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Title: I Cannot be Silent! Author: Leo Tolstoy Date: 1908 Language: en Topics: execution, punishment, obituary Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I_Cannot_Be_Silent
"Seven death sentences: two in Petersburg, one in Moscow, two in Penza,
and two in Riga. Four executions: Two in Kherson, one in Vilna, one in
Odessa."
This, daily repeated in every newspaper and continued, not for weeks,
not months, not for one year, but for years! And this in Russia, that
same Russia where the people regard every criminal as a man to be
pitied, and where till quite recently capital punishment was not
recognised by law! I remember how proud I used to be of that, when
talking to Western Europeans; but now for a second and even a third
year, we have executions, executions, executions, unceasingly!
I take up today's paper.
To-day, the 9 May, it is something awful. The paper contains these few
words: "To-day in Kherson on the Strelbitsky Field, twenty peasants were
hung for an attack made with intent to rob, on a landed proprietor's
estate in the Elizabetgrad district.[1]
Twelve of those by whose labour we live, the very men whom we have
depraved and are still depraving by every means in our power - from the
poison of vodka to the terrible falsehood of a creed we do not ourselves
believe in, but impose on them with all our might - twelve of these men,
strangled with cords by those whom they feed and clothe and house, and
who have depraved and still continue to deprave them. Twelve husbands,
fathers, sons, from among those on whose kindness, industry, and
simplicity alone rests the whole of Russian life, were seized,
imprisoned and shackled. Then their hands are tied behind their backs
lest they should seize the ropes by which they would be hung, and they
are led to the gallows. Several peasants similar to those who are about
to be hung, but armed, dressed in clean soldiers' uniforms, with good
boots on their feet and with guns in their hands, accompany the
condemned men. Beside them walks a long-haired man, wearing a stole and
vestments of gold or silver cloth, and bearing a cross. The procession
stops. The Manager of the whole business says something: the secretary
reads a paper; and when the paper has been read, the long-haired man,
addressing those whom other people are about to strangle with cords,
says something about God and Christ. Immediately after these words, the
hangmen (there are several, for one man could not manage so complicated
a business) dissolves some soap, and having soaped the loops in the
cords that they may tighten better, seize the shackled men, put shrouds
on them, lead them to a scaffold and place the well-soaped nooses around
their necks.
And then, one after another, living men are pushed off the benches which
are drawn from under their feet, and by their own weight suddenly
tighten the nooses round their necks, and are painfully strangled. Men,
alive a minute before, become corpses dangling from a rope; at first
slowly swinging, and them resting motionless.
All this is carefully arranged and planned by learned and enlightened
people of the upper class. They arrange to do these things secretly at
daybreak so that no one shall see them done, and they arrange that the
responsibility for these iniquities shall be so subdivided among those
who commit them that each may think and say that it is not he who is
responsible for them. They arrange to seek out the most depraved and
unfortunate of men and, while obliging them to do this business planned
and approved by themselves, still keep up an appearance of abhorring
those who do it. Even such a subtle device is planned as this; sentences
are pronounced by a military tribunal, yet it is not the military but
civilians who have to be present at the execution. And the business is
performed by unhappy, deluded, perverted and despised men, who have
nothing left them but to soap the cords well, that they may grip the
necks without fail, then to get well drunk on poison sold them by these
same enlightened upper-class people, in order more quickly and fully to
forget their souls and their quality as men. A doctor makes his round of
the bodies, feels them, and reports to those in authority that the
business has been done properly; all twelve are certainly dead. And
those in authority depart to their ordinary occupations, with the
consciousness of a necessary though painful task performed. The bodies,
now grown cold, are taken down and buried.
The thing is awful!
And this is not done once, and not to these twelve unhappy, misguided
men from among the best class of the Russian people only, but is done
unceasingly for years, to hundreds and thousands of similar misguided
men, misguided by the very people who do these awful things to them.
And not this kind of dreadful thing alone is being done, but on the same
plea and with the same cold-blooded cruelty, all sorts of other tortures
and violence are being perpetrated in prisons, fortresses and convict
settlements.
And while this goes on for years all over Russia, the chief culprits of
these acts - those by whose order these tings are done, those who could
put a stop to them - fully convinced that such deeds are useful and even
absolutely necessary, either devise methods and make up speeches how to
prevent the Finns from living as they want to live, and how to compel
them to live as certain Russian personages wish them to live; or else
publish orders to the effect that "In Hussar regiments the cuffs are
collars of the men's jackets are to be of the colour of the latter,
while the pelisses of those entitled to wear them are not have braid
round the cuffs over the fur."
This is awful!
Tolstoy's notations
translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I_Cannot_Be_Silent
[1] The papers have since contradicted the statement that twenty
peasants were hung. I can only be glad of the mistake, glad not only
that eight men less have been strangled than was stated at first, but
glad also that the awful figure moved me to express in these pages, a
feeling that has long tormented me. Therefore, merely substituting the
word twelve for the word twenty, I leave all the rest unchanged, since
what I said refers not only to the twelve who were hung, but to all the
thousands who have lately been crushed and killed.