It scorned the slow, legalistic methods and resolutely answered
the terrorism of Czarism by a terrorism of the people. It maintained a
special department for carrying on this grim work. Its Central Committee
passed sentences of death upon certain officials, and its decrees were
carried out by the members of its Fighting Organization. To this
organization within the party belonged many of the ablest and most
consecrated men and women in Russia.
A few illustrations will suffice to make clear the nature of this
terroristic retaliation: In March, 1902, Sypiagin, the Minister of the
Interior, was shot down as he entered his office by a member of the
Fighting Organization, Stephen Balmashev, who was disguised as an officer.
Sypiagin had been duly sentenced to death by the Central Committee. He had
been responsible for upward of sixty thousand political arrests and for the
suffering of many exiles. Balmashev went to his death with heroic
fortitude. In May, 1903, Gregory Gershuni and two associates executed the
reactionary Governor of Ufa. Early in June, 1904, Borikov, Governor-General
of Finland, was assassinated by a revolutionist. A month later, July 15th,
the infamous Von Plehve, who had been judged by the Central Committee and
held responsible for the Kishinev pogrom, was killed by a bomb thrown under
the wheels of his carriage by Sazanov, a member of the Fighting Force.
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