Trial

Before the Red Tribunal in the magnificent Hall of Nobles at Moscow appeared Ivan Okladsky, aged 65, to answer for a crime committed 43 years ago. He was charged with being the world's greatest traitor, a man who had lived on the blood of revolutionary martyrs. Thousands of people flocked to hear the life history of Okladsky.

Ivan Okladsky became a revolutionary in his earliest days. He joined the Narodnaia Volia or Party of the People's Will--members of this party are better known as the Nihilists--which was led by Prince Peter Kropotkin, Catherine Breshkovsky, Nicholas Tchaikovsky.

This little stout man with long grey whiskers told how he, a boy of 16, had tried to kill Tsar Alexander II* in 1875 by mining the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad). He told how he mined the railway track in 1879 along the route to be taken by the Tsar on his return to the capital from the Crimea. He told how, in 1880, he had mined a bridge in an attempt upon the life of his Tsar. He told why he was always unsuccessful.

In 1881, Alexander was most foully murdered. At this time, Okladsky was in prison and shortly after the assassination he was brought up for trial. To his Tsarist judges he said: "I do not ask and I do not need your leniency. On the contrary, if you show me mercy, I shall regard this as a personal insult." He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was almost immediately commuted

About a year later, Okladsky was the highest paid ordinary official of the notorious Okrana or Tsarist secret police. He was created a "personal noble" (noble for life), later an hereditary nobleman.* In Moscow, before his Bolshevik judges, he said that he had been forced to betray his Nihilist comrades under the inhuman torture to which he was subjected while awaiting execution and, at the price of his freedom, had consented to join the Okrana and work for the Tsar.

The grim figure of the Public Prosecutor Krylenco arose to demand the life of the prisoner. This demand was quickly granted, but, out of consideration for the advanced age of the "revolutionary traitor" the death sentence was commuted to ten years' penal servitude.

* On Mar. 13, 1881, Tsar Alexander II. was driving along the bank of the St. Michael Canal wren a young man threw what appeared to be a snowball at the Imperial sledge. The snowball went off with a thundering detonation, the carriage was shattered, two men of the Tsar's escort were killed outright, many were wounded; but Alexander escaped scot-free.

His Imperial Majesty was then implored by faithful servants to return hastily to the Winter Palace, but he insisted upon remaining to look after the victims. Somewhere an agitated voice called out: "Are you hurt, Your Majesty?" "No, thank God," replied the Tsar. At this the assassin, who had been seized, grimly remarked that it was a little early to thank God. As he spoke, another snowball was hurled by a second assassin, landed at the feet of the Tsar. . . .

When the smoke cleared away, the Tsar lay with his legs torn off his body, his face horribly lacerated. Pathetically he tried to raise his bloody body on his hands. A few feet away lay the second assassin, similarly injured; dead and dying lay thick around. The Tsar was raised tenderly into a police sledge, driven to the Winter Palace. In a few hours Tsar and second assassin were dead. Hundreds of arrests followed.

* The noble class in Russia is distinct from the aristocracy, coming next below it and above the so-called bourgeoise.