REVIVAL OF NIHILISM.
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STORY FROM ST. PETERSBURG IN RELATION THERETO.
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The Wife of a General Elopes With a Nihilist, and is Afterward Captured and Killed by Her Husband.
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Special to the Record-Union.
New York, Jan. 22.—A Berlin cable says: The forerunner of his imperial Highness, the Czarewitch, arrived some twenty-four hours before the great event materialized, which sets all Berlin talking. The stories going the rounds with reference to the Czarewitch is that the Czar’s desire is to make a dicker with the Kaiser to fight Nihilism and Socialism. In connection with this the following story is related, which points toward a revival of Nihilism.
The St. Petersburg Central Committee of Nihilists, it is said, ordered some three months ago one of their members, a young aristocrat, noted for his manly beauty and refinement of manners, to engage in intrigue with the wife of General Frowdeinki, a shining light of the political house of the Czar, whose duty it is to watch the International League of Nihilists and Socialists. The comrade did honor to the confidence which his friends extended him, and in November he eloped with the General’s wife from St. Petersburg, the woman having first provided herself with 15,000 roubles from her husband’s safe. They traveled through various parts of Europe, stopping finally at Fiume. They no sooner put up at the hotel when a cipher dispatch ordered them to return at once to Kief. This was on January 5th. The nihilist, though thinking it very strange his comrades recalled him so quickly and demanded him to put himself into immediate danger of capture, followed the summons, and with the General’s wife re-entered Russia.
They no sooner crossed the frontier when a number of police officers in citizens’ dress entered the carriages and informed them that they were prisoners of state. Arrived in Kief, they were at once confronted by General Frowdeinki and subjected to a rigid cross-examination. The General’s wife, upon seeing her husband, assumed a determined attitude and boldly said: “I am a nihilist, and will not reveal one single word that I know.” The General tried his best to move her. On receiving only defiant answers, he finally got enraged, drew a sword and plunged it into his wife’s heart, killing her instantly. The nihilist was carried off’ to St. Petersburg, where he is now imprisoned.
“Revival of Nihilism,” Sacramento Daily Union 84 no. 133, (January 23, 1893): 1.
