8 MARCH 1879, Page 3

The news from Russia is serious. The Secret - Committee -which

guides the Nihilists has placarded in several Russian towns a proclamation admitting that it had ordered the assassin- ation of General Prince Krapotkine, the Governor of Kharkoff. It states that he was condemned, and shot, on account of his -cruelty to political prisoners ; and pledges itself to inflict death for death, and reply to every act of political cruelty by an assassi- nation. The Committee even threaten to extend their vengeance -to the Czar. One of the secret presses at which these placards are prepared was quite recently entered by the police, who fell -under a storm of bullets from the printers. These incidents have renewed the agitation of the Emperor, who is, more- over, greatly embarrassed by the liberal line taken by the Heir - Apparent. It is even stated, in a telegram from Vienna to the Standard, dated Vienna, Thursday night, that the Czar has ordered his son into arrest in a fortress, an order only modified, on the intercession of the Duke of Oldenburg, into another of close arrest in the Heir-Apparent's own palace. Moreover, another telegram, also of Thursday, but from Berlin, mentions a rumour that a palace revolution had occurred in St. Petersburg. None of these statements may be correct, though it is strange they should pass over the wires, but all point to some expected struggle in the palace itself between two great parties.