I HAD decided to go abroad, because I had learned that the leading spirits of the “fighting league” of our party were just then living at Geneva. It was my intention to join the league and become a terrorist. My own life and that of my friends had taught me that peaceful methods of struggle with tyranny were no longer possible. Terrorism at that time was not only the mood of individuals in Russia, but all classes of society were pervaded with the spirit of active struggle. The masses were waiting only for a signal to rise in open revolt against the despotic régime.

To become a member of the terrorist organization was a matter of considerable difficulty. Only people with an established revolutionary reputation were admitted. With doubt in my heart I arrived in Geneva. Luckily, I found there Comrade Nicholai, who had escaped from Siberia a few weeks before me, and had already succeeded in forming the acquaintance of people who stood close to the league. Thanks to his efforts, I obtained an interview with the leaders of the organization several days after my arrival in the city.

By their keen sympathy and thoughtful attitude these people made a profound impression upon me. With great circumspection they tried to dissuade me from the course I had chosen, but it was of no avail. I knew too much about the life of my unhappy country to change my resolution and turn from the path to which I had been driven.

The executive committee finally decided to admit me into the organization. My first mission was to be the assassination of General Trepov. He was the St. Petersburg Governor-General. He it was who issued the famous order to the local garrison “not to spare cartridges.”

The first and foremost condition of the life of a terrorist is the complete severance of all intercourse with relatives and friends. A terrorist may not even correspond with anybody. The sole purpose of this is to safeguard innocent people against governmental persecution in the event of arrest of a member of the organization. There have been cases when people were exiled to Siberia or sentenced to long terms at hard labor for having written to or received a note from a terrorist.

This isolation and constant dwelling on one thought have a very peculiar effect upon one. The whole universe no longer existed for me. Trepov’s photograph represented to me a symbol of all of Russia’s ills, and his death the only cure for them. Now, when I think of the weary weeks which I passed in a little village, I know that only fanatical faith gave me the moral strength to prepare myself for such an act. My thoughts could not clearly picture that to which I was inevitably drawn. The fact that I was going to sacrifice my own life had absolutely no influence whatever upon me. I never even thought of my own death. But _his_ death, the death of one whom I considered the cause of thousands of deaths, was constantly in my mind.

At last, after a month of weary solitude, a comrade brought the disappointing news that General Trepov had found out in some way about the intention of the “fighting league” and had taken extraordinary precautions: he did not receive anybody and scarcely left his house. The committee deemed it best to postpone the attempt until another way was found.

The “fighting league” always had a list of high government officials whose activity was most injurious to the liberal movement, and upon such officials the league, in conjunction with the central committee of the Socialist-Revolutionists’ party, pronounced sentences of death. Next on the list was Governor-General Kleigels at Kief, who by indiscriminate suppression of all manifestation of dissatisfaction among peasants, students, and workingmen and cruel persecution of the Jews had made himself hateful to all who had the welfare of Russia at heart. General Kleigels was warned by the Kief committee of the party that he would be assassinated if he did not cease his atrocities; but he continued his policy of suppression, and took measures to guard against an attempt on his life.

Comrade Nicholai and I undertook to execute the sentence pronounced upon Governor-General Kleigels. It was planned that we should settle at Kief, Comrade Nicholai as a street peddler and I as a flower-girl. These occupations gave us the possibility of being in the street all the time without arousing suspicion.

From seven o’clock in the morning till eight in the evening I sat on a stone at the corner of the street where the general lived. Comrade Nicholai had a stand on the opposite corner. A week passed, and then another, then a third, but Kleigels would not leave his house. One day two Cossacks galloped past me, followed by a closed carriage with two Cossacks riding in the rear. The carriage stopped before a church. I hid myself around the corner. At last Kleigels appeared, but his wife and son were with him. My eyes fell at that moment on my comrade, who stood at the entrance of the church. Despair was written on his face. I understood his thoughts. Had this cowardly general heard that Kalyáev had twice risked his life, but would not kill the Grand Duke Sergius because the duchess was with him, and so used his family as a shield? To us they proved an insurmountable barrier. It was no part of our policy to shed the innocent blood of women and children. We strictly adhered to this rule, sometimes at great cost to ourselves.

So my second mission was doomed to failure. Soon after my last unsatisfactory conference with M. Azeff, a prime mover in the league (whom I later knew as an infamous traitor to our sacred cause), a bomb hurled by Ivan Kalyáev ended the life of Grand Duke Sergius, then governor-general at Moscow.

Crazed with fear, the czar locked himself in his palace, which was filled with soldiers. But the revolutionary propaganda in the army had weakened even this bulwark of czarism, and the soldiers could no longer be trusted.

In the meantime the political agitation in the country was assuming unheard-of proportions. Partial strikes on railroads and other public and private enterprises united into one country-wide general strike. The whole mechanism of the great empire came to a standstill. The authorities completely lost their heads, and for several days the very capital was virtually ruled by the “council of labor deputies” elected by the workmen of St. Petersburg.

This open and general revolt forced the czar to yield, and on the seventeenth of October, 1905, he issued the famous manifesto granting a constitution to Russia.