“Another beautiful nihilist…” (1887)

A HORRIBLE STORY. The story told by the dispatches about Hessy Helfmann, the Nihilist girl, is from Paris, and therefore to be received with strong suspicion, apart from the almost incredible character of the statement. Were it a story of any other country than Russia indeed it might be dismissed at once as a palpable fiction. Rut unhappily there are too many reasons for believing that in Russia police brutality is capable of being carried to great lengths, and that in a case like this, where the victim was a condemned regicide, there could be little temptation to refrain from […]

THE TERM “NIHILIST.” November Century.  The word “Nihilist” was introduced in Russia by Turgenef, who used it in his novel “Fathers and Children” to describe a certain type of character which had then recently made its appearance in the ranks of the rising generation, and which he contrasted sharply and effectively with the prevailing types in the generation which was passing from the stage. As applied to Bazaroff, the skeptical, materialistic, iconoclastic surgeon’s son in Turgenef’s novel, the word “Nihilist” had a natural appropriateness which the Russian public at once recognized. There were differences of opinion as to the question […]

BEAUTIFUL NIHILIST SLAYS; WEDS; TRACKED, IS CAUGHT Woman Who Killed Governor Genera of Warsaw Pleads She Has Become Austrian by Marriage By Associated Press. VIENNA, Nov. 23.—Wanda Dobroczieka, the woman who threw a bomb at Gen. Skalon of Warsaw and, aided by confederates, disappeared has been brought from Cracow to Vienna, where her trial on the demand of the Russian government for her extradition will take place. The prisoner is a strikingly pretty woman of the Polish type and is as intelligent as she is pretty. After her crime she fled to Cracow. There her beauty attracted many admirers, one […]