer a protest
against the brutalities of the Government officials. Are our petitions
ever read, our entreaties ever answered? There were other things too,
but they didn't generally get into the newspapers. Women stripped in
barrack rooms,--and that in winter,--the Russian winter,--and beaten by
common soldiers. Not women of the streets and slums, but women of the
higher classes. Mock trials held with closed doors, the crime,--to
have incurred the displeasure of someone in favour at the Court,--the
end,--Siberia! A student is known to be quiet, a great reader and
interested in the condition of the serfs. He is watched, arrested, and
on the false evidence of the police ends his days in the mines.
Entreaties, reason, appeal! Have we not tried them? Now we have only
one weapon left--retaliation. Sometimes we are able to avenge our
martyrs. The two fiends who guarded Marie Spiridonova were shot by the
members of her Society. She was only a girl too--about the same age as
you.
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