Chapter XI: Witte Condemned to Die

One of the most repulsive sides of the reaction of 1906-7 and of the autocratic regime that engendered it was laid bare in the course of the investigations which took place in the latter year into the various attempts made on Witte's life. Incidentally the iniquity of the hidden workings of Tsarism burst fitfully into the light and caused even Witte's faith to waver in the viability of the regime. Those inquiries were both official and private, and the records of them passed through my hands. I knew the names and possessed photographs of the would-be assassins, and I telegraphed accounts of their misdeeds to London in the hope of having the penitent criminal sent to Russia for public trial, and for the exposure of the crimes of his employers--people in high places--in accordance with his own desire. The friends of the Tsar had come to the conclusion that the autocracy would wither and die unless the man who had concluded peace with Japan and constrained the Emperor to create the Duma were done to death.

Witte was the one statesman who had arisen in Russia since the days of Peter. He pursued a fairly coherent policy, just to the past, congruous with the present, anticipatory of the future. Its immutable postulate was peace in Europe and the world. In vain he had endeavoured to carry it out against the insurmountable difficulties created by the Tsar and the Tsar's environment, but even in the face of these he had prevented one war and ended another. Perceiving the impossibility of saving the Tsardom from anarchy or the population from ruin under the prevailing regime, he had worked hard and not unsuccessfully to modify it, and to him the credit or the blame of having extorted the October constitution from Nicholas II. was universally attributed. The achievements he had thus effected despite vast obstacles {188} stirred the admiration of all who were capable of appreciating them.

But for the Tsarist State it was expedient that Witte should die. And he was accordingly condemned to be assassinated. The sentence was passed, not by revolutionists--these had no grievance against him--but by an association of reactionaries subventioned by the court and patronised by the Emperor. It was the statesman's belief that if these reactionaries had had among them men who like the terrorists were prepared to die for their idea, they could have made away with him quickly, but being mostly drawing-room plotters they depended upon mercenaries to deal the death-stroke and face the danger. That was why one of them, Kazantseff by name, deluded two or three shallow-brained louts of anti-Tsarist leanings into believing that he represented the revolutionary executive which had condemned certain traitors to die. He then exhorted them to render a valuable service to the cause by carrying out the sentence. The dull-witted bumpkins acquiesced and killed B. Yollos, an old friend of mine, a brilliant publicist and member of the first Duma who had just invited me to Moscow. He was shot dead in the broad daylight. A friend of his, also an old acquaintance of mine, Herzenstein, was likewise put to death by Kazantseff's orders.

Witte's destruction was devised with method and deliberation. A plan of his house was made and two infernal machines timed to explode at 9 a.m. were lowered down the chimney. Although filled with high explosives which would have riven the entire wall of the building, the machines, owing to a defect in the works, did not explode.[1]

The next attempt was better devised. When the ex-Premier was getting into his motor, bombs were to be thrown at him. And as I accompanied him, I should have shared his fate.

One Friday morning[2] everything was carefully planned {189} for the crime, which was to have been committed on the following day after lunch at about half-past one. And if the plan had been realised the Premier and myself would have been assassinated. A soothsayer, Witte remarked, might on that Friday noon have foretold my future with perfect truth in some such words as these: "Your life is in danger. The danger is imminent, and the chances that you will escape it are exceedingly slight. The assassins are two, their immediate employer is one, behind him is the greatest power in the Empire watching, winking, shielding. They have already been employed on similar jobs. Your friend Yollos was one of their victims. This time they are to blow up a motor-car in which you will be seated, you and a distinguished statesman. The appointed time is to-morrow. He and you have one and only one hope of escape. It is not in the unsuccessful explosion--that is eliminated, for the bombs are powerful. It depends upon a much less likely contingency. In order that you should come off with your life to-morrow, it is necessary that the employer, who is safe and sound and sure of success, should be beheaded by one or both of his assistants. Nothing else will avail you ought. The outlook is dismal."

That forecast, had it been uttered on Friday, would have dovetailed with the facts exactly. For the plot was to be executed on the following day by the two murderers, who from a tavern opposite Witte's house were to advance and throw highly explosive bombs at the motor as he entered. There was nobody to hinder them. But in the meantime one of the would-be assassins, Feodoroff, an ignorant dull-witted lad, had acquired the conviction that he was being duped by Kazantseff who, posing as a Bolshevik, had told him that it was the Revolutionary Party that had condemned Witte to die for having betrayed it by arresting some of its members.

The truth was that Kazantseff was himself the paid agent of an official in the government service, and they both belonged to the band of reactionaries known as the League of the Russian People patronised by the Tsar.

One of the would-be bomb-throwers, Feodoroff, had for {190} some time suspected that he was being hoodwinked. After having murdered a man described to him as a reactionary he learned from the newspapers that his victim was one of the most promising Liberal Parliamentarians and publicists in the Empire, B. Yollos, whereupon he asked his employer, Kazantseff, for explanations. As the explanations only half satisfied him, he and his companion kept a watch on their suborner who next urged them to assassinate a man named Dr. Belsky and then Count Witte. But opening a drawer of his table one day during his temporary absence, one of the murderers found convincing proof among the papers there that Kazantseff was a member of the reactionary society known as the League of the Russian People. Thereupon he decided to kill him. At first Saturday was the day fixed.

I was lunching with Witte on that day and on my arrival he said, "I must leave the house immediately after lunch to-day, for there is a sitting of the Council of the Empire at which I want to be present. You and I shall drive together there at once after coffee." But before we had left his study for the dining-room the telephone bell rang. Witte listened, became anxious, and after a few monosyllabic questions set down the receiver. Then turning to me he said, "Something grave is happening. Akimoff[3] tells me there will be no sitting of the Council to-day.[4] It appears that some crime is being devised in connection with the sitting. He cannot tell me what it is. My impression from what I have just heard is that the terrorists want to blow up the upper chamber and all its members." I said, "We shall know, later. As you have ordered the motor let us use it. Come with me after lunch to the Exhibition of Motor Cars, in the Michael Riding School." Witte assented, and when the repast was over we went. The crime devised was the murder of Witte.

This attempt, however, was postponed to the day of the next sitting of the Council, but in the meantime things took an unexpected turn. Kazantseff went with Feodoroff to a {191} place outside Petersburg in a wood where on the eve he had hidden the explosives for the bombs. Feodoroff and he first walked along the rails and then turned into the forest. Kazantseff having found the place where he had hidden the materials, began to fill the bombs. Feodoroff at first intended to wait until the work was done, but on second thoughts he took a dagger and at once plunged it into Kazantseff's neck. As it chanced it was a weapon which he had received from his victim a day or two before for a different human sacrifice. Kazantseff quivered, fell to the ground, and lay motionless in a pool of blood. Then the murderer began to rifle his pockets for papers, but the seemingly dead man stirred and gazed up at Feodoroff weirdly. Losing all self-mastery Feodoroff seized the dagger and drove it wildly into Kazantseff's cheeks and neck, having forgotten to take it out of the scabbard, and in his frenzy he at last dealt such a sweeping blow with it that the head was severed from the trunk. Then he went back to Petersburg, gave himself up to the revolutionary party, confessed his crimes, and asked them to put him to death.

As soon as I learned the details I communicated them to London[5] in the hope that European opinion might perhaps constrain the Russian government to accept the offer made by Feodoroff to surrender himself on condition that he had a public trial. This I did in concert with Witte, who said to me, however, "'Please write down this prediction of mine before you send your telegram: the Russian government will not bring Feodoroff nor his companion to trial because if it did it is the Tsar's own environment that ... would be the real accused, and it is they whom the evidence would condemn. Therefore, they cannot accept your challenge." And I wrote his prediction down. It came true. None the less Witte made every effort to have light thrown on the plots against his life, but to no purpose. Stolypin and the Minister of Justice[6] were determined that {192} the matter should be hushed up, so they allowed only a few formalities to take place before ending the inquiry. Stolypin himself had requested me, the year before, to use my influence to keep Witte out of Russia, and answering a direct question of mine, added that while willing to protect him if he should come back, he could not promise to do it efficaciously.

This attitude and all that it was subsequently found to imply filled the ex-premier with bitterness of soul. He complained of it to various ministers and dignitaries, and finally brought the matter to the knowledge of the Emperor. But he obtained no satisfaction. The official inquiry into the attempt on his life by means of the infernal machines was stopped by the public prosecutor on the ground that he could not find the guilty parties. The investigation into the other plot likewise became a mere matter of form. I still possess a long document dictated by the statesman himself asking me to bring the following facts to the cognisance of the civilised world:--

"In circles that may fairly be termed official, the various attempts on my life were spoken of, and in one case written about, several days before they were actually made.[7] You know the crimes laid to my charge. I was accused of having made peace with the Japanese and of having destroyed the autocracy in Russia. And the reactionary hangers-on of the court were for killing me. The Prefect of Petersburg[8] himself stated that he was aware that an attempt on my life would be made. The second plot against me was known to many people in advance: several members of the Council of the Empire had heard of it. The President of the Council knew of it and adjourned the sitting on account of it. The ex-Director of the Department of the Police[9] announced it to the ex-Minister of Finances, Shipoff. I received a letter {193} from my would-be murderer demanding 5000 roubles, and the express carrier who handed me the letter was authorised to take the money back. I put white paper into the envelope as though it were banknotes, informed the police agent, and asked him to have the express messenger followed. My request was agreed to verbally, but it was not complied with, lest the criminal should be caught.

"What grieved me profoundly was that a lying report was spread at the time by the reactionaries that I had had the bombs put down my own chimney. At present even they do not dare to repeat it because the conspirators who committed the crime have since become known. But how members of the Stolypin cabinet could have given currency to this black calumny, aware as they were that the Prefect of Petersburg was cognisant of the conspiracy long before it was carried out, I cannot understand.

"Why was Kazantseff not arrested after any of his murders? As you know, he took part in the assassination of Herzenstein. Of this a gendarme was eye-witness. He also arranged the plot against my life. He had your friend Yollos shot in Moscow. Then he came back to Petersburg to try again to have me killed. The authorities are conversant with the intention and the endeavours to compass it. They were also informed of the day, and yet they plead that they could do nothing to bring the plot-weaver to justice! And when Kazantseff himself was killed they feigned not to know who he was. Mark these dates: on the 27th May (9th June) the murder of Kazantseff became known, yet on the 15th/28th July the public prosecutor abandoned the inquiry into the plots against my life. But the authorities knew all about Kazantseff. They must have known, because it was in concert with the League of the Russian People that he had Yollos shot. And when he did this he was a detective agent; he was in receipt of a salary from a government official, and he was living on a false passport given to him by the secret police. In order to be able to entrap impulsive young men he had been authorised to give {194} himself out as a revolutionist, and in this capacity he enlisted some unthinking lads to execute what he assured them were decrees of the terrorist organisation.

"The plot to kill me was ingenious. Kazantseff betrayed a man named Petroff and had him sent to Archangel. This Petroff had been a member of the council of working men's deputies who, when I was premier, wanted to arrest me, but all of whom I had arrested. If Kazantseff's plan had put me out of existence, how would it have been explained? Not as a reactionary, but as a revolutionary crime. The authorities and their press would have pretended that Petroff had escaped from his place of punishment in order to be avenged on me. There would have been a tremendous outcry against 'those mad revolutionists who would not spare even Count Witte.' Remember, all this took place at the moment when you were telling me and an unbelieving world that the second Duma was about to be dissolved. You remember how your statement was denied first by Nelidoff, then by the Finance Minister, Kokofftseff, and at last by the prime minister himself, in spite of which you repeated after each denial the time limit before which the Duma would cease to exist. Your prediction was verified. An adequate pretext was needed for the coercive measures then planned. A new electoral law, whittling down the franchise, was being secretly drafted by Stolypin, but there was no specious excuse for it. The murder of Witte by 'terrorists' would have supplied one. And how much more stringent that bill would have been if the murder of Witte had taken place in time and could have been laid to the charge of those who were desirous of enlarging the functions of the Duma!"

The chain of thought between what Witte expressed in this utterance and what he inferred but left unsaid is sufficiently visible. He often told me that he was convinced of the complicity of prominent personages in the plot to kill him. When the official inquiry was at last abandoned he read me a letter for Stolypin, the Premier, which he had drafted, and after we had discussed its wording he had it delivered. {195} He finally contrived to elicit the Tsar's opinion on the matter. Of that I possess an exact copy.[10]

It was an emphatic assertion that ample justice had been done to Witte, and that the Minister of Justice was right in quashing the investigation.

In sooth that was the nearest approach to justice to which the Tsarist State was capable of rising from the depths to which it then had fallen. It was the perverted social and moral conceptions embodied in those revolting methods of Azeff, Kazantseff, and their exalted employers that quickened in men, even in ardent monarchists, a puissant desire to have the country rescued at every cost from the choking grip of this awful nightmare.

The regime having sophisticated the intelligence and debased the soul of the people had come to be thus destructive of the foundation of mutual trust. It encouraged private citizens to form associations for the murder of eminent men of liberal tendencies. And several of these were now in existence. Whatever stock of moral force Tsarism may have had at the outset would seem to have been exhausted at the close of the Manchurian campaign. And the differences in the capacities of the various races and social classes of the community for steady advance along the road of cultured thought and feeling were by that time become too great, too fundamental, to warrant hope from any organising policy with unity as one of its aims. The Tsarist State was obviously condemned to die. With a genial statesman like Witte at its head it might still, so to say, have appealed from the sentence, but only with the empty hope of prolonging life while the appeal was being argued. With Witte immobilised it could only drift helplessly towards the abyss.

[1] I held one of them in my hands and carried it downstairs in presence of Witte and of the chief police agent.

[2] On the 7th June, 1907.

[3] President of the Council of the Empire.

[4] On the 9th June, 1907.

[5] They were telegraphed by me to the _Daily Telegraph_.

[6] Shtsheglovitoff, the same minister who arranged the infamous indictment of an innocent Jew for an imaginary ritual murder.

[7] I can confirm this assertion for I was present on some occasions when Witte was warned. I once warned him myself.

[8] Von Launitz. He was himself assassinated in accordance with a plot arranged by the head spy of the government, Azeff.

[9] A. A. Lopukhine.

[10] I am unable to say whether this judgment of the Emperor was scribbled on Witte's remonstrance to Stolypin or on the report submitted to him by the Minister of Justice. A complete account of all the details is among my papers which for the moment are beyond my reach. But the main point is the tenor of the Tsar's judgment, and that I have reproduced.

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