Mackey – Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry Vol. 1

236 SECRET SOCIETIESbelong to a class likely to approve of a revolutionary plot .But the Nihilists profited in another way by the coronation .The whole force of the Government, and its most intelligentspies, being concentrated, at Moscow, the Nihilists seized thisoccasion to spread their doctrines and to enrol supportersat St . Petersburg and other large centres, to which may beattributed the great riots which, after the coronation, occurredat St . Petersburg, which were intensified by the fact thatnone of the expected constitutional reforms were granted .The manifesto issued by the emperor on the coronation dayconsisted simply of a remission of arrears of taxes ; criminalscondemned without privation of civil rights had one-thirdof their terms remitted ; exiles to Siberia for life had theirsentences commuted to twenty years' penal servitude ; thosestill lying under sentence for the Polish troubles in 1863were to be set free ; but confiscated property was not to berestored . Much more had been expected, and the Burgomasterof Moscow had been bold enough, in his congratulatoryaddress to the emperor, to express those hopes, forwhich ",presumption " he was visited with the emperor'sdispleasure . But the disappointment of the people's expectationof an amnesty and a constitution greatly favoured thespread of Nihilistic doctrines . The Nihilists continued tohold secret meetings, issue their papers, flying sheets, andmanifestoes . In September 1883 a number of officers werearrested, and a large depot discovered at Charkoff, containingarms of every kind, large quantities of gunpowder,dynamite bombs, and new printing apparatus . It was foundthat dynamite was being manufactured in Kolpino, closeby St. Petersburg. Here 138 naval and 17 artillery officerswere arrested and conveyed to the St . Peter and Paul fortress. In Simbirsk an artillery colonel was arrested, whohad gained an enormous influence with the peasants, andincited them to revolutionary deeds .630. Colonel Sudeikin shot by Nihilists.-On the 28thDecember the Nihilists took their revenge by shootingColonel Sudeikin, the Chief of the Secret Police, in a houseto which he had been enticed by the false information of anintended Socialist meeting . They also left a letter statingthat the next victims would be Count Tolstoi, Minister ofthe Interior, and General Grossler, the Chief of the St .Petersburg police . " If ever assassination could be palliated,"says the Evening Standard of the 31st December1883, "it is in such a case as the present . When men knowthat sons, or brothers, or wives are being driven to madness