3-052-475 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of the Crisis in Russia: police espionage in St. Petersburg, 1880. 'That secret association of desperate sectaries, which bears the name of Nihilists, is avowedly bent on the destruction, by insidious violence, of every institution and form of civil government, public and private property, religion, marriage, and family life...These remarks are such as we feel it but right to make in connection with our Illustrations...of the proceedings of Russian police in the pursuit and arrest of suspected Nihilists, at St. Petersburg and elsewhere. The number of persons already subjected to imprisonment or to sentence of exile has been greatly exaggerated by reports which have found their way into the English press...but the police have been very active in making arrests, both at St. Petersburg and in other towns and districts, since the affair of last November at Moscow, when a mine was exploded beneath the railway by which his Majesty was to have travelled in entering that city...all sensational statements as to the notable persons or large numbers arrested are pure inventions, having no better foundation than the casual arrest of two or three persons on the evening of the explosion".' From "Illustrated London News", 1880.