The Show Trial of Countess Panina

Bessie Beatty, The Red Heart of Russia. 1918

Above the gray mist of Petrograd in winter the "terror" and the "guillotine" hung like threatening swords.

Organized punishment was no part of the revolutionary scheme, but every group of revolutionists who took power discovered, to their distress, that it was easier to will people into a line of conduct than to make them follow it.

The People's Commissaries were beset by enemies on every side. There were traitors within the ranks, and honest and dishonest enemies without. There were the usual number of weak or unscrupulous men in uniform who find their way into every army and navy. All were engaged, one way or another, in trying to keep the poor, battered social machine from running.

All the courts that refused to recognize the authority of the Soviet were promptly closed.

The few remaining open were required to operate according to the decree of the People's Commissaries. The decree provided that the court should decide all cases, in the name of the Russian Republic. It permitted the judges to be guided in their decisions by the old laws "to the extent in which they did -not contradict the revolutionary conscience and the revolutionary conception of right."

When the decree abolishing the old courts was passed, a Military Revolutionary Tribunal became the chief judicial body. I was present at Smolney Institute to witness its birth in one of the stormiest of the stormy sittings of the Central Executive Committee. In the words of the decree, it was organized "to conduct a campaign against counter-revolutionary forces, and in order to settle cases emanating from, campaigns against marauders, speculators, sabotagers, and other such merchants, officials, etc."

Petrograd greeted the day of its first sitting with apprehension, and pronounced it "the beginning of the terror." On that day press and populace discussed little besides the guillotine.

It was a crisp, cold winter Sunday, and as I crossed the great Dvortsovaya Bridge that spans the Neva, and crunched through the heavy snow to the palace of the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, I kept telling myself again and again that there could be no guillotine; that the world must have moved forward a little bit in that century and more which stretched between this Revo. lution and that of France.

Countess Panina was the first prisoner at the bar. As Minister of Public Welfare in the, Kerenskii Cabinet, she was the first woman to be lifted to a place of official honor in Russia. When the Bolshevik Revolution overturned the government, Countess Panina bad in her possession about ninety thousand rubles belonging to the Ministry of Education. Being a liberal and not a radical Socialist, she refused to recognize the authority of the People's Commissaries, and declined to turn the money over to Bolshevist representatives.

No woman of the liberal group was so highly esteemed as she. For years she had devoted her life to the improvement of social conditions for the workers. The Narodny Dom, the People's House at Petrograd, where many of the revolutionary meetings were held, was the result of her labor. The people were torn with conflicting emotions when she was brought to trial,

The music-room in the Grand Duke's palace, where the favorites of other days entertained their royal patrons, bad been chosen as the scene of the trial. It was a big, square auditorium, paneled in rarest wood and roofed with delicately tinted glass-all simple, beautiful, and subdued. Into this setting the revolutionists had introduced a semicircular table covered with shiny -red leather and skirted with a flouncing of turkey red cloth. The electric lights bad gone out, and the room was lit by two garish red glass lamps with green shades.

The tribunal consisted of seven men-two peasants, two soldiers, two workmen, and the president, Zhukov. Most of them sat stiffly on the edges of green-brocaded silk vhairs and looked as thoroughly uncomfortable as if they were prisoners instead of the, judges.

They were taking the job with desperate seriousness. Zhukov alone seemed undisturbed by the surroundings. He was a lean, clean-cut, intelligent-looking man. His eyes were deep set beneath the roof of a high forehead. He wore a neat sack-suit and a white collar.

The room was packed with a crowd of Countess, Panina's friends. They cast hostile glances in the direction of the tribunal, and the atmosphere was charged with the tensity of their feeling. A red-headed camera-man with a journalistic sense, had established himself at a point of vantage. On a bench against the wall sat the prisoner, a soldier, looking very uncomfortable in a new and,, shiny uniform of padded khaki and high hat of., sheepskin, standing on each side of her. The Countess might have been a social worker in any,' American city. She bad a pleasant, round, well- bred face, and a pair of kindly eyes. She wore a severe black tailored suit and a small close-fitting turban.

Zhukov opened the proceedings with a reference to the part played by military revolutionary courts during the French Revolution, and declared that in Russia also the tribunals would "defend with severity the rights and traditions of the revolutionary peoples."

The charge was briefly stated. The prisoner pleaded "not guilty." The documentary evidence, a letter. of Countess Panina's, was introduced. There were no lawyers. Prosecutors and defenders both came from the crowd. An intellectual, J. Gurevitch, made a statement denying the guilt of the prisoner. When he finished, a young workman, Ivanoff, took his place before the judges. He was from the artillery factory. A straw-colored Russian shirt, buttoned on one side, was as much a part of him as his fair hair and blue eyes. He spoke simply and earnestly:

"If I have seen some light in my life, it is only because she came into it," be said. "She has given me the possibility of thinking. It was in her Narodny Dom I learned to read. She is not a countess here. This is no time for distinctions. She is only a citizen who has given so much to her people. I ask you to give her freedom, because

I would not want the world to bear that the Russian people are without gratitude."

As be walked to his chair, a professional man, one of Countess Panina's friends, stepped forward and shook his hand, and the crowd arose to pay him tribute.

Naumov, the prosecutor, arose. He was a boy too, slightly younger than the other, and a factory worker also. His dark brown hair was closely cropped, and he wore a brown sateen shirt matching a pair of snapping brown eyes. As be began his attack, a murmur of dissent ran through the crowd, and an old man in a gray peasant's blouse rose from his chair. His face and the top of his bald bead flaming scarlet, his long white beard shaking, both his bands waving in the air, be shouted: "I can't stand it-I can't stand it!" He was an old journalist from a provincial paper to whom the Countess bad long been an idol. Two gray-haired women caught his arms and led him from the court-room, protesting violently as be went.

Naumov continued:

We should not look at it from the sentimental point of view," be said. "I admit that citizeness Panina is a noble woman, but the time has come to struggle for the things that are the rights of the people. The people must learn to read, because they have the right to know how to read, not. through the kindness of any one person.

So I bad come from ordered America, not to see the trial of the sweet-faced woman against the Wall. It was the trial of an idea-the sure basis of human right against dependence on the benevolent whim of the individual- It was the order of the radical against the order of the liberal. Parity and justice, privilege and right, were having their day in court.

Two other speakers from the crowd followed the factory boys. Then the Countess Panina was asked to make a statement. Her breast rose and fell. Finally she spoke, her words coming faintly at first.

I had taken the post, and I could not relinquish it except on order of the Master.' she said. "The Constituent Assembly is the only power that I shall recognize. The money is in an institution of credit, and I will turn it over when the Master speaks.

She choked, stood silent a moment, and sat down.

The court went out to deliberate. In a moment, the room was in an uproar. Every one was talking at once. Half an hour later,, the judges filed back to their seats) looking as uncomfortable as when they had filed out. A Russian-American, a man named Krameroff, who had been the bead of the Russian branch of the Socialist party in San Francisco, arose to pro- test. The president of the court motioned to him to be seated. He paid no attention. Zhukov ordered two soldier guards to place him undo" arrest. Krameroff still protested, then locked arms with the soldiers and walked smilingly out, between them.

A sudden hush fell upon the court-room. The friends of Panina, held their breath in expectation of the verdict.

Zhukov did not keep them long waiting. He arose and began reading:

The Military Revolutionary Tribunal, in the name of the revolutionary nation, having exam., ined the case with regard to the removal by Citizeness Panina. of a sum of about 93,000 rubles from the funds of the Ministry of Popular Education, decides (1) that Citizeness Panina shall' remain under arrest until she returns to the Commissary of Popular Education the national money taken by her and (2) the Revolutionary Tribunal regards Citizeness Panina as guilty of acting in opposition to the national authority, but, in view of the accused's past, confines itself to holding Citizeness Panina up to the reprehension of society.

The reprehension of society! The scorn of the people! It was a typical Russian revolutionary decision, probable in no other land under the sun. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief. No one quite knew how to take it. The Countess Panina's status remained practically the same. Here and there some one started to clap. Others quickly hissed them into silence. Again the threatened "terror" bad passed.

It was a far cry from this exhibition of revolutionary justice to the guillotine-almost as far as it was from that system of organized injustice of the Tsars that kept the endless procession of men and women marching toward exile and death.

A few days after the trial, friends of Countess Panina paid the money to the Department of Education, and the prisoner was allowed to go free.

She held no grudge against the Bolsheviki; for, though she differed from them, she understood their philosophy and the sincerity of their belief. She bad felt, from the first, the difficulty of reconciling war and revolution, but believed, whatever the price Russia must pay, she must never go back again to the old order.

The intricacies of law played no part in subsequent sittings of the Military Revolutionary Tribunal. There were no convenient technically , ties either for the innocent or the guilty. Every case was judged simply on its merits as workmen soldiers, and peasants interpreted right and wrong.

There were thirty-six members of the full tribune, divided into groups of six, each group sitting for a week at a time. Commercial and political offenders were tried by separate groups and the cases ranged from that of a boy who had stolen a bundle of papers, to that of Puriskavitch, who was taken with a machine-gun and other counter-revolutionary paraphernalia in his possession.

Both were handled with equal seriousness. The boy's peculations amounted to something like a ruble and sixty kopecks, and his victim was an old woman who sold papers on the street. He insisted that be didn't have anything, and that all people who sold papers were really property-owners, and when their papers were gone they could always get more papers. At this the old woman became very indignant, denied that anything to do with the bourgeoisie, and insisted that she was just a poor workingwoman.

The court asked the boy what he did with the money. He gave an accounting. The most important item was fifty kopecs for a ticket to the opera at the Narodny Dom. Ile explained that be was miserable and depressed, and be thought if be could go to the theater the world might not seem such a gloomy place. The judges listened with sympathy, and one of them asked gravely:

'Did you feel better after you went to the theater?...

The boy nodded. There was nothing incongruous to the jury about the need for music. The Russian accepts it as an extenuating circumstance quite as readily as he would physical hunger.

The tribunal offered no censure, but decided that the old woman must be reimbursed for the loss of her papers. The boy bad no money, so the court ordered that he sell something. He said be had nothing to sell. They looked him over, and decided that his rubbers were the only things With which he could part. 'Rubbers, in Petrograd, were precious Possessions. The lad gave them up -reluctantly. Then) remembering: the Narodny Dom, his face broke into a satisfied, smile.

"It was worth it," he said.

The most severe sentence I beard was that passed upon General Boldireff, commander of, the fifth army, who was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. General Boldireff had refused to answer the summons of the Bolsheviki cow. Commander-in-chief of the army, Krylenko, to at. tend a council. When he was arrested, he said he was acting in accordance with the resolution or the Army Committee not to recognize the au. thority of any party. The Army Committee later reversed its decision, and resolved to obey the orders of Krylenko; but the General claimed not to have known this until his arrest by soldiers of his army. Zhukov asked the General bow he would have behaved toward Krylenko if he had known that the Army Committee had recognized him as supreme commander-in-chief.

"At the present time," said the General "I am a citizen of free Russia, and obey only the will of the nation as it will be expressed by the Constituent Assembly.

I wished to preserve the army under my command from the struggle of parties, which would disorganize it," he said. "I am myself a son of the people, and honorably guarded the interests of the sons of the nation that had been intrusted to me. Those soldiers with whom I have shared hunger and cold, the mud and dirt of the trenches, the bitterness of defeat and the inspiration of victory, will admit this. I stood at my post like a sentinel, until I was s removed from it by force.

The soldiers who bad arrested Boldireff accused him of sabotage tending to disorganize the army, and called on the tribunal to punish him severely. Other soldiers tinder his command protested against the trial and pleaded in his defense.

In pronouncing sentence, President Zhukov said:

In the name of the revolutionary people, the Revolutionary Tribunal finds General Boldireff guilty of disobedience to the chief, Krylenko; but, in view of the circumstance that be was not aware that the Army Committee bad altered its former resolution and had decided to recognize Krylenko as s commander-in-chief., resolves to sentence General Boldireff to three years' imprisonment.

in a second the place was s in an uproar. Cries of "Shame! Shame!" "Despots!,, swept the court.

Zhukov ordered the room cleared, and the next day warned the spectators against a recurrence, of any such protests.

A lawyer, Charykoff, was put on trial for accusing one of the members of the Inquiry Committee of belonging to the Black Hundred. The offender apologized, and the punishment was again nothing worse than "public reprehension.'

Despite the mildness of the revolutionary judgments, the talk of the guillotine continued. One afternoon, when it was at its height, I dropped in to the office of Jacob Peters-if one could describe as "dropping in" the intricate process of finding one's way through the labyrinth of corridors and up the many steps that Jay between him and the sidewalk. Ile was on the top floor of the old police station on the Corokhovaya, where the Anti-Counter-Revolutionary Committee, successor to the Military Revolutionary Committee that had organized the Bolshevist Revolution, had its headquarters.

Peters was pale, tired, and disillusioned. Human nature, viewed from the dubious vantage of the police station,, left much to be desired. As I passed through the outer office I noticed a woman sitting there. ITer plain face was pale, and an occasional tear trickled from her frightened eyes.

Peters sighed when I asked about her. "She's the secretary of the cadet party," lie said. "I have to question her to find out what she knows about Counter-Revolutionary plots, and I bate to do it. I wasn't made for this work: I detest jails so that I can't bear to put any one into them."

What about the guillotine?" I asked. "Surely the Russian Revolution will never resort to that. It's been over a hundred years since the French Revolution, and I would like to think the world bad moved a little since then.

Peters shook his head. "No," he said; "we will never restore the death sentence in Russia not unless' he hesitated a moment-- 'not unless we have to use it for men who are traitors in our own ranks. What else can you do with a man who betrays his own cause."

There are so few of us to do the work," said Peters. "We have to take every y one who offers, and it is impossible to know who are our true friends and who are our foes. It is physically impossible for me even to read thoroughly every, paper that I am asked to sign during the day. I have to trust to others, and it is getting so that I do not know who to believe.

With that, be opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a revolver. He laid it down, then took out three sealed packages of paper money. The first one contained a thousand rubles. It was a bribe demanded by Peters's predecessor in this very office, a handsome, debonair young person who rattled off French as rapidly as he did Russian. I had met him only a few days before, when be proudly announced that his name would go down in history. Now be was reposing in jail, and waiting for the Military Revolutionary Tribunal to get around to his case. The chance to become rich as well as famous had proved too much for him. He called one night at a vaudeville theater which produced clever satires on current Politics, and ordered the place closed on the ground that one of the playlets was counterrevolutionary. Later, through an agent, he made it known to the manager that the payment of a thousand rubles would suffice to keep the place open. The Bolsheviki discovered what be was doing, dismissed him from office, and placed him under arrest.

The second envelop contained fifteen thousand rubles which had been taken the night before from a food speculator, caught in the act of trying to ship a large consignment of flour through Finland to Germany. He offered a bribe of a thousand rubles to a soldier at the Finlyansky Station. The soldier hurried to Smolney with the money and the news. He could not write, so he made his mark upon the complaint to which he swore. A detail of half a dozen soldiers and Red Guardsmen was sent to help him. The man was arrested, and evidence secured that unearthed a whole nest of speculators.

There was no longer a secret police in 'Russia.

The Okhranka had gone with the Tsar into oblivion. But the people themselves were on the watch for evidences of anything that might threaten the power of the Commissaries. There was little that went on in the city that did not soon reach the ears of Jacob Peters's Committee

A servant girl was sent to the Fortress of Peter and Paul with a cake for her master imprisoned there. Wrapped in a parcel, lying, on the table near the cake, was a bundle of papers that had been carefully collected to be put out of the way of prying Bolshevist eyes. The servant I apparently inadvertently took the wrong pack. age to the prison, where it fell into the bands of the prison authorities. That the servant was not. as inadvertent as she seemed was indicated a few days later, when she reported that Stephenovitch whom the Bolsheviki were trying to find, would sleep that night in such a place, at such an hour. When the Red Guard was sent to search, it was as she bad predicted.

When the Military Revolutionary Tribunal began its sittings, more than a hundred speculatios were waiting to be put on trial. Peters told me that one day he was riding on a street. car, when the man sitting beside him engaged him in conversation. He offered to sell him twelve hundred bags s of flour at two hundred and fifty rubles each, six thousand pounds of sugar, and some butter. Peters got him to write down his name and address, and within the hour he bad been arrested and his supplies had been seized.

One large consignment of flour was found bid'den beneath the birch-wood logs in a barge on the Moika Canal supposed to contain nothing but Wood.

Despite all efforts to unearth the offenders, a few men waxed hideously rich upon the hunger of the many. All provocation notwithstanding, the guillotine remained simply a name. Wherever the death penalty was inflicted, it was done by mobs having no official sanction-by mobs aroused to an uncontrolled fury, and momentarily conscious of no other passion than that of reprisal. Considering the unsettled condition of government, such instances of violence were not so frequent as to change the character of the Revolution into that of a Reign of Terror.

Source: Bessie Beatty, The Red Heart of Russia (New York: The Century Co., 1918), Chapter XVI.