"16,000 Years in Chains"

The so-called Bomb Boys & Girls of Bolshevism, terroristic heroes of Russia's Revolution, include not only active Bolsheviks like Josef Stalin but a host of passive old men & old women, safely pensioned on the onetime estate of Prince Sheremetiev, 40 miles from Moscow. Last week some of the pensionaries grumbled as old people will, remarked that even now only 40% of their number are Communists.

"Nobody notices human suffering in all this fuss about machinery and the Five-Year-Plan," complained a flashing-eyed non-Communist oldster. "The things I fought for -- Freedom, Equality. Happiness -- somehow the Revolution has lost sight of them!" No grumbler is Bomb Boy Michael Frolenko. ancient, grizzled Chief Assassin (there were 20) of Tsar Alexander II, who "liberated"' Russia's 20,000.000 serfs. After the bombing "the Emperor . . . presented a terrific sight," writes his eyewitness-nephew, Grand Duke Alexander, "his right leg torn off, his left leg shattered, innumerable wounds all over his head and face. One eye was shut, the other expressionless. . . . The agony lasted 45 minutes." Bomber Frolenko spent 24 years at hard labor and in exile before he escaped in the uprisings of 1905. At 84 he is robust and hearty, talks incessantly of his exploit. "I was one of the principal organizers of the whole undertaking [against Alexander II]" boasted Assassin Frolenko last week. "For two years we hunted that scoundrel Tsar and at last we got him!" "Do you still approve your deed? Do you still approve of terror generally?" "I certainly do!" replied the Bomb Boy, who is a year younger than President von Hindenburg, "I certainly do!" Besides Josef Stalin the Society of For mer Political Prisoners (all of whom must have served bona fide Tsarist prison terms for revolutionary offenses) counts some 3,000 members, estimates that they spent collectively "almost 16,000 years in chains and 5.000 years undergoing other punish ment.''

Death in Biarritz came last week to another contemporary of grizzled Bomber Frolenko, 88-year-old Prince Alexander of Oldenburg. He, too, was typical of his generation in Russia, the group of ineffectively liberal aristocrats of the middle 19th Century. (Tsar Alexander II's liberation of the serfs did not, in the end, please the serfs because the plan made them pay-as-they-farmed.) A grandson of a sister of Tsar Alexander I, Prince Alexander became Commander of the Preobrajensky Guards at 28. In 1877 he captured Etropol in the war with Turkey. His father. Duke Constantine, gave much of the family fortune to schools and hospitals. With his wife, Princess Eugenia, granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I, Prince Alexander established National House in St. Petersburg where the poor were treated to bread and circuses. During the War he was director of sanitary services in the Imperial Army, escaped to Biarritz at the outbreak of the 1917 revolution.

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