2. Russian Sorrow

An echo of Russian sorrow across the ocean. – Americans’ condolences. – Voices of society, the press, and government. – Memorial services in Washington and New York. – An American preacher on freedom and its abuse.

Joy and sorrow are inseparable in human life, and sorrow often treads close upon joy. Only a year before, the Russian people had celebrated together with their tsar another anniversary of the twenty-fifth year of the reign of their beloved Monarch, and popular jubilation resounded throughout the country. But sorrow, terrible and heavy sorrow, was already at the doors. And so it came, and a cry of the people rang out across Russian soil, sweeping away the traces of the joy just experienced. Oh, joy! fleeting is your true name!

From the horror of a wickedly bloody tragedy, forever disgracing Russian soil, the whole earth trembled, as far as the iron nerves of the earth extend. Across the ocean, in New York, the terrible news was received on the very day the sacrilegious crime was committed. Newspapers received telegrams around six o’clock in the evening, and at about the same time a telegram was sent from Washington from the Russian Imperial Embassy to the Russian church priest, summoning him to the national capital to perform a memorial service. Meanwhile, newspaper reporters spread the fateful news throughout the city, and all of New York instantly became a place of terrible agitation: a murmur of indignation and horror spread through all public and private institutions where living people could be found. The next morning, the sorrowful fact appeared on the pages of all newspapers, and there too was expressed the sentiment with which the American people received it. Never had they expressed such strong and unanimous indignation as they now expressed against the villains who had raised a deadly hand against the crowned head of the Russian Tsar-Liberator. The American people had themselves once experienced the shame inflicted upon them by villains in the assassination of President-Liberator Lincoln; therefore they are capable of understanding Russian sorrow more deeply than any other people. And the deeper he felt his condolences to the Russian people, the more terrible was his indignation against those responsible for their sorrow. The New York Herald, printing the next day a vast account of the tsar-murder with a detailed sketch of the past reign, said in its leading article:

“Murder can never be beneficial to the fate of kingdoms and nations; on the contrary, all friends of freedom above all others mourn any attempt to achieve it by means of murder. Nihilism or revolution will never receive a heavier blow in the eyes of humanity than by the murder of this noble and valiant sovereign. These attempts to change a people’s fate through violence against the fundamental law of social existence are the extremes of madness. As far as America is concerned, the fate of the tsar will be received with deep sorrow. He was not only the head of a nation connected to the United States by bonds of special sympathy, but he was a friend of the Union at a time when the Union needed friends. The world will remember him as the liberator of the serfs. America will not forget him as the only sovereign who, during our civil war, was magnanimous and open in his sympathy for our cause. And now, when the shadow of death has fallen upon his royal brow, our sorrow is increased by the fact that in his loss civilization has lost a farsighted and beneficent sovereign, and America has lost a devoted and powerful friend.”

The stately newspaper then, with bitter indignation and thunders of curse, beset nihilism. But to characterize American public opinion on this matter, I present an excerpt from another most serious American newspaper, the “Times.” In a leading article entitled “What Have the Nihilists Done?” the newspaper says:

“The nihilists have killed the tsar, but have they not also killed nihilism? These savages and half-deranged women vainly imagined that the throne, crown, and imperial rule would instantly vanish as soon as the spark of life was extinguished in the cruelly mangled body of their victim. They have set forth no goal other than the one they have now achieved. They boasted of being apostles of pure destruction; and besides that, they have no remedy for human ills, no plan to rebuild the state and form a happier society. This is a revolting and soulless gang. Their chief and deadly aim (tsar-murder) is now achieved, and they are face to face with the most complete test of any system – first success. When the shock of horror from their terrible crime passes, the world will wait to see what the nihilists intend to do next, and it will see that – nothing. Their empty and inhuman doctrine leads them no further. But they will answer for their bloody deed, if not before Russian justice, then before the rest of the world, and will lose the last spark of sympathy with which some poorly educated friends of freedom in other lands have regarded them. Now, as never before, nihilism has thrown off its mask and openly stands as the chief enemy of the freedom of the Russian people. It has slain the Tsar-Liberator, whom the peasantry loved because he broke the chains from their hands, and whose only enemies were the castoffs from the bloated and dissolute middle class and the false friends of freedom calling themselves nihilists. Nihilism has constantly impeded the growth of Russian freedom and now, perhaps, has dealt it a blow from which it will not recover for a generation. It is known that Alexander II was a sovereign of liberal tendencies. Proof of this is sufficient in his emancipation of the serfs and in the warm sympathy with which he regarded popular institutions as they exist in the United States.”

The American people expressed their sympathy for the Russian people not only through the press but also through their representative assemblies. Thus, the legislative assembly of New York State, in one of its first acts in the session of March 14 (2), adopted the following resolution concerning Russian sorrow:

“Resolved: that the assembly of the State of New York, representing more than five million of the American people and the moral, political, and social sentiments of the state and the whole country, has heard with the deepest sorrow of the death by assassination of Alexander II, tsar of Russia since 1855. He was a friend of the American Union when the country was plunged into a terrible civil war. The liberator of 23,000,000 Russian serfs, the liberator of Bulgaria, and by his death was occupied with establishing a constitutional form of government for all the Russian people. In the course of the past year, he abolished a grievous tax on the poorest classes of his people and destroyed the despotic power of the Third Department, which arrested citizens on suspicion and exiled them to Siberia without investigation or any form of trial. The people of this state, sympathizing everywhere with constitutional freedom and just equality, at the same time abhor assassins, whether under imperial rule as in Russia or under popular rule as in the republic of the United States. It remembers the brutal murder of its own chosen chief, President Lincoln, and wishes to bear witness to its abhorrence of the crime of political assassination, considering them hostile to freedom, civilization, and Christianity, and the deadliest enemies of any reform – both in the states and nations of America and in the states and empires of the whole world.”

A member of the legislative assembly, Mr. Erastus Brooks, who introduced this resolution, addressed the assembly with a long passionate speech of sympathy for the Russian people, and the assembly unanimously adopted and approved both the speech and the resolution.

Similar resolutions were adopted by the legislative assemblies of other states of the American union, and as it were their common epitome, there came a resolution of the Senate of the United States in Washington. In the session of March 14 (2), the American Senate unanimously adopted the following resolution:

“Whereas the Senate of the United States of America, now convened in special session, has received notification of the death, through unlawful and inhuman violence, of His Majesty the Emperor of Russia Alexander II, therefore

“Resolved: that the Senate joins its voice with the voice of all civilized nations in condemning murder as a means of avenging any oppression, real or imagined.

“Resolved: that recalling and with pleasure cherishing the relations of true friendship which have always existed between the peoples and governments of Russia and the United States, for the strengthening and maintenance of which the late Emperor seriously employed his great influence, the Senate expresses to the government and people of Russia its condolences in his bitter national loss.

“Resolved: that the Secretary of the Senate shall transmit a copy of these resolutions to the President of the United States, with a request that he communicate them to the government of Russia.”

Regarding this Senate resolution, the Herald wrote: “Universal expression of sympathy and condolences for the deceased tsar throughout the civilized world is what one would expect, and it is quite fitting and touching. We are glad that the Senate of the United States followed Blaine’s (the prime minister’s) swift action in sending a message of condolences to the Russian government. Regarding the crime, there can be only one opinion.”

Finally, the young American students did not lag behind others in expressing their sympathies for the Russian people and contempt for the villainous gang of murderers. Students of the best college in New York, Columbia, Faculty of Political Science, “unanimously adopted a resolution of condolences to the reigning house of Russia and to the entire well-disposed and law-abiding Russian people, striving for gradual, peaceful, and constant social development. And they cannot sufficiently strongly and severely condemn all seditious outbursts of violence and criminal acts as senseless, ineffective, and bringing in their wake the most baneful consequences for constant social progress.”

Newspaper reporters scattered about the city, seeking out and questioning everyone who had any connection with Russia, and the opinion of all such people (excepting a few fragments of the nihilist party, who openly gloried in the crime, thus drawing upon themselves even greater public contempt) was unanimous and mighty sympathy for the Russian people and indignation against the villains. Flags of all foreign consulates and even private institutions hung at half-mast – in position of mourning, and through the usual hum of monotonous industrial bustle of the American metropolis, there noticeably passed a sorrowful note of condolence for the poor Russian people who had allowed such a crime to be committed in their midst, news of which cries grimly to heaven.

Having received a sorrowful telegram from His Excellency, the Russian Imperial Minister in Washington, the rector of the Russian Orthodox church in New York quickly prepared for travel, and on the night of Tuesday he set out for the national capital of the American people, together with a cantor and the General Consul of New York. A swift train thundered through the night darkness and arrived in Washington early in the morning. There active preparations were already being made for the memorial service, and the wife of the Imperial Minister Bartolomei personally occupied herself with putting her hall in the appropriate condition for the sorrowful service. Meanwhile, the capital of the American people watched these preparations with warm sympathy, and it was expressed, among other things, in the fact that priests of an Episcopal church offered their temple as a place for performing the memorial service, accompanying this offer with warm declarations of their sympathy and condolences. “Daring to make such an offer of our temple for Orthodox use,” says in his letter the venerable rector of the church Harold, “I solely intend to declare my deep respect for your ancient catholic church and to express my heartfelt condolences to the Imperial family and the Russian people.” Since proper preparations had already been made at the residence of the Russian Imperial Minister, the Russian priest had only to thank the Episcopal American rector for his kind offer and warm sympathy for the Russian people, which he did, paying him a personal visit.

The memorial service was appointed for 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Tuesday (15) March 3, and official invitations were sent to the representatives of the powers. At the appointed time, the carriages of the envoys one after another began to drive up to the entrance of the Russian Embassy, and from them emerged brilliantly uniformed figures, whom the Russian Imperial Minister and his wife, dressed in deep mourning, kindly received. The brilliance of diverse court uniforms, shadowed by mourning crepe throughout the surrounding arrangement, by the dull flickering of three candles burning on a table before which stood the priest and cantor awaiting a sign to begin the memorial service, the wafting of incense in thick clouds settling upon the group of representatives of the powers, and the quiet murmur of greetings and condolences – all this was a solemn and impressive expression of the prevailing mood of sorrow. Reporters carefully followed the performance of the memorial service, and the next day detailed accounts of the performance of the “Russian requiem” appeared in all the newspapers of Washington, New York, and other cities. In the Washington newspaper “The National Republican” the following description of the memorial service was printed:

“The residence of the Russian Minister, on Connecticut Avenue, yesterday afternoon was the scene of an impressive and brilliant assembly on the occasion of a commemorative service in honor of the deceased tsar of Russia. It was interesting to see how the diplomatic corps and the families of ministers and attachés proceeded under the heavy arch of crepe, serving as an emblem of mourning. Inside the house, profound silence prevailed and the mood of sorrow reigned. The windows were darkened, the walls hung with heavy folds of mourning material, framed with silk crepe and fringe, and there were visible all the signs of mourning with which the Eastern church and the Russian court express all the sorrow for a deceased monarch. On the eastern edge of the hall an improvised altar was set up, on which three lighted candles were the only signs of the faith of the church. In front stood members of the Russian Embassy and General Consul Weletzky from New York, whose court uniforms were shrouded in crepe and the buttons of court dress covered in black. The British Minister with his family, the French and German Ministers, in short, the entire diplomatic corps crowded behind the Russian Embassy. The State Secretaries (Ministers) of the United States, Blaine and Lincoln, with their wives and specially invited friends, witnessed the religious service performed by Father Nicholas Bierring and his assistant, the venerable Father (!) Lopukhin, from New York. “Grant rest, O Lord, to the soul of your departed servant, the most pious Emperor Alexander Nikolayevich,” said Father Bierring, and this was the prevailing spirit of the entire service. His assistant answered and sang: “I will pour forth my prayer to the Lord, and to Him I will declare my grief.” At the conclusion of the ceremonies a blessing was given to all through the elevation of the cross, and there was sung the proclamation of eternal memory to the deceased monarch. In one of the back rooms of the house appeared a large portrait of the deceased Emperor, hung with emblems of mourning, and added still greater sorrowful solemnity to the entire surrounding arrangement.”

Similar accounts were transmitted by telegraph to the newspapers of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and other cities of the country.

Among the members of the diplomatic corps were representatives not only of European and Christian powers but also of Asian ones. Thus, there were members of the Chinese embassy in their national costumes, and members of the Japanese embassy in brilliant European uniforms. The Turkish embassy was present in its full complement. A remarkable feature of it is that it consists entirely of Orthodox Greeks, and therefore belongs to the parish of the Russian Orthodox church in New York. It was expected that the newly elected President of the United States, Garfield, would be present at the memorial service, but his laborious activities in his new position forced him to limit his representation to the first ministers of the cabinet – Blaine and Lincoln, who stood out sharply from the ranks of the members of the diplomatic corps in their simple black dress. For the latter, attendance at the Russian Orthodox memorial service was accompanied not only by the feeling of general condolence to the Russian people but also by deep personal sorrow of his own heart. He is the son of the famous President of the United States Lincoln, who, like our deceased sovereign, was a benefactor of humanity, a liberator of millions of slaves, and like our sovereign, fell from the villainous hand of enemies of true freedom. The sorrowful tones of the memorial service for the deceased sovereign now pressed upon his son’s heart with full weight, revived in him the memory of his valiant father, who perished for the good of humanity; he could not overcome his feelings. He wept throughout the entire memorial service… Yes, truly great is the dark power of infernal malice on earth, and only by the blood of martyrs is the kingdom of truth and goodness purchased in humanity!

On the following Sunday a memorial service was held in the Russian church in New York. The church was draped in the deepest mourning, in which, thanks to the consul’s care, refined taste was happily combined with the marks of heavy grief. The memorial service was set for eleven o’clock in the morning, after the usual liturgy; but crowds of Americans began arriving from early morning, and by ten o’clock not only was the church packed full, but the entire sidewalk outside was black with people, whom a patrol of eight policemen, detailed to keep order, could barely manage. Besides attending the Russian church in person, Americans expressed their sympathy in written statements as well. Both on the very day of the memorial service and on the following day, the Russian priest received a mass of letters expressing deep condolence. Letters came not only from residents of New York, but from neighboring cities and even from distant states.