Show STRANGE MANIA FOR DEATH people of russian village commit suicide in a body and in peculiarly horrible form A case of mass suicide Is reported from the village of Opa tovo russia kusala in the lamboff province where the peasants to the number ot of more than assembled together men women and children in a spacious wooden bathhouse doors windows and other apertures aper tures were vere hermetically sealed and nailed up in the cellar firewood saturated with petroleum was in great quantities fire was set to the build lug everybody in the building perished in the conflagration if not suffocated previously by the fumes all around tile the building armed guards had been left so that the dreadful sacrifice should be carried out undisturbed when the awful thing was consummated the guards shot each other A few men lost their nerve nt at the oie last moment and survived to tell the title tale this scarcely believable incident takes us back a long way mass suicide Is not unknown in the history of russia brought to despair by administrative persecution or to escape famine find epidemic entire entire villages have committed wholesale suicide lle often tills this was the result of religious fanaticism peter I 1 who was somewhat bolshevist in the enforcing of his reforms was met in northern russia by numerous conflagrations involving hundreds of deaths As late as the reign of alexander esander AI in III a case occurred in the south when a crowd of fanatics allowed themselves to be buried alive by their religious teachers |