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I - - THE OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL, PORTLAND, I SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 14, 1914. A Modern Genghis Khan Holds the Reins of Gov ernment in the Land of the Czar. I THE INMeR ' WlHMGS :;; ::tM::iUSSIlAH: ;- PQLlCE SYSTEM t x -r ; 1 'V in. S' ..v.? f f s d, I , 1 v.. ; . qiip 'in iw spuiiv ggjt (Copyright by The New York Time Company.) By Kurt Aram THIRD ARTICLE IT was once prophesied by Alexan der Herzen that as soon as the telegraph reigned in Russia there would arise a Genghis Khan to make use of It. The prophecy has since come' true. The -Russian police Is this modern Genghis Khan with the telegraph, and to this Instrument of torture the telephone has now been added. Genghis Khan, as everyone knows, was the most successful Mongolian desptit of all Asia. The Russian po lice has become just such an Asiatic tyrant, only in much greater degree, for It has at its disposal all the re sources -of 'modern technical inven- ions. Czars have been forced to pay their n I hr1 v , ,, y 4Jik- 'j , - ..niiimA 5ioccicJL FBecoituyn jar tribute to time, and have passed away; -von home secretaries have had to submit to the eternal law of change, 'i he police system of Russia alone is the same as it was a century ago; it seemH in truth to be a thing immor tnl. Even at the times when the very foundations of Russia seemed- to trem ble it has stood firm and unshaken. No matter what happens, whether It results in injury to the cause of the government or to the cause of the people either way it always turns out to the advantage of the Russian police. As far back as Alexander I this sys tem was in fair working order. On December 27, 1825, occurred ,the insur rection of the Dekabristes an event which shook the whole empire. The only result for the police Was a marked strengthening of their power. How poorly versed were the police at that time In the art of hanging! Three leaders- of the insurrection had tojbe hanged twice. The art has vastlyfrn proved since then! ; When Alexander II was assassin ated, the whole gigantic empire trem bled. The police alone lost its foot ing for not a' single moment More over, through the Count Ignatiev and with the help of tne head of the police department, Plehve, and a public prosecutor, this assassination produced for the police system its most cruel and effective weapon, the "rule of in creased " supervision," by which the whole of Russia up to this day has . been held In bondage. A fomenting discontent cost a czar his life; It put into the hands of the police, however. Its deadliest weapon. "Make an End to Education" When Alexander III replied to Count Deljanov's report with the fa mous words, "Make an end to educa tion!" th police did not hesitate for a moment to carry out this order. -It was then that the disgraceful dejree was Issued against women students abroad, by which they were placed on the same level as prostitutes. It was at this time that the police establishment became truly omnipo tent a law unto itself. Since then it has not hesitated to deliver grand dukes and ministers to the scaffold, if by so doing it could Berve Its own spe cial purposes. Thus, the chief of po lice, Sudjekin, did all In his power to persuade the terrorist, Degajev, that he and his friends should murder Min ister Tolstoi and the Grand Duke Vladimir. Sudjekin thus calculated to have a reason for attacking the secret terrorist organization with all the means at his command, to become minister himself, and prove to be the czar's only trustworthy protector. Degajev, in a state of drunkenness, told this excellent plan to a friend, who thereupon placed before him the pleasant alternative of killing Sudje kin or being himself killed. Degajev murdered Sudjekin and fled to Amer-' ica. ' ' ' Furthermore, it was Asev, the po lice spy, who dressed op two revolu tionaries in officers' uniforms and sta tioned them In (he anteroom f the president of the council, Stolypin. We know, for the rest,; . that the bomb these two had brought burst at the wronjjnoment that Stolypin remained "unharmed, while his . two innocent . children, were fatally wounded and are it. bedridden to this day. All this was public knowledge, and the offenders ' were publicly punished, but in spite of it, Asev remained for some time "the Czar's protector." Genghis Khan plus the telephone! But to look a little more closely Into the organization of this police. As it is complicated enough, and en veloped In sufficient secrecy to render it almost incomprehensible, we must confine ourselves to a few principal points, which even in Russia are no secret. At the head of the entire police stands the home, secretary, who .might more correctly be called minister- of police, for all Russian politics end In police politics, and the government is at bottom nothing but a police gov ernment, with only here and there the feeblest attempt to disguise the fact. The home secretary is chief of the general as well as of the "special" police, as the latter is called today the term "political police" is too bald! As chief of the general police, the home secretary has strings on all the J (J A l , ...s. r. ' "the C&cv's Protector administrations of the empire, begin ning with the governor-general. And he keeps his thumb on the so-called self-governing administrations as well, from the largest "semstvo" to the smallest "mlr" 1n the most remote "lit tle village. He accomplishes all this by the help of police officials, who are members of the system even though they occasionally bear no offi cial title. This is for the express purpose of preventing self-government once the great hope of liberal Rus sia from becoming in any degree comfortably established. The relations between the home secretary and the "special" police on the other hand, have not developed in quite so simple a fashion. Officially, the home secretary is chief of the "special" police also, and as such has the huge corps of policemen, com manded by subalterns, at his disposal. As a matter of actual fact, however, the "special" police constitutes a sep arate police department of its own, with its own special chief. In time of disturbance, this chief of the "spe cial" police department in St. Peters burg is undoubtedly the most power ful man in Russia in fact, he is her actual ruler. But when has Russia been so free from Internal disturbances as in the last hundred years? Consequently, the following situation has arisen. If the chief of the "special" police hap pens to be a powerful personality, then the home secretary can exercise prac tically no influence on the police de partment, which is the department that rules Russie. If. on the other hand, the home secretary chance to be the stronger personality, then the - chief of police, together with the en tire tremendous machine at his dis posal, must submit to the secretary's desires. But who, in a state which verges on absolutism, can be considered as the "stronger personality" ? Doubtless the man who is prepared to fight any danger that may threaten absolutism in the most thorough-going fashion. In such a state, the more powerful personality is always Identical with the more unscrupulous, the more vio lent man. Will Kill Kindness If the home secretary be such a man, then he will straightway suppress any chance humane feelings that might arise in the heart of the chief of po lice. If, on the contrary, the home eecretary should show a tendency to harbor some of the more tender emo tions, the- chief of police, aided and abetted by the vast machjne which lies ready to his hand, promptly nips such a tendency in the bud. Perhaps it is now not so difficult to understand why the police system In Russia always has remained firm, even when the government tottered, always has been able to- pursue its own ends regardless of all else. From the point of view of absolut ism, the ideal condition would be for the home secretary and the chief of police to go hand in hand. It did work that way under Plehve. But that a humane attitude should arise simultaneously on each side is some thing which Russia has hot, to date, experienced.' ... Is Not Answerable. If the home secretary represents the responsible government for all in ternal Russian affairs, then the hief of police represents an irresponsible r a- wti- L-fUi- i ii i BTiH-I: side government, answerable to none, which, however, always has access to the czar, and, as we have seen, pos sesses an especial Influence through the columns of the "czar's newspaper," for which the home secretary acts merely as a postman. A naive, non-Russian mind might query: Why does a minister at the head of a responsible administration submit to this irresponsible, indepen dent side government? Why does he not remove it? Well, in an absolute state, this med ley of responsible central government and irresponsible side government means a most fortunate condition of affairs. If anything too outrageous happens in the home secretary's de partment, so that even foreign coun tries get a bit unpleasant about it, then the police department is made an swerable, and the home secretary is. able to wash his hands of the whole affair before the entire world. And if a legal examination of the outrage becomes unavoidable, then the threads that run from the ministry to the police department, and from the police department back to the minis try, are, without any particular effort, entangled to such a degree that nc one is able to find the way out -of the labyrinth. The side government has always proved in any contingency the minister's best rear guard. Neither has the chief of police any occasion for anxiety, for, not being responsible to any one, nothing can happen to him. His position would be in genuine dan ger" only when he might chance to have a more humane or more-sensible idea than the home secretary. But a chief of police who values his position will scrupulously avoid hav ing such ideas. Once, however, this unusual event did occur, and the ex ceptional chief of police who not only . had a humane, sensible idea, ' but wished to carry it out, was Lopuchin. The provocative activity of police spies who spare neither grand dukes nor ministers in order to win for them selves the halo that goes with being the sole reliable "protectors of the czar," seemed to him not only unreasonable- but criminal. In order to stop the machinations of these spies, he put himself into se cret communication with Burzev at ' Paris, the well-known specialist in the hunting down of those whose activi ties are of a dangerously provocative nature. But Lopuchln was betrayed and a lawsuit was opened up against him. He explained his intentions, but to the Home Secretary it seemed so ab surd for a chief of police to entertain a genuinely humane motive that it was concluded on the face of it that y Lopuchln must have : : been making common cause with -the revolution aries., He Was Sent to Siberia The result was that Lopuchln, until then, the all-powerful chief of police, was banished to Siberia. Only, ia..con- 1" 1 ifflir i- orroa courtcv ot.wci wnud sequence of the last amnesty was he permitted to return to his home, for in the meantime the government had been forced to admit that it had wronged him. But no chief of police in Russia will allow himself again to be caught with a sensible idea! Ves tigia terrent! As has been said, the Home Secre tary stands at the head of the gen eral police. The institution that in the hierarchy of the police is near est to him is that of the chief gov ernors. This institution was founded principally for the suppression of re bellions, and bears the unmistakable stamp of the police system. The general government is split into a number of minor governments, and the governors of these are nominated by the Czar, on the Home Secretary's advice. Of what sort are these gov ernors? Educated men, perhaps? Prince Urussov, who was governor of Bessarabia Immediately after the world-famous pogrom of Kishinev, gives the following description of a meeting of governors at St. Peters burg, with Plehve in the chair: Then the chairman requested the governors to give their opinions on the reports just heard. Involuntarily a picture of my schooldays arose be fore my eyes. If we expected the teacher to call upon us, we cast down our eyes, we crouched down before the boys in front of us. we did everything in order to escape ob servation. Alas! 'Among these grown-up schoolboys the star pupil, who was all ready to answer any ' question, was missing! Every one remained attentively silent, and it was in vain that Plehve glanced at us with an amiably encouraging smile. ' Since nobody spoke, be talked for some time with, his neighbor Sti schinskij, then apparently lost his Fiatience, uttered the name, no doubt ntentionally, of one of the gov ernors present, and, without looking at him. expressed a desire to hear his opinion. . understood what was beings said to him only by watching the speaker's lips. was -innocently occupied in making a drawing. He sat directly opposite Plehve. and did not at all notice his invitation to speak, only interrupting1 his occupation after bis neighbor had pulled his sleeve. Some time elapsed before he com prehended what was taking place. Then he pulled a solemn face and Bald that first of all the shaft horses must be considered. We all of us knew that X. X. was the ownqr of a very famous stud, and could- not quite make up our minds about this apparently Inept declaration. It turned out. however, that X. X. had the chairman of future councils in mind, the fortunate choice of whom, in his opinion, guaranteed success to the work in hand. We were unable to get any further with our project, and Plehve hastily asked us to tea in the next room. Not even tea, however, sufficed to animate the governors. Plehve grew 'sick of this sort of "exchange of opinions," and gave the chair to his 1 rt. !0 iW" the colleague, Stischlnsklj, wno struggled along for some time, and at last re marked, "Cest a pluerer!" Prince Urussov then continued: Enough to make one weep! The .assistant minister obtained the same impression of the governors in the year 1904. Now. at the beginning of 1907, when all the governors had been changed, everyone who knows anything about the situation has to admit that the change is considerably for the worse, and significantly so. The home secretary, when he sug gests candidates for the post of Gov ernor to the Czar, looks more for sym pathy with absolutism and for docility than for intellectual qualities. No wonder that there are governors who are not even able to write their names in correct Russian. No wonder that Prince Urussov did not remain gov ernor for long. But if the intellectual level of these governors "is enough to make one weep," one can Imagine on what sort of level the subordinate po lice officials stand, such as the dis trict judges, land commissioners, po lice sergeants, and policemen. No wonder, too, that in the towns even stablemen are organized and fitted out with various police duties. Their level can hardly be distinguished from that of common police soldievs. When the times are normal, the gen eral police has as its principal work all affairs connected with passports and censorship in its hands. Besides this, it has to suppress all demon stration and meetings, for which pur pose the military is always at Its dls- "J posal. . There is further the "special" po lice. Formerly it was called "the third division," and In still earlier times, "the secret office." It has changed its ugly name from time to . time, but its occupation has always remained the same. This "special" police department commands an army of policemen, spies, and private agents. Its task Is "to prevent and to thwart all crimes and transgressions of the law, as well as to exercise a general ' watchfulness," . Further, it says In f fV the "secret Instructions." the chief contents of which were published by Peter Struve In his periodical Oswo boschdenje, (Liberation:) Doubtless our especial attention must be given to the discovery and pursuit of all attempts to promul gate evil doctrines whose object It Is to undermine the most important foun dations of the state, society, and fam ily. Every new appearance of this sort must be carefully watched and at once brought to the notice of the proper authorities, even when by doing no definite Information can be gained. In consequence, the following are the objects of continual police su pervision: First, the schools and all public lec tures, in order to understand their ten dencies and to become acquainted with any suspicious persons. Second, the book market, especially the retail market, - reading rooms, and all similar institutions that might fur ther the sale of dangerous or criminal books. Third, all persons who travel about for the purpose ef making any col- Polica Pcxtrol Oafcnra Ct,s Hidi-ng Plcai lected observations, and all expedition for scientific purposes, which are very often only a means of hiding various criminal Intentions. Finally, It is necessary carefully to watch the mental attitude of the peo- f'le. as well as the direction which po Itical Ideas are taking In general so ciety, in order to discover the onuses of all sentiments hostile to the gov ernment. . In other words, - any movement that does not suit the purposes of absolut ism, and very few movements do, la to be suppressed by the police. It Is. as every one knows, a very dubious pleasure to be a teacher or a student In Russia. But workmen, clerks, shop keepers, and mid wives are no better off. In short, every Russian who reads a book, who opens hispnouth, or shows a desire for education is under police supervision and followed Inces santly by the official eye. And that the police do not act in an over-delicate or tender hearted fashion goes without saying. Since 1881, when the "rule for In creased supervision" was Issued, and which was to be provisional valid for three years only but possesses today, after the lapse of SO years, the same "provisional validity," the police are practically at liberty to do as they choose with any and every Russian. By means of this rule, the police may place any spot in the Russian empire in a state of "exceptional su pervision" or of "increased supervls-. Ion." Today this : state of "increased supervision" holds in the districts of St. Petersburg, Moscow. Charkov. Kiev, Ekaterinoslav, the towns of Odessa, Rostov, and a. host of others. In short, this rule is in force over 30. 000,000 of Russians, which- are about a fifth of all Russia and almost a third of European Russia. An Abase of Power, What does the term Increased su pervision' meant It means that the governors and the town heads are per mitted to issue orders for the preven X tion of disturbances of all kinds, and can" punish disobedience by a fine of 600 rubles, or imprisonment to a max imum of three months. " How this power is abused can be Judged from the Ministerial report of 'January 11, 1905. Not less frequent are the cases of administrative rules of punishment under the order for Increased super vision, even when the orders of the governors and town heads relate to Infringements which have nothing whatever to do with ' suppression of disturbances, as, for Instance, driving too fast In the streets, disregard of sanitary regulations, etc' This means that governors and town heads are permitted to treat a harm lens cabdlver who drove faster than they like, as a state criminal, or to consider a miserable shopkeeper whoj noee did not please them as the csar's future murderer on the pretext, for in stance, that his shop did not live .up to sanitary regulations! Under the rule of 'increased super vision," furthermore, the police are at liberty to stop all meetings, even In private houses, to close down shops and factories without notice, to pun ish with a maximum of three months' Imprisonment, to Instigate searches In houses without the slightest Justifi cation, to forbid any one against Whom they have a grudge, domicile In any district, and to place any one they choose undeK police surveillance for five years! In this state of "Increased super- vision" In which a third of European Russia now finds herself every Rus sian Is the helpless prey of the po lice, for there Is no Instance to which he can appeal for protection against this tyranny. And who orders this state of "in creased supervision?" The same au thority that carries it out. namely, the police through its ministers. And side by side with this flourishes the insti tution of "administrative banishment" without legal procedure, which is so notorious the whole world over that I do not need to waste words upon it here. But all this Is not sufficient for the police. Just as the "general" police organizes stablemen for Its ends, so the "special" police protects every or ganization of rowdies that is directed against movements toward liberty of any sort. Thus President of -the Coun cil Stolypin reported to the csar that the Leagu of Faithful Russians la Odessa, of which the czar Is an hon orary member, and the badge of which he occasionally wears, consists nearly 60 per cent of criminals, and that scarcely one and one-half per cent of the members could be called educated. But the czar replied: "The league is the most loyal of all organizations and the most useful to the govern ment. It Is best to be patient with It and give it time to improve." No wonder that the chief of police in Odessa, NovltzkiJ, when arraigned as one of the instigators of the slaughter of October, 190S, telegraphed to Stolypin: "It Is impossible for the police to fight successfully sgalnst se cret associations whose leaders guar- antee their members exemption from punishment for their crimes." The home secretary then washed his hands of all guilt before the president of the . council Jjy shoving the blame on the side government. Straightway the side government appealed with an Injured air to the president .of the council, protesting its innocence. It is by these methods that sand is thrown into the eyes of non-Russians, and the destruction of all the elements making for liberal thought and culture can go on undisturbed. . , And to succeed in this is a matter of chief Importance to a Genghis Khan, whether he wear a Mongol beard or a police uniform. All else is secondary. The , fourth article of this series will appear in next Sunday's Journal.