Mackey – Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry Vol. 1

THE NIHILISTS 223demands . Whilst (justly) accusing the highest officials and'dignitaries of dishonourable conduct, avarice, and barbarousbrutality, they demanded their removal from the entourageof the emperor, to whom they then intended no harm . Itwas the court camarilla they were aiming at, and the suppressionof the emperor's private chancellery, commonlycalled "the Third Division ." , But the more ardent Nihilistswere for more drastic measures, and a portion of the party,represented by their organ, Land and Liberty, seceded, andtook the name of the " Party of the People," which sectionwas in 1878 divided again, and the seceders called themselvesthe "Party of Terror," and were represented by the Willof the People . The party had no definite plans at first ; itsfirst overt act was Solovieff's attempt on the life of theemperor (617). And the Government seemed to play intothe hands of the Terrorists . It did everything it could togoad the people to desperation : the merest suspicion led toarrest ; ten, twelve, fifteen years of hard labour were inflictedfor two or three speeches made in private to a fewworking-men ; spies were employed by Government to obtain,by false pretences, admittance to Nihilistic meetings, inorder to betray the members . Naturally the Nihilists retaliatedby planting their daggers into such traitors as theydiscovered and could reach . Thus Gorenovitch, originally amember of the propaganda, who had betrayed his companions,was, in September 1876, dangerously wounded,and his face disfigured for life by sulphuric acid ; in thesame month and year, Tawlejeff was assassinated at Odessa ;and in July 1877, Fisogenoff at St . Petersburg .615 . Vera Zassulic .-But the signal for the outbreak ofthe terrorism, which distinguished the latter phases ofNihilism, was given, unintentionally, by the shot fired bythe revolver of Vera Zassulic on 24th January 1878 . GeneralTrepoff, the chief of the St . Petersburg police, had ordereda political prisoner, Bogolinboff, to be flogged for a slightbreach of prison discipline . Vera Zassulic made herselfthe instrument to punish this offence . Her life had beenan apprenticeship for it . She was then twenty-six, and atthe age of seventeen she had been arrested and kept in confinementtwo years, because she had received letters for arevolutionist. She had then passed her first examination asa teacher, and was working at bookbinding . At the end oftwo years she was released, but in a very few days was seizedagain, and sent from place to place, and finally placed atKharkoff, nearly two years under police supervision. At the