// ppgen prisonsv11-txt.txt
// KD Weeks, Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
// 20141205110617griffiths
// first edit: 8/27/2016
// ppgen: 3.56a
.dt The History and Romance of Crime: Russian Prisons, by Arthur Griffiths
.de div.illo { width:80%; text-align:center; margin:auto; margin-bottom:2em; }
.de a:link { text-decoration: none; }
.de div.tnotes { padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;background-color:#E3E4FA;border:1px solid silver; margin:1em 5% 0 5%; text-align: justify;}
.de .epubonly {visibility: hidden; display: none; }
.de @media handheld { .epubonly { visibility: visible; display: inline; } }
.de .htmlonly {visibility: visible; display: inline;}
.de @media handheld { .htmlonly { visibility: hidden; display: none; } }
.de .blackletter { font-family: "Old English Text MT", Gothic, serif;}
.de @media handheld { .blackletter { font-family: "Century Gothic", Gothic, serif;} }
.sr h |||
.sr h |||
.sr ut || ~|
.sr ut ||~|
// Begin Poetry
.dm start_poem
.fs 95%
.sp 1
.nf b
.dm-
// End Poetry
.dm end_poem
.nf-
.fs 100%
.dm-
// create errata table page references
.dm cref $1
.if t
$1
.if-
.if h
#$1:corr$1#
.if-
.dm-
// create markup
.dm corr_noid $1 $2
.if h
$2
.if-
.dm-
.dm corr $1 $2 $3
.if t
$3
.if-
.if h
$3$3
.if-
.dm-
// Begin description
.dm start_descr
.fs 90%
.in 2
.ti -2
.dm-
.dm end_descr
.fs 100%
.in
.dm-
.dv class='tnotes'
.ce
Transcriber’s Note:
.if t
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical
effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.
.if-
The position of illustrations have been adjusted slightly to avoid
falling in mid-paragraph.
Please see the transcriber’s #note:endnote# at the end of this
text regarding the few textual issues encountered during its preparation.
.dv-
.bn 001.png
.h1
The History and | Romance of | Crime
.nf c
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY
.nf-
.sp 4
.il fn=dec.jpg w=30px ew=10%
.sp 4
.nf c
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON
.nf-
.bn 002.png
.bn 003.png
.bn 004.png
.bn 005.png
.dv class='illo'
.il fn=i_frontis.jpg w=354px ew=75%
.ca
Young Girl Revolutionist Condemned\
to the Scaffold
.ca-
So severe was the Russian government in the measures
adopted to repress the revolutionists that mere school-girls
were exiled, imprisoned or executed. Many well-born girls
made it their chief aim to help the peasants, enduring the
privations and hardships of the labouring classes. Madame
Vera Phillipova, a young woman of great beauty, was long
the most popular person in the revolutionary movement. She
became identified with the conspiracy of “the Fourteen,” and
was thrown into the Schlüsselburg for the term of her natural
life.
.dv-
.bn 006.png
.bn 007.png
.sp 4
.nf c
Russian Prisons
ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL
THE SCHLÜSSELBURG
THE OSTROG AT OMSK
THE STORY OF SIBERIAN EXILE
TIUMEN, TOMSK, SAGHALIEN
by
MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain
Author of
“The Mysteries of Police and Crime,”
“Fifty Years of Public Service,” etc.
.nf-
.sp 4
.il fn=dec.jpg w=30px ew=10%
.sp 4
.nf c
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
.nf-
.bn 008.png
.hr 25%
.nf c
EDITION NATIONALE
Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.
NUMBER 307.
.nf-
.hr 25%
.bn 009.png
.pn 5
.sp 4
.h2
INTRODUCTION
.sp 2
The huge empire founded by the Czars of Russia
in the latter half of the sixteenth century was
based upon absolute autocracy. The Czar by virtue
of his divine origin exercised absolute authority
over the many diverse elements consolidated under
his sovereign will. From the earliest times no idea
of personal liberty was tolerated; the slightest expression
of independence in thought and action was
peremptorily forbidden. The attitude of the government
has ever been uncompromisingly severe
toward all malcontents, and Russian history for the
last two centuries is one long record of conspiracy
constantly afoot, and constantly repressed by savagely
cruel coercion. Imprisonment, the absolute
loss of physical freedom, has taken a wider meaning
in Russia than in other countries, for it is the lot
in one form or another of two classes of offenders:
the ordinary criminal under a civil code, from which
capital punishment is now excluded, and the political
dissidents deemed criminal by the arbitrary
government of the land and deserving of exemplary
and vindictive punishment. Russian prisons are in
some respects the worst and most horrible the world
has seen, and they are more especially reprehensible
.bn 010.png
.pn +1
in these latter days when humane considerations
are allowed weight in the administration of
penal institutions.
In giving a description of Russian prisons as
they have been and to some extent still remain, it
is fair to state that the facts are authenticated by
unimpeachable evidence. We have the statements of
eye-witnesses speaking from their own knowledge,
and these unsparing critics have not always been
foreigners and outsiders; Russians themselves have
also raised their indignant voices in energetic protest,
and official reports can be quoted to substantiate
many of the charges. On the other hand,
Russian methods have found champions and apologists
among travellers, who were, perhaps, superficial
observers, easily misled, and their accounts
cannot in the least upset the conclusions arrived
at by more thoroughgoing and disinterested investigators.
Such men as George Kennan, indefatigable,
honest, courageous and of the highest veracity,
have framed an indictment from which there
is no appeal. The facts have been vouched for,
moreover, by the trustworthy narratives of those
who have themselves been personal victims of the
worst horrors inflicted, and buttressed by confidential
reports from great Russian functionaries sent
direct to the Czar. Secret despatches which have
fallen into hands for which they were not intended,
and have been made public by the searchers for
truth, frankly admit the justice of the sentence
.bn 011.png
.pn +1
passed upon at least one frightful portion of Russian
penal institutions,—the system of exile to
Eastern Siberia. Governor-General Anuchin twice
addressed the Czar Alexander III, in 1880 and
1882, after long tours of personal inspection, in
such condemnatory terms that the mighty ruler
upon whom the terrible burden of responsibility
rested, was moved to endorse the report in his own
handwriting with the words, “It is inexcusable,
even criminal, to allow such a state of affairs in
Siberia to continue.” The frightful system which
allowed an irresponsible bureaucracy to sentence
untried persons to exile by so-called “administrative
process” is fully explained and described in
the present volume.
.bn 012.png
.bn 013.png
.sp 4
.h2
CONTENTS
.ta r:8 l:32 r:10 w=80%
CHAPTER | | PAGE
| Introduction | #5#
I.| General Survey | #13#
II.| Two Famous Fortresses | #36#
III.| The Exile System | #68#
IV.| The Ostrog at Omsk | #99#
V. | Life in the Ostrog | #128#
VI.| Tiumen and Tomsk | #160#
VII.| Vagabondage and Unions | #185#
VIII.| Treatment of Politicals | #211#
IX. | Changes in System | #247#
X. | Saghalien | #269#
.ta-
.bn 014.png
.bn 015.png
.sp 4
.h2
List of Illustrations
.ta l:40 r:6 r:6 w=80%
Young Girl Revolutionist | Frontispiece |
Fortress of Peter and Paul | Page| #38:i038#
Russian Prisoners | ” | #229:i229#
.ta-
.bn 016.png
.bn 017.png
.pn 13
.pi
.sp 4
.ce
RUSSIAN PRISONS
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER I | GENERAL SURVEY
.pm start_descr
Commencement of judicial reform in Russia—Abandonment
of knout and branding iron—The plet—Two classes of
prisons, the “lock-up” and the “central” or convict prisons—Experiences
of a woman exiled from Russia—Testimony
of Carl Joubert—The state of the central prisons—The
“model” prison in St. Petersburg—Punishments
inflicted—The food in different prisons—Attempted escapes—Myshkin—His
early history and daring exploits—Failure
of his plan to rescue Chernyshevski from Siberia—His
escape, recapture, and sentence of death—The
prisoner Medvediev.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
A definite movement toward judicial reform
began in Russia in the early sixties. The old law
courts with their archaic procedure and evil repute
as sinks of bribery and corruption were abolished.
Trial by jury was revived, and justices of the peace
were established to dispose of the smaller criminal
offences. Shortly afterward, two of the most disgraceful
features in the Russian penal code, the
knout and the branding iron, disappeared. The
punishment of splitting the nostrils to mark ineffaceably
the prisoners exiled to the salt mines of
.bn 018.png
.pn +1
Okhotsk also ceased, and the simple Chinese no
longer were surprised with the sight of a hitherto
unknown race of men with peculiar features of their
own. The knout, however, had long served its
devilish purpose. It was inflicted even upon women
in the time of Peter the Great, and was still remembered
as an instrument which would surely kill at
the thirtieth stroke, although in the hands of a skilful
performer a single blow might prove fatal.
Flogging did not go entirely out of practice and
might still be ordered by peasant courts, in the army
and in the convict prisons. But another brutal whip
survived; the plet is still used in the far-off penal
settlements, although rarely, and only upon the
most hardened offenders. It is composed of a thong
of twisted hide about two feet in length, ending in
a number of thin lashes, each a foot long, with small
leaden balls attached, and forms a most severe and
murderous weapon. The number of strokes inflicted
may vary from twenty-three to fifty and at
Saghalien in some cases reaches ninety-nine. If the
victim has money or friends, the flogger is bribed
to lay on heavily; for when the blow is so light
as to fail to draw blood, the pain is greater. By
beginning gently the flagellator can gradually increase
the force of each blow until the whole back
is covered with long swollen transverse welts which
not uncommonly mortify, causing death.
At one time trial by court-martial could sentence
a soldier to the frightful ordeal of the “rods,” flogging
.bn 019.png
.pn +1
administered by comrades standing in two
ranks between which he moved at a deliberate pace
while they “laid on” the strokes with sticks upon
his bare back. This is exactly the same penalty
as that of “running the gauntlet,” or “gantlope,”
well known in old-time military practice, and sometimes
called “Green Street” in Russia, for the rods
used were not always stripped of their leaves. The
infliction might be greatly prolonged and the number
of strokes given sometimes amounted to several
thousand. Devilish ingenuity has now replaced the
physical torture of knout and plet by a modern
device for inflicting bodily discomfort, nothing less
than riveting a wheelbarrow to a man’s legs, which
he must take with him everywhere, even to bed,—the
apology for a bed on which he passed the
night.
Russian prisons are of several classes. There
are first the “lock-ups,” or places of detention for
the accused awaiting trial, scattered throughout the
country, and quite unequal in the aggregate to the
accommodation of the number of prisoners on hand.
It has been estimated that to lodge all adequately,
half as many more than the existing prisons would
be required. Those of another class, the houses of
correction, the hard labour or “central” prisons
where compulsory labour is exacted, are very much
like the “public works” convict prisons in the English
system. Many of these are established in European
Russia; more are to be found in Western
.bn 020.png
.pn +1
Siberia, and, on somewhat different lines, in the
penal settlements of Eastern Siberia.
In the provincial “lock-ups” or ostrogs the conditions
have always been deplorable. They are horribly
overcrowded with wretched, hopeless beings
for whom trial is often greatly delayed, and who lie
there in inconceivable discomfort at the mercy of
brutal and extortionate gaolers, “packed like herrings
in a cask, in rooms of inconceivable foulness,
in an atmosphere that sickens even to insensibility
any one entering from the open air,” says one
writer.
The same author gives the experiences of a lady
who was expelled from Russia for opening a school
for peasants’ children, and who was transferred to
the Prussian frontier from prison to prison. “At
Wilna,” she says, “we were taken to the town
prison, and detained for two hours late at night in
an open yard under a drenching rain. At last we
were pushed into a dark corridor and counted.
Two soldiers laid hold of me and insulted me
shamefully. After many oaths and much foul language,
the fire was lighted and I found myself in
a spacious room, in which it was impossible to take
a step in any direction without treading on the
women sleeping on the floor. Two women who
occupied a bed took pity on me and invited me to
share it with them.... The next night we were
turned out from the prison and paraded in the yard
for the start under a heavy rain. I do not know
.bn 021.png
.pn +1
how I happened to escape the fists of the gaolers,
as the prisoners did not understand the evolutions
and performed them under a storm of blows and
curses; those who protested were put in irons and
sent so to the train, although the law prescribes
that in the cellular wagons no prisoner shall be
chained.
“Arrived at Kovno, we spent the whole day in
going from one police station to another. In the
evening we were taken to the prison for women
where the superintendent was railing against the
head gaoler and swearing that she would give him
‘bloody teeth.’ The prisoners told me that she
often kept promises of this sort. Here I spent a
week among murderesses and thieves and women
arrested by mistake. Misfortune unites the unfortunate,
and everybody tried to make life more tolerable
for the rest; all were very kind to me and
did their best to console me. On the previous day
I had eaten nothing, for prisoners receive no food
on the day they are brought to prison. I fainted
from hunger, and the prisoners brought me round
by giving me some of their black bread; there was
a female inspector, but she did nothing but shout
out shameless oaths such as no drunken man would
use.
“After a week’s halt at Kovno, I was sent on
to the next town. After three days’ march we came
to Mariampol. My feet were wounded and my
stockings full of blood. The soldiers advised me
.bn 022.png
.pn +1
to ask for a vehicle, but I preferred physical suffering
to the continued cursing and foul language of
the chiefs. I was taken before the commander, who
remarked that as I had walked for three days I
could very well manage a fourth. On arrival at
Volkovisk, the last halt, we were lodged provisionally
in the prison, but the female side was in ruins
and we were taken to the men’s quarters, and had
nowhere to sit but on the filthily dirty and foul-smelling
floor. Here I spent two days and nights,
passing the whole time at the window. In the
night, the door was constantly thrown open for
new arrivals; they also brought in a male lunatic
who was perfectly naked. The miserable prisoners
delighted in this, and tormented the maniac into a
paroxysm of passion, until at last he fell on the
floor in a fit and lay there foaming at the mouth.
On the third day a soldier of the depot, a Jew, took
me into his room, a tiny cell, where I stayed with
his wife.
“The prisoners told me that many of them were
detained by mistake for seven or eight months,
awaiting their papers before being sent across the
frontier. It is easy to imagine their condition after
a seven months’ stay in this sewer without a change
of linen.... I had been six weeks on the road
and was still delayed, but I got leave to send a registered
letter to St. Petersburg, where I had influential
friends, and a telegram came to send me on
to Prussia immediately. My papers were soon
.bn 023.png
.pn +1
found, and I was sent to Eydtkuhnen, where I was
set at liberty.”
It is asserted by our author that this horrible
picture was not one whit overcharged. “To Russians
every word rings true and every scene looks
normal. Oaths, filth, brutality, bribery, blows, hunger,
are the essentials of every ostrog and of every
depot from Kovno to Kamtchatka, from Archangel
to Erzerum.” It is summed up by Kropotkin as follows:
“The incredible duration of preliminary detention,
the disgusting circumstances of daily life;
the congregation of hundreds of prisoners into
small dirty chambers; the flagrant immorality of
a corps of jailers who are practically omnipotent,
whose whole function is to terrorise and oppress;
the want of labour and the total absence of all that
contributes to the moral welfare of man; the cynical
contempt for human dignity and the physical
degradation of prisoners—these are the elements
of prison life in Russia.”
Another writer of more recent date, Carl Joubert,
whose works on Russia have been widely read,
says, “I am aware that in no part of the world
is the lot of a prisoner a happy one. It is not intended
that it should be; but in civilised countries
they are, at least, given the opportunity of keeping
themselves clean and decent. They are treated as
human beings and their health is considered; but
in Russia it is different. The prisoners in Russia,
whether before or after the trial—and a great
.bn 024.png
.pn +1
many of the political prisoners have no trial—the
Russian prisoners are considered beasts, and treated
accordingly. The warders know what is expected
of them; and if a warder shows any glimmering
of humanity in his treatment of the prisoners committed
to his charge, his services are dispensed with
and a stronger-hearted warder takes his place.
“I said that Russian prisoners have no sex; but
I must qualify that statement. In so far as the
normal treatment of the women is concerned, they
are separated from the men, but no other distinction
is made. If they are young and attractive, however,
their sex can procure for them, and worse still,
for those who are dear to them, a certain amount
of consideration from those in authority over them
on the road to Siberia.”
The penalties inflicted by the Russian code may
be classed under four heads. The first is hard
labour with the loss of civil rights, so that the convict’s
property passes to his heirs; he is dead in
law, and his wife may marry another; he endures
his term either after deportation to Siberia, or in
one of the “central prisons” which have been built
on purpose in European Russia, and where he
spends a third or fourth of his entire sentence, until
he goes finally to Siberia or Saghalien as a penal
colonist. These central prisons were created to
substitute a more regular and more severe treatment
than was possible at a distance from home,
and the aim was achieved. According to the best
.bn 025.png
.pn +1
authorities, the central prisons are practically “hells
upon earth.” “The horrors of hard labour in
Siberia,” says Peter Kropotkin, “have paled before
them, and all those who have had experience of
them are unanimous in declaring that the day a
prisoner starts for Siberia is the happiest in his
life.”
A few specific details may be quoted about one
or two of these prisons. In that of Kharkov, in
Little Russia, at one time two hundred of the five
hundred inmates died of scurvy in the course of
four months. In the Byelogorod prison, nearly
half of a total of three hundred and thirty prisoners
died within a year, and forty-five more in the following
six months. At Kiev the scourge of typhus
was endemic. In one month in the year 1881 the
deaths were counted by hundreds and the places of
those who died were promptly filled by others similarly
doomed. All the rooms occupied were very
damp, the walls sweating with moisture, the floor
rotten in many places, the cesspools overflowing and
the neighbouring ground saturated. The epidemics
were officially explained and the causes acknowledged
by the chief board of prisons. It was urged
that although the prison was dreadfully overcrowded,
there was plenty of room elsewhere.
The chief prison in St. Petersburg at one time
was the Litovski Zamok, and it was credited with
being kept clean, but the buildings, old-fashioned,
dark and damp, were only fit to be levelled to the
.bn 026.png
.pn +1
ground. A newer prison is the House of Preliminary
Detention which is ambitiously designated as
the “model,” and which was built on the plan of
modern prisons in Belgium and at an immense cost.
Kropotkin characterises it as the only clean gaol
for ordinary prisoners in Russia. Cleanliness in
it amounts to a craze; the scrubbing brush is never
idle; broom and pail are used with demoniacal activity.
Particles of asphalt dust from the floor continually
load the atmosphere and make breathing
difficult. The three upper stories are infected by
the exhalations from the lower, and the ventilation
is so abominably bad that at night when the doors
are shut the interior of the cells is suffocating.
Endeavours to remedy this have ended in a recommendation
to rebuild the prison entirely as nothing
less will serve. The cells are large enough, ten
feet in length by five feet wide, and it is yet essential
to keep the traps in the door constantly open
to prevent asphyxiation.
Strict individual separation was the rule established
in this St. Petersburg House of Detention,
and it extended to both cells and exercising yards.
The space allotted to the latter was circular in shape
and was divided into segments by walls radiating
from a common centre to the circumference. Each
inmate walked to and fro singly in his own compartment,
under the surveillance of an official standing
on a raised platform in the centre. Nothing
was visible from within the partition but the backs
.bn 027.png
.pn +1
of the lofty prison buildings topped with a narrow
strip of sky.
The rule of cellular isolation was defeated, however,
by the ancient prison device of rapping on the
walls according to a conventional alphabet based
upon a fixed number of blows for each letter. The
letters are arranged in certain groups as follows:—
.pm start_poem
a b c d e f
g h i k l m
n o p r s t
u v w x y z
.pm end_poem
.ni
Words are composed by knocking so many times
on the wall for each letter. First, the horizontal
line on which the letter stands is counted and its
place numbered on the vertical line. Thus to frame
the word “you,” the first signal for “y” would
be four knocks, indicating the vertical line; then a
pause and five taps to give the place on the horizontal
line. Three taps followed after a short
pause by two taps would form the letter “o,” and
four short taps with one final tap after a pause
would fix the letter “u.” These sounds are not
only distinguishable in cells alongside each other
but in those far distant if the wall is the same.
Communications by this means passed continually,
although the system was abhorrent to the authorities
and severe punishments were imposed upon all
caught in the act.
.pi
Punishments were the only break in the monotony
.bn 028.png
.pn +1
of this dull solitary life, and they were varied
and ingenious. A prisoner guilty of minor offences,
such as smoking or the secreting of a match or a
morsel of bread saved from a meal, might be condemned
to kneel for a couple of hours on the bare
flags of a freezingly cold thoroughfare, or be cast
into a dark cell, originally intended for cases of
ophthalmia, and kept there for months, frequently
until he became blind or mad or both. Cruelty was
of common occurrence in this House of Detention.
It was here that General Trepov ordered a prisoner
Bogolubov to be flogged for not removing his hat
when he came into the great man’s presence, and
punished others who protested by confining them
in cells near the lavatory amidst all kinds of filth,
and heated to a temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
The personal experiences of an officer who spent
a long time in a prison near St. Petersburg were
afterward published in a liberal journal. “In the
evening,” he reports, “the governor went his
rounds and usually began his favourite occupation—flogging.
A very narrow bench was brought out
and soon the place resounded with shrieks, while
the governor smoked a cigar and looked on, counting
the lashes. The birch rods were of exceptional
size, and when not in use were kept immersed in
water to make them more pliant. After the tenth
lash the shrieking ceased, and nothing was heard
but groans. Flogging was usually applied on
.bn 029.png
.pn +1
groups of five or ten men or more at one time, and
when the execution was over a great pool of blood
remained to mark the spot. People in the street
without would cross themselves and pass to the
other side. After every such scene we had two or
three days of comparative peace; for the flogging
had a soothing effect on the governor’s nerves.”
“On one occasion,” says the same writer, “we
were visited by an inspector of prisons. After casting
a look down at us, he asked if our food was
good or if there was anything else of which we
could complain. Not only did the inmates declare
that they were completely satisfied; they even enumerated
articles of diet which we had never so
much as smelled.” The food here and elsewhere
was neither plentiful nor palatable. “It consisted
of a quarter of a pound of black bread for breakfast;
and a soup made of bull’s heart or liver, or of seven
pounds of meat, twenty pounds of waste oats,
twenty pounds of sour cabbage and plenty of
water.” The daily sum allowed to cover cost was
one penny, three farthings, not a great deal when
officials expected to embezzle a substantial part.
Leo Deutsch, an important political prisoner, says
that his daily ration of black bread was two pounds,
with a dinner at midday of two dishes, not bad,
but insufficient and always half cold, as the kitchen
was far away. This was in the fortress of St. Peter
and St. Paul. At the “Butirki”—this was the
popular name for the central prison of Moscow—the
.bn 030.png
.pn +1
food, he says, “was beneath criticism; even
the most robust at their hungriest could scarcely
swallow a spoonful of the repulsive malodorous
broth in wooden bowls brought to our cells at midday.
This is explained by the fact that the sum
originally provided by government for our maintenance
was extremely small; and on its way
through to us a great part of it found its way into
the bottomless pockets of officials great and small,
among whom there is an organised system of general
peculation. The big cauldrons used for cooking
the food of several thousand prisoners were
filled up with the worst materials that were procurable.”
George Kennan in his “Siberia” tells us he
tasted the soup in the kitchen of the Tiumen, or
forwarding prison, and “found it nutritious and
good.” The bread was rather sour and heavy, but
not worse than that prepared and eaten by Russian
peasants generally. The daily ration of the prisoners
consisted of two and a half pounds of this
black bread, about six ounces of boiled meat, and
two or three ounces of coarsely ground barley or
oats with a bowl of kvas morning and evening for
drink.
Carl Joubert says, “I inspected the rations in the
prison at Tomsk. The soup stank with the odour
of a soap factory. I asked for a piece of bread
from a warder, and when I had examined it I called
for a bowl of warm water. I put the bread to soak
.bn 031.png
.pn +1
in the water, and in a couple of minutes I handed
the wooden bowl to Dr. Anatovich, and asked him
to look at it. ‘Why should I examine it?’ he asked.
But a moment later I heard him exclaim: ‘My
God! My God!’ The surface of the water was
covered with worms.” The soup at the infamous
prison fortress of the Schlüsselburg often contained
cockroaches floating on the surface, and the director
thus explained their presence to a complainant:
Whenever the copper lid is lifted, the steam
rises to the ceiling and dislodges the cockroaches
which fall into the soup.
Various attempts have been made to bring the
Russian prisons into line with the more modern
development of penal principles, but they have never
been carried out consistently nor resulted in marked
reforms. A good deal of money has been spent in
constructing new buildings on the most approved
plans, and the favourite theory in vogue, that of
cellular confinement, has been adopted to a limited
extent. Such enormous numbers have to be dealt
with, and over such a wide area, that no comprehensive
uniform system could possibly be introduced
to meet even a fraction of the demand. But
a certain number of cellular prisons were provided,
seemingly with the idea of intensifying the pains
and penalties of imprisonment.
The prison at Kharkov was one of the worst of
its class; the cells were dark and damp, and the
régime of solitary confinement was unduly prolonged.
.bn 032.png
.pn +1
The most terrible sufferings were endured
by the political prisoners who were chiefly lodged
in them, until special prisons were appropriated for
them, such as those of St. Peter and St. Paul and
the Schlüsselburg. At Kharkov a “hunger strike”
was organised, the fixed resolve to abstain altogether
from food—a form of protest common
enough in Russian prisons until a remedy was applied
to their grievances. Concessions were then
made to the extent of permitting exercise in the
open air, removing fetters from the limbs of the
sick in hospital and giving daily employment, but
not before disastrous results had shown themselves.
Six of the political prisoners went out of their
minds and several died.
During the time that the Kharkov prison was
used for this class of offenders, it was the scene
of some startling events. Several escapes and attempts
at rescue occurred. The case of Hypolyte
Myshkin, a determined and most courageous man,
was remarkable and deserving of more success.
Myshkin was lodged at Kharkov in a small cell on
the lower story, which had once been occupied
by Prince Tsitianov, a distinguished revolutionist.
He concentrated all his energies upon contriving
escape, and within the first year had manufactured
a dummy figure to lie on the guard-bed in his place,
and proceeded to excavate a tunnel beneath the
prison wall. He had no implements except his
hands and a small piece of board, but he dug deep
.bn 033.png
.pn +1
and far, disposing of the earth by packing it into
a space between the floor of his cell and the ground.
He had also made a suit of clothes to substitute for
the prison uniform when at large. The material
used for this purpose was obtained from a number
of old maps, given to the former occupant of the
cell and which had been left lying on the stove.
Myshkin soaked the paper off the muslin on which
it was mounted, and made a shirt and a pair of
trousers. He was actually on the point of departure,
when, unfortunately, a gaoler visited his cell
at an unusual hour. He was down in his tunnel,
and the dummy betrayed him. The alarm was
raised, the other end of the tunnel was entered, and
the fugitive was caught in a trap. He was transferred
to another cell from which there was no
prospect of escape.
Myshkin, hopeless and reckless, now sought freedom
in death. Resolving to commit an offence
which would entail capital punishment, he obtained
leave to attend divine service at the prison church,
and managed to get close to the governor, whom
he struck in the face when in the act of kissing the
cross in the hands of the officiating priest. Under
ordinary conditions, trial and condemnation to
death would follow, but just at this time the distressing
state of affairs at Kharkov had caused so
much uneasiness that the Minister of the Interior
had sent a sanitary expert to report upon the conditions
which had produced so much lunacy and
.bn 034.png
.pn +1
so many deaths. Professor Dobroslavin pronounced
the place unfit for human habitation, and
urged the immediate removal of all political convicts.
It was no doubt supposed that Myshkin
was of unsound mind when he struck the governor,
and he was not even tried for the offence, but
shortly afterward was despatched to the far-off
silver mines of Kara.
Myshkin’s antecedents and his ultimate fate are
of interest. He was a young student at the Technological
Institute of St. Petersburg in 1870, when,
fired by the ardent spirit of the new revolutionists,
he conceived a bold project to effect the escape of
the well-known author and political writer, Chernyshevski,
at that time in Siberian exile. After spending
some time in the old Alexandrovski central
prison near Irkutsk, the prisoner was presently interned
under police surveillance in Villuisk, a small
village in the subarctic province of Yakutsk. Myshkin
planned to travel across Asia disguised as a
captain of gendarmerie, present a forged order to
the head of the police at Villuisk, desiring him to
hand over Chernyshevski to the sham captain, who
was to escort him to another place on the Amur
river. Myshkin got safely to Irkutsk, where he
was employed in the office of the gendarmerie and
became greatly trusted. He had the freedom of
the office and cleverly abstracted the necessary blank
forms, forged the signatures, affixed the seals, got
his uniform, and, thus provided with all proper credentials,
.bn 035.png
.pn +1
appeared before the ispravnik, or local
chief of police, at Villuisk, who received him with
all deference and respect. Myshkin was a man of
fine presence, eloquent and well spoken, and when
he produced his order he was within an ace of success.
But there was a weak point in the plot. It was
quite unusual for officers of rank to travel without
escort, and Myshkin had not had sufficient funds
to take with him confederates disguised as soldiers
or gensdarmes. The ispravnik grew suspicious,
the more so as the exile Chernyshevski was an
important political offender, and he hesitated to
surrender him without seeing his way more clearly.
He told Myshkin that he must have the authority
of the governor to set his exile free. Myshkin, unabashed,
offered to go in person to seek the governor’s
consent, and he set off for Yakutsk, attended
by a complimentary escort of Cossacks.
The ispravnik astutely sent another Cossack to pass
them on the road with a letter of advice for the
governor. The messenger caught up with the first
party and made no secret of his mission.
The game was up, and Myshkin, in despair,
made a bolt for the woods. The Cossacks promptly
gave chase, but Myshkin drew his revolver, beat
off his pursuers and succeeded in getting away.
He wandered through the forests for a week, and
was at last captured, half dead from cold and privation.
He was lodged first in the prison of Irkutsk
.bn 036.png
.pn +1
and then brought to St. Petersburg, where
he was thrown into the fortress of St. Peter and
St. Paul, and he lay there for three years in a solitary
cell awaiting trial. He was kept in the Trubetzkoi
Bastion, near a prisoner whom Mr. Kennan
afterward met in Siberia and who described his
neighbour’s sufferings feelingly. “Myshkin,” he
said, “was often delirious from fever, excitement
or the maddening effect of long solitary confinement,
and I frequently heard his cries when he was
put into a strait-jacket or strapped to his bed by
the fortress guard.”
Myshkin’s trial caused a great sensation. The
government had refused to allow the proceedings
to be taken down in shorthand, and the prisoner
declined to make any defence; he made a fiery
speech, however, denouncing the secrecy of the trial
and declaring that the public ought to hear the
whole case through the press. He was ordered out
of court, and being removed by force, his last
words, half stifled, were: “This court is worse
than a house of ill-fame; there they sell only bodies,
but here you prostitute honour, justice and
law.” This insult aggravated the original offence,
and the court increased his sentence to ten years’
penal servitude with forfeiture of all civil rights.
Myshkin was a born orator, but by his own
admission he lived to regret his eloquence. When
on his long journey to Eastern Siberia, one of his
comrades died at Irkutsk, and he was moved to
.bn 037.png
.pn +1
make a brief oration at the funeral. He spoke out
in church, eulogising the high moral character of
the deceased, and declaring that “out of the ashes
of this heroic man and others like him will grow
the tree of liberty for Russia.” Here the police
interfered; Myshkin was dragged out of church
and sentenced later to an additional fifteen years’
penal servitude. So it was said of him that he
never made but two speeches in his life, one of
which cost him ten and the other fifteen years of
imprisonment. Myshkin regretted the second
speech, which, he said, would do no good, as the
world could not hear; it was the mere gratification
of a personal impulse, and it added so many years
to his detention, that, even if he lived to emerge
from exile, he would be too aged to work effectively
in the cause of Russian freedom.
Myshkin afterward escaped from Kara, when a
more rigorous régime had been introduced by
Count Loris Melikov, and permission to work in
the open air had been withdrawn. One prisoner,
Semyonovski, driven to desperation, committed suicide,
and several condemned to long terms made up
their minds to break prison. Myshkin and a comrade
were the first to go; a second and a third pair
followed; a fourth couple were caught in the act,
and the authorities, spurred on to extreme activity
by the presence at Kara of the head of the prison
department, recaptured six of the fugitives. Myshkin
succeeded in reaching Vladivostok, and was on
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
the point of embarking on board a foreign ship
when he was recognised and retaken.
Myshkin and thirteen others who were deemed
dangerous were sent back to St. Petersburg in
1883, where they were lodged at first in the fortress
of St. Peter and St. Paul and then in the “stone
bags” of the fortress of Schlüsselburg. The dread
of insanity from a new term of solitary confinement
drove Myshkin to repeat the same tactics as at
Kharkov. He struck one of the officers, and found
more prompt retaliation this time, for he was tried
by court-martial and shot.
Another striking incident occurred at the Kharkov
prison. Two prisoners on their way there were
nearly rescued by an attack on the prison van. One
of the guards was shot, and the release would have
been effected had not the horses taken fright and
stampeded, which led to their recapture. The attack
was made by a number of mounted men,
armed, and one of these, Alexei Medvediev, also
called Fomin, was afterward caught in Kharkov
station. He was committed to the gaol, but managed
to escape with a party of ordinary criminals
by burrowing under a wall. They did not get farther
than a wood near-by when they were recaptured.
Medvediev’s friends arranged a plan to set
him free again. Two of them, disguised as gensdarmes,
brought a forged order to the prison gate
calling for the prisoner, who was to be escorted,
they said, to the gendarmerie office for examination.
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
The false gensdarmes were detected and
taken into custody, sent for trial and condemned
to death. The sentence was afterward commuted
to penal servitude for life, and they were sent to
Kara. Medvediev was treated after the same fashion,
but he was detained in various prisons of Western
Siberia, closely guarded, and was at last returned
to the Alexis Ravelin in the fortress of St.
Peter and St. Paul for five or six years. He is
described by a comrade—Leo Deutsch—as “a
man of consummate bravery who literally despised
danger, and was always ready to embark on the
most terrible adventure. He had been a postilion
and had received only a scanty education at an
elementary school, but by his own exertions he had
gained a respectable amount of knowledge....
At Kara he became an adept in various handicrafts;
he was an excellent tailor, shoemaker, engraver and
sculptor, and afterward, when he was living as a
free exile, he became a watchmaker and goldsmith.
Unfortunately, soon after he left the prison he fell
a victim to alcoholism, to which he had an inherited
predisposition; all attempts at reclaiming him were
vain, and in a few years he was beyond hope.”
.bn 040.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER II | TWO FAMOUS FORTRESSES
.pm start_descr
The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul—Political prisoners
confined within its walls from an early date—Used by
Peter the Great—The imprisonment of the author, Chernyshevski—Dmitri
Pisarev—The Trubetzkoi Bastion—Kropotkin’s
account of the prison—Leo Deutsch’s experiences
there—The sad case of Netchaiev—Probability that he
was flogged to death—Severity of the régime of the Alexis
Ravelin—The fate of prisoners confined in Schlüsselburg
unknown—The prison of Kiev—Leo Deutsch confined
there—Succeeds in making his escape—Other escapes—Prison
of Moscow—General depot for exiles about to
embark for Siberia—Account of the journey to Siberia by
train—Kindliness shown by the peasants—Food and gifts
of clothing brought to the train for the exiles—The Red
Cross League—The exiles’ begging song—Treatment of
the “politicals”—Dastievich and the governor—Women
revolutionists.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
The government of the Czar was not slow to
avail itself of the coercive means afforded by cellular
confinement, and to use them especially against
political offenders. At first these prisoners were
distributed among the common criminal prisons
such as that of Kharkov, and located, where the
accommodation existed, in “secret” or solitary
confinement cells. According to George Kennan,
the secret cells in Siberian prisons were intended
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
for persons accused of murder and other capital
crimes. They had neither beds nor sleeping platforms
and contained no furniture. Their occupants
slept without pillows or bed clothing on the cold
cement or stone floor, and during the day they had
either to sit or lie on this floor, or to stand.
The politicals at Kara in Eastern Siberia lived
under “dungeon conditions,” absolutely apart,
breathing foul air continually, starving on bad and
insufficient food and completely deprived of exercise.
The need for separate prisons nearer home
led presently to the adaptation of existing fortresses
in or close to St. Petersburg, such as the St. Peter
and St. Paul on the banks of the Neva, and the
Schlüsselburg or “Castle of Stone-bags” on an
island in Lake Ladoga, whose waters lap the base
of its walls. The records of these formidable places
of durance are made up of human suffering.
The first named, the “Petropaolovskaya,” is
never mentioned by Russians without a shudder.
It is stained indelibly with the imprint of appalling
cruelty and savage ill-treatment. Its grim, gray
bastions crouch low, flush with the water’s edge,
opposite the imperial palace, and in full view of
the great city. Within its extensive perimeter are
included several fine buildings; the mint, the cathedral,
the burial place of the reigning dynasty,
military barracks and well filled arsenals, while the
ordinary street traffic passes through it in the day
time.
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
From its earliest days this fortress was the scene
of murderous and cruel atrocities. Peter the Great
used it recklessly when imposing his will upon the
enslaved people; torture, the lash, horrible mutilations
and death were continually inflicted within
its gloomy walls. Peter is said to have executed
his only son Alexis in this fortress. Defeated conspirators
against autocracy constantly languished
in its deep sunken dungeons or were thrown into
the Neva from its battlements. Generations of unsuccessful
revolutionists, during reign after reign,
have eaten out their hearts here in lifelong imprisonment.
Many of the “Dekabrists,” mostly nobles
who rose against the Czar Nicholas in 1826,
lingered in one of its cells for twelve years. Since
then, numbers of hapless people, defeated in their
vain efforts to compass freedom and liberal institutions
for their country, have been imprisoned, neglected
and forgotten in the fortress of St. Peter
and St. Paul.
The fortifications of St. Peter and St. Paul cover
an extent of three hundred acres. It is a five-sided
or pentagonal work, constructed on the old-fashioned
plan of Vauban, having six conventional
bastions and two salient ravelins, one on the eastern
and the other on the western front. To the northward,
on the far side of the Neva, leading away
from the city and partly overlooking the zoological
gardens, is a crown work or hornwork of red brick
built by Nicholas I. Various parts of the fortress
.bn 043.png
.bn 044.png
.bn 045.png
.bn 046.png
.bn 047.png
.pn +1
have been appropriated for prison purposes. One
of the most famous was the so-called “Courtine”
of Catherine, connecting the south and west bastions,
facing the Neva; the bastion on the west
being known as the Trubetzkoi. This also became
a famous prison, for when completed and opened,
being newer, more spacious and safer, it largely
replaced the Courtine, now no more than a place
of detention for officers under arrest for breaches
of discipline.
.dv class='illo'
.il id=i038 fn=i_038fp.jpg w=500px ew=90%
.ca The Fortress of Peter and Paul,
The famous fortress of “Peter and Paul” is stained indelibly
with the imprint of appalling cruelty and savage ill-treatment.
Its grim, gray walls rise opposite the Imperial Palace
in St. Petersburg. Within the enclosure are several fine
buildings, including the burial place of the Czars. In the daytime
ordinary street traffic passes through it. Peter the Great
is said to have executed his only son, Alexis, in this fortress,
after torture. Many noted conspirators against the government
of the Czar have languished in its deep sunken dungeons
or have been thrown into the river Neva from its battlements.
.dv-
Some notable prisoners have been lodged in the
Courtine of Catherine. Chernyshevski wrote his
novel “What is to be done?” in one of its cells,—a
book which had potent, widespread influence over
the youth of Russia, and which greatly developed
the usefulness of women in the revolutionary propaganda
by raising their status. He is the gifted
writer who inspired the chivalrous attempt of the
student Myshkin to effect his release, as already
described. Another inmate of prominent literary
attainments was Dmitri Pisarev, who devoted himself
while imprisoned to writing his remarkable
analysis of Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” He
was confined without even the form of trial, and
was held a close prisoner until his mental powers
waned. Soliviov was the last “political” immured
in the Courtine, but individuals have been sent there
from the Trubetzkoi Bastion when special isolation
was deemed necessary. One, Saburev, was removed
to one of its cells, where he was stupefied with
.bn 048.png
.pn +1
drugs so that he might be photographed while insensible.
The best account of the Trubetzkoi Bastion and
its prison is to be found in Count Kropotkin’s book,
“In Russian and French Prisons.” He spent more
than two years there after 1873. The prison was
in the reduit, an inner building of vaulted casements
conforming to the five sides of the main
bastion and constructed within to serve as a second
line of defence. One side was taken up by the
quarters of the governor of the fortress, and two
sides were occupied by cells on two stories. These
cells were spacious enough for a gun of large calibre;
they were not light, for the windows opened
upon the interior enclosure, and the high wall of
the outer bastion faced the windows at a distance
of fifteen or twenty feet. In St. Petersburg the
sky is often overcast, but Kropotkin was able to
write his book on the Glacial period in his cell, and
to prepare his maps and plans on especially bright
days. A lining of felt covered the cell walls, at
a distance of five inches, intended to prevent communication
by knocking, which nevertheless frequently
took place.
The cells in this prison were heated from the corridor
outside by large stoves, and the temperature
was kept high to prevent the exudation of moisture
on the walls. It was necessary to close the stove
doors very soon and while the coal was blazing,
with the result that asphyxiating gases were generated
.bn 049.png
.pn +1
and the inmates ran the risk of being suffocated.
An idea prevailed that the authorities
purposely caused these mephitic gases to enter the
cells so that the prisoners might be poisoned, but
this was an exaggeration with no foundation in
fact. The food at one time was good, but Kropotkin
says that it deteriorated, and no provisions
were permitted to be brought in from outside except
the Christmas and Eastertide doles of white
bread, charitably given by compassionate merchants.
Books, if approved, might be received
from relatives, and there was a small prison library.
Out-of-door exercise was allowed daily
from half an hour to forty minutes, but in the
short daylight of the northern winter it was limited
to twenty minutes twice a week.
On the whole, detention in the Trubetzkoi Bastion
was not, according to Kropotkin, “exceedingly
bad, although always hard.” One of its
worst features was the unduly prolonged solitary
confinement, which was extended to two or three
years, far beyond the limit ordinarily prescribed in
modern civilised countries. Another terrible infliction
was the dead silence compelled. “Not a
word is heard,” wrote Leo Deutsch, “the silence
is intense. No one could imagine that men live
here year after year. Only the chimes of the clock
upon the ear, sound out every quarter of an hour
the national hymn, ‘How glorious is our Lord
in Zion.’” As to this, Kropotkin says, “The cacophony
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
of the discordant bells is horrible during
rapid changes of temperature, and I do not wonder
that nervous people consider these bells as one of
the plagues of the fortress.” The same writer
bears witness to the taciturnity of the officials. “If
you address a word to the warder who brings you
your clothes for walking in the yard, if you ask
him what the weather is, he never answers. The
only human being with whom I exchanged a few
words every morning was the colonel (governor)
who came to write down what I wanted to buy:
tobacco or paper. But he never dared to enter into
conversation, as he himself was always watched
by some of the warders.”
The fortress contained other prisons far worse
than that of the bastion. There was the Trubetzkoi
Ravelin to the west of it, the cells in which are
so dark that candles are burned in them for twenty-two
hours out of the twenty-four. Their walls
were literally dripping with moisture and there
were pools of water on the floor. An account of
the sufferings of some who were concerned in the
“Trial of the Sixteen,” whose death sentences had
been commuted to imprisonment in the ravelin,
was published in the Narodnaya Volya. “Not only
books were prohibited, but everything that might
help to occupy the attention. Zubkovski made geometrical
figures with his bread to practise geometry,
and they were immediately removed by the gaoler,
who said that hard-labour prisoners were not permitted
.bn 051.png
.pn +1
to amuse themselves.” Of those whose sentences
were commuted one became consumptive and
another was attacked with scurvy and brought to
death’s door. Two of the five condemned to hard
labour in the same fortress went mad, and one
attempted to commit suicide.
One of a party transferred to the Moscow prison
was so helpless from scorbutic wounds that he
was carried out of the cellular wagon in a hand-barrow.
Two fainted as soon as they were taken
into the open air. Tatiana Lebedieva had been
sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour. “But,”
says the medical report, “she cannot live so long.
Scurvy has destroyed all her gums; the jaws are
visible beneath; she is moreover in an advanced
stage of consumption.” Another, a mother, was
nursing her eighteen months’ old baby, and every
minute it seemed the child must die in her arms.
As for herself, she did not suffer much, either physically
or morally.
Regarding the Alexis Ravelin on the eastern
front, no very authentic details are forthcoming,
but it is said to contain underground cells as bad
as any oubliettes in the dark ages. The only proof
of their existence is to be found in the fact that a
number of soldiers of the garrison were tried by
court-martial for having conducted a clandestine
correspondence for some of the prisoners, carrying
out letters for them and smuggling in newspapers,
money and other prohibited articles. The prisoners
.bn 052.png
.pn +1
concerned were nameless. The inevitable fate of
those committed to the Alexis Ravelin was to lose
their identity; they were forgotten and became
mere numbers, only distinguished by the numerals
of the oubliettes they occupied. This happened to
one, Netchaiev, who killed a spy at Moscow and
fled to Switzerland, from where he was extradited
by the authorities of a free country, but on condition
that he should be tried as a common-law prisoner.
Netchaiev absolutely disappeared after he
was tried at Moscow and sentenced to hard labour.
There is no record of his incarceration in any central
prison or of his departure for Siberia. It is
nearly certain that he was lost to all knowledge in
some hidden depth of the Schlüsselburg fortress.
Netchaiev was treated with great inhumanity.
Overtures had been made to him by General Potapov
to turn informer, and so insultingly that the
prisoner struck the general in the face. For this
he was flogged terribly, chained hand and foot and
riveted to the cell wall. He managed to appeal
direct to the Czar, Alexander II, in a letter written
with his own finger nail and in his own blood;
a modest letter stating the facts of his imprisonment,
and asking if they were really known to the
emperor and met with his sanction. This letter was
entrusted to some one working under his window,
but it was intercepted and the ultimate fate of the
prisoner was never positively known. It was said
that he had died of a second flogging, and posthumous
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
letters attributed to him were published in the
year 1883.
The régime of the Alexis Ravelin was brutally
severe. Exercise was forbidden, the windows of
the cells were boarded up, and the hot-air openings
of the stove were closed, so that consumption rapidly
developed in the feeble frames of the prisoners.
It was fatal to one young man, Shirayev, whose
crime was too free comment upon the state of affairs.
He had dared to prophesy a time when the
Czar would no more govern, and power would be
held by popular representatives. Another, Shevich,
an officer of the military academy, went mad in
the Alexis Ravelin, to which he was committed for
having left the ranks and improperly addressing
Alexander III on the occasion of an imperial parade.
Despite the elaborate precautions taken, and the
strict rules prescribed, the secrecy of the Alexis
Ravelin could not be kept inviolate. The government
hoped that the silence of the grave might close
over its captives. But too many travelled the sad
road, and news came back from some. Letters
penetrated the thick walls; the inmates found sympathy
with their gaolers, who would not remain
invariably mute. Some more effectual tomb for the
living must be devised, and a large sum (150,000
rubles) was forthwith expended upon the enlargement
and improvement, from a disciplinary point
of view, of the ancient castle of Schlüsselburg, once
the favourite prison of Paul I.
.bn 054.png
.pn +1
This new prison became available in 1884, and
was to be the receptacle for the most dangerous and
influential politicals. It was freely admitted by the
authorities that the very harshest régime would
prevail there: close confinement, scanty diet and
entire absence of all that makes life endurable,—books,
correspondence, the visits of relatives and
friends. Above all, when the gates closed on a new
arrival in the Schlüsselburg, hope died within him.
Lifelong imprisonment was before him; there was
no release this side of the grave. Few who enter
the prison are ever set free again. The inmates
are buried alive, suffering perpetual martyrdom.
It was here that the “humane” Peter the Great
imprisoned his first wife, the unhappy Evdokia. He
had forced her to enter a convent as he had become
tired of her. Young and beautiful, she rebelled
against the life of a working nun, and when, a few
years later, a young army officer was detailed to inspect
the convent, they fell in love with each other.
When Peter heard of this, he had the officer impaled
on a stake, and at the instigation of his new wife,
the empress Catherine, Evdokia was thrust into the
Schlüsselburg. The stone tower which she occupied
and where she died is still known as the “Czarina’s
Bower.”
In a cell underneath this stone tower, the great
Polish patriot Valerian Lukasinski spent the greater
part of the thirty-seven years of his imprisonment in
the fortress. He had previously been immured in a
.bn 055.png
.pn +1
Polish prison for nine years, so that he endured a
continuous imprisonment of forty-six years, and
died in the Schlüsselburg at the age of eighty-two.
The castle of Schlüsselburg figured in the war
with Charles XII when Peter the Great took it from
the Swedes in 1702. It stands just where the Neva
issues from Lake Ladoga, a bare fortress on a
lonely island. A small, desolate town surrounds it,
whose sparse inhabitants are easily kept under surveillance,
and access to the castle is impossible for
any but those authorised or permitted by the police.
The political prison was emptied in 1905; the
prisoners were freed, and the building was thrown
open to the public for inspection. It was supposed
this would end the gruesome history of the fortress
as a prison, but just one year later, after the triumph
of the reactionists, it was again put to use
as a place of durance, and instead of the few veteran
politicals who were liberated in 1905, three hundred
revolutionists were crowded into the prison under
fearful conditions.
A French publicist, M. Eugene Petit, a member
of the bar, seems to have visited the prison, and his
report appeared in the Revue Penitentiare of July,
1906.
The government has always chosen to send whom
it pleases to this state prison and to subject them
to such treatment as it pleases, usually of the most
arbitrary and rigorous kind. The leading idea is
absolute isolation in cells of limited dimensions, nine
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
feet by seven feet. The furniture is of the conventional
kind; an iron flap, fastened to the wall when
not in use, supplies the bed, but cannot be let down
except between eight o’clock in the evening and six
in the morning, and at other times rest can only be
obtained by lying on the floor. A petroleum lamp
lights the cells while darkness lasts, which in winter
is for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and
this has a very injurious effect on the eyesight besides
vitiating the air; the windows are high and
glazed with opaque glass. The prisoner is kept constantly
under observation through the “judas” or
inspection plate in the door, and a warder in slippered
feet comes to look through every five minutes.
The dietary is characterised as detestable and quite
insufficient. The early morning meal consists of cabbage
soup, shchi, and kasha, a kind of porridge,
with black bread often full of worms.
To complete isolation is added deadly silence and
unbroken idleness. Not a word is uttered anywhere
in the neighbourhood of a prisoner; the warders
never speak to them, but issue orders by signs and
gestures. Books are withheld until after a long
period of confinement and when the mind is failing,
and then only devotional works are allowed.
Brief exercise in the open air is conceded after
about the same lapse of time, first for a quarter of
an hour, then half an hour, and when over, a warder
carefully brushes away the footsteps lest it might
be imagined they had been made by a friend. Employment
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
is also given as a great favour,—permission
to remove a little sand from a heap, which
the next prisoner shovels back to the old place.
All communication from without or within is
peremptorily forbidden. No news of the day comes
in; no report of the condition of prisoners filters
out. Konachevich’s father died after years of fruitless
inquiry, without hearing where his son was or
whether he was still alive. A prisoner, Polivanov,
left the prison in 1902 to hear that his father had
died thirteen years before. It was not until 1896,
that a prisoner, when he died in hospital, was allowed
to have a single friend or comrade at his
bedside. He was quite alone. Every sort of humiliation
was inflicted upon him. He was never permitted
to use the familiar address “thou” to his
warders, although they spoke to him in that way
in the second person and he must not resent it.
A retired military officer named Lagovskoi was
shut up in Schlüsselburg in 1885 by “administrative
process,” without trial, and sentenced for five
years, which was prolonged for another five years,
still without trial. For having dared to address the
governor with the familiar “thou,” he was confined
in a strait-jacket and his legs were tied together;
then they gagged him, and holding him just a yard
above the ground dropped him repeatedly till his
head was cut open. The same treatment was administered
to another prisoner, Popov, who was
also gagged and his head banged upon the floor.
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
The effect of the imprisonment was seen in its
results. In the six years after 1891, just forty-eight
persons were removed into Schlüsselburg
from the Alexis Ravelin, all of them young and in
sound health at the time. At the end of these six
years, five had committed suicide or had been shot,
three were still retained but were out of their minds,
three had died insane, nine others had died, the
majority of them carried off by consumption.
Twenty out of forty-eight was a large proportion,
and the fact is authenticated by M. Petit, who can
give the names and exact dates.
After the year 1896, the rigours of the régime
were in some measure slackened. Books were allowed,
such as scientific manuals, grammars and
dictionaries for the study of languages, and historical
books of a date previous to the eighteenth
century, but no works of a purely literary character
and no periodicals, reviews or newspapers. Writing
materials were issued, a few sheets during the
daytime, which, with whatever was written thereon,
were withdrawn in the evening. By degrees the
dietary was slightly improved, the period of exercise
was prolonged and the prisoners were occasionally
allowed to work in the garden or in the
carpenter’s shop. Still better, association with a
fellow prisoner for a brief space was conceded twice
a week when at exercise. Later, extracts from the
letters of relatives were read out to the prisoner
once yearly, communicating a brief message such
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
as, “We are alive and well and living at such and
such a place.” By and by the prisoners were permitted
to reply no less briefly, but never to state
where they were confined.
Two provincial prisons were much concerned
with political prisoners, those of Kiev and Moscow.
The former was the scene of many tragic episodes,
and fierce conflicts between the revolutionists and
the authorities. Some remarkable escapes were
made from them. The university of Kiev was a
hot-bed of political unrest, and its students were
active and determined conspirators. An independent
spirit was always present in the prison, the
product of past resistance. It was from Kiev that
the well-known Leo Deutsch escaped with two
others in 1878, through the courageous assistance
of a comrade Frolenko, who managed as a free man
to get a false passport and obtain employment as
a warder in the prison. He took the name of
Michael and was in due course appointed to take
charge of the corridor in which his friends Deutsch,
Stefanovich and Bohanovsky were located. They
had pretended to protest against his coming to their
ward so as to disarm suspicion.
Frolenko set to work without loss of time. He
provided disguises, two suits of private clothes and
a warder’s uniform, which the prisoners put on, and
he then released them from their cells. As they
were stumbling along the passage, one of them
tripped against a rope which he caught at and
.bn 060.png
.pn +1
pulled frantically. It proved to be the alarm bell
of the prison and caused a deafening noise. The
false “Michael” at once explained to the authorities
what he had done unwittingly, and the disturbance
passed off without further discovery. Again
the fugitives, who had hidden themselves in the
first corners they found, started on their journey
and got out of the prison, where a confederate met
the party and led them to the river and to a boat
stored with provisions which awaited them. They
voyaged along the Dnieper for a whole week, concealing
themselves when necessary in the long
rushes, and at last reached Krementchug, where
they were furnished with passports and money and
successfully passed the frontier. “Michael” went
with them, and it was long supposed by the officials
that he had been made away with by the prison
breakers.
Beverley, a young man of English extraction,
met death when escaping from the Kiev prison.
He had been arrested for living under a false passport
and being active in the revolutionary propaganda
with a comrade Isbitski. He had driven a
tunnel from their cell to a point beyond the prison
walls. The authorities had discovered the tunnel
and had posted a party of soldiers at the exit,
where the fugitives must emerge into the upper
air. As soon as they appeared they were shot
down. Beverley was mortally wounded, and as
he lay on the ground he was despatched by
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
repeated bayonet stabs. Isbitski was also struck
down, but was carried back alive after a severe
beating.
Leo Deutsch gives other cases of escape that
proved more successful. A student Ivanov was
helped to freedom by the officer commanding the
guard, Tihonov, who was a member of the Narodnaya
Volya society, or the “Will of the People.”
Another prisoner disappeared under the most mysterious
circumstances which were never explained.
But the most important escape was in August, 1902,
when eleven noted prisoners, arrested a short time
before, broke prison in a body. They exercised
every evening in the prison yard which was bounded
on one side by an outer wall overlooking fields and
which was unguarded on the outside. The prisoners
got into the field, taking with them an iron anchor
weighing twenty pounds, and a rope ladder. At a
given moment some of them had fallen upon their
warder, overpowered him, gagged and bound him.
Two others, climbing on each other’s shoulders,
reached the top of the wall, where they pulled up
the anchor, made it fast, and then secured the rope
ladder, which served for the ascent of the prisoners
on one side and their descent on the other. So
much sympathy was felt for them in the town that
they were effectually concealed when at large and
provided with the necessary funds for leaving the
country. Throughout the whole affair no blood
was shed and no one was hurt. Many more escaped
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
from Kiev in a different fashion, passing out
of its walls to the scaffold.
The great central prison of Moscow, locally
known as the “Butirki,” served as a general depot
for ordinary criminals on the point of departure
as exiles about to be transported to Siberia. It is
a vast establishment with accommodation for thousands;
a mighty stone building which looks like a
gigantic well. A great wall with a tower at each
of the four corners encloses it, and the various
classes of politicals were confined in these towers.
In the north tower were the “administrative” exiles;
in the “chapel” tower were those still under
examination, and in another the female prisoners
were kept. All the male political prisoners in Moscow
wore chains and the convict dress. It was a
degrading costume, made the more humiliating by
the method of shaving the right side of the head
and leaving the left side with the hair cut close.
To Leo Deutsch, who was subjected to the prison
barber before leaving Kiev, the ordeal was extremely
painful. He says: “When I saw my own
face in the glass a cold shudder ran down my spine
and I experienced a sensation of personal degradation
to something less than human. I thought of
the days—in Russia, not so long ago—when
criminals were branded with hot irons.
“A convict was waiting ready to fasten on my
fetters. I was placed on a stool and had to put my
foot on an anvil. The blacksmith fitted an iron
.bn 063.png
.pn +1
ring round each ankle, and welded it together.
Every stroke of the hammer made my heart sink,
as I realised that a new existence was beginning for
me.
“The mental depression into which I now fell
was soon accompanied by physical discomfort. The
fetters at first caused me intolerable pain in walking,
and even disturbed my sleep. It also requires considerable
practice before one can easily manage to
dress and undress. The heavy chains—about thirteen
pounds in weight—are not only an encumbrance,
but are very painful, as they chafe the skin
round the ankles; and the leather lining is but little
protection to those unaccustomed to these adornments.
Another great torment is the continual
clinking of the chains. It is indescribably irritating
to the nervous, and reminds the prisoner at every
turn that he is a pariah among his kind, ‘deprived
of all rights.’
“The transformation is completed by the peculiar
convict dress, consisting of a grey gown, made of
special material, and a pair of trousers. Prisoners
condemned to hard labour wear a square piece of
yellow cloth sewn on their gowns. The feet are
clad in leather slippers nicknamed ‘cats.’ All these
articles of clothing are inconvenient, heavy and ill-fitting.
“I hardly knew myself when I looked in the
glass and beheld a fully attired convict. The
thought possessed me, ‘For long years you will
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
have to go about in that hideous disguise.’ Even
the gendarme regarded me with compassion.
‘What won’t they do to a man?’ he said. And I
could only try to comfort myself by thinking how
many unpleasant things one gets used to, and that
time might perhaps accustom me even to this.”
A later episode in the experience of Deutsch is
rather amusing. Many of the ordinary prisoners
were in the habit of ridding themselves of their
chains, at first at night and afterward during the
day. The trick was winked at by the warders.
Deutsch called for a nail and a hammer and openly
broke the rivets in the presence of his warders.
“Go and tell the governor what I have done,” he
said, and the offender was haled into the presence
of the great man who indignantly protested, saying
that it was a serious business. “Not at all,” replied
Deutsch, “it should prove to you that I have
no intention of attempting to escape. And you see
I still keep them on tied up with string.” Nothing
more was said for the moment; nor was the barbarous
practice insisted upon when the politicals stoutly
refused to submit to it.
The immunity continued until the time of departure
arrived, when the officer who was to command
the convoy insisted upon the strict observance
of the regulations. Deutsch and his comrades still
refused to comply. They were determined to resist
till the last, and kept together lest they might
be overcome singly. Just as they were to be
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
marched off, they were told that if they chose to
be examined by the prison doctor, he would excuse
them from travelling on foot. When taken into
his presence, a strong posse of warders fell upon
them and overpowered them by sheer force. One
by one they were dragged into a corner and held
forcibly down on a bench while the barber shaved
half their heads and the blacksmith firmly riveted
the chains.
Dostoyevski, whose “Reminiscences of the Dead
House,” recording his personal experiences of convict
life, are quoted, says that long afterward he
shuddered at the mere thought of the head shaving:
“The prison barbers lathered our skulls with cold
water and scraped us afterward with their sawlike
razors.” Fortunately it was possible to evade the
torture by payment. A fellow convict for one kopeck
would shave anyone with a private razor.
This man was never to be seen without a strop in
his hand on which, night and day, he sharpened his
razor, which was always in admirable condition.
“He was really quite happy when his services were
in request, and he had a very light hand, a hand
of velvet.” He was always known as “the Major,”
no doubt a survival of the old institution of the
barber-surgeon, as military doctors often bear the
rank of major.
There were some compensations for the politicals.
One was the unvarying sympathy they
evoked from the population on the rare occasions
.bn 066.png
.pn +1
when they came in contact with them. Kindly folk,
when they could, forced charitable gifts upon them.
When Deutsch and his party took the train at Moscow
for Nizhni-Novgorod, the platform was
crowded with well-wishers, and they started for
Siberia amid the tears and sobs of friends and
relatives, shouting affectionate farewells and joining
in the plaintive melody struck up by the prisoners,
many of whom sang beautifully. At the first
station peasants and workmen came to the carriage
windows unhindered, with humble offerings. One
old woman pressed a kopeck, the smallest copper
coin, upon Deutsch, crying, “Here! Take it in
the Virgin’s name. Take it, take it, my dear.” She
insisted when he protested he did not need it as
much as many others. But he accepted it, and kept
it as a remembrance of the warm-hearted old creature.
It was the same all along the road. Everywhere,
as they passed, groups of people waved their hands
with expressive gestures. It was the custom of the
country to show compassion thus for “the children
of misfortune,” the kindly designation of the poorer
classes for all prisoners. Deutsch, with his shaven
head, convict garb and clanking chains, won especial
interest. Many sought to serve him and begged
him to write down any special article he was in need
of and it should be sent after him.
There were societies formed to assist prisoners
with presents of small useful articles when starting
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
for their dreary exile. Long before the party left
Moscow, Deutsch and his companions were begged
to make out a list of their requirements, and as they
were fifty in number, and were to be half a year
on the road, the demands on the kindness of their
benefactors were not few. But at any cost and
with much personal inconvenience, all that was
asked for was given. These same friendly societies
came under the officious attentions of the police,
for a list of the members was once seized at a search
of houses, and as they were supposed to belong
to some secret associations with evil aims, they were
immediately classed as a branch of the Red Cross
League of the “People’s Will” organisation. The
most criminal action of the society was that of seeking
to provide political prisoners with old clothes.
Yet a number of arrests of members followed, and
many of these perfectly harmless, well-meaning people
were detained for some time in gaol.
The kindly custom prevails throughout Russia
of sending gifts of food to the prisoners at festival
seasons. The “Easter table” is generally the rule
in Russian cities, when the master keeps open house
and any visitor may enter to be hospitably entertained
with food and drink. The principle is even
carried further and helps to soften the hardships of
the prisoners. At Moscow all manner of good
things were sent in, Deutsch tells us: “Easter cakes,
eggs, hams, poultry, and all that is customary, including
several bottles of light wine and beer, so
.bn 068.png
.pn +1
that our Easter table was a magnificent sight. Under
the superintendence of the old governor and his
staff,” he continues, “we spent the evening and half
the night in a merry fashion not often witnessed in
a prison. Songs were sung, there were jokes and
laughter; finally a harmonica appeared, and the
young people began to dance. Yet, despite so much
hearty and unfeigned cheerfulness, not one of us
could forget our real condition; indeed, the very
sight of gaiety brought to the minds of many of us
remembrance of home, where our dear ones were
at this moment celebrating the feast-day, though
with many sad thoughts of the absent.”
It was the same in far-off Siberia. At Omsk,
where Dostoyevski was confined for four years,
gifts were sent to the prison at Christmastide
in enormous quantities,—loaves of white bread,
scones, rusks, pancakes and pastry of various kinds.
There was not a shopkeeper in the whole town who
did not send something to the “unfortunates.”
Among these gifts were some magnificent ones,
including many cakes of the finest flour, and also
some very poor ones, rolls worth no more than a
couple of kopecks, the offerings of the poor to the
poor, on which a last kopeck had been spent. These
delicacies were divided in equal portions among the
occupants of the various prison barracks, and
caused neither protest or annoyance, as every one
was satisfied.
There were good Samaritans in Siberia who
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
spent their lives in giving charitable assistance to
the “unfortunates.” Dostoyevski very rightly calls
their compassion, which is quite disinterested,
“something sacred.” There was a lady in the town
of Omsk who laboured unceasingly to assist all exiles
and especially the convicts in the prison. It
was conjectured that some dear one in her family
had gone through a like punishment, and, in any
case, she spared no effort to offer help and sympathy.
The most she could do was but little, for
she was very poor; “but,” says the author, “we
convicts felt when we were shut up in the prison
that outside we had a devoted friend.” He made
her acquaintance when leaving the town, and with
some of his comrades spent an entire evening at
her house. “She was neither old nor young,
neither pretty nor ugly. It was not easy to guess
whether she was intelligent or high-bred. But in
her actions could be seen infinite compassion, and
an irresistible desire to please, to solace, to be in
some way agreeable. All this could be read in the
sweetness of her smile.”
When her visitors left she gave each of them a
cardboard cigar box of her own making. It was
all but valueless, but the gift was inestimable as a
proof of her desire to be remembered. Dostoyevski
here analyses the theory that a great love for one’s
neighbour is only a form of selfishness, and asks
very pertinently what selfishness could animate such
a nature as this.
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
But for the charity of the Siberian peasantry,
the terrible journey of many thousands into exile
could never be accomplished. The government issues
a beggarly allowance in cash, a sum varying
between five and twelve kopecks per head, according
to the locality, out of which the exiles provide their
own food. The prices also vary with the season
and the harvests. This money hardly suffices for
the commonest ration; it will buy at most bread,
a few vegetables and a little tea. Gambling is, however,
such an ingrained vice that many waste all
of their substance daily, and the spendthrifts would
starve but for begging by the road. When a party
passes a village, permission is sought from the convoy
officer to raise the miloserdnaya or “exiles’
begging song,” and selected convicts go from door
to door, cap in hand, soliciting alms.
This song is inconceivably pathetic. George
Kennan, who often heard it, declares that it resembles
nothing with which he was acquainted. It is
not singing nor chanting, nor like wailing for the
dead, but a strange blending of all three. “It suggests
vaguely the confused and commingled sobs,
moans and entreaties of human beings who were
being subjected to torture, but whose sufferings
were not acute enough to seek expression in shrieks
or high pitched cries.... No attempt was made
by the singers to pitch their voices in harmony or
pronounce the words in unison. There were no
pauses or rests at the ends of the lines, no distinctly
.bn 071.png
.pn +1
marked rhythm. The singers seemed to be constantly
breaking in upon one another with slightly
modulated variation of the same slow, melancholy
air, and the effect produced was that of a rude
fugue of a funeral chant.” The following is an
extract from the words sung:—
.pm start_poem
“Have pity on us, O our fathers!
Do not forget the unwilling travellers,
Do not forget the long imprisoned.
Feed us, O our fathers—help us!
Feed and help the poor and needy!
Have compassion, O our fathers,
Have compassion, O our mothers,
For the sake of Christ, have mercy
On the prisoners.”
.pm end_poem
“If you can imagine these words, half sung, half
chanted slowly, in broken time and in a low key,
by hundreds of voices, to an accompaniment made
by the jingling and clashing of chains, you will have
a faint idea of the song. Rude, artless and inharmonious
as the appeal for pity was, I never in my
life heard anything so mournful and depressing.
It seemed to be the half articulate expression of all
the griefs, the misery and the despair that had been
felt by generations of human beings in the étapes,
the forwarding prisons and the mines.”
The collections made both in cash and kind were
taken on to the next halting place, when they were
divided with scrupulous exactitude under the watchful
control of the artel, or prisoners’ association,
which rules in every prison with an iron hand.
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
An advantage enjoyed by the political prisoners
in Russian prisons is the affable demeanour of the
official staff towards them. Every prison official as
a rule treats them with a certain amount of courtesy
and respect. This is due to an unwritten law arising
from the long established belief that these “politicals”
belonged to the educated and cultured
classes, and that their offences, so-called, have been
committed with high motives, in obedience to the
dictates of reason and conscience, in the hope of
improving the condition of the people and winning
a greater measure of liberty and independence for
their down-trodden nation. Superior officers were,
as a rule, polite in their address, and subordinates
spoke civilly and treated them with marked consideration.
The prisoners watched jealously the
attitude of their masters toward them, and fiercely
resented any failure of respect, or anything that
tended to lower their personal dignity.
Leo Deutsch tells a story of the sharp lesson in
manners taught to a great functionary, the chief
personage and head of the prison department, M.
Galkin Vrasski. The incident occurred at Moscow
when he was making a tour of inspection through
the provincial prisons. The politicals had heard that,
conscious of his power and self-importance, he was
in the habit of entering cells, when visiting them,
with his hat on. The first he reached was occupied
by one Dashkievich, who had been a theological
student,—“a man of very calm but unyielding
.bn 073.png
.pn +1
temperament, and permeated to an uncommon degree
with the instinct of justice and fairness.” The
great chief entered with much ceremony, escorted
by the governor and a brilliant staff, and asked
Dashkievich pompously whether he had any complaint
to make. “Pardon me,” interrupted the
prisoner quietly, “it is very impolite of you, sir,
to enter my apartment without removing your hat.”
Vrasski reddened to the roots of his hair, turned on
his heel and walked out, followed by his entire entourage.
He was at pains to ask the name of the man who
had dared to reprove him thus openly. He had
learned his lesson, for he appeared at all the other
cells hat in hand. But the offence rankled, and as
Deutsch avers, he took his revenge later. Dashkievich
had been sentenced to “banishment to the less
distant provinces of Siberia;” this was altered by
Vrasski’s order, and he was sent eventually to
Tunka in the furthest wilds, on the border of Mongolia.
In this matter of removing the head-dress, the
politicals were very punctilious. Once, on arrival
at the Krasnoyarsk prison, which was chiefly cellular,
a party of politicals had a serious conflict of
opinion with the governor, who ordered that they
should be placed in separate cells singly, instead
of in association. They resented and positively
refused to abide by this order, and demanded to
be lodged as heretofore along the road, in company
.bn 074.png
.pn +1
with one another. Pending a change of decision,
they remained in the corridor with their baggage,
and would not budge a step. The governor of the
prison insisted upon compliance with the regulations,
and he was backed up by the chief of police,
a very blustering and overbearing person. The
prisoners would not yield and the matter was referred
to higher authority, first to the colonel of
gendarmerie, then to the public prosecutor, and
lastly to the governor of the district. Nothing
could be decided that night, and the prisoners, still
obdurate, camped out in the passage, being permitted
to have their own way until the district governor
had been heard from.
As they sat at dinner the next day, the chief of
police brought the answer. He was in full parade
uniform and wore his helmet. “Gentlemen,” he
began ceremoniously, “I am to inform you”—He
was abruptly interrupted by the request to first
remove his helmet. The officer protested that when
in parade uniform he was forbidden to do so.
“Then we shall not listen to you,” said the prisoner
Lazarev. “We have nothing to do with your uniform.
It is a mere question of manners.” “But
I really cannot, I will not,” replied the officer.
“Then you may take your message back to the
governor, we shall not listen to it,” was the answer
of the politicals, and their firmness won the day.
The result was a concession to their demands. “I
wonder how many officials,” remarks Deutsch,
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
“have had to learn this elementary lesson in politeness
from us.”
The women revolutionists also showed the highest
spirit and were always ready to fight for their
own rights. A police ispravnik had insulted a political,
mistaking him for another with whom he had
a difference. It came to the knowledge of the wife
of the political, who was a clever resolute woman,
and she went straight to the police office and boxed
the officer’s ears. The harshness with which one
police officer, the chief at Irkutsk, had treated a
number of women politicals brought down on him
a severe rebuke. The officer accompanied a high
official during a visit to the prison of that city. The
moment he appeared he was addressed by the leading
political prisoner in these words: “We are
astonished at your impudence in daring to appear
before us, after having by your treatment forced our
women comrades into a terrible hunger strike.”
The room was hurriedly emptied of all officials, the
chief and his suite, and the odious policeman was
followed by a chorus of uncomplimentary epithets.
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER III | THE EXILE SYSTEM
.pm start_descr
The exile system—A principal secondary punishment—Reform
of 19th century—Classification of exiles—The hideous
march into Siberia—Infant mortality—Less than
half the exiles sentenced by regular tribunals—Many banished
by “administrative process” on arbitrary order—The
“untrustworthy”—Power to banish exercised by
many even minor authorities—Some cases of rank injustice—Monstrous
ill-usage of a medical man—Dr. Bieli
and his wife’s insanity—Students and young schoolgirls
exiled—Simple banishment—The exile’s life in Siberia—Danger
of protesting against ill-usage—Penalties of infringing
rules—Surgeon forbidden to practise in a case
of life and death—Terrors of banishment to the far north
in the arctic province of Yakutsk—A living death—Denounced
by Russian press.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
An account has been given of the most prominent
Russian penal institutions in the mother country
and of the prisons established for all offenders upon
whom confinement has been generally imposed as
a preparatory step to deportation. It remains to
describe the system of Siberian exile, long the principal
element of penal coercion known to the Russian
code. For all alike, the undoubtedly guilty
and the resolute patriots with high aims, but often
violent methods, this penalty exists and has existed
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
for centuries, ever imposed recklessly with marked
indifference to the human suffering it has entailed.
Banishment to the far-off wilds began soon after
the vast region of Siberia became part of the Empire,
that is to say, in the middle of the seventeenth
century. It originated in the idea of “removal;”
and was adopted as a convenient outlet for the
wrecks of humanity who had survived the cruel,
personal inflictions prescribed by savage laws. All
who escaped the capital sentence and were neither
impaled nor beheaded, endured secondary punishment
of atrocious severity; they were flogged by the
knout or bastinadoed; they were cruelly mutilated,
their limbs were amputated or their tongues torn
out; they were branded with hot irons or suspended
in the air by hooks run into the ribs, and left to die
a death of lingering torment. Those that were
left were transported to Siberia.
What the system was and to a great extent still
is, despite skin-deep reforms, with its most glaring
evils, claims description in any account purporting
to be complete. It is necessary to refer to the sufferings
endured and the infamies practised in some
detail, so that we may realise the true measure of
the infinite misery they have caused. It is almost
impossible to conceive of the horrors of that march
of thousands of both sexes across a continent;
ragged, debilitated men, weak women and helpless
children, tramping on and on for a whole year or
more, shoeless, insufficiently clad and subsisting on
.bn 078.png
.pn +1
the chance alms of the charitable; fed by a meagre
pittance, lodged nightly in half-ruinous log prisons,
or festering for weeks in detestable forwarding
prisons. The Russian exile system has rivalled in
its inflictions the cruelties and barbarities of the
darkest ages.
By degrees changes in the penal code, multiplying
offences punishable by exile, increased the numbers
sent to Siberia. The colonisation and development
of the new country claimed the attention of the
government. Throughout the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries increasing numbers were deported,
but with no attempt at organised system and
with the most callous neglect of the human beings
driven forth like cattle along the dreary road. They
were at all times abominably misused everywhere,
harassed, whipped, starved, and treated worse than
the four-footed beasts, which from their intrinsic
value would have been worth a certain amount of
care. Exile was substituted for the death penalty,
and the families of the offender often accompanied
him. The punishment was sometimes accorded for
breaking laws and regulations that were most trivial
and ridiculous. Among offences were included
fortune-telling, prize-fighting, snuff-taking, and
driving with reins—a culpable western innovation—for
the Russian rode his draught horse then or
ran beside it.
The demand for enforced labour steadily increased
as Siberia’s natural resources became more
.bn 079.png
.pn +1
and more evident. The discovery of mineral wealth,
the rich silver mines of Nertchinsk in the Trans-Baikal,
and the establishment of large manufactories
at Irkutsk called for more exiles, and laws were
passed extending the punishment. Any kind of misconduct
led to deportation. Jews were exiled for
failing to pay their taxes, serfs for cutting down
trees without permission, and minor military offences
were visited with this penalty. Large numbers
took the road, but without the slightest organisation.
There was no system; the exiles were
driven in troops like cattle from town to town. No
one knew exactly the cause of exile or could differentiate
between individuals. Some were murderers
and the most hardened offenders; some were simple
peasants guilty of losing their passports or the victims
of an oppressive proprietor. “The exile system,”
says Kennan, “was nothing but a chaos of
disorder in which accident and caprice played almost
equally important parts.”
Two cases may be quoted here of the haphazard
arbitrary treatment that commonly prevailed. A
peasant who had innocently bought a stolen horse
was sent to Siberia as an enforced colonist, but was
not set at liberty on arrival. Through some error
and confusion as to his identity, he was transported
to the Berozev mines and worked there underground
for three and twenty years. Again, the governor
of Siberia, Traskin, of notoriously evil repute, having
a spite against one of the councillors of the
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
State Chamber, banished him from the province of
Irkutsk, with an order that he should never be permitted
to remain more than ten days in the same
place. The wretched man accordingly spent the
rest of his life in aimless wanderings through Siberia.
With the nineteenth century some reforms were
introduced. The exiles were organised in parties,
marched under escorts, and étapes, or halting stations
for a stay of a night or more, were built at
regular intervals along the road. The identification
and separate personality of individuals were established
by means of proper papers showing whom
they were, their history and destination. A great
administrative measure was the creation in 1823 of
a central bureau at Tobolsk (removed later to
Tiumen) for the record and registration of all exiles
arriving and passing into Siberia. Sub-offices
at the principal Siberian towns assisted with the
necessary details showing the distribution and disposal
of all persons banished. Full statistics are
consequently available for estimating accurately the
extent of penal deportation in recent years. Approximately,
since the beginning of the nineteenth
century, more than a million souls have passed the
boundary line between Europe and Asia. Speaking
more exactly, the total number banished between
1823 and 1887 amounted to 772,979, or an annual
average of about seventeen thousand.
Siberian exiles have been grouped by Kennan into
.bn 081.png
.pn +1
four great classes. These are as follows: the hard-labour
convicts, in Russian called the katorzhniki;
the penal colonists, or poselentzy; the persons
merely banished, the ssylny; women and children
who go to Siberia voluntarily as the companions
of fathers and parents, and conversely, in rare cases,
men who accompany their wives. Members of this
class are called dobrovolny. According to law, they
are not under the disciplinary control of the escort,
but, as a matter of fact, they are subjected to the
same treatment as the convicts. An eye-witness
reported in a Moscow paper in 1881 that when he
met a party of exiles on the march, “the exhausted
women and children literally stuck in the mud, and
the soldiers dealt them blows to make them advance
and keep pace with the rest.”
Members of the two first classes wore chains, leg
fetters, and walked in slippers for distances of six
and seven thousand miles. The rest went free of
such physical encumbrances, but were otherwise exposed
to the terrible hardships and privations of
the long protracted, wearisome march. The mere
atmospheric conditions and extremes of temperature
in the varying seasons suffice to break down the
health of all but the most hardy, for winter succeeded
summer before the march ended and vice
versa, so that arctic cold alternated with tropical
heat, and deep snow with burning sun and torrential
rains. When to such exposure are superadded
unsuitable clothing, bad and insufficient food, the
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
insanitary condition of the over-crowded étapes and
the absence of medical care, “one is,” Kennan
says, “surprised, not that so many die, but that so
many get through alive.”
A Russian painter, M. Jacoby, has painted an
awful picture depicting the frightful scene. It has
been graphically described by Kropotkin and may
be quoted here in full to give a clear idea of this
hideous march.
“You see a marshy plain where the icy wind
blows freely, driving before it the snow that begins
to cover the frozen soil. Morasses with small
shrubs or crumpled trees, bent down by wind or
snow, spread as far as the eye can reach; the next
village is twenty miles distant. Low mountains,
covered with thick pine forests, mingling with the
gray snow clouds, rise in the dust on the horizon.
A track marked all along by poles to distinguish it
from the surrounding plain, ploughed by the passage
of thousands of carts, covered with ruts that keep
down the hardest wheels, runs through the naked
plains. The party slowly moves along this road.
In front a row of soldiers opens the march. Behind
them heavily advance the hard-labour convicts,
with half-shaved heads, wearing gray clothes with
a yellow diamond on the back, and open shoes worn
out by the long journey, and exhibiting the tatters
in which the wounded feet are wrapped. Each convict
wears a chain riveted to his ankles, its rings
being twisted with rags. The chain goes up each
.bn 083.png
.pn +1
leg and is suspended to a girdle. Another chain
closely ties both hands and a third chain binds together
six or eight convicts. Every false movement
of any of the gang is felt by all his chain companions;
the feebler is dragged forward by the stronger
and he must not stop the way; the étape stage is
long and the autumn day is short.
“Behind the hard-labour convicts march the
poselentzy, condemned to be settled in Siberia, wearing
the same gray clothes and the same kind of
shoes.... In the rear you discover a few carts
drawn by the small, attenuated, cat-like peasants’
horses. They are loaded with the bags of the convicts,
and with the sick or dying who are fastened
by ropes on the top of the load. Behind the carts
struggle the wives and children of the convicts; a
few have found a free corner on a loaded cart, and
crouch there when unable to move further, whilst
the great number march behind the carts, leading
their children by the hand or bearing them in their
arms. In the rear comes a second detachment of
soldiers, stimulating these weak, feeble creatures to
fresh exertions by blows with the butt end of their
muskets.”
The infant mortality under these conditions almost
exceeds belief, and deportation to Siberia has
been aptly and truthfully described as a “massacre
of the innocents.” In the year 1881, when 2,561
children followed the exile march, very few survived.
The majority succumbed to the hardships
.bn 084.png
.pn +1
of the road and died before or immediately after
their arrival at their destination. The yearly quota
has constantly increased, numbering from five to
eight thousand. To the danger to health incurred
must be added the moral degradation, especially in
the case of the young girls.
Before reviewing the conditions and setting forth
the actual facts, with the processes that produced
them, it will be well to dissect the grand totals and
arrive at the relative proportions of the three principal
classes composing the whole body of exiles
constantly moving across the frontier to fill the
prisons and to people Siberia to its uttermost ends.
Less than one-half were criminal in the sense that
they had committed offences and had been adjudged
guilty in open court by duly constituted tribunals.
The larger moiety had had no legal trial; they had
been punished with banishment by the irresponsible
action and simple fiat of minor officials and bodies
of ill-educated peasants, wielding the extraordinary
powers conferred by “administrative process.” At
no time and in no civilised land have people been so
ruthlessly sacrificed and subjected to the forfeiture
of personal liberty by this utter abnegation of justice
and fair play, and the result is a standing disgrace
to the government that permitted and encouraged
it. The extent to which this most reprehensible
system has obtained may be judged by a simple
statement of figures. For many years past the average
number sentenced to exile by legal verdict in
.bn 085.png
.pn +1
regular courts was 45.6 per cent. of the whole yearly
contingent, and those banished by “administrative
process” was 54.4 per cent. It must always be
borne in mind that, in describing the methods pursued
and the painful results attendant on them,
more than half the sufferers were either entirely innocent
or guilty of offences that could only be
deemed criminal by a strained interpretation of the
exercise of authority, and in no case had they been
properly tried and convicted by law.
The system has been defined by Mr. Kennan as
“the banishment of an obnoxious person from one
part of the empire to another without the observance
of any of the legal formalities which in most civilised
countries precede the deprivation of rights and
the restriction of personal liberty.” A person might
be entirely guiltless of any offence, he need not have
made himself amenable to the law; it was enough
that the local authorities should suspect him of being
“untrustworthy”[1] or believe that his presence
in any place was “prejudicial to public order,” or
threatened public tranquillity. He might be arrested
forthwith and detained in prison for a period
varying from two weeks to two years, and then by
a stroke of the pen be deported, forcibly, to any part
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
of the empire and kept there under police surveillance
for from one to ten years. He could not protest
or seek to defend himself. The same impenetrable
secrecy was maintained as in the dungeons of the
Spanish Inquisition. Not a whisper reached him
of the causes of his arrest; he might not examine
the witnesses who accused him or supported the
charge against him. He must not call upon friends
to speak of his loyalty and good character; he was
perfectly helpless and altogether at the mercy of the
authorities, and even his nearest relatives were in
ignorance of his whereabouts or what happened to
him. They could not help him or must not if they
would.
.fn 1
The Russian word is “neblagonadiozhny” and means
literally, “of whom nothing good can be expected,” and the
expression has been given a very wide interpretation. Young
people who read certain forbidden books or join forbidden
societies for the ventilation of certain principles are deemed
untrustworthy.
.fn-
The power to send people into exile thus arbitrarily
was vested in petty authorities, officers of gendarmerie,
subordinate police officials, or mere executive
orders countersigned by the minister of the
interior and approved by the Czar. There is nothing
new in this system. The people of Russia, from
noble to serf, have never enjoyed the semblance of
liberty; the Russian bureaucracy has wielded the
unlimited power delegated to it by the autocratic
Czar, and from the beginning of the eighteenth century
twenty different classes of officials could employ
“administrative methods” as a substitute for
judicial process. The right was vested in governors,
vice-governors, chiefs of police, and provincial bureaus,
ecclesiastical authorities and landed proprietors.
In addition to the power to send into exile,
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
these various authorities could at their discretion
confiscate property, brand, inflict torture and flog
with the knout. Village communes had also the
power to order the removal by exile of members
who were worthless and ill-conducted, of whom
their fellows were anxious to get rid.
Innumerable cases of oppression and injustice are
on record of which a few may be cited. One of
the most flagrant was that of Constantine Staniukovich,
who was the son of a Russian admiral. He
had been in the navy but had a fondness for literature
and became a writer of plays and novels condemned
by the censor as of “pernicious tendency.”
But he continued to write and finally became the
proprietor of a magazine. He was seized without
warning and locked up in the fortress of St. Peter
and St. Paul. His wife, who was at Baden Baden,
heard nothing of his arrest, and found when she
returned to St. Petersburg that he had mysteriously
disappeared. She learned, after diligent inquiry,
that he was in prison, and that his letters had been
secretly tampered with, his offence being a correspondence
through the post with a well-known Russian
revolutionist residing in Switzerland. At
length, after a long imprisonment, he was exiled by
administrative process to Tomsk for three years.
His magazine was discontinued by his absence and
he was financially ruined. Neither wealth nor a
high social position could save him from arbitrary
treatment.
.bn 088.png
.pn +1
Another literary man, M. Berodin, was banished
to Yakutsk, close to the Arctic Circle, because the
manuscript of an article deemed “dangerous” was
found in his house in St. Petersburg by the police.
This was a spare copy of an article he had written
for the Annals of the Fatherland, which had been
accepted but had not appeared. When he was on
his way to Eastern Siberia to expiate this horrible
offence, the incriminated article was passed by the
censor and actually published without objection in
the same magazine, and without the alteration or
omission of a single line. The exile read his own
article, for which he had suffered, in the far-off
place of his confinement.
The most monstrous instances of high handed
proceedings are recorded. One unfortunate gentleman
was exiled because he was suspected of an
intention to put himself in an illegal situation, no
more than a projected change of name. Another
man was exiled and sent to Siberia because he was
the friend of an accused person who was waiting
trial on a political charge, and of which he was in
due course acquitted. But the friend of this innocent
man was deemed an offender, and was sent
across the frontier. Such was the chaos of injustice,
accident and caprice, that errors were constantly
made as to identification. When the roll
of a travelling party was called, no one answered
to the name of Vladimir Sidoski. A Victor Sidoski
was in the ranks and was challenged to answer.
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
“It is not my name. I am another man, I ought
not to have been arrested; I am Victor, not Vladimir,”
was the answer. “You will do quite as
well,” retorted the officer. “I shall correct the name
in the list.” And Victor the innocent became
Vladimir the prisoner. It sometimes happened that
an arrest was made by mistake; the wrong man
was taken and it was clearly shown, but no release
followed. It was unsafe to take up the case of any
victims of misusage. One lady who resented acts
of manifest injustice was arrested and banished
because “it was no business of hers.”
A young and skilful surgeon, Dr. Bieli, was
shamefully ill-treated. Two women students at a
medical college in St. Petersburg had been expelled
on suspicion of “untrustworthiness,” and being
anxious to continue their studies, had remained in
the capital and had secretly become the doctor’s
pupils. They were without passports in an “illegal”
position and should have been handed over
to the police. But Dr. Bieli shielded them until
their visits to his house, generally at night, attracted
the attention of the police, and it was thought that
some political conspiracy was in progress. Arrests
followed, the fatal truth came out, and Dr. Bieli was
exiled to the arctic village of Vorkhoyansk. His
wife was expecting her confinement and could not
go with him, but travelled after him, starting on
a journey of six thousand miles to be made in the
rough jolting telyegas and enduring endless hardships.
.bn 090.png
.pn +1
Her health broke down and gradually her
mind gave way. But she bore up until the end of
her trials seemed near, when she learned that a mistake
had occurred in the place of her destination
and that she must traverse another three thousand
miles before she reached her husband. The sudden
shock was fatal; she became violently insane and
died a few months later in the prison hospital at
Irkutsk.
The measure of administrative process has been
defended by intelligent Russians who visit the blame
upon the Nihilists and terrorists,—“a band so
horribly vile that their crimes are beyond parallel.”
A writer in a German periodical justifies this language
by denouncing the bloodthirsty recklessness
of the revolutionists who have not hesitated to use
the assassin’s knife and dynamite bombs. To give
local authorities power to banish the suspected was
essential as a means of precaution, “the only possible
means to counteract the nefarious doings of
these dark conspirators.” Admitting, however, that
the decision was unfortunate and has caused unspeakable
misery, he says: “From the day this
power was delegated no man knows at what moment
he may not be seized and cast into prison or
doomed to exile.”
He casts all the responsibility on the revolutionists,
but in doing so, as Kennan says, puts the cart
before the horse. Terrorist measures were the
reply to grievous oppression. “It was administrative
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
exile, administrative caprice, and the absence of
orderly and legal methods in political cases that
caused terrorism, not terrorism that necessitated
official lawlessness.” Already the true facts are
patent and thoroughly understood by the world at
large. The so-called excesses of the revolutionists
have not been committed, as the champions of the
Russian government would have us believe, “by
bloodthirsty tigers in human form at the prompting
of presumptuous fancies,” but “by ordinary men
and women exasperated to the pitch of desperation
by administrative suppression of free speech and
free thought, administrative imprisonment for years
upon suspicion, administrative banishment to the
arctic regions without trial, and, to crown all, administrative
denial of every legal remedy and every
peaceful means of redress.”
Already “the whirligig of time has brought its
revenges.” Russia is wading through blood to the
still far-off horizon which is at last dawning on a
vexed and tortured people. The overthrow of despotism
is approaching inevitably if slowly. The will
of the people cannot be ignored or their aspirations
checked and crushed by the old arbitrary methods
of repression and coercion.
A whole volume might be filled with the detailed
iniquities of the administrative process, which was
so largely operative and so long before the oppressed
people were goaded into retaliation. As far back
as the early decades of the nineteenth century, statistics
.bn 092.png
.pn +1
were gathered by a careful and industrious
writer covering the period between 1827 and 1846
and showing the average number banished annually
to be between three and six thousand, and the aggregate
for the twenty years to be nearly eighty
thousand. Beyond doubt in more recent years the
numbers have steadily grown, although the exact
figures are not available.
Kropotkin ably summarises the objects of exile:
“Students and girls suspected of subversive ideas;
writers whom it was impossible to prosecute for
their writings, but who were known to be imbued
with a ‘dangerous spirit;’ workmen who
were known to have spoken against the authorities;
persons who have been irreverent to some governor
of a province or ispravnik were transported by hundreds
every year.” The barest denunciation and
the most casual suggestion were sufficient to afford
a motive.
Several young girls were condemned, not merely
to exile, but to hard labour for from six to eight
years for having given a socialistic pamphlet to one
workman. A child of fourteen became a penal colonist
for shouting aloud that it was a shame to condemn
people to death for nothing.
A flagrant case was that of M. Annenkov, a
landed proprietor, who proposed the health of the
governor at a banquet given him by the nobility of
Kursk. At the end he was bold enough to remark
that he greatly hoped his excellency would devote
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
more time to the affairs of the province. The following
week a tarantas containing two gensdarmes
stopped at his door; he was arrested, was forbidden
to bid his wife farewell, and was conveyed as a
prisoner to a distant part. Only after six months
and the most urgent representations of influential
friends was he again set free.
In the last decade of the reign of Alexander II,
between 1870 and 1880, administrative exile was
employed with unprecedented recklessness and the
most consummate indifference to personal rights.
Unlimited discretionary powers were vested in governors
of provinces. General Todleben, in Odessa,
banished all of the “untrustworthy” class without
inquiry or discrimination, and sent into exile every
one whose loyalty to the existing government was
even doubtful. It was enough to be registered as
a “suspect” on the books of the secret police, or
to have been accused, even anonymously, of political
disaffection. Parents who had the most honourable
record of unblemished loyalty were exiled because
their children had become revolutionists; schoolboys
were exiled because they were acquainted with
some of the disaffected and had failed to report the
fact to the police; teachers were exiled for circulating
copies of a harmless magazine; members of
provincial assemblies, who claimed the right to petition
the Czar for redress of grievances, were sent
across the frontier; and university students, who
had been tried and acquitted of a political offence,
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
were re-arrested and exiled by administrative process,—all
in violation of the most elementary principles
of justice.
The majority of the administrative exiles were
political prisoners, but all politicals were not let off
with simple banishment. A considerable number
of political offenders were sentenced to hard labour
and also to penal exile. They did not live apart but
were incorporated with the common-law criminals
and subjected to precisely the same irksome treatment;
they were equally deprived of civil rights,
and could never count upon freedom absolute and
unconditional. A few might in the long run be
allowed to return to European Russia, at the intercession
and with the guarantee of influential friends,
but endless exile was generally their portion and a
hard hand-to-mouth existence, with unceasing struggles
to gain bread, for when nominally free they
are still under police surveillance and do not easily
find the means of a livelihood. They are worse off
than when prisoners, for they are granted no government
allowance and must fight for every kopeck
under many disadvantages.
We come thus to the large class of the ssylny,
those simply banished, whose liberty is forfeited,
although they are not actually subjected to imprisonment;
and with them must be comprised the emancipists,
those who have completed their penalty but
are not permitted to leave Siberia. Both classes are
practically prisoners, although not within four walls
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
perhaps. Their movements are restricted, and they
are still held under observation within a certain
area and must observe certain stringent rules of
conduct. Their condition is only a modified form
of imprisonment applicable to at least half of the
entire number transported to Siberia.
A code of rules has been drawn up for all whom
the law condemns to exile and enforced domicile,
whether at home or in far-off Siberia. The pregnant
word “banishment” is carefully excluded from
these rules, and police surveillance takes effect on
those “assigned to definite places of residence,” an
expression euphemistically applied to the wildest and
most remote regions of the empire. It is an obviously
colourable suppression of true facts. The
names of such places as the frontiers of Mongolia,
the arctic province of Yakutsk, or the sub-tropical
mountain districts of Central Asia are never mentioned,
but there can be no mistakes as to the irksome
character of the rules. It is a life of sufferance,
of sometimes open arrest, and often of rigorously
curtailed freedom of movement. The exile
must remain where he is planted; to move his quarters
he must give notice and obtain the consent of
the police, to whom he must constantly report himself.
His chosen place of residence is liable to
visitation and search at any time of the day or
night, and anything it contains may be removed;
his correspondence, all letters and telegrams, inward
and outward, may be read or withheld at all times.
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
The manner of the exile’s daily life is laid down
with great minuteness, and the nature of his employments
specified, chiefly in the negative sense.
He cannot hold any position in the service of the
state; he must do no clerical work for any society
or institution; he must not promote, or serve with
any company; he cannot act as curator of any
museum; he must not give lectures or impart instruction
as a schoolmaster; he must not take any
part in any theatricals, and is forbidden generally
to exercise any public activity. He may not embark
in any photographic or literary occupation;
may not deal in books, must not keep a tea house
or grog shop, or trade in intoxicating liquors. He
shall not appear or plead in court except on behalf
of himself and his near relations, nor without special
permission may he act as physician, accoucheur,
apothecary or chemist. The penalty of contravening
any of these regulations is imprisonment for
terms varying from three days to one month. Exiles
without means are granted a meagre allowance
from the treasury, but it is withdrawn if they fail
to obtain employment through bad conduct or laziness.
The difficulty of getting a living under so
many restrictions is not considered.
The exile’s life is full of irksome conditions.
When, after a nearly interminable journey, he
reaches his “definite domicile,” he must find his own
residence with some reluctant householder who does
not care to shelter a presumably dangerous political,
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
subject at all times of the day or night to police
visitation; and, moreover, the householder is expected
to spy upon his tenant and report any suspicious
circumstance. When at length he overcomes
these irritating and causeless objections and
rents a bare room, he has to settle the question of
daily subsistence. His wife and family he has left
behind in Russia, probably destitute, while he is here
in Siberia without means, and with little hope of
being able to secure them. He falls back on the
government grant, no more than twelve shillings
a month, and finds that it is utterly insufficient to
provide him with the commonest necessaries of life.
Rent, coarse food, meat, rye flour, a few eggs,
“brick” tea and a little cheap tobacco exhaust his
allowance and leave a substantial deficit, and this
without spending a kopeck on washing, kerosene or
medicine.
Naturally the exile seeks to supplement his inadequate
income. His position is nearly hopeless.
Possibly he has had the best education, is a graduate
of the university, knows several languages, and is
a skilful surgeon or practised physician. He does
not, of course, expect to find in the wilds of Siberia
as many openings for his trained intelligence
as in St. Petersburg or Moscow, but surely there is
room for an expert penman, a good accountant, a
competent teacher, a fair musician? Yet he seems
to have no chance to earn a few rubles, a few
kopecks even, day by day. The regulations, quoted
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
above, close every avenue, debar him from every
employment but ordinary manual labour. He has
never learned any handicraft; he cannot work as
carpenter, shoemaker, wheelwright or blacksmith;
he has no capital and cannot go into trade; he must
not engage himself as driver or teamster, for he
cannot leave the village to which he has been assigned.
There is nothing left for him except to dig,
but there is not an inch of land for him to cultivate.
All the ground in the neighbourhood belongs to the
village commune and has been already allotted to
its members, so that any available land is so far distant
that he would risk arrest by going there.
In this dilemma he petitions the government to
relieve him of his restrictions, and permit him to
engage in such a harmless vocation as teaching
music, but he is referred to the rule forbidding it.
To this refusal was once added the cruel suggestion
that the starving and impecunious convict might
hire himself out as a labourer to the king, his peasant,
for half a dozen kopecks a day. The same answer
was given to a petition from some political
prisoners who begged to be allowed to occupy and
cultivate a tract of government ground near their
village.
It was dangerous to protest against ill-usage. A
number of exiles, goaded to desperation by brutal
severity of the acting governor of the province of
Tobolsk, respectfully declared that there was a
limit to human endurance and that their position
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
had become intolerable. This petition was adjudged
“audaciously impudent” and its authors, nineteen
in number, were removed to a barren village within
the Arctic Circle. Memorials from free and independent
bodies were equally unpalatable to the authorities.
The medical society of Tver in European
Russia, a short distance from Moscow, dared to
back up a request made by a number of qualified
physicians exiled to Siberia to be allowed to practise
in the places of their banishment. A year or
two before, the governor-general of Eastern Siberia
had reported to the Czar that the number of doctors
in the country was utterly insufficient, saying, “In
the cities only is it possible to take measures for the
preservation of health. In every other part of
Eastern Siberia physicians are almost wholly lacking,
and the local population is left helpless in its
struggle with diphtheria and other contagious diseases
which desolate the country.” Two years later
the medical school of Tver was swiftly punished for
venturing to endorse this statement, and for daring
to ask that the prohibition to practise might be rescinded
in the case of the doctors so urgently
needed. The school was forthwith broken up and
two of its members who were in state services were
summarily dismissed from their posts.
Exiled physicians who dared to infringe the rules
were mercilessly dealt with. A student named
Dolgopolov had been banished for a most trifling
offence. During a riot at the Kharkov university,
.bn 100.png
.pn +1
when the streets were being cleared by the mounted
Cossacks with their heavy dog-whips, Dolgopolov
indignantly took the brutal horsemen to task. For
this he was promptly arrested and banished by administrative
process to Western Siberia. Here, at
the earnest entreaty of two suffering fellow creatures,
one ill with typhus fever, and the other afflicted
with cataract, he ventured to prescribe for
them. He was immediately summoned before the
chief of police, who had a personal grudge against
him, and roughly reminded him he had transgressed
the regulations. A little later he was called in to
attend the major’s wife who had been accidentally
shot in the leg by her son. The immediate extraction
of the bullet was essential, and no one but
Dolgopolov was competent to perform the operation.
He explained that he was forbidden to practise
under pain of imprisonment, but it was put to
him as a matter of life and death, and he at last
consented. The next day he was arrested by order
of the ispravnik and thrown into prison at Tiukalinsk,
where he contracted typhus fever. His case
excited profound sympathy in the town, which was
magnified by the authorities into a charge of exercising
a pernicious and dangerous influence, and
was so reported to the governor, who immediately
ordered his removal to the arctic town of Surgut.
No mention had been made of his illness, but the
convoy officer refused to receive him. As the
ispravnik would not be baulked, however, he obtained
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
a peasant’s cart, dragged the patient from his
bed in hospital and sent him away in his night-shirt
under the escort of two policemen.
He arrived at Ishim after 126 miles en route.
Other political exiles who resided here rallied
around him, had him examined by the local surgeon,
and got the local chief of police to draw up a statement
and telegraph it to the governor, who heard
for the first time of the sufferer’s dangerous illness,
and who replied by ordering him to be taken into the
local hospital. It was currently reported that the
governor took a substantial bribe from the ispravnik
at Tiukalinsk for sparing him the prosecution he
richly merited. Dr. Dolgopolov gradually recovered
and was later sent to Surgut. The Siberian ispravniks,
or chiefs of police, were notorious offenders,
and Kennan says that at the time of his journey
there were ten under accusation of criminal charges
but still evading trial by timely propitiation, in cash,
of their superiors.
Police surveillance was the more difficult to bear
because a large number of the officials who carried
out this duty were degraded characters with criminal
antecedents. Many had been originally common-law
exiles taken into the government service at
the expiration of their terms. Kennan states that
he came across police officers whom he would not
dare to meet at night, when alone and unarmed.
He records that in the city of Tomsk the police had
been constantly guilty of “acts of violence, outrage
.bn 102.png
.pn +1
and crime, including the arrest and imprisonment
of innocent citizens by the hundreds, the taking
of bribes from notorious criminals, the subornation
of perjury, the use of torture and the beating
nearly to death of pregnant women.” A newly appointed
governor, on visiting a prison, heard three
hundred complaints of unjust imprisonment, and on
investigation of them two hundred prisoners were
set at liberty. The methods of surveillance were
unceremonious and rudely intrusive. An exile
wrote to the press as follows, complaining that the
police entered his quarters repeatedly to verify his
presence and to see if any one else was there.
“They walk past our houses constantly, looking in
at the windows and listening at the doors. They
post sentries at night on the corners of the streets
where we reside, and they compel our neighbours
to watch our movements and report upon them to
the local authorities.”
Many ladies were to be found among the political
exiles, often defenceless girls from sixteen to twenty
years of age and young married women temporarily
separated from their husbands who were interned
elsewhere or were at hard labour in the mines.
They were constantly exposed to indignity or
worse, suffered insult or outrage, and were compelled
to associate with others for common protection.
One young woman, on returning from a short
walk, found that a police officer had invaded her
private apartment and was lying asleep in helmet
.bn 103.png
.pn +1
and boots upon her bed. The chief of police also
shamelessly misused his control of the exiles’ correspondence,
which was absolute; he might at his
discretion suppress and destroy any letters after perusal
of their contents, or detain them and postpone
delivery on the ground that they were in secret
cipher which he was anxious to penetrate. Sometimes
he carried them to his club and read them
aloud between drinks to his boon companions, who
laughed brutally at the tender messages contained
in them.
It must be admitted that the fate of those merely
banished is stern enough and their condition is in
some respects worse than that of the actually imprisoned.
Loss of liberty is a terrible punishment,
of course, but at least food and lodging are provided
and, as has been shown, the simple exile is
not certainly assured of either. There are phases
of exile, too, which far transcend the worst form of
incarceration. Banishment to a ulus or yurt of the
arctic province of Yakutsk is the most barbarous
penalty that could well be devised for the prolonged
torture of a civilised being. The province of
Yakutsk is very sparsely inhabited, the climate is
arctic, the post arrives rarely and at long intervals;
common necessaries, not to say luxuries, such as tea,
sugar, petroleum, are unprocurable. Even stale
black bread can seldom be obtained and at an exorbitant
price. The native’s hut, or yurt, is tent-shaped
and built of rough logs, the interstices filled up with
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
earth and turf. The life of an exile there has been
stigmatised as a “living death,” and a description
by a writer in the Russian Gazette is quoted.
“The Cossacks who brought me from the town
of Yakutsk to my destination soon returned, and
I was left alone among the Yakuts who do not understand
a word of Russian. They watch me constantly,
for fear that if I escape they will have to
answer for it to the Russian authorities. If I go
out of the close atmosphere of the solitary yurt to
walk I am followed by a suspicious Yakut. If I
take an axe to cut myself a cane, the Yakut directs
me by gestures and pantomime to let it alone and
go back into the yurt. I return thither, and before
the fireplace I see a Yakut who has stripped himself
naked, and is hunting for lice in his clothing—a
pleasant picture! The Yakuts live in winter in the
same buildings with their cattle, and frequently are
not separated from the latter even by the thinnest
partition. The excrement of the cattle and of the
children; the inconceivable disorder and filth; the
rotting straw and rags; the myriads of vermin in
the bedding; the foul, oppressive air, and the impossibility
of speaking a word of Russian—all
these things taken together are positively enough
to drive one insane. The food of the Yakuts can
hardly be eaten. It is carelessly prepared, without
salt, often of tainted materials, and the unaccustomed
stomach rejects it with nausea. I have no
separate dishes or clothing of my own; there are
.bn 105.png
.pn +1
no facilities for bathing, and during the whole winter—eight
months—I am as dirty as a Yakut. I
cannot go anywhere—least of all to the town,
which is two hundred versts away. I live with the
Yakuts by turns—staying with one family for six
weeks, and then going for the same length of time
to another. I have nothing to read, neither books
nor newspapers, and I know nothing of what is
going on in the world.”
The editor of the Russian Gazette, M. S. A.
Priklonsky, an eminent publicist and man of letters,
in commenting upon this state of things writes,
“Beyond this severity cannot go. Beyond this
there remains nothing but to tie a man to the tail
of a wild horse, and drive him into the steppe, or
chain him to a corpse and leave him to his fate.
One does not wish to believe that a human being
can be subjected, without trial and by a mere executive
order, to such grievous torment.... And
yet we are assured ... that up to this time none
of the exiles in the province of Yakutsk have been
granted any alleviating privileges.”
Mr. Kennan bears witness in 1891 that exiles
were still sent to Yakutsk, and Leo Deutsch speaks
of the practice as still prevailing much later, although
he and his colleagues did not shrink from
removal there, hoping it might lead to some more
advantageous change later. But humanity shudders
at the detestable treatment of the poor people
whose worst crime was a passionate desire to alleviate
.bn 106.png
.pn +1
the sufferings of their fellow countrymen.
Life at Yakutsk was infinitely more terrible than
the worst tortures inflicted by prolonged confinement
in a separate cell, which is commonly described
as “the greatest crime of the nineteenth century.”
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER IV | THE OSTROG AT OMSK
.pm start_descr
Centre of exile system at Omsk—Dostoyevski—His famous
book “Recollections of the Dead House” based on his experiences
in this Ostrog—Description of the prison and
its heterogeneous inmates—Detestable character of an ex-noble—His
attempted escape with another convict—Another
well-born criminal of very different character—His
industry and skill with his hands—The prison routine—Food—Extra
delicacies could be obtained—Passion for
gambling—Various devices for indulging it—Method of
smuggling strong drink into the Ostrog—Drunken carousals—Gazin,
the vodka seller—His history and atrocious
crimes—Dostoyevski narrowly escapes being murdered by
him.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
In the early decades of the nineteenth century
the exile system centred chiefly at Omsk, an ancient
military post situated on the junction of the rivers
Om and Irtysh. A place of arms had been erected
here in 1719 to strengthen the Russian dominion
among the nomads of the Asiatic Steppes. This
was replaced by a formidable fortress and became
a chief post on the Siberian boundary line. A large
town sprang up around it, which grew into the
headquarters of local administration, and was long
the residence of the governor-general of Western
Siberia.
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
Just outside the ramparts of the fortress stood
a wooden prison, enclosed by a high stockade, which
has an interesting penal history, having served for
long years as a base and starting point for the convict
exiles on their eastward march. The prison
population constantly numbered about eight hundred
and it was the place of durance for several
remarkable prisoners. One of the greatest of Russian
novelists, Dostoyevski, based his famous book,
“Reminiscences of the Dead House” on his personal
experiences in this old ostrog.[2] He was one of the
early “politicals” who were subjected to the same
régime as the common-law prisoner or ordinary
gaol-bird, and he suffered four years as a hard-labour
convict at Omsk. His offence was being
involved in the Petrachevski affair in 1849, and
with him in Omsk was the poet Dirov, who suffered
a like term of four years for the same reason.
.fn 2
The ostrog was the name given to the stockaded entrenchment
or rude fort built by the Cossack invaders of
Siberia in the old days. As prisoners were confined more and
more in these forts, the word ostrog came to define a place of
durance, and is now applied to all local prisons in Siberia, and
provincial lock-ups. The prison had disappeared when Kennan
looked for it on his visit to Omsk. New buildings have
been erected on the site.
.fn-
Dostoyevski’s treatment, having regard to his
offence, was a disgrace to civilisation, and it is satisfactory
to know that intelligent Russian officials
to-day are heartily ashamed of the episode. A full
account of its enormities has been since written by
.bn 109.png
.pn +1
a fellow prisoner named Rozhnovski, and was published
in the Tiflis newspaper, Kavkaz. He was at
the mercy of harsh taskmasters, endured the severest
discipline, wore irons always and the prisoners’
dress, and was twice flogged. The first corporal
punishment he received was for complaining in the
name of the other prisoners of filthy foreign matter
floating in the daily soup, and the second was for
saving the life of a comrade from drowning, in
direct defiance of his officer’s order to do nothing
of the kind. The second “execution” was so terrible
that the victim was taken up for dead; he lay
insensible for so long that he was afterward nicknamed
the “deceased.”
Never have the inner life and history of a Russian
prison of that epoch—the middle of the nineteenth
century—been so thoroughly explored and
exposed as by the gifted writer, Dostoyevski. He
draws on his own experience, speaking at first hand
from his personal knowledge. He knew exactly
what imprisonment meant, for he had been through
it, constantly subjected to its irksome restraints and
almost intolerable conditions. He had learned to
habituate himself to its laws and penalties; to endure
the most acute discomforts; to face with patient
resignation the endless vista of the slow moving
years, continually tortured and tormented by
suffering and the complete absence of all that tends
to brighten life and make it bearable. He had
ample opportunities for studying and observing the
.bn 110.png
.pn +1
convicts with whom he was so long obliged to consort.
He draws them with photographic exactitude.
He observed, and has effectively reproduced their
traits, thoughts, feelings and inner nature. He saw
them at their best and at their worst; he noted
the generous emotions that sometimes swayed them,
the evil passions that more often possessed them.
He can do justice to the sympathy and compassion
lavished on suffering comrades and reprobates; to
the envy, hatred and uncharitableness constantly
exhibited when moved by jealousy or consumed
with temper and overmastering desire for revenge.
The daily life of a Siberian place of durance at that
time is brought before us with striking force: its
generally wearisome monotony, to which severe toil
is a welcome break; the petty, pitiful recreations
enjoyed often at the risk of punishment; the vices
of drunkenness and gambling, strictly forbidden
although constantly indulged in; the gormandising
at Christmas and other festivals. He describes the
ambitious theatrical entertainment given in the convict
barrack room, when the convicts, despite the
difficulties raised by discipline and the dearth of
means, produced a striking performance.
The old prison at Omsk was situated at the end
of the citadel just under the ramparts. It was surrounded
by a high palisade of stakes buried deep
in the ground, enclosing a court-yard two hundred
feet long by one hundred and fifty feet broad. A
great gate in the stockade guarded by sentries gave
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
admission to the prison. Looking through the interstices
of the palisades from within, a narrow
glimpse was obtained of the glacis of the fort sloping
downward, and of a little corner of the sky
above. The prison buildings consisted of a number
of log huts of one story, each providing a separate
barrack to accommodate roughly about two hundred
convicts herded together in very close association.
This was long before the extension of the
cellular system to Russia, and the terrors of isolated
confinement did not exist in those days. But
life in common had its peculiar horrors, which our
author enlarges upon. “I could not,” he says, “possibly
have conjured up the poignant and terrible
suffering of never being alone, even for one minute,
during ten years. Working always under surveillance
in the barracks, ever in the unvarying companionship
of two hundred others; never alone, never!
This enforced cohabitation was the sharpest and
most painful sensation endured. Nowhere is it so
horrible as in a prison, where the society must contain
many with whom no one would willingly live.
“Among them were murderers by imprudence
and murderers by profession, simple thieves and
chiefs of thieves, masters in the art of finding money
in the pockets of a passer-by or of lifting anything,
no matter what, from the table.... The majority
were depraved and perverted, so that calumnies and
scandal rained among them like hail. Our life was
a constant hell, a perpetual damnation.... Those
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
who were not already corrupt on reception soon
became so. Intrigues, calumnies, scandalous backbiting
of all kinds, envy and hatred reigned above
everything else. No ordinary tongue could hold its
own against these adepts at abuse with insults constantly
in their mouths.”
A curious trait in this heterogeneous assembly,
in which the elements of evil predominated, was the
reticence of the convicts. Some were malefactors
of the worst kind, veterans in habitual crime,
guilty of the most atrocious misdeeds, but they
would not talk of them. On one occasion in the
barrack room a miscreant who had killed and cut
up a child of five began to relate the horrible details;
how he had tempted the little one with a toy,
inveigled it into a private place, and there used his
murderous knife. He was one of the licensed buffoons
of the establishment, who as a rule found a
ready audience, but he was now received with one
unanimous cry of indignant disgust; and he was
shamed into silence. It was contrary to the unwritten
law of the prison to speak of such things.
Another case was that of a parricide, a young
man of noble birth who had filled the post of a public
functionary. A wastrel, a spendthrift and a
reckless gambler, he had been a cause of constant
annoyance to his father, who remonstrated with
him in vain. The son had reason to believe that
he would inherit a substantial sum from his father,
so he killed him in order to come into the estate
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
more quickly and thus continue his debaucheries.
Presently the corpse was unearthed from a drain;
the head had been severed and placed on a cushion
beside the body. The parricide’s crime was brought
home to him, he was tried and convicted, degraded
and deprived of his privileges, and sentenced to
twenty years’ hard labour. At the ostrog he was
despised by his fellow convicts because he was
shameless and permitted himself to talk lightly of
his crime. He sometimes spoke of his father with
extraordinary callousness, and once, in boasting of
the hereditary good health of his family, quietly
remarked, “My father, for example, never was ill
until the day of his death”—by the hand of his
unnatural son.[3]
.fn 3
In the latter part of his book Dostoyevski corrects this
early account of the supposed parricide, and tells us that it
was all a mistake. It was a grave case of judicial error.
The convict, when he had served ten years’ imprisonment, was
proved to be entirely innocent. When the real murderers had
been discovered and had confessed their crime, the wronged
man was set at liberty.
.fn-
This animal insensibility carried so far was no
doubt phenomenal. It showed an organic defect
in the man’s nature, but conscience still lurked in
its lowest depths, and there were times when he
was vexed and tormented by great agitation in his
sleep, when he cried aloud, “Hold him! Cut off
his head!” Outwardly, in his waking hours, he
never showed the slightest signs of remorse or repentance,
and this is characteristic of the great bulk
.bn 114.png
.pn +1
of criminals. Dostoyevski avers that in all the
years he mixed with them he never noticed even
the most fugitive indication of regret or moral compunction
for crimes committed. “The criminal,”
he adds, “who has revolted against society, hates
it, and considers himself in the right; society was
wrong, not he. Is he not, moreover, undergoing
his punishment? Accordingly, he is absolved, acquitted
in his own eyes.”
Most convicts exhibited similar personal traits.
A few showed a gay, frivolous demeanour, which
drew down on them the unmixed contempt of their
fellows; the larger number were morose, envious,
inordinately vain, presumptuous, susceptible and excessively
ceremonious. Their first endeavour was
to bear themselves with dignity; to submit to discipline
and obey the rules, but with self-respect, so
long as they were enforced fairly and reasonably.
Established usage had great weight, almost as much
as official regulations. Every new arrival was soon
brought into line and found his level with the rest.
A man at first reception might seek to show off
and astonish his fellows by bold talk and loud
threats, but it was all wasted breath; he soon
yielded submission, willingly or unwillingly, unconsciously
perhaps, to the predominant tone of the
place.
Class distinctions were not ignored in this Russian
ostrog, but convicts of noble birth, of title even,
and educated as gentlemen, had an especially hard
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
time. In English prisons such persons receive a
certain consideration from their fellows, are addressed
civilly and treated with some respect. At
Omsk they were cordially disliked and subjected to
many annoyances. There were some half-dozen,
like Dostoyevski, of noble rank, who had been degraded
from their position and were looked down
upon and despised by the other convicts, who would
not admit them as members of their class. A
gibe commonly heard was, “Ah, Monsieur’s carriage
once drove people in the street; now Monsieur
picks hemp.” Their comrades were aware of
their peculiar sufferings and made sport of them.
“It was above all when we were working together,”
declares Dostoyevski, “that we had most to endure,
for our strength was not equal to theirs and we
were seldom of much use at labour. Nothing is
more difficult than to gain the confidence of the
common people; above all such people as these!”
The unequal effect of the punishment was very
marked in the ostrog. “A common man,” says our
author, “sent to hard labour, finds himself in kindred
society, perhaps even in a more interesting
society than he has known. He loses his native
place and his family, but his ordinary surroundings
are much the same as before. A man of education,
condemned by law to the same punishment as the
common man, suffers incomparably more. He must
stifle all his needs, all his habits; he must descend
into a lower sphere, must breathe another air. He
.bn 116.png
.pn +1
is like a fish thrown upon the sand. The punishment
he undergoes, nominally equal for all criminals
according to law, is ten times more painful
and more severe for him than for the common man.
This is an incontestable truth, even if one thinks
only of the material habits that must be sacrificed.”
The principle holds good in penal codes everywhere.
As a general rule, there is no differentiating
treatment, no regard for antecedent conditions of
rank, position, or education, and it is argued, no
doubt rightly, that the offender of the better class
knows better and has no excuse for lapsing into
crime. When he falls, it is under the impulse of
irresistible evil nature, and his misdeeds will rival
the worst. There were five ex-nobles at Omsk, and
the majority, three at least, were incorrigible blackguards,
criminal to the backbone. Dostoyevski
sketches their portraits in a few incisive strokes and
in the blackest colours. One was a man who offered
the most repulsive example of degradation and
baseness to which he may fall whose feeling of honour
has perished within him. This youth acted as
spy and informer for the governor, to whom, by
the intermediary of a servant, he repeated all that
was said and done in the prison. It was a base
trade which he had adopted when at large in St.
Petersburg and before he had completed his studies.
Being short of funds, he sold himself to the police
authorities after a quarrel with his parents, and
.bn 117.png
.pn +1
betrayed a number of associates to obtain the means
for satisfying the grossest and most licentious desires.
At last, moved by insatiable greed, he joined
in a mad plot which he should have seen was hopeless,
for he was not without intelligence, and was
arrested, tried and condemned to ten years as a
hard-labour convict in Siberia. He accepted his
fate without repining; he could fall no lower, and
as a convict he might perpetrate any villainies without
shame or compunction.
“I think of this disgusting creature,” says Dostoyevski,
“as of some monstrous phenomenon.
During the many years I lived in the midst of murderers,
debauchees and proved rascals, never in my
life did I meet a case of such complete moral debasement,
determined corruption and shameless turpitude....
To me he was never more than a piece
of flesh furnished with teeth and a stomach, greedy
for the most offensive and ferocious animal enjoyments,
and ready to assassinate anyone to compass
them. He was a perfect monster, a mere animal
restrained by no feelings, no rules of conduct....
Fire, plague, famine, no matter what scourge, is
preferable to the presence of such a man in human
society.... The common-law convicts maintained
friendly relations with him and were more affable
with him than with us. They thought nothing of
his base actions; espionage and denunciation were
in the air as natural products of the place, and the
kindly attitude of the authorities, whose creature
.bn 118.png
.pn +1
he was, gave him importance and a certain value
in the eyes of his fellows.... He poisoned the
first days of my imprisonment and drove me nearly
to despair. I was terrified by the mass of baseness
and cowardice into which I had been thrown. I
imagined that every one else was as foul and contemptible
as he.”
Some years later this man was the hero in an
escape from the prison which caused considerable
commotion at the time. A change had come over
his circumstances, for his patron and protector, the
major for whom he acted as spy, had left the prison,
and his palmy days were a thing of the past. He
then spent his time in forging passports, but pined
for more remunerative employment, and at last
resolved to make a bold stroke for freedom. He
allied himself with another convict named Kulikov,
a man of active, enterprising character, full of
strength and self-reliance, who calculated the
chances coolly and was prepared to take any risks
to get away from the prison and lead his own life
outside. They were well suited to each other,
equally bold and determined, equally intelligent and
cunning.
Their first step was to seduce a soldier to assist
them in their flight. According to the rules, convicts
were never suffered to go about without an
escort of one or more soldiers, but thus attended
they might leave the prison precincts and enter
the town. The man selected for an escort was a
.bn 119.png
.pn +1
Pole who had been in trouble, and had served in
one of the disciplinary companies, but had at length
rejoined his battalion, in which he rose to the rank
of corporal. He was a prey to home-sickness in
an acute form, and was prepared to risk much to
return to his native country. He was quite willing
to further the plans of the intending fugitives, and
managed to form with them part of a force detailed
to execute some repairs at a distant military
barrack at that time empty of troops. In the middle
of the job, the corporal took off his two prisoners,
ostensibly to fetch some tools from another
shop. Kulikov, with a wink, added that he would
bring back some vodka, but the liquor never arrived
nor the prisoners. They had gone into the
town to a secure hiding place, where they changed
their clothes and got rid of their irons and lay
by waiting for a quiet moment to escape after the
first excitement had blown over.
Their disappearance was not realised for some
hours. The hue and cry was then raised and a
thorough search instituted. The authorities were
most unhappy, for stringent regulations had been
neglected; the convicts should have been guarded
by at least two men apiece and not allowed to come
and go as they pleased. Inside the prison everything
was turned upside down, and the prisoners
were repeatedly searched and cross-questioned.
The guards were doubled in the prison and beyond
it, expresses were despatched to all police stations
.bn 120.png
.pn +1
around, and mounted Cossacks beat up all the surrounding
country. It was comparatively open
ground; the forests were at some distance and no
cover was at hand. At the end of a week the
prison-breakers were recaptured in a village only
seventy versts distant, and were brought back to
the ostrog, chained hand and foot. Severe flogging
was the certain retribution for attempted escape;
Kulikov was adjudged by a court-martial to suffer
fifteen hundred lashes, and the originator of the
plot five hundred, but as he was consumptive, he
was excused from a portion of the punishment by
the doctor of the prison.
Another well-born convict was of a character so
different that he merits a detailed description. His
name was Akim Akimych, and he had been an officer
who, when serving as a sub-lieutenant in the
Caucasus, had put a small tributary prince to death.
He was in command of a petty fort in the mountains,
and his neighbour, the prince, made a night
attack upon it, meaning to burn it about his ears,
but the enterprise failed. Akimych pretended not
to be aware of his real assailant, and invited the
prince to come and pay him a friendly visit. A
great show was made; the garrison was paraded
and the guest royally entertained. After dinner
Akimych took the prince severely to task, reproached
him with his treachery, and shot him.
He at once reported this summary action to his
superior officer, who placed him under arrest and
.bn 121.png
.pn +1
brought him to trial by court-martial, which sentenced
him to death; but the penalty was commuted
to twelve years’ imprisonment in Siberia.
He bowed submissively to his hard fate, but defended
his conduct. “The prince had tried to burn
my fort. What was I to do? Was I to thank him
for it?” he asked pertinently.
Akimych was a strange medley of opposite qualities.
In aspect tall and much emaciated, in temper
obstinate, and not very well educated, he was excessively
argumentative and particular about the
accuracy of details. He was very excitable, very
quarrelsome, easily offended and most sensitive.
The other convicts, who generally despised the
nobles, laughed at him when not afraid of him, and
he claimed at once a footing of perfect equality
with them, which he maintained by insulting them,
calling them thieves and vagabonds and, if necessary,
beating them. He had a keen appreciation
of justice and fair play and would interfere in anything
he thought unjustifiable, whether it concerned
him or not. He was esteemed for his straightforward
ways and not a little for his cleverness and
skill with his fingers.
Akimych could do almost anything; he was an
adept at all trades, was a good cobbler and boot-maker,
an excellent locksmith, a painter, and a
carver and gilder. These trades he had acquired
in the prison by merely watching and imitating his
fellow workmen. One handicraft at which he laboured
.bn 122.png
.pn +1
assiduously was the making of variegated
paper lanterns, which he sold at a good price in
the town, from where orders came in abundance.
He also manufactured baskets and toys, so that he
was never without money, which he spent in the
purchase of shirts, pillows, tea and extra food.
Akimych laboured methodically and regularly until
a late hour in the night, and then put away his
tools, unfolded his mattress, repeated his prayers
and turned in to sleep the sleep of the just.
After the night closing, the interior of the barrack
became a hive of industry. It looked like a
large workshop. Strictly speaking, private labour
was not permitted, but this was winked at as the
only means of keeping the convicts quiet during
the long hours of a winter’s evening. They were
then quite safe from interruption. During the day,
some of the under officers might come in prying
and poking about, and the convicts had to be on
their guard. As soon as the gates were padlocked,
however, everyone sat down in his place and began
his work. The interior of the barrack was suddenly
lighted up; every man had his own candle
and his wooden candlestick, and they all set to work
without fear of interruption. Work was not exactly
forbidden, but the possession of tools was,
and the order was secretly evaded. Each man hungered
for the earnings of this private labour, a
few coppers, and that it apparently was allowed in
this Russian ostrog, unlike prisons elsewhere, was
.bn 123.png
.pn +1
a tangible boon, a certain small compensation for
the loss of liberty. Money might be spent, surreptitiously,
in buying tobacco and drink, both strictly
prohibited, but all the more sweet because indulgence
in them was forbidden. Besides, if not
quickly expended, the money might be confiscated
in the constant and minute searches made. The
prisoners were being continually “turned over,”
and ruthlessly deprived of any money that might be
found. The only safe plan was to entrust the cash
to one old man, who was strictly honest and extremely
cunning at concealment. One of his hiding
places was in the stockade at some height, where
the stump end of a branch protruded; it was removable,
and within was a cavity running down
to some depth. The secret was jealously guarded,
for the convicts were expert thieves and without a
scrap of conscience.
Dostoyevski, for the safe keeping of his small
possessions, bought a small box with a lock and
key. This was forced open the first night and
everything was abstracted. At another time, a
comrade who pretended a warm friendship, stole
his pocket Bible from him, the only book he was
permitted to possess, and sold it forthwith for
drink. The friend had been asked to carry it into
the barrack only a few yards away. On the way
he met a purchaser and at once disposed of the
Bible for a few kopecks. He confessed the theft
the same evening, explaining that he had a sudden
.bn 124.png
.pn +1
craving for vodka and could not resist it. When
the thirst was on him he would have committed
murder to gratify it. He talked of the theft as
quite an ordinary incident, and when reproved was
not in the least ashamed. He listened calmly,
agreed that it was a very useful book and was
sorry he had taken it, but in his inner heart thought
the grievance was mere nonsense.
Ameliorations of this life might be secured (for
money); recreations were possible, though they
were mostly vicious, and amusements even might
be surreptitiously enjoyed or winked at by the authorities.
Human nature is so constituted that it
becomes habituated to anything, and the inmates
of the ostrog learned to endure its worst evils, and,
except for the pain of personal chastisement or the
acute sufferings engendered by disease, they spent
their weary, unlovely days with dogged, callous
indifference.
At daybreak every morning a drum beaten near
the principal entrance roused all from the last refreshing
sleep obtained in the small hours when
mosquitoes and more loathsome insects had desisted
from their attacks. The convicts rose from
their plank beds to the music of clanking leg irons,
their inseparable companions, and, trembling with
cold as the icy air rushed in through the unbarred
open gates, gathered around the water pails, took
water into their mouths and washed their faces
with their hands. These pails had been filled the
.bn 125.png
.pn +1
night before by appointed orderlies. Personal
cleanliness is not entirely neglected by the peasant
class in Russia, nor even by convicts, and the periodical
vapour bath was greatly appreciated. The
orderlies, like the cooks, were chosen by the convicts
themselves from among their numbers; they
did not work with the rest, but, as elsewhere, attended
to the washing of the floors, the condition
of camp bedsteads, and the provision of water for
ablutions and for drinking.
After roll-call, the entire number proceeded to
the kitchen, where the first meal of the day was
eaten in common. The convicts, in their sheepskin
overcoats, received their ration of black bread in
their parti-coloured, round, peakless caps, from the
cooks who had cut up the loaves for them with the
“rascal,” the prison knife, which was the only
weapon permitted in the place. As many as could
find room, sat grouped around the tables and
laughed noisily; some soaked pieces of bread in
the cups of sour tea, kvas, in front of them; others
drank the tea they were permitted to provide for
themselves. This privilege was extended to food
generally, and the convicts who could pay for it
bought their own, which was cooked in the public
kitchen and substituted for the ordinary prison
fare. Osip, one of the prison cooks, or “cook
maids” as they were commonly called, prepared
the food, which was purchased in the town market
by the old soldiers who were attached to the prison
.bn 126.png
.pn +1
to watch over the general discipline and good order
of the place. They were good-natured veterans,
always ready to run messages and purvey
to the needs of the prisoners.
Dostoyevski at first could not stomach the regulation
cabbage soup, but eventually overcame his
repugnance. Meanwhile, he had his own private
table, which cost him no more than a couple of
rubles monthly, and he had a morsel of roast meat
every day, cooked by Osip in some mysterious fashion
that was never divulged. Osip was practically
his servant, and was paid regular wages. Suchilov
was another who acted as personal attendant, boiled
the tea-urn, performed commissions, mended
clothes and greased the great-boots four times
monthly. Suchilov was an “exchange,” a convict
who had changed places with another of longer
sentence, assuming the punishment for a sum in
cash. He was a poor devil, always impecunious,
ready for any menial occupation and regularly employed
as a lookout man by the gamblers when at
play. For five kopecks a night he kept watch in
the passage in absolute darkness and in temperatures
varying between winter cold and extreme
summer heat, to give alarm if any superior officer
paid a night visit, for when caught at cards the
convicts would pay the penalty with their backs,—all
would be soundly flogged. But the terrors of
corporal punishment did not conquer the passion
for play. There were always men who had the
.bn 127.png
.pn +1
wherewithal,—a small piece of carpet as board,
or “deck,” a candle and a greasy pack of well-thumbed
cards. The fortunate possessor of these
necessaries received fifteen kopecks for their use.
The game played was chiefly gorka, or “three
leaves,” a pure game of chance, and it was continued
until far into the night, often until the break
of dawn, or within a few minutes of the morning
drum. The stakes were for copper coins, but relatively
large sums were won and lost.
The passion for gambling was deeply rooted and
still consumes the Russian prisoner. Among the
exiles travelling in pain and anguish across the
Siberian continent, it had such a hold that men
would risk their last farthing of the meagre allowance
issued for daily rations, and if unlucky, would
be obliged to go hungry or depend entirely upon
charity. Cards were generally forthcoming, but
when none were on hand, various ingenious devices
were put in practice on the road. One was
to spread an overcoat, or soiled linen foot-robe,
on the floor of the prison room, and the game was
to guess the exact number of fleas that would jump
upon it in a given length of time, and back the
opinion with a wager. Another plan was to chalk
two small circles, one within the other, on one of
the sleeping platforms, nary, and place a number of
vermin in the inner circle. Then the player would
bet on the animal he believed would first cross the
line into the outer circle. These unsavoury methods
.bn 128.png
.pn +1
were also pursued in the old English war prison
at Dartmoor.
A craving for strong drink was constantly exhibited,
and strange to say, could generally be gratified.
A large business was done in smuggling
spirits into the ostrog. The trade was hazardous
but proportionately lucrative. It was undertaken
by the convict who was ignorant of any handicraft
or too idle to acquire one. His capital was his
back, which he was ready to lay bare to the lash
if detected in the nefarious traffic, and he must
possess a small amount of cash to expend in the
vodka. This money he entrusted to some resident
in the town, soldier, shopkeeper or free labourer,
who brought it up to the prison and concealed it
in some hiding place agreed upon outside the gates,
on the works to which the convict had access. The
stuff paid contribution in transit, and was well
watered, but the convict buyer had no redress and
took what he could get. With the fluid a length
of bullock’s intestines was left, which, when
washed, was filled with the vodka and wound
around the waist of the convict about to introduce
it into the prison. The carrier ran the risk of detection
when searched, but he had a bribe convenient
to slip into the hand of the corporal at the
gate, and he might have the good luck to escape
observation. If he failed, he paid the penalty of
a severe flogging. On the other hand, the forbidden
liquor might win through, and the convict
.bn 129.png
.pn +1
dealer would then have a supply of stuff for the
convict customers among his comrades.
As soon as enough money had been earned or
stolen, the time was ripe for a carouse, a drunken
holiday, when the whole sum, painfully put together,
kopeck by kopeck, was lavished in one
glorious burst of self-indulgence. The man was
resolved to enjoy himself. “These days of rejoicing
had been looked forward to long beforehand,”
says Dostoyevski. “He had dreamed of
them during the endless winter nights, during his
hardest labour, and the prospect had supported him
under his severest trials. The dawn of this day
so impatiently awaited has just appeared ... accordingly
he takes his savings to the drink seller
who at first gives him vodka, almost pure, but
gradually as the bottle gets more and more empty,
he fills it up with water. It may be imagined that
many glasses and much money are required before
the convict is drunk. But, as he is out of the habit,
the little alcohol remaining in the liquid easily intoxicates,
he drinks all he can get, pledges or sells
all his own clothes and then those belonging to
the government. When he has made away with
his last shirt, he lies down in a drunken sleep and
wakes up next day with a bad headache.” Then
he began again to work for many weary months
and amass the means for another debauch.
As for the drink seller, he made his profit to be
spent in adding to his stock in trade. But this time
.bn 130.png
.pn +1
he drank it himself. Enough of trade, he would
have a little amusement. Accordingly he ate, drank
and paid for a little music, and kept it up for several
days until his money was gone, unless, indeed,
misfortune overtook him. It might be that some
of the officers had noticed his condition, and he
was dragged before the major in the orderly room,
where he was arraigned, convicted and punished
with the rods. Then he shook himself like a beaten
dog, and after a few days resumed his trade as
drink seller. Detection was not frequent, for the
convicts would do all they could to shield a man
under the influence of drink. Russians have generally
a sympathy for drunkenness. Among convicts
it amounted to worship. The condition implied
aristocratic distinction, and the man in his
cups swaggered and showed himself off with a
great assumption of superiority.
The phrase “pay for a little music” needs explanation.
A convict in funds and half drunk was
in the habit of hiring a musician to make a greater
show. There was one who had been a bandsman
in the army and who possessed a fiddle which he
was ready to play for anyone who paid him, and
he would follow his employer about from barrack
to barrack, grinding out dance tunes with his utmost
strength and skill. His face showed his disgust
and boredom, but if he slackened his arm he
was roughly reminded to go on more briskly and
earn his wage properly.
.bn 131.png
.pn +1
This love of ostentatious extravagance found
other outlets. Drinking to excess was not the only
form of self-indulgence. Gormandising was another.
The convict when in funds would treat
himself to a fine feast, the materials for which were
brought in from the town by the old soldier go-between
above mentioned. The occasion chosen
was always on some religious festival and began
by the convict placing a wax candle before the holy
image or ikon in its honoured corner. Then he
would dress himself with extreme care and sit
down to dinner in state. He would devour course
after course,—fish, meat, patties,—gorging himself
quite alone. It was seldom that the selfish
creature invited any comrade to share his repast.
A fondness for new clothes was very noticeable
in the prosperous convict, and he was not forbidden
to substitute the garments of his choice for the
prison uniform, which consisted of a coarse shirt,
long gray dressing gown, loose drawers and peakless
cap. Their taste in clothes ran to gay waistcoats
and fancy trousers, coloured shirts, and belts
with metal clasps. On Sundays the dandies in the
prison put on their best clothes to strut about the
barrack yard. But the glory of display soon
yielded to the temptation to buy drink and make
a little cash. The evening of the very day on which
they were first worn the smart clothes would disappear,
sold or pledged to the convict pawnbrokers,
ever ready for business.
.bn 132.png
.pn +1
Usury was followed in the ostrog quite as a profession.
Money was borrowed on all kinds of
pledges, often upon articles of equipment, the property
of the government. There was no good faith
about the transaction. When the money had been
advanced, the borrower would go at once and inform
the authorities that goods belonging to the
state were in the unlawful possession of the usurer,
who was forthwith obliged to give them up
and accept his loss with the usual penalty of the
lash.
A notable specimen of the dealers in vodka was
a convict named Gazin, a terrible creature of gigantic
proportions and enormous bodily strength.
“A more ferocious and more monstrous creature
could not exist. He was a Tartar with an enormous
and deformed head, like a gigantic spider
of the size of a man.” The strangest reports were
current about him. He was said to have been at
one time a soldier; to have been repeatedly exiled,
and to have as often escaped only to be recaptured.
He had been guilty of the most frightful crimes.
He took a delight in killing small children, whom
he attracted to some deserted spot, terrified into
convulsions, tortured horribly and then murdered.
In the prison, however, he seldom exhibited his
worst traits. He was generally quiet in demeanour,
rarely quarrelsome, and careful to avoid disputes,
having too great a contempt for his companions
and too good an opinion of himself. His face was
.bn 133.png
.pn +1
not without intelligence, but cruel and derisive in
expression like his smile.
Gazin was the richest of all the vodka sellers,
and at regular intervals used his stock in trade for
self indulgence. Twice yearly he got completely
drunk and when in his cups displayed all his brutal
ferocity. As he grew more and more excited, he
assailed his comrades with gibes, invectives and
venomous satire long since prepared. When quite
intoxicated, he waxed furious and, flourishing his
knife, truculently rushed at some one to kill him.
Then a combined attack was made upon him, and
he was disarmed after he had been made unconscious
by blows upon the pit of the stomach. When
well beaten, he was wrapped up in his pelisse and
thrown on to his camp bed to sleep off the effects
of drink. On every occasion exactly the same
thing occurred; the prisoners knew what would
happen as did Gazin himself. This went on for
years until his physical energy began to fail; he
weakened, complained of illness, and frequently
became a patient in hospital, where he was well
treated and in due course died.
Gazin, in one of his drunken bouts, fell foul of
Dostoyevski and nearly murdered him. He came
into the kitchen one day, followed by his fiddler,
and staggered up to a table where our author sat
with a friend or two drinking. He smiled maliciously
and asked with an insolent jeer how they
could afford to buy tea. No answer was given,
.bn 134.png
.pn +1
as any contradiction would have maddened him.
Their continued silence had just the same effect.
“You must have money,” he went on, “a great
deal of money; but tell me, are you sent to hard
labour to drink tea? Please tell me; I should like
to know.” Still there was no reply. He trembled
and grew livid with rage and looking round for
some weapon of offence, seized the heavy bread box
and rushed at Dostoyevski, raising it over his head.
Death seemed imminent for one and all when a
diversion was fortunately created by a voice crying,
“Gazin! they have stolen your vodka.” The miscreant
instantly dropped the box and ran off to
recover his treasure. It was never known whether
there had been any theft, or whether the words
were invented as a stratagem to save the lives
threatened.
The vodka seller was in his glory at Christmas
time, when there were great festivities and a
drunken orgy was in progress with the tacit permission
of the authorities. Gazin kept sober until
toward the end of the celebration. He stood by the
side of his camp bedstead, beneath which he had
concealed his store of drink, after bringing it from
his customary hiding place deep buried under the
snow in the barrack yard. “He smiled knowingly
when he saw his customers arrive in crowds. He
drank nothing himself; he waited for that till the
last day when he had emptied the pockets of his
comrades,” who degenerated into the wildest excesses,
.bn 135.png
.pn +1
singing, laughing and crying by turns, patrolling
the barrack room in bands, and striking
the strings of their balalaiki or native guitars.
To drink to excess was the chief way to find an
outlet for rejoicing; it was also the means of deadening
the hideous anticipation of acute and inevitable
pain. A convict sentenced to be flogged invariably
contrived to swallow the largest possible
dose of spirits beforehand, often a long time ahead
and at a fabulous price. A certain conviction prevailed
that a drunken man suffered less from the
plet or “the stick” than a sober one in the full
possession of his faculties. In one case, an ex-soldier
awaiting punishment infused a quantity of
snuff into a bottle of vodka and drank it off at once.
He was seized with violent convulsions, vomited
blood, and was taken to hospital unconscious. His
lungs had been hopelessly affected, phthisis declared
itself and he soon died of consumption.
.bn 136.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER V | LIFE IN THE OSTROG
.pm start_descr
The hospital life at Omsk—Humanity of the prison doctors—Tender
treatment for victims of the lash—Sympathy
shown to one another by convicts—The prison bath—Different
classes of criminals—The murderer Petrov—Sirotkin;
his history—Luka Kuzmich, the murderer of six
men—The “old believer” from Little Russia—Ali, the
young Tartar—Two brigands—The Jew, Isaiah Fomich;
the prison usurer—The festival of Christmas—Gifts of
food and drink sent in from the town—Prison theatricals—Convicts’
pets—Tanning and skin dressing carried on
by the convicts—Dostoyevski’s release.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
The one bright spot in the ostrog was the
hospital. It was no part, however, of the prison
proper. The convicts when sick were lodged in a
couple of wards in the military hospital, which
stood outside the fortress at a distance of five or
six hundred yards. It was a large building of one
story, painted yellow, spacious and well managed.
Dostoyevski bears witness to the humanity and
good feeling of the prison doctors, who made no
distinction between the convicts and those who had
never come under the ban of the law. In Russia
the common people alone vie with the doctors in
showing compassion for prisoners, whom they
.bn 137.png
.pn +1
never reproach with their misdeeds, satisfied that
they are suffering sufficiently in working out the
sentences imposed upon them. The convicts were
grateful for the kindness shown them, and were
in the habit of saying that the doctors were like
fathers to them and that they could not praise them
too highly. This was also the common attitude of
the peasantry toward the doctors, who in Russia
generally enjoy the affection and respect of the
people, although the latter would often prefer to
take the empirical remedies of some old witch than
go into a hospital and be treated with regular medicine,
being influenced by the fantastic stories currently
reported of the horrors perpetrated in hospitals.
These fears vanish when they have once
made acquaintance with the doctors and their humane
and compassionate methods of practice. Personal
prejudices disappear with personal knowledge.
The prison doctors were careful and attentive to
their patients, questioning them minutely about
their ailments, diagnosing anxiously and prescribing
the necessary remedies with judgment and
much medical skill. They were quick to detect imposture
and malingering, but were not too hard
upon the pretended invalids, whom they could forgive
for seeking the ease and comfort of the hospital
with its warm lodging, its bed with a mattress
and the more palatable food. They had a scientific
name for feigned disease, which they styled febris
.bn 138.png
.pn +1
catharalis, a formula quite understood, and an
imaginary malady required a week’s treatment.
But they drew the line at last, and refused to be
further imposed upon. If any one seemed disposed
to linger on in hospital, the doctor would say
plainly, “Come, come, you have had your rest,
you must go out now and take no more liberties.”
One case of persistent malingering must be
quoted. It was of a class not unknown in western
prisons. A convict long suffered from a seemingly
incurable disease of the eyes for which no treatment
availed, although plasters, blisters, and leeches
were tried. This particular prisoner was under
sentence to receive a thousand lashes, and he was
eager to postpone the punishment as long as possible.
The most desperate devices have been tried
for this purpose, sometimes even a murderous attack
upon an officer or comrade, which would entail
a fresh trial and an additional penalty, but
which would also delay the flogging. The man
with the sore eyes had some secret method of aggravating
the disease which was never discovered,
but its use was eventually checked by another
operation applied to the back of the patient’s neck.
The skin was taken up into the form of a blister,
into which a double incision was made, one on each
side and a thick thread of cotton was passed
through the wound. Every day at a certain hour
the thread was pulled backward and forward so
that the wound would suppurate and never heal.
.bn 139.png
.pn +1
The torture of this was intolerable, and to escape
the continual suffering the convict volunteered to
leave the hospital. Almost immediately after he
went out, his eyes became well and as soon as the
neck was healed he underwent his corporal punishment.
It was a painful moment for the hospital when
the victim of a severe flogging was brought in
fresh from the lash. He was received with grave
composure and a respect proportioned to the enormity
of his offence and the amount of punishment
it had entailed. Those who had suffered most
cruelly were thought more of than the mere deserter
guilty of a minor military crime. If the
patient were too much injured to attend to himself,
he received even more sympathy. The surgeons
knew they were leaving him in kindly and
experienced hands. The treatment of the poor
back, all scored and mangled, was extremely simple:
the constant application of a piece of linen
steeped in cold water. A very delicate operation
inflicting acute torture was the picking out from
the lacerated wounds the scraps and fragments of
the twigs when the flogging had been performed
by rods. Yet the sufferers usually exhibited extraordinary
stoicism. Dostoyevski says: “I have
seen many convicts who had been whipped cruelly.
I do not remember one who uttered a groan. Only
after such an experience the countenance becomes
pale and discomposed, the eyes glitter, the look wanders
.bn 140.png
.pn +1
and the lips tremble so that the patient sometimes
bites them till they bleed.”
Quoting further and speaking of one man just
flogged, the same writer says: “He was only
twenty years old. He had been a soldier and was
rather a fine man, tall and well-made, with a
bronzed skin. His back, uncovered down to the
waist, had been seriously beaten and his body trembled
with fever beneath the damp sheet applied to
his bleeding sores. For the first half hour he
walked up and down the room in agony. I looked
in his face; he seemed to be thinking of nothing,
his eyes had a strange expression at once wild and
timid; they fixed themselves with difficulty upon
surrounding objects. He stared at the hot tea I
had before me steaming in its cup. I offered it to
the poor creature who stood there shivering, with
chattering teeth, and he drank it down at one gulp,
without looking at me or making a sign, then put
the cup down silently and resumed his walk. His
pain was too intense for words or thanks. No one
questioned him or spoke; the other prisoners attended
to the changing of the cold compresses,
thinking rightly that he would prefer that to outspoken
compassion, and the sufferer seemed satisfied
and grateful to be left severely alone.”
That the convicts, even the most criminal and
degraded, were not quite heartless or insensible to
the finer feelings, was to be seen in their demeanour
when a sick comrade died in hospital. The passing
.bn 141.png
.pn +1
away of one poor victim of consumption is told
with infinite pathos and much painful realism.
Toward the end he became almost unconscious, his
sight was confused, he recognised no one and was
evidently suffering acutely. His respiration was
painful, deep and irregular; his breast rose and
fell convulsively as he struggled for breath, and
he cast off his bedding as an intolerable burden.
When exposed, it was terrible to see his immensely
long body—with fleshless arms and legs, and ribs
as clearly marked as a skeleton’s—which was
absolutely naked but for the cross pendent from
his neck and his leg irons. As his last moment
approached, a death-like stillness prevailed, no one
spoke or only in whispers. The convicts stepped
on tiptoe across the floor, gazing furtively at the
dying man, who caught with trembling hand at
the cross, which seemed to be suffocating him, and
tried to tear it off; the rattling in his throat grew
more and more pronounced, and at last he died.
The spectators behaved with impressive reverence.
One convict closed the dead man’s eyes,
crossing himself, and the rest imitated the action.
The corporal on duty came in, removed his helmet
and also crossed himself, as he looked intently at
the naked, shrivelled corpse still loaded with irons,
which fell to the ground with a sharp sound and
rattled along it as the body was lifted from the
bed and carried out. The spell was broken; every
one spoke as usual, and the voice of the corporal
.bn 142.png
.pn +1
was heard calling for the blacksmith to remove
chains no longer needed as a restraint. The spirit
had taken flight; no physical precaution could
serve to prevent its escape.
It is hardly necessary to dilate upon the cruel
and indefensible practice, still observed by some
so-called civilised countries, of imposing fetters
upon those whom the law has condemned to the
loss of personal liberty. The poor excuse of their
need for safe custody is always pleaded, and the
best answer is that of the old English judge who
suggested that gaolers build their prison walls
higher when he forbade the use of irons. No such
argument can be used with the Russian authorities,
who would still maintain the necessity of irons as
a means of preventing escape, although they have
never availed, entirely, and they would urge as a
secondary reason that their use implies a moral
degradation no less than a physical burden. It is
a well known fact that the determined convict can
and does constantly rid himself of his chains in
Russian prisons, by hammering out the rivets with
a stone, or elongating the basils sufficiently to allow
the ankles to be drawn through. But the retention
of irons upon convicts when sick and suffering cannot
be justified, viewed from any standpoint.
When men are really ill and must still carry their
chains unvaryingly in bed and in hospital, the cruelty
is manifest. In health it is found that the
limbs shrivel and waste away, but for those in the
.bn 143.png
.pn +1
fangs of disease, such as scurvy, phthisis or fever,
it is an added intolerable torment, altogether prejudicial,
postponing or often preventing recovery.
Yet the doctors themselves, kindly men, convinced
of their evil effects, hesitate to recommend the
removal of irons from their patients in the very
worst stages of illness and, as we have just seen,
death itself is the only relief that can come.
The horrible inconvenience caused by those inseparable
companions is well illustrated by the difficulty
in putting on or taking off clothing, a rare
business, no doubt, for the convicts made few
changes and slept fully clothed, but it must be done
at the periodical visit to the public bath. The
chains were fastened to a leather waistbelt by two
straps, one for each leg, and they must be held up
in this way, or walking would be impossible. Each
end of the chain was attached to a ring loosely
fitting the leg so that a finger must be inserted
between the iron and the flesh; the straps were
necessary to keep the ring in its place, or the skin
would be chafed and broken the very first day.
To remove the trousers or the shirt is quite an art
and only slowly acquired.
We get a graphic description of the prison bath
as taken in collective fashion by a hundred convicts
at one time, all of them crowded into one small
apartment some twelve feet square. Not a single
scrap of space was unoccupied, they were huddled
together on benches tier above tier, so that the feet
.bn 144.png
.pn +1
of those above trampled on those below and the
leg chains became inextricably entangled and numbers
were trampled on or dragged about the floor.
The bath itself was like a drunken orgy; a dense
volume of steam filled the room and deluges of
dirty hot water were dashed to and fro from the
pailful carried by every bather. Everyone was
naked save for the rattling chains to which the
convicts howled a mad accompaniment. They
were maddened by the excitement, the tropical
heat, the smart of the blows self-administered or
struck by the hired rubbers, for convicts were
always to be found who for a kopeck or two were
willing to lay strokes on the heated flesh of the
employers with birch rods of twisted twigs. It
must have been a hideous scene, a great mass of
commingled humanity in a state of half intoxication,
shouting and shrieking at the top of their
voices. The steam grew thicker and thicker until
all were soaked and saturated with it, and their
bodies became scarlet in the intolerably burning
and overheated atmosphere.
The ostrog at Omsk contained a number of
widely differing types, embracing many classes of
crime, the most heinous as well as venial offences.
All classes and many nationalities of the widespread
Russian Empire were represented; well-bred
nobles, degraded from their rank and sent
to herd with serfs and peasants, and “old believers”
from little Russia, insurgent Poles, mutinous
.bn 145.png
.pn +1
soldiers sentenced by court-martial for desertion
and grave acts of insubordination, mountaineers
from the Caucasus exiled for brigandage, and Mahometans
from Daghestan who lay in wait for
passing caravans and pillaged them and assassinated
the merchant travellers. There were murderers
in many varieties; Cain who killed slowly
and deliberately with deep malice and forethought,
and the slayer moved to murder by swiftly risen,
passionate impulse in a sudden irresistible access
of fury. Thieves of all sorts abounded; petty pilferers
and robbers on a grand scale; the wandering
tramps or brodyagi who had escaped from
durance to range the woods and steal from all
they met. There were also many smugglers, long
trained and practised in the traffic, who clung with
great attachment to the business and who were
constantly engaged in the clandestine introduction
of spirits into the prison.
The story of one murderer, Petrov, exhibits a
curious and somewhat uncommon character. He
had been a soldier and had suddenly revolted at
the ill-usage of his colonel who struck him one day
on parade. It was not the first time he had been
beaten, for the personal chastisement of their men
was by no means uncommon with Russian officers,
but on this occasion Petrov would not tamely submit,
and retaliated by stabbing the colonel to the
heart. It was said of him in prison that when the
spirit moved him, nothing would stop him; he was
.bn 146.png
.pn +1
capable of anything, and he would kill a man without
the smallest hesitation or without showing the
slightest remorse. The evil temper in him was
easily aroused and was then ungovernable. Once
he was sentenced to be whipped for some minor
offence, no small punishment certainly, and he resolved
not to submit to it. He had been previously
flogged more than once and had borne his punishment
calmly and philosophically. But this time
he considered that he was innocent and wrongfully
sentenced. He meant to resist, even to go so far
as to kill the governor, if necessary, sooner than
yield. This major-governor was a much dreaded
being, a tyrannical disciplinarian, with lynx-like
eyes for the detection of any irregularity; he was
commonly called by the convicts “the man with
eight eyes.” His severe method had generally the
effect of irritating his charges, naturally ill-tempered
and irascible men.
Petrov made no secret of his fell purpose, and it
was known throughout the prison that when called
up for punishment he would make an end of the
major. He had successfully concealed a sharp-pointed
shoemaker’s awl, which he held ready in his
hand as he was marched under escort to the place of
execution. The prisoners, in breathless anticipation
of what they might see, clung close to the stockade,
peering through the interstices, for they believed the
major’s last hour had come. But the major, quite
ignorant of his impending doom, had suddenly decided
.bn 147.png
.pn +1
not to witness the flogging, and drove home
in his carriage leaving his lieutenant to superintend
the punishment parade. “God has saved him,”
ejaculated the convicts piously, and Petrov submitted
to his ordeal without a murmur. His anger
was against the major and it had disappeared when
the object was removed.
On another occasion, he had quarrelled with a
comrade over the possession of a worthless piece of
rag. They disputed with great violence and a collision
seemed inevitable. Suddenly Petrov turned
pale, his lips trembled, growing blue and bloodless,
his respiration became difficult, and slowly he approached
his antagonist step by step—he always
walked with naked feet—while a deathlike stillness
around succeeded the noisy chatter of the other convicts
in the yard. The man he threatened awaited
him tremblingly and suddenly blanched and gave in
by throwing the cloth of contention at his adversary,
using the most horrible and insulting language
toward him.
This Petrov was a man of contradictory traits.
In person he was of short stature, agile and strongly
built, with a pleasant face, a bold expression, white
regular teeth and an agreeable voice. He seemed
quite young, no more than thirty, although he was
fully forty years of age. He always appeared absent-minded
and had a habit of looking into the distance
over and beyond near objects. An attentive
listener, joining with animation in the talk, he would
.bn 148.png
.pn +1
suddenly become silent, oppressed, as it were, with
disturbing thoughts. He was deemed a most resolute
character and inspired the utmost awe in every
one, as capable of anything if the caprice seized
him; ready to murder any one out of hand without
hesitation, and never deterred by the dread of subsequent
remorse. He generally showed tact and
forbearance in his relations with others, spoke to
them civilly and was not easily roused or annoyed.
Sirotkin was another type of ex-soldier who had
found military discipline insufferable and was resolved
to escape from it at any cost. All went
wrong with him; every one was harsh and cruel
and he was forever being punished, and sobbing as
if broken-hearted in some remote corner. One dark
night when on sentry duty he was so unutterably
sad that he placed the muzzle of his piece to his
breast and pressed the trigger with his big toe. The
gun missed fire twice; then he paced his beat carrying
his musket reversed. He was checked for this
by the captain of the guard, whereupon he bayonetted
his officer then and there. He received a
long sentence and could never realise that he richly
deserved it. He was an enigma to all; mild-mannered,
with tranquil blue eyes, a clear complexion
and a soft air, and seemingly quite incapable of a
murderous crime. When addressed, he answered
quickly and with deference, but otherwise spoke
little and rarely laughed. There was an expression
in his eyes as of a child of ten; he cared for nothing
.bn 149.png
.pn +1
but ginger-bread cakes, on which he lavished the
small sums he sometimes earned, although he was
lazy and apathetic and had no trade.
Luka Kuzmich was a convict who had killed as
many as six men in cold blood and was much given
to glory in his misdeeds. Yet for all his bragging
words he was despised by his comrades, who
summed him up as a conceited swaggerer inspiring
no real fear. He often told the story of a crime
of which he was especially proud, the murder of a
major in another prison, but it made no impression
because of his vanity and self-sufficiency. The major
was a bully, one of those who used the blasphemous
formula, customary at times with common men
promoted undeservedly to high office, and who
cried to his charges, “I will teach you to behave
yourselves—I am your Czar, your God!” Luka,
after upbraiding his comrades for not resenting
these pretensions, borrowed the “rascal,” the one
sharp knife permitted to be kept in the kitchen, went
up to the major, and stabbed him in the intestines.
He gained great notoriety for this horrible deed,
and a crowd assembled to witness the infliction of
the five hundred lashes given him for the crime, but
no one in the prison thought the more of him when
he told the story, or believed him when he posed
as a very terrible person.
In sharp but pleasing contrast to these miscreants
were convicts who had undoubtedly broken the law,
but from mistaken motives,—under pressure of religious
.bn 150.png
.pn +1
dissent, or in obedience to and by the example
of elders. One man belonged to the sect of
“old believers,” dissenters in Little Russia from the
orthodox state religion, and when a number of them
had been converted at Starodub, this old man,
Notey, bitterly resented the building of a new Greek
church and joined with others to burn it down.
This act of incendiarism was visited with a sentence
of imprisonment which this well-to-do shopkeeper
accepted courageously, convinced that he was “a
sufferer for the true faith.” He bore his penalty as
a martyrdom and was proud of it, firmly believing
he had done well in destroying an opposition church.
A peaceable, kindly old man of sixty years, he had
a mild, good-natured face and clear limpid eyes
which were surrounded with many little wrinkles.
He was of a gay, light-hearted temperament, ready
to crack jokes with his fellows, not with the coarse
cynical laughter of other convicts, but with something
of simple childish glee. He had quickly acquired
the respect and good will of all the prisoners,
who had such implicit confidence in him that
he was the universal banker trusted to hold and conceal
their little hoards of cash and to honestly account
for all moneys deposited with him.
In spite of the firmness with which he endured
his hard fate, he was tormented by profound and incurable
grief. At night, or in the small hours, he
was in the habit of leaving his bed and climbing up
to the top of the great porcelain stove where he
.bn 151.png
.pn +1
regularly performed his devotions, praying aloud
with broken, agonised sobs. He might be heard repeating
as he wept, “Lord, do not forsake me.
Master, strengthen me! My poor little children, my
dear little children, we shall never see each other
again.” He would remain there in earnest supplication
until dawn came and the prison was opened.
Another estimable creature was a young Tartar,
Ali by name, one of a band of brigands from Daghestan.
He had been drawn into evil practices by
his elder brothers and sentenced for what was really
their crime, but “extenuating circumstances” were
admitted, and he received the minimum punishment.
One day he had been ordered to take his yataghan,
mount his horse and ride abroad with his brothers
as they were bent upon plundering the caravan of
a rich Armenian merchant, whom they slew, taking
possession of his goods. They were captured, tried,
flogged and sent to Siberia. Every one liked this
lad—he was only twenty-two years old—on account
of his gaiety and good temper. His frank,
intelligent face was always calm and placid; there
was a childish simplicity in his confident smile; his
large and expressive black eyes were so full of
friendliness and tender sympathy that it was a relief
to look at him. His three brothers, the real cause
of his misfortune, loved him with paternal affection.
He was their chief consolation. Dull and sad as
a rule, they always smiled when they spoke to him,
as to a child, and their forbidding countenances
.bn 152.png
.pn +1
lighted up. He did not dare address them first; he
recognised their superiority as elders and treated
them with great deference and respect. It was a
strange fact that he could preserve his native honesty
and remain firm and uncorrupted among such
surroundings. Chaste as a young girl, everything
that was foul, shameful or unjust filled him with indignation.
He carefully avoided quarrels and yet
he was no coward and could not be insulted with
impunity.
At this time there were two Lesghians from the
Caucasus, mountain brigands, one of whom was tall
and thin, with a bad face. The other, by name
Nourra, was universally popular. Of middle height
and built like a Hercules, with fair hair, and violet
eyes, he had exceedingly mild manners, although he
had been constantly engaged as a rebel and his body
bore many scars from old bayonet wounds. His
conduct in prison was exemplary, and he punctiliously
observed the rules. Thieving, cheating and
drunkenness filled him with disgust; he evinced his
indignation and turned away, but without quarrelling.
Fervently pious, he said his prayers religiously
and strictly observed all Mahometan fasts.
He clung firmly to the hope that when his sentence
ended he would be sent back to the Caucasus. Indeed,
without this consolation he would certainly
have died in prison.
There is a humourous side to every situation, and
the dark, gloomy life in the ostrog was brightened
.bn 153.png
.pn +1
at times by the comicalities of one prisoner, a Jew,
Isaiah Fomich by name, who was a butt and laughing-stock
for all. He was a murderer who had been
publicly whipped, exposed on the pillory and
branded for a crime of greed. The branding had
left frightful scars, to remove which he had received
a famous specific, but he was waiting until his release
to use it, years ahead. “Otherwise, I shall
not be able to marry,” he would say, “and I must
absolutely get married.” His first appearance in
the prison evoked general laughter. He looked like
a poor, plucked fowl, gaunt and thin and with hardly
an ounce of flesh on his bones. Already of uncertain
age, small, feeble, cunning and at the same
time stupid, but boastful, and a horrible coward, it
was difficult to believe he could have borne a flogging.
The life of the prison seemed to agree with
him and it was believed he was quite pleased to be
condemned, as it gave him a chance of making a
good deal of money. He was a jeweller by trade
and a good workman. There was no “free” jeweller
in the town of Omsk, and he secured more orders
than he could execute, for which he was always
well paid. Being rich, he soon was able to purchase
all he wanted. He fared sumptuously; he
bought a samovar, a tea cup, and a mattress. With
his spare cash he also soon became the prison usurer,
and almost every convict in the prison was in his
debt and paid him heavy interest on small loans.
His arrival was greeted with great interest. He
.bn 154.png
.pn +1
was the only Jew in the prison, and everyone
crowded round to stare at him when he was first
brought in with his hair shaved on the right side
of his head. He sat on his plank bed, clinging to
his bag, not daring to raise his eyes or resent the
ridicule heaped upon him. A young convict came
up to him, bringing a ragged pair of old linen trousers,
and asked what Fomich would advance on
them. “A silver ruble? No, only seven kopecks
(seven farthings),” said the Jew, “and three kopecks
interest.” “By the year?” he was asked.
“No, by the month,” he replied. And the bargain
was struck after much contemptuous laughter,
whereupon Fomich put the pledged rags carefully
away in his bag.
They all laughed at him, but no one insulted him,
and he was rather proud of being noticed, as he
thought it added to his importance. He gave himself
great airs; he would sing in a squeaking, falsetto
voice some idiotic refrain to a ridiculous tune,
and perform the most comical antics. On Saturday
evening, the convicts would collect to see him celebrate
his Sabbath and he was greatly flattered by the
curiosity displayed. He prepared his table in one
corner with a very dignified air, lighted two candles,
clothed himself in his robes, put on the phylacteries
and tied a little box on his forehead where it protruded
like a horn. Then he read aloud, wept and
tore his hair, and suddenly changed into a hymn of
triumph delivered with a nasal tone. All this, as he
.bn 155.png
.pn +1
readily explained, was to typify the lamentations at
the loss of Jerusalem, changing into rejoicing at
the return.
One day, when at his worship, the major came
in and stood behind the Jew while he was wildly
gesticulating without noticing the governor, who,
after watching him for some time, burst out laughing
and went off with the one exclamation, “idiot.”
Afterward Fomich declared that he had not seen
the major; that he was always in a state of ecstatic
abstraction when saying his prayers. He was, or
pretended to be, a very strict Jew, and liked people
to admire his punctilious observance of the rule of
idleness on his Saturday Sabbath; and was very
proud of his visit to the synagogue under escort as
a single worshipper, a privilege to which he was entitled
by law. Fomich was at the height of his
glory in the bath, where he treated himself to the
services of several rubbers and sang loudly when
the hubbub was highest and the steam most plentiful.
The festival of Christmas, so highly esteemed
throughout Russia, was strictly observed also in the
prison. The convicts were eager to show that they
were doing the same as the rest of the world outside,
and to feel that they were not altogether reprobates
cast out by society. It was essentially a high
day and holiday, when no work was enforced or
undertaken, and when rejoicing, enjoyment and
sensual gratification became, with permission, the
.bn 156.png
.pn +1
order of the day. A complete change came over the
prison on the eve of the great day. Almost all were
busy preparing to keep Christmas in suitable fashion
according to their own ideas. The chief of these
was to revel in unaccustomed good living. The old
soldiers, the guards who might come and go,
brought in openly the supplies ordered from the
town, suckling pigs, poultry and joints of meat;
and the drink sellers, no less active, smuggled in
their vodka secretly.
Every one was moving early, the drum beat was
heard long before dawn and the convicts were well
up and dressed when the officer of the day came in
to muster the men and wish them a happy Christmas.
This interchange of compliments was general
even between convicts who had not spoken to each
other before; those who had once quarrelled forgot
their enmity in the desire for peace and good-will.
A sort of universal friendship prevailed in harmony
with the sentiment of the day. It was encouraged
by the good feeling expressed from outside, for
relays of gifts of food, great and small, began to
arrive from the town to be distributed among the
prisoners.
The kitchens were the chief centre of interest.
Great fires were blazing, and the cooks were preparing
the festive entertainment, under the eyes, or
with the assistance of the convicts themselves.
Every one supplemented the daily ration with choice
morsels privately purchased out of hard-earned
.bn 157.png
.pn +1
savings. But no one tasted food until the priest
arrived with cross and holy water; a small table
had been prepared for him with a holy image on
it, and before it a lamp was burning. After he had
conducted the service, the pre-Christmas fast ended,
and the feast began by the permission of the commandant,
who had visited the barrack formally and
tasted the cabbage soup, but had made no remark
about the additional delicacies provided and which
were now brought in to be greedily devoured.
The scene presently degenerated into an orgy.
Faces became flushed with drink and good cheer;
the balalaiki, or banjos, were produced; the fiddler,
paid by a convivial convict, played lively dance
music. The conversation became more and more
animated and more and more noisy, but the dinner
ended without great disorder. Later, drunkenness
was general; it was no offence that day, and even
the officers, who made the regulation visits, paid no
attention. The antics of the intoxicated were an
amusing spectacle to most. But a few of the more
orderly and right-thinking showed their disapproval.
The “old believer” from Starodub climbed up to
his favourite perch on top of the stove and fervently
prayed for the rest of the day. The sight of these
excesses was exceedingly painful to him. The
Mahometan prisoners took no part in the revels;
they looked on with much curiosity and manifest
disgust. The youth Nourra, already mentioned,
shook his head crying, “Aman, Aman. Alas!
.bn 158.png
.pn +1
Alas! It is an offence to Allah!” The Jew, Isaiah
Fomich, declined to join in a celebration commemorating
an offence committed by his co-religionists,
and to show his contempt for Christ, lighted a candle
and went to work in a favourite corner.
As the day passed, reckless self-indulgence gradually
increased, but the general drunkenness and
debauchery began to lapse into wearisome depression.
Men who had been convulsed with uproarious
laughter became maudlin and dropped into
some out of the way spot, weeping bitter tears;
others, pale and sickly, tottered about, seeking quarrels
with all whom they met. Old differences were
revived; disputes soon developed into personal conflicts;
frequently two of the men would come to
blows as to which should stand treat to the other.
The whole spectacle was insupportable, nauseating
and repulsive. The great festival, which should
have passed with so much delight, ended in dejection
and disappointment. The convicts, drunken or
sober, alike dropped down on their camp beds and
slept heavily.
In some countries prisoners have been permitted
to find relief in theatrical performances. It was so
in the Spanish presidios, and here in the old Russian
ostrog a dramatic entertainment, on a most ambitious
scale, was a feature of the Christmas holidays.
A convict company was organised very secretly;
it was always uncertain whether the major
would consent, and all was kept from his knowledge
.bn 159.png
.pn +1
until the last moment. The rehearsals were quite
private; the names of the plays were unknown, or
how the costumes and scenery were to be obtained.
The stage was created in a space cleared in the centre
of the barrack, and could be put up and taken
down in a quarter of an hour. The moving spirit
was one Bakluchin, who had been a soldier in Riga,
and had murdered his rival, a German, whom he
had caught paying addresses to his fiancée and who
was preferred by her. This Bakluchin, who was
thirty years old, was of lofty stature, with a frank,
determined countenance, but good-natured and generally
popular. He had the comedian’s knack of
changing his face in comic imitation of any
passer-by, and convulsed all who saw him. As the
projected performance took place, Bakluchin
swelled with ill-concealed importance and boasted
of the success he would achieve. He went about
declaiming portions of his part and amusing everybody
by anticipation.
Two popular pieces were chosen for performance,
plays from an old book, preserved by memory in the
traditions of the prison. Many of the “properties,”
too, had been handed down, carefully concealed in
secret places for years. One of them, the curtain,
which was a work of art, was composed of numerous
scraps of cloth sewed together, such as the linen
of old shirts, bandages, and underwear; even pieces
of strong paper were added to fill in empty spaces;
and on the surface was painted in oil a landscape
.bn 160.png
.pn +1
with trees and ponds of flowers. This curtain delighted
the convicts and shared the first applause
with the orchestra of eight instruments,—two violins,
three banjos, two guitars and a tambourine.
The musicians played well, and the tunes were all
original and distinctive.
The audience, before the curtain rose, crowded
and crushed into the narrow theatre, wild with
suppressed excitement. Two benches were placed
immediately in front of the stage, which was lighted
with candle ends. These seats, with one or two
chairs, were for the officers who might deign to be
present,—the overseers, clerks, directors of works
and engineers. Behind stood the convicts respectfully,
row after row. Some were posted on the
camp beds or had climbed up on the porcelain stove,
and every face glowed with delight, a strange look
of infinite contentment and unmixed pleasure shining
on these scarred and branded countenances so
generally dark and forbidding. Everyone was
dressed in his best, his short sheepskin pelisse, in
spite of the suffocating heat, and each face was
damp with perspiration. Everyone was there: The
Tartars and Circassians, who showed a passionate
delight for the theatre; Young Ali, whose childish
face beamed and whose laughter was contagious;
the Jew, Isaiah Fomich, who was in an ecstasy
from the rising of the curtain to its fall, and rejoiced
at the chance of showing off, for when the
plate was passed he ostentatiously contributed the
.bn 161.png
.pn +1
imposing sum of ten kopecks, or twopence, halfpenny.
As the play proceeded, it was received with warm
applause. Cries of approbation were heard in all
parts of the house. The convicts nudged each other
with loud whispers, calling attention to the jokes,
laughing uproariously, smacking their lips and
clacking their tongues, and toward the end the
gaiety reached its climax. “Imagine the convict
prison,” says Dostoyevski, “the chains of long
years of captivity in close confinement, the bodily
toil monotonous and unending, the accumulated,
long protracted misery and despair, and the grim
place of durance transformed on this occasion into
one of light-hearted amusement where prisoners
might forget their condition, dismiss the nightmare
of crime and breathe freely and laugh aloud.”
A comedy in prison! The convicts were in costumes
altogether different from the daily garb of
shame, but with the inseparable chains always obstructing.
One was in female attire, wearing an
old worn-out muslin dress, with neck and arms bare
and a pert calico cap on his half shaven head. Another
represented a gentleman of fashion in a frock
coat, round hat and cloak, but his chains rattled as
he strutted across the stage; one was in the full-dress
but faded uniform of an aide-de-camp. There
were convicts in many characters, strange and varied:
a nobleman, an innkeeper, demons, a Brahmin
in flowing robes. Every one was delighted when
.bn 162.png
.pn +1
the performance ended, and the convicts separated,
quite pleased to have been taken away from themselves
for a brief space, full of praise for the actors
and of gratitude to their superiors, who had permitted
the play to be given. It was a wise concession,
for the convicts made a point of conducting
themselves in the most exemplary fashion.
The prisoners in the ostrog were fond of live animals,
and if permitted, would have filled the prison
with domesticated pets. They had dogs, geese, a
horse and even an eagle whom they vainly sought
to tame. “Bull” was a good-sized black dog with
white spots, intelligent eyes and a bushy tail. He
lived in the prison enclosure, slept in the courtyard,
ate the waste scraps from the kitchen and had little
hold on the sympathy of the men, all of whom he
regarded as masters and owners. He came to greet
the working parties on their return from labour,
wagging his tail and looking for the caresses which
he seldom got. Dostoyevski, as he tells us, was one
of the first to make friends with Bull by giving him
a piece of bread and patting him on the back, which
pleased him greatly. “That evening, not having
seen me for the whole day,” says the author, “he
ran up to me leaping and barking. Then he put
his paws on my shoulders and looked me in the face.
‘Here is a friend sent to me by destiny,’ I said to
myself, and during the first weeks, so full of pain,
every time I returned to the barrack I hastened to
fondle and make much of Bull.”
.bn 163.png
.pn +1
Another dog was called Snow. He was a luckless
creature who had been driven over and injured in
the spine by the wheels of a telyega, “country cart.”
He looked like two dogs because of the curvature of
his spine, and he was mangy, with bleared eyes and
a hairless tail always drooping between his hind
legs. Snow was abjectly submissive to all, both
men and fellow-dogs. He never barked nor made
overtures, but continually turned on his back to
curry favour, and received the kick of every passer
without a sign of resentment, except that if hurt
he would often utter one low deprecatory yelp.
When surprised with a caress wholly unexpected
and unusual, he quivered and whined plaintively
with delight. His fate was sad and brutal; he was
torn to pieces by other dogs in the ditch of the fortress.
A third dog was Kultiapka, brought in as a puppy
soon after he had been born in one of the prison
workshops. Bull took him under his especial protection
and “fathered” and played with him. He
was always of abbreviated height but grew steadily
in length and breadth, and was quaint in appearance.
One ear hung constantly down while the
other was always cocked up. He had a fine, fluffy,
mouse-coloured coat which cost him his life. One
of the convicts who made ladies’ shoes cast greedy
eyes upon Kultiapka, and having felt his skin lured
him into a corner, killed and flayed him. A little
later the young wife of one of the officers appeared
.bn 164.png
.pn +1
in a smart pair of velvet boots trimmed with mouse
coloured fur.
Tanning and skin dressing was a trade much followed
in the prison. Dogs which had been stolen
by servants were brought in and sold. On one occasion
a fine black dog of good breed was disposed
of by a scamp of a footman for thirty kopecks. The
poor beast must have anticipated what was in store
for him, for he looked up at the convicts in a distressed,
beseeching way, but could find no pity, and
he was speedily hanged. The same fate overtook
the prison goat, a beautiful white kid of whom every
one was fond. The pretty creature was full of
grace and was very playful, jumping on and off
the kitchen table, wrestling with the convicts and
always full of fun and spirits. He grew up into
a fine, fat beast with magnificent horns, which it was
proposed to gild and which were often decorated
with flowers. It was the custom for the goat to
march at the head of the convicts when returning
from labour, and when the eyes of the choleric
major fell upon it in the procession, he forthwith
ordered it to be executed. The goat was killed and
flayed; both carcass and skin were sold in the
prison; the latter went to the leather dresser, the
former, which fetched a ruble and fifty kopecks,
was roasted and the flesh retailed among the convicts.
Other strange pets were a flock of geese, which
somehow had been hatched within the enclosure,
.bn 165.png
.pn +1
and as they grew up they attached themselves to
the prisoners and would march out with them regularly
to labour. When the drum beat and the parties
assembled at the great gate, the geese came cackling,
flapping their wings and hopping along. While the
convicts worked, the geese pecked about close at
hand until the time came for return, when they
again joined the procession and marched with their
friends solemnly back to the barracks, to the great
amusement of the bystanders. The close attachment
between the birds and their friends did not
save the geese from having their necks twisted and
being added to the dinner on a feast day.
The captive eagle did not take kindly to detention.
It had been brought in wounded, with a broken wing
and half dead. Nothing could domesticate or tame
it. It gazed fiercely and fearlessly on the curious
crowd and opened its beak as if determined to sell
its life dearly. As soon as a chance came it hopped
away on one leg, flapping its one uninjured wing,
and hid in a far-off, inaccessible corner, from which
it never emerged. The convicts often gathered to
stare at it and would bait it with the dog Bull, who
hesitated, in wholesome dread of the savage bird’s
beak and claws. The eagle long refused food, and
although he finally took meat and drank water left
with him, he would consume nothing that was given
him by hand or when any one’s eye was upon him.
When no one was near, he would creep out of his
corner and take a walk of a dozen steps, hopping
.bn 166.png
.pn +1
and limping backward and forward with great regularity
under the lee of the stockade. He resisted
pugnaciously all overtures to friendship, and would
suffer no one to pet him or pat him but pined away,
lonely and irreconcilable, waiting only for death.
At last the convicts were moved to compassion
for the caged bird, deprived of liberty like themselves.
It was seriously discussed whether he ought
not to be set free. So he was securely tied, taken
out to the ramparts when the parties went to labour,
and thrown out on the bare, barren steppe. The
bird immediately hurried away, flapping his
wounded wing and striving desperately to get out
of sight of his captors. They looked after him enviously;
they had given him the freedom they did
not possess, a boon they hungered for unceasingly
night and day, winter and summer, but especially
when the sun shone bright and they could see the
boundless plain stretching away in the blue distance
beyond the river Irtysh and across the free Kirghiz
Steppe.
Dostoyevski feelingly records his sensations when
the day for his release at length arrived. The night
before, as darkness fell, he went round the enclosure
for the last time, revisiting every spot where he had
suffered the bitter pangs of imprisonment, solitary
and despairing,—the place where he had counted
over and over again the thousands and thousands
of days he had still to remain inside. The next
morning, before the exodus for labour, he made
.bn 167.png
.pn +1
the rounds to bid his comrades farewell; and many
a coarse, horny hand was held out to him with
hearty good-will. The generous souls gave him
Godspeed, but others who were more envious turned
their backs on him and would not reply to his kindly
greetings. His last visit was to the blacksmith’s
shop. He went without escort, and placed his feet
on the anvil, each in turn; the rivets were struck
out of the basils and he was freed from his chains.
“Liberty! New life, resurrection from the dead!
Unspeakable moment!”
.bn 168.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER VI | TIUMEN AND TOMSK
.pm start_descr
New route taken by exiles since opening of the Trans-Siberian
railway—Increased numbers produced overcrowding
in all prisons both in Europe and Asia—The “forwarding
prisons” the cause of much distress—The Tiumen prison;
cells, kitchen, hospital—Infectious diseases—Death-rate—Tomsk
forwarding prison—Conditions worse than at Tiumen—The
balagan or family “kamera”—Futile attempts
to dispute incontrovertible evidence—“Étapes” or road
prisons and “polu étapes” or half-way houses—Distance
covered daily by the marching parties—The “telyegas”
or country carts which carried the sick—Method of buying
provisions from villagers en route—The “étape” of
Achinsk—Infectious diseases in these prisons—The reports
of Governor-General Anuchin—Sympathy of the
Czar Alexander III.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
The old order changeth slowly, and the hideous
memories of the black and baleful past will long
survive. The pages which record the disgraceful
facts may be torn out of Russian prison history but
they can never be eradicated or forgotten. Let it
be granted that reforms and improvements have
been introduced, and that some of the most glaring
evils have been removed, we may doubt whether in
the present condition of the empire, still shaken to
its very base by disaster and disaffection, the betterment
.bn 169.png
.pn +1
goes below the surface or will be lasting. The
governing authorities in these troublous times have
but little leisure to discuss penology, and although
long since aroused to a lively sense of the shortcomings
of their prison system, they are slow to
mend their ways. Changes and ameliorations
promised still tarry by the way, and there is but
little hope that the frightful conditions so long prevailing
have even in part disappeared.
The chief blot upon the method of transportation
no longer exists, it is true. The wearisome, almost
interminable march has been replaced by the long
railway journey over the Trans-Siberian line, completed
in 1897 and opened the following year for
the conveyance of exiles. The convicts no longer
spend a couple of years or more on a journey now
performed in eight or ten days. Their sufferings
are no longer protracted indefinitely, but for a brief
space they are still locked up like cattle in dirty, ill-ventilated
vans, and are still collected in the foul
“forwarding prisons,” whence they pass on for distribution
to Eastern Siberia, the convict colony of
Saghalien, or the outer darkness near the North
Pole. A few well-planned and commodious new
prisons have been erected in recent years, for which
credit must be given to the prison administration,
but they have applied only a partial remedy to existing
conditions.
The exile route to-day naturally follows the new
line of railway. From Moscow the road strikes
.bn 170.png
.pn +1
south to Samara on the Volga, to which point a
large passenger traffic is brought by the great water-way
to board the trains. From Samara to Ufa on
the west slope the Ural Mountains, and after scaling
them the line descends to Chelyabinsk on the Siberian
frontier. Here the convict travellers are
divided into parties according to their destination.
Some go north toward Tiumen and Tobolsk, others
travel due east in the direction of Lake Baikal,
and others start south for Semipalatinsk and the
Altai.
The route before the railway was built was from
Moscow, the centre of the home prison system,
thence by train to Nizhni-Novgorod, and on by boat
down the Volga through Kazan to Perm, and thence
by train across the Ural Mountains to Ekaterinburg
and Tiumen. All exiles of whatever class, without
distinction or separation, travelled this way, and all
halted at Tiumen, where they were made up into
parties and forwarded to their several destinations.
Overcrowding was the curse of all Russian prisons;
the cause of discomforts innumerable, inflicting
untold suffering, producing deadly endemic and
epidemic diseases. That it was the same everywhere,
we are told on incontestable authority, and
the futile attempts made by superficial inquirers to
vindicate the government which is responsible are
contemptible. To begin with St. Petersburg, the
official report of the society for prisons stated that
.bn 171.png
.pn +1
in 1880 the show prison, the Litovski Zamok, although
built for seven hundred inmates, uniformly
contained from nine hundred to a thousand; and
the depot prison, supposed to hold two hundred,
was always filled with double the number. The
first named had 103 rooms nominally for eight
hundred persons. These rooms, as described by an
eye-witness, were exceedingly dirty, and he further
says: “The ‘black holes’ are dreadful; they are
absolutely deprived of light; a dark labyrinth leads
to them and within all is wet, with rotten floors and
dripping walls. A man coming from the outer air
staggers away half asphyxiated. Specialists say
that the healthiest man will surely die if he is kept
there for three or four weeks. After a short stay
prisoners went out exhausted; several could hardly
stand on their feet.”
As to the specific charge of overcrowding, a few
details must carry conviction. The prison at Nizhni-Novgorod
was built for three hundred, and generally
held seven or eight hundred persons. In Poland
there were four prisons occupying the space
required for one. The prison at Perm was built in
1872 for 120 inmates, but in the same year it held
just double that number and the cubical air space
allotted to each individual was from 202 to 260
cubic feet, or, as Kropotkin puts it, it was just as
if a man was living in a coffin eight feet by six feet.
Another authority, the Journal of Legal Medicine,
issued by the medical department of the Ministry
.bn 172.png
.pn +1
of the Interior, gives the cubical contents as no more
than 124 cubic feet per head. At Tomsk the prison
was disgracefully overcrowded. It was built for
nine hundred but contained over two thousand
souls. At Samara the average prison population
was 1,147, but the aggregate cubic capacity of all
the prisons in the town was for 552 inmates. At
Verkhni Udinsk an ostrog built for 140 prisoners
was often packed with five hundred and even eight
hundred inmates. On the whole, summing up the
dreadful facts, an apologist of the Russian government
admits that the prisons contain half as many
more than the number originally intended.
Let us pass to the direct evidence of a perfectly
veracious witness, speaking out of his own experience.
George Kennan approached his self-imposed
task with a judicial, well-balanced mind, quite unprejudiced
against the Russian system, predisposed,
if anything, to view it with favour. He paid a
lengthy visit to the Tiumen forwarding prison, with
the full permission of the authorities, who withheld
nothing from his observation, premising only that
it was greatly overcrowded and in a bad sanitary
condition.
As to the first point, the figures were conclusive.
It was a well-known fact that the prison was built
originally for 550 inmates but was subsequently enlarged
by the addition of detached barracks so as
to hold nominally 850 prisoners. On the day Kennan
visited it, the number was 1,741, as witnessed
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
by a blackboard hanging up at the office door. In
the first room entered, a kamera or cell, 35 feet
long, 25 feet wide and 12 feet high, the accommodation
and air space at the outside was for forty
persons. On the night before, 160 had slept or,
more exactly, passed the night in the room. The
same dreadful superfluity of human beings existed
throughout the entire prison.
“I looked around the cell,” says Kennan.
“There was practically no ventilation whatever,
and the air was so poisoned and foul that I could
hardly force myself to breathe it. We visited successively
in the yard six kameras or cells, essentially
like the first, and found in every one of them three
or four times the number of prisoners for which it
was intended, and five or six times the number for
which it had adequate air space. In most of the
cells there was not room enough on the sleeping
platforms for all of the convicts, and scores of men
slept every night on the foul, muddy floors, under
the nary, ‘sleeping platforms,’ and in the gangways
between them and the walls.”
The main building, containing the kitchen, the
workshops, the hospital and a large number of
kameras, was in a worse sanitary condition than the
barracks. The air in the corridors and cells, particularly
on the second story, was indescribably foul.
The oxygen had been breathed again and again;
it was laden with fever germs from the unventilated
hospital wards, fetid odours from diseased human
.bn 174.png
.pn +1
lungs and unclean human bodies, and the stench of
unmentionable receptacles. “It was like trying to
breathe in an underground hospital drain,” says
Kennan. The kitchen was a dark, dirty room in
the basement where three or four half naked cooks
were baking large loaves and preparing soup.
The bread was sour and heavy, but as good as that
usually eaten by Russian peasants; the soup was
found to be good and nutritious.
The hospital was on the third floor and the wards
were larger and lighter than the kameras, but
wholly unventilated; no disinfectants were in use,
and the air was polluted to the last degree. The
prospect of regaining health in such unwholesome
dens was small. A man in robust condition must
certainly become infected in a few weeks, and there
was little hope for the recovery of the sick. All the
worst disorders were to be found among the patients;
scurvy, typhus fever, typhoid fever, acute
bronchitis, rheumatism and syphilis. Only the
patients affected by malignant typhus were isolated
in a single ward. The women were separated from
the men, but that was all. “The patients, both
men and women, seemed to be not only desperately
sick, but hopeless and heart broken.” The mortality
was excessive. Typhus was epidemic every
year. The prison was uniformly overcrowded; it
had been built for eight hundred and generally contained
eighteen hundred. Some scanty ventilation
was possible when the windows could be opened,
.bn 175.png
.pn +1
but in the stormy autumn or bitter winter no fresh
air could be admitted.
According to the official reports of the inspectors
of exile transportation, in the eleven years between
1876 and 1886 the greatest number of deaths in the
Tiumen prison hospital was 354, the lowest 175,
the average 270. This is an unparalleled death-rate.
In various European prisons the rate is on
the average as follows:—England, 1.4 per cent.;
France, 3.8 per cent.; Austria, 3.5 per cent.; Belgium,
1.8 per cent.; United States, 1.7 per cent.
“In the Tiumen forwarding prison it was 29.5 per
cent., or almost 300 per thousand.... This would
entirely annihilate a fixed population in from two
and a half to four years,”—a death-rate such as
this, in the words of Mr. Cable, “exceeds that of
any pestilence that ever fell on Europe in the Middle
Ages.”
The female prison was in a separate yard within
a high stockade of sharpened logs. The kameras
were clean and well-lighted; floors and sleeping
platforms had been scrubbed; the rooms were not
so densely overcrowded, and the air was purer than
on the men’s side. But the condition of the third
detached prison, that for exiled families, in which
men, women and children were herded together to
the number of three hundred, was horrible. It was
overcrowded; the air was heavy and foul; “dozens
of children were crying from hunger and
wretchedness; and the men and women looked
.bn 176.png
.pn +1
tired, sleepless and dejected.” All the women were
voluntarily accompanying their husbands or fathers
into banishment.
The disgraceful state of the Tiumen forwarding
prison was perfectly well known to the authorities,
and has been strongly commented upon in official
reports. How far amendment has proceeded I have
no definite information, although we may hope that
the diversion of the outward stream of exiles since
the opening of the Trans-Siberian railway has
greatly reduced the excessive demands upon the imperfect
accommodation. But there is another forwarding
prison further eastward and at one time
on the direct line of exile traffic. This is at the city
of Tomsk, which is actually fifty miles distant from
the railway, because the local authorities refused
to pay the blackmail demanded by the projectors
of the line to bring it through, or within easy reach
of the city. Before railway days, the convicts travelled
in barges on the river Tobol from Tiumen to
Tomsk. These barges were planned to accommodate
six hundred on each voyage; they were towed
by steamers and made the journey in from seven to
ten days, completing eighteen trips during the season
of open navigation, and thus they transported
annually between ten thousand and eleven thousand
souls.
If the Tiumen prison was in horrible condition,
that of Tomsk was infinitely worse. Its deplorable
state was frankly admitted to George Kennan by
.bn 177.png
.pn +1
the authorities when they granted him permission to
visit it. “I think you will find it the worst prison
in Siberia,” said the acting governor of the province
of Tomsk. What else was to be expected when the
buildings were filled with more than twice the number
of inmates which they could properly accommodate?
The Tomsk forwarding prison was designed
to hold fourteen hundred, but three thousand
or even four thousand were habitually
crammed into it. The numbers arriving exceeded
the power of distribution, and week by week a
residuum remained to increase the permanent population.
The étapes, or halting stations along the
road, could accommodate only a limited number and
there were not enough troops to provide for more
than one marching party each week.
The Tomsk forwarding prison is described by
Mr. Kennan, who saw it in 1885, as, “a stockaded
camp or enclosure three acres in extent, lying on
open ground outside the city.” Within were some
fifteen to twenty log buildings grouped about a
pyramidal church tower. Each wooden building in
the enclosure was a one-storied barrack prison of
square logs with board roofs, heavily grated windows
and massive iron doors secured with padlocks.
There were eight of these, each constituting a prison
ward and each divided into two kameras, one on
each side of a central corridor running through the
building. Each ward or building was calculated
to hold 190 inmates, but was crowded with at least
.bn 178.png
.pn +1
three hundred. Each cell was about forty feet
square and the air space was seven-eighths of a cubic
fathom per head. The cells were fairly well lighted,
but the atmosphere was pestilential and the temperature
from the natural heat of the prisoners’ bodies
was fifteen or twenty degrees higher than the external
air. The usual sleeping platforms ran across
the cells, but there was not room on them for half
of the number confined there, and the other half was
forced to sleep beneath the platforms, or on the
floor in the adjoining gangways. These lay there
on the mud-stained and filthy floor, without pillows,
blankets or bedclothing. They were in such a
grievous state that they complained feelingly of the
heat, foulness and oppressiveness of the air and
declared that it was impossible to move about in
the day time or to get rest at night.
The same evils were present in every cell. But
the horrors culminated in the “family” room or
balagan, the long, low shed of rough pine boards,—a
frame work hastily put together and with sides
of thin white cotton sheeting. There were three of
these crammed full of family parties, men, women
and children. The shed was surrounded by a foul
ditch half full of filth which soaked through and
from under the cotton-sheeting wall. The only light
that penetrated within the windowless balagan was
through this wall of cotton. The place was packed
with hundreds of occupants,—“weary-eyed men,
haggard women and ailing children,” sitting and
.bn 179.png
.pn +1
lounging about the sleeping platforms and on the
broken boards of the floor through which exuded
all kinds of abominations. The air was insufferably
fetid from the great numbers of infants unwashed
and wholly uncared for. Wet underclothing,
washed in the camp kettles, was hanging from the
beams to dry; an indistinguishable chaos of bags,
bundles and domestic utensils encumbered the floor,
and the crowd was so closely packed that people
could not move without touching each other. No
remedy, no alleviation was possible. The cold at
night in these cotton enclosed walls, or the damp
heat and imperfect ventilation in the bath-house—which
many would have preferred—were equally
fatal to infant life. Detention in these wretched
apologies for shelters was greatly prolonged. No
change of clothing was provided; a man wore the
same shirt for months, until it almost dropped off,
in dirty ragged scraps, full of vermin. Not
strangely was it thought a welcome relief when the
orders came to take the road. The toilsome march
with its incessant hardships and exhausting fatigue
was preferable to the fixed residence in a forwarding
prison.
The hospital at Tomsk was in some respects better
than that at Tiumen; it occupied a separate
building, and was kept in better order. There were
always more patients than beds to receive them, and
the surplus in various stages of acute disease lay
about on benches or on the floor. Despite the overcrowding,
.bn 180.png
.pn +1
the place was kept fairly clean, the bed
clothing was fresh and plentiful and the air was less
polluted than at Tiumen. The percentage of the
sick varied according to the season. It rose in
November, when the population was at its highest,
to twenty-five per cent., and among the diseases
malignant typhus, the true type of the ancient, but
now happily rare, “gaol fever,” was always largely
present. There were twenty-four hundred cases of
illness in the year and at the most crowded time
there have been 450 cases in the hospital with beds
for only 150 patients.
The prison surgeon, one of the most humane and
devoted of his class, Dr. Orzheshko, has described
his experience covering fifteen years. In November,
he says, “three hundred men and women dangerously
sick lay on the floor in rows, most of them
without pillows or bed clothing; and in order to
find even floor space for them we had to put them
so close together that I could not walk between
them, and a patient could not cough or vomit without
coughing or vomiting into his own face or into
the face of the man lying beside him. The atmosphere
in the wards became so terribly polluted that
I fainted repeatedly upon coming into the hospital
in the morning, and my assistants had to revive me
by dashing water into my face. In order to change
or purify the air, we were forced to keep the windows
open; and as winter set in, this so chilled
the rooms, that we could not maintain ... a temperature
.bn 181.png
.pn +1
higher than five or six degrees Réamur
above the freezing point.”
This hospital was so saturated with contagious
disease that it stood condemned, and deserved to be
burned down. Official procrastination delayed its
destruction, but in 1887 a sum of 30,000 rubles was
granted for the erection of a new hospital, which is,
presumably, now occupied. It was high time to
make a change. The city of Tomsk, the capital of
Siberia, the great centre of Siberian trade, flourishing,
prosperous and increasing, naturally became
alarmed. The free inhabitants were threatened
with the spread of dire epidemic diseases. The local
press, defying the censorship, eloquently denounced
the horrible condition due to the vast accumulation
of excessive numbers in the forwarding prison, and
the resultant evils in sickness and mortality. The
newspapers stated incontrovertible facts. The
death-rate in the city of Tomsk was fifty per thousand
per annum, sufficiently large, but in the prison
it was three hundred per thousand. Typhus was
the predominating disease, accompanied by smallpox,
diphtheria, measles and scarlatina. This typhus
constituted 56.4 per cent. of all the sickness
in the forwarding prison in 1886, 62.6 per cent. in
1887 and 23 per cent. in 1888. The corresponding
death-rate in these years was 23.2, 21 and 13.1 per
cent.
A violent controversy was aroused between the
enterprising and outspoken American investigator,
.bn 182.png
.pn +1
Mr. George Kennan, and a well-known English
explorer, Mr. H. de Windt, who undertook to contest
the statements, and, indeed, to deny the facts
set forth by Mr. Kennan, plainly condemning them
as the phantasy of a disordered imagination and
boldly affirming that such a place as the Tomsk
forwarding prison “does not exist.” Mr. de
Windt’s arguments are based upon the negative evidence
of his own experience. He declares that he
saw nothing of the horrors described, but then he
never saw or closely inspected the prisons incriminated.
He was, no doubt, admitted to certain
prisons, which he visited under the auspices of the
authorities, and he reported upon them hastily and
on imperfect knowledge. Mr. Kennan’s painful
story is so completely sustained by Russian official
reports and the open condemnation of the Siberian
press, that it is entitled to full credence and may
be relied upon as absolutely trustworthy and conclusive.
His account of Tiumen and Tomsk must
take a prominent place in the history of penal institutions.
The exile system called the étapes or “road
prisons” into being. They were very numerous
and were planted at intervals of every twenty-five
or forty miles, and as this distance was beyond the
limit of a single day’s march, half-way houses, or
polu étapes, were to be met with regularly along the
road. Each étape was the headquarters of a detachment
of soldiers who formed the convoy or escort
.bn 183.png
.pn +1
of the convicts moving eastward. At the polu étapes
there were no troops. The head of each convoy
was a commissioned officer styled the nachalnik.
The marching parties covered 330 miles every
month, doing from fifteen to twenty miles on two
succeeding days and resting on the third. Thus a
party leaving Tomsk on Monday morning reached
a polu étape that night, slept there and passed on
to another regular étape on Wednesday, where they
halted for twenty-four hours. On Thursday the
journey was resumed with a fresh escort, a polu
étape was reached that night, and a regular étape
the next, and so on, day after day and week after
week for many months. Until 1883, there was no
separation of the sexes on the march, but after that
date single men were excluded from the family
parties in which women and children were included.
Terrible demoralisation was previously the rule in
the constantly overcrowded étapes, and the grossest
offences were commonly committed.
The departure of a marching party from the
forwarding prison was generally fixed at eight
o’clock in the morning, when the telyegas, or country
carts, for the conveyance of the sick and infirm,
began to collect in front of the prison gate. Next
appeared the prison blacksmith with his anvil and
portable forge, to test the fetters as the convicts
came forth, and after he had satisfied himself that
the rivets were fast and the basils had not been
bent, an under officer doled out ten kopecks to each
.bn 184.png
.pn +1
individual, and the convicts were formed in line, by
classes, for convenience of inspection and calling the
roll. The hard-labour convicts removed their gray
visorless caps to show that their crowns were half
shaved according to regulation. From the other
sides of their heads hung a mat of long, coarse and
dishevelled hair. At length the whole party, numbering
from three to four hundred, assembled in the
street; each convict carried a gray linen two-bushel
bag for the storage of his personal effects. Many
possessed tea-kettles, dangling from the waist belts
that supported the leg irons, and one or two might
be seen with a favourite dog in their arms. All the
men were dressed alike in long gray overcoats over
coarse linen shirts and loose gray trousers. The
women wore no distinctive uniform, but were
dressed mostly in peasant costume with gaily coloured
handkerchiefs on their heads. Square foot-wrappers
of gray linen were used in lieu of stockings
and all wore the koty, or low shoes, while they
lasted, but they were of such rotten, worthless material
that they fell to pieces in a couple of days and
the wretched wayfarers went barefooted.
The telyegas were carts of the rudest description,
one-horsed and without springs or seats, and the
occupants, sick and suffering, old, infirm and emaciated,
lay at the bottom on a scanty layer of grass.
A doctor’s certificate was essential to secure a place
in the carts, and a sharp lookout was kept to weed
out the malingerers. In one year more than twenty-five
.bn 185.png
.pn +1
hundred broken-down persons were conveyed
to their destination in as many as 658 carts.
When the column started, the marching party
led the van at a brisk pace, followed by the military
escort, the carts bearing the sick, and those conveying
the gray linen bags. The commanding officer
brought up the rear. “This strange procession,”
says Deutsch, who knew from personal experience,
“extends itself along the road for about three-quarters
of a mile, and raises clouds of dust.” A
terrible scourge was the Siberian midge, a pest attacking
not only the exposed hands and face but
getting into the mouth, nose, ears and eyes, and
under the clothing, and inflicting unendurable irritation.
The pace maintained was at the rate of two
miles an hour. After traversing ten miles, a halt
was called for rest and the noon-day meal. The
effort was little for the able-bodied, but for the
weaker, laden with chains and bundles, the long
march was most exhausting, and all gladly flung
themselves on the ground, wet or dry. A spot was
chosen at the entrance of some village, and its residents
came forth to haggle and huckster over the
sale of coarse food, such as black rye bread, fish
pies, hard boiled eggs, milk and kvas, or sour country
beer. Prices varied, and no attempt was made
to control them officially; they were liable to be
extortionate at seasons of scarcity, after bad harvests,
and the government allowance was at times
ludicrously inadequate, barely enough to satisfy
.bn 186.png
.pn +1
hunger. Besides, the average convict is an inveterate
gambler, and many became penniless risking
and losing the whole of their allowance. Then they
would beg by the roadside, as already described.
After a short hour’s pause, the march was resumed,
a second ten miles was painfully covered, and it was
almost dark when the halt for the night was reached,
whether at an étape or polu étape.
There was little to choose between the étapes and
the polu étapes, but the latter were smaller and the
accommodation was consequently worse. Both
were stockaded enclosures, containing three or
more long, low, one-story buildings. One of these
was the commanding officer’s quarters, a second was
for the soldiers of the escort, and the remaining hut
or huts formed the prison. Each was divided into
two or three cells; each was furnished with the
usual plank sleeping platforms in a double row, and
a brick stove. The available space was much too
small for the prisoners passing through as these
halting prisons were built for about half the number.
“All of these,” says an official report, “are
not only too small, but old and decayed and demand
capital repairs.” The governor-general of Eastern
Siberia, Anuchin, reported confidentially in 1880,
to the Czar, Alexander III, that all prisons he had
visited, including the étapes, were tumbled-down
buildings in a lamentable sanitary condition; that
they were cold in winter and saturated with miasma;
that the prisons of the empire generally, with the
.bn 187.png
.pn +1
exception of the principal ones recently erected,
were not remarkable for their good qualities, but
the Siberian prisons were particularly bad because
they were built quickly, with insufficient means, and
almost wholly without supervision of any kind.
Only one architect had been employed and his
sphere of action was so wide that he paid only a
rare visit to new works in progress. The contractors
departed from the original plans and evaded
conditions, so that the work was continually neglected.
In the first place the money was insufficient,
after a portion of the government appropriation
had been stolen by fraudulent contractors and
corrupt officials, and the new étapes were run up
without stone foundations, so that the walls soon
“settled” and the buildings rapidly deteriorated
under climatic agencies and the injurious wear
and tear of the constant overcrowding. In temperate
weather half the prisoners slept on the
ground in the outer courtyard, but when it was too
inclement they filled the kameras, lay about the corridors
and packed themselves into the garrets. Not
the smallest care was taken to make places habitable.
Dirt accumulated everywhere; no provision had
been made for ventilation, and the windows would
not even open. Occupation of quarters was a matter
of force, when the weakest went to the wall.
On arrival at an étape, generally in the afternoon,
a halt was called outside the palisade for roll-call,
and then the great gates were thrown open for the
.bn 188.png
.pn +1
indiscriminate admission of the crowd. “With a
wild, mad rush and a furious clashing of chains,
more than three hundred men made a sudden break
for the narrow gateway, struggled, fought and
crowded through it, and then burst into the kameras,
in order to secure, by preoccupation, places on
the sleeping platforms,” says Kennan. Leo Deutsch
graphically describes this “battle for the best sleeping
places, the weaker being thrust aside or trampled
down by the stronger. At our first sight of this
mad fighting and struggling among some hundred
men in a narrow space, we thought they would kill
each other, but generally the wild tumult of blows
and kicks and curses did not result in anything
serious.” The losers in the game took the worst
places, or bartered for a better bed with the more
fortunate at the price of a few kopecks.
When the scramble for a night’s lodging ended,
the tired wayfarers fell to preparing their own suppers.
Hot water for making tea was retailed by the
soldiers of the escort, and cooked food with coarse
bread was bought from the market women who
came in to sell their wares. Sometimes they did
not appear and the convicts would almost starve,
or the times were hard and impossible prices were
charged. The daily allowance issued by the authorities
was sometimes insufficient, and again the convicts
went short. Often enough the buyers cheated
the sellers, or stole their goods, and the poor women
could get no redress. After supper, roll was again
.bn 189.png
.pn +1
called, the watch was set, sentries were posted, and
the prisoners were locked up and left for the night.
The étape at Achinsk, for instance, between
Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk, is described by a newspaper
of Irkutsk as “a cloaca where human beings
perish like flies. Typhus fever, diphtheria and
other epidemic diseases prevail there constantly,
and infect all who have the misfortune to get into
that awful place,” and a St. Petersburg newspaper
says, “There one doctor has on his hands more than
three hundred sick.” A correspondent wrote to a
Tomsk journal, “As soon as you enter the court-yard
of the prison you notice the contaminated,
miasmatic air.... Dante himself would have
thrown down his pen if he had been required to
describe the damp, cold, dilapidated cells of this
prison. At night myriads of bed-bugs torture every
prisoner into a condition not far removed from
frenzy. The prison sometimes has six hundred inmates
and to its filth and disorder are attributable
the typhus fever, diphtheria and other diseases that
spread from it, as from a pit of contagion, to the
population of the city.” In the Isham étape, the
cold was intense and the exiles arriving had no
warm clothing. One man was frozen to death on
the road. At Cheremkhovsky the air space which
was barely enough for two persons had to serve for
thirty. It was described by a prisoner as “a grave
and not a prison.” At Kirinsk, the building of decayed
logs would have fallen down had it not been
.bn 190.png
.pn +1
shored up by other logs equally rotten. A prisoner,
to show the state of the wood, thrust his fingers
out of sight into the wall.
We have seen how the marching parties were
accompanied by a large contingent of sick who were
unfit to travel and yet could not be left behind, sometimes
even at the point of death. They were compelled
to sit all day in a cramped position in the
rude carts, intensifying the already acute pains of
their often mortal ailments, and were exposed to all
conditions of the weather. When dry and warm,
they were enveloped in clouds of dust, causing intolerable
discomfort, especially in the case of disease
of the respiratory organs; when cold and inclement,
still worse dangers attended the exposure
to snow and wintry winds. No change into dry
clothing on arrival was feasible, for with inconceivable
carelessness the baggage was allowed to
become soaked through on the road. The baggage
carts were unprovided with cover even by tarpaulins.
Thus the sickly, in the worst stages of illness,
were forced to lie down upon the same platforms,
side by side with the more robust, to whom they
quickly passed the contagion of their diseases. In
the rare cases when the étape was provided with a
lazaret, newcomers who were ill might fare better,
but the average étape hospital was infamously bad.
The indictment against the Czar and his government
for their brutal defiance of the commonest
rules of humanity has been more than substantiated
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
by the deplorable facts set forth in the previous
pages. It is agreeable to note some disposition to
mend matters on the part of the supreme authorities.
Certain reforms in prison administration have been
introduced in recent years, showing that the autocrat
of all the Russias has not continued utterly indifferent
to the sufferings of Siberian exiles and
convicts. Widespread radical changes have been
impossible; the evils were too deep seated and too
extensive for general removal; but one or two new
prisons have been erected, more in accord with the
dictates of penitentiary science and aiming at partial
improvement. A brief account of one or two
of these may serve to relieve somewhat the gloomy
picture which has been by no means over-coloured.
The Czars Alexander II and III could not plead
ignorance of the horrible conditions prevailing in
Eastern Siberia which were brought unmistakably
to their notice by the reports of Anuchin in 1880
and 1882. Some of his condemnatory remarks have
already been quoted and may be repeated here as
summing up his final verdict. After minute inquiry
and much investigation, he characterises the Siberian
prisons as follows: “The exile system and
penal servitude in Eastern Siberia are in the most
unsatisfactory state ... while the exile bureaus in
the provinces are not organised in a manner commensurate
with the importance of the work that
they have to do and are prejudicial rather than useful
to the service.” The Czar Alexander III was so
.bn 192.png
.pn +1
deeply impressed with the necessity for reform that
he endorsed on this report in his own handwriting,
“I should greatly like to do this and it seems to
me indispensable.” Events proved too strong however
even for the autocrat ruler of all the Russias.
He says: “I have read this report with great interest,
and I am more than troubled by this melancholy
but just description of the government’s forgetfulness
of a country so rich and so necessary to Russia.”
On the part dealing with prisons the Czar
endorsed the words, “A melancholy but not a new
picture.” On a later page I shall go further into the
ameliorations and improvements attempted since
1886.
.bn 193.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER VII | VAGABONDAGE AND UNIONS
.pm start_descr
Peculiar phases of criminality to be found in Siberian prisons—Country
overrun with convict fugitives—Terrible privations
suffered by these vagrants—The “call of the
cuckoo”—The vagrants known as “brodyagi”—Number
of runaway convicts in the summer months said to exceed
thirty thousand—The formation of the “artel” or union
in all companies of convicts—The power and methods of
the “Ivans” or recidivists in the “artel”—Leo Deutsch’s
story—Life of the politicals in the Middle Kara state
prison—The “Sirius” or student who worked during the
night—The humane governor, Colonel Kanonovich—He
resigns rather than obey the government’s orders that the
prisoners should be perpetually chained to wheelbarrows.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
Certain types of criminals and some peculiar
phases of criminality have grown up in Russian, and
especially in Siberian prisons. They are mainly due
to the negation of proper penitentiary principles and
the absence of any fixed methods of treatment. Callous
indifference has generally alternated with brutal
repression and savage, disciplinary punishments.
The chief result has been the growth of classes of
criminals seldom seen elsewhere. The so-called
“habitual offender” is to be met with strongly developed
and in a peculiarly vicious form in Siberia.
The whole country is overrun with fugitive convicts
who have made good their escape in various fashions.
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
Some have run from the marching parties,
carrying their lives in their hands as they braved the
bullets of the generally straight-shooting soldiers
of the escort; others have successfully evaded the
police at remote points of settlement as established
exiles; not a few have benefited by the exchange of
identity with some one who remained behind. All
have become wild men of the woods, the terror of
all peaceable members of society whom they may
come across in the scattered settlements or single
houses of the sparsely inhabited districts. Many
thousands of these vagrants are at large in the summer
months, when they may live in the open air
and subsist as best they can on what they find or
steal. Large numbers are recaptured; many perish
from cold and starvation when winter approaches;
many more give themselves up voluntarily to save
their lives, accepting the severest flogging or a new
sentence as the penalty of their escape.
Yet they are incorrigible wanderers and pass their
lives in short periods of freedom and longer doses
of confinement. When Kennan saw a marching
party start, he was shown convicts who were treading
the dolorous road for the sixth time. The captain
of the escort assured him that he had known
cases in which the journey had been repeated sixteen
times. In other words, the vagrant had crossed Siberia
just thirty-two times on foot, and had, therefore,
walked as much as if he had twice made the
circuit of the globe at the Equator.
.bn 195.png
.pn +1
The passionate craving for freedom has been well
described by Dostoyevski. “At the first song of the
lark throughout all Siberia and Russia, men set out
on the tramp; God’s creatures, if they can break
their prison and escape into the woods.... They
go vagabondising where they please, wherever life
seems to them most agreeable and easy; they drink
and eat what they can find; at night they sleep undisturbed
and without a care in the woods or in a
field;... saying good night only to the stars; and
the eye that watches them is the eye of God. It is
not altogether a rosy lot: sometimes they suffer
hunger and fatigue ‘in the service of General
Cuckoo.’ Often enough the wanderers have not a
morsel of bread to keep their teeth going for days
at a time.... They are almost all brigands and
thieves by necessity rather than inclination....
This life in the woods, wretched and fearful as it
is, but still free and adventurous, has a mysterious
seduction for those who have experienced it.”
A curious illustration of this consuming passion
is to be found in the case of an aged convict who
had become the servant of a high official at the
Kara gold mines. This man ran away periodically
at the return of spring, and although suffering always
the same terrible privations, was brought back
in irons. At last, at the fateful moment, he came
to his master and begged that he might be locked
up. “I am a brodyaga, heart and soul, quite irreclaimable,
and I cannot resist the cuckoo’s call.
.bn 196.png
.pn +1
Please do me the favour to put me under lock and
key so that I cannot go off.” He was closely confined
until the summer passed, and when the fever
of unrest left him, he was released and became quiet,
contented and docile as ever. A convict who has
earned conditional freedom and received a grant of
land, may have married, had children and lived
quietly for some years, when suddenly some day he
will have disappeared, abandoning wife and family,
to the stupefaction of everybody. Vagrancy is in
his blood. He probably was a deserter before his
conviction; the passion for wandering has always
possessed him. He has hungered after a change of
lot, and nothing would hold him, not even his
family, much less police surveillance or prison bars.
The largest number of these vagabonds, or “passportless”
men, as they are called, have begun at the
earliest opportunity to make a break for liberty
while on the road between the étapes. As the party
was being marshalled after the midday rest, or when
it reached some defile or stretch of broken ground,
a simultaneous dash was made by several through
the marching cordon of guards. Fire was then
opened instantaneously, and one or more of the
fugitives fell while the rest got away. If the rush
was made near some wood and cover could be
gained, the escape was successful. The first step
on reaching a safe shelter was to remove the leg
irons by pounding the basils into an oblong shape
with a stone. Then the fugitive’s face was turned
.bn 197.png
.pn +1
westward toward the Ural Mountains, and one or
two might by chance reach European Russia.
As a rule, they travel along byways and tracks
known only to themselves through the taiga, or primeval
forest, but they sometimes boldly appear upon
the great highways to Moscow. They are often to
be met with in couples or small bands, still in their
prison rags, skirting the forest and keeping near
the edge so as to hide quickly at the first alarm.
Before the days of the railway, they would engage
in conversation with friends in any passing party
of convicts on the march, and even dared to salute
the officers, who might know them perfectly but who
would not interfere with them. Life is often very
hard with them, but the Siberian peasants are
usually charitable, partly from religious feeling, but
not a little from fear, for the brodyaga is vindictive
and capable of showing his ill-will murderously.
The doors of dwelling houses are kept fast shut, but
food is often placed outside on the window-sill,—a
piece of bread and cheese or a bowl of thickened
milk. Sometimes the bath-house, at a little distance,
in a detached building, is left open to give a night’s
shelter, but it is dangerous to admit a tramp into
the main residence. Leo Deutsch tells the following
story of the unfortunate results of incaution. It
is from the lips of one of the principal actors.
“We’d been a few days on the road when one
stormy night we came to a village. It was pouring
in torrents, and we could find nobody who would
.bn 198.png
.pn +1
let us in, till at last an old man opened the door
of his hut. We begged him in God’s name to give
us shelter. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘will you promise to
leave us old folks in peace?‘ ‘What do you take
us for, grandfather?‘ said we. ‘Have pity on us!’
So he let us in, and the old woman gave us something
to eat, and they allowed us to lie on the stove
by turns. Well, they went to sleep and we just did
for them, and went off with everything that could
be of any use to us. We didn’t get far: the peasants
came after us and caught us; and then there
was the usual game: trial and sentence to penal
servitude.”
Frequently the recaptured brodyaga is sentenced
to only a few years’ penal servitude, when he was
originally sentenced for a much longer period, and
thus escape not only gives him freedom for a time,
but considerably lessens his punishment even after
a second or third trial. This is the result of the
impossibility of establishing the identity of persons
arrested without passports, but the difficulty has
largely disappeared in recent years with the more
systematic methods of photographing the convicts.
The brodyagi were Ishmaelites against whom
every hand was turned. The people of Siberia
showed them little mercy and constantly hunted
them down simply to rob them of anything they
possessed. It was better than chasing an antelope,
they said; the beast had only one skin, the convict
had two; his coat, his shirt, boots and clothes, and
.bn 199.png
.pn +1
something in his pockets. Again—quoting from
Deutsch—there was the case of a tramp who had
engaged himself as a labourer during the winter
months. When paid his wages, a mere pittance, he
wandered forth; his late master pursued him, shot
him from behind a bush and repossessed himself
of the money. The Siberian woods held many unrecognised
corpses, about whom no questions were
asked. Life is cheap in the great convict land.
With the advent of spring, when approaching
summer renders life in the woods bearable, the “free
commands,” comprising persons sentenced to simple
banishment or conditionally released, begin to overflow
into the forests, and a constant stream of fugitives
bent upon changing their lot sets westward.
The signal for the start is the first note of the
cuckoo; hence the prison synonym for an escape
is “to go to General ‘Kukushka’ for orders.” They
pass around Lake Baikal, climbing the high, barren
mountains that surround it, or they cross it on a
raft or empty fish cask. Their fires are to be seen
in the distance guiding the hunters who are out to
avenge some new outrage of the runaways.
It is estimated that the numbers of vagabonds at
large in the summer months exceed thirty thousand.
By far the larger part of these reappear at the convicts’
settlements when winter arrives. They are
not recognised and have steadfastly refused to recollect
their proper names, so one and all are provided
with the same appellation of “Ivan Dontremember,”—a
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
large family, and the name carries with
it the penalty of five years’ hard labour. When
deportation to Saghalien was later adopted on a
large scale, the hope was entertained that the fever
for escape would in a measure be cured by the difficulties
and dangers of the savage conditions of
that wild and distant land. The prison administration
strongly recommended that the most incorrigible
runaways should be interned on that convict
settlement, where, hemmed in by sea and ice, they
were cut off from the mainland of Asia and circumscribed
in their bids for freedom. The Saghalien
brodyagi, however, have been as active for evil and
as irrepressible as in Siberia; they have worked in
gangs, and rendered more desperate by the poverty
of the country and the greater difficulties of subsistence,
they have become more recklessly criminal.
Fugitives who had broken prison joined forces and
terrorised whole districts, attacking posts and settlements,
committing the worst outrages, and long
defying pursuit and recapture. More detailed accounts
of the prevailing lawlessness in Saghalien
belong to a later date.
The multiplication of escapes by the most desperate
characters in Siberia, and their almost inevitable
recapture and reconviction, developed some detestable
features in prison life. If anything were
needed to emphasise the misusage of the comparatively
innocent victims of Russian oppression, it will
be found in the permitted predominance of the worst
.bn 201.png
.pn +1
elements. The best were forever at the mercy of
the worst; the hardened miscreants ruled the prisons;
they might not be in the majority, but they
depended upon the strength that came with combination
of the truculent and masterful banded together.
Where convicts gathered together in any
number the first step was the organisation of the
artel, or “union,” which governed the rest with irresistible
despotism. In the days of marching by road
the union was generally formed at the first halting
place, when a starosta, or “chief,” was forthwith
elected by the prisoners from among their own
body, and nominally by the vote of the majority.
But the decision lay really with the “Ivans,” the
recidivists who had been in exile before; the old,
experienced rogues and vagabonds, who imposed
their will upon their comrades through their nominee.
It was the ruthless rule of a secret oligarchy,
wielding despotic and irresponsible power entirely
in its own interests. The individual prisoner sacrificed
his personal rights to gain the protection of the
association which pretended to stand between him
and the authorities. The union had funds acquired
by means of a tax assessed on the whole body, and
from other sources of revenue, such as the sale by
auction to the highest bidder of the privilege of
keeping a sutler’s shop where tea, sugar and white
bread were sold openly, and where tobacco, playing
cards and intoxicating liquor might be secretly purchased.
.bn 202.png
.pn +1
The will of the artel was law; its functions were
far-reaching and its authority absolute over all the
members. It worked secretly and out of sight, securing
its ends by astute devices and a free use of
bribes to officers and soldiers, and by utilising the
knowledge that it was backed up by the whole number
of prisoners. Among its duties were concerting
plans of escape with the requisite assistance; the
suborning of the executioner to flog lightly; the
hiring of telyegas and sleighs for conveyance by
the road of those who could pay for the privilege,
frequently to the exclusion of the really weak and
suffering; the bribery of all officials; and the enforcement
of all contracts and agreements among
the prisoners. It had its own unwritten code, its
own standard of honour and obligation, its own
penalties. A member might commit almost any
crime, provided he was loyal and obedient to the
organisation; if he betrayed it or revealed its secrets,
no matter under what compulsion, he was
already a dead man. The whole continent of Asia
could not hide or save the unfaithful exile. If condemned
by the pitiless tribunal, his fate would certainly
overtake him somehow, somewhere, even at
a long distance from the scene of his offence. The
traitors might secure the protection of the authorities
and live altogether in the strictest solitude, but
immunity was only secured for a time. The blow
would fall eventually. Kennan quotes two cases,
in one of which the victim was choked to death on
.bn 203.png
.pn +1
board a convict steamer on the voyage to Saghalien,
and in the other, he was found dead, with his throat
cut, in a Caucasian étape.
The chief of the union was a person of great importance;
he had the whole strength of the society
at his back and was the recognised intermediary
with the authorities. An astute convoy officer
would enter into relations with him, and in return
for a promise that no escapes would be attempted,
winked at the removal of leg irons on the road,
which, as has been said, the wearer could always
accomplish by altering the shape of the anklets.
Even a high official, no less a personage than the
inspector-general of exiles, would make a cash contribution
to the funds of the artel to secure this same
promise. If any daring convict should then escape,
the union was eager to effect the recapture, either
of the actual fugitive or of some runaway found at
large. The ultimate fate of the fugitive has already
been indicated.
The artel, acting through its leaders, the “Ivans,”
who helped the starosta to his place and practically
controlled him, claimed the right to enforce the strict
observance of the agreements made between convicts,
and especially in regard to “swops,” or the
exchange of identities, with all the attributes and
responsibilities attaching to each. In recent years,
great pains have been taken to prevent this by such
means as the obligation to carry photographs and
personal description which are constantly compared
.bn 204.png
.pn +1
with the individual. But the exchanges were long
made with impunity, facilitated by the loose system
prevailing. Every marching party consisted of two
principal classes; the convicts sentenced to imprisonment
with hard labour, and the ssylny, sentenced
to exile only as forced colonists. The penalties are
quite unequal, and many of those doomed to suffer
the most severe would be glad to exchange positions
with the colonists when any could be induced to accept
the heavier burden. There were many such;
it was only a question of price, and that was not
generally high; often a ridiculously small compensation
sufficed and the bargain was soon made.
There are in every exile party a number of abject
creatures, degraded gamblers, who have lost their
clothing (government property) and mortgaged
their food allowance for weeks ahead, and who will
sell their souls for a few rubles and a bottle of vodka.
Such a creature will listen greedily to the overtures
of the more prosperous convict, who has won or
saved money on the road, and who tempts with
splendid offers: a warm overcoat, five rubles and
a few glasses of drink as the price of his personality.
The bribe is backed up by specious arguments. The
new convict might console himself with the thought
that he need not remain long at hard labour. When
duly arrived at his destination in the mining settlements,
or at some great prison, he had only to declare
that he was not the man he pretended to be.
He would confess, in fact, that he had fraudulently
.bn 205.png
.pn +1
exchanged with another, whom he named but who
could not be found. The first act of the sham exile
would be to escape from the village in which he was
interned and to get lost in the taiga. The false convict
might be held for a time and subjected to a
severe flogging and a term of imprisonment, after
which he could count upon release as an ordinary
exile.
This is no fanciful story. Cases were of constant
occurrence. Leo Deutsch, when on his way to the
Kara mines, was seriously approached by a comrade
on the march, who suggested an exchange and
showed unblushingly how it might be carried out.
This man was a veteran “Ivan,” a criminal aristocrat
and dandy among his fellows; he wore a white
shirt with a gay tie under his gray overcoat, and a
brightly coloured scarf round his waist, to which
his chains were cleverly attached so that they did
not rattle or incommode him when walking. The
suggestion was nothing less than a cold-blooded
murder. The substitute to be provided was to have
some personal resemblance to Deutsch, and would
take his place with the other politicals one day, and
disappear the next. When his body should be picked
up presently in a neighbouring stream, it would be
supposed that Deutsch had committed suicide, while
in reality, still alive and hearty, he was to be disguised
as the substitute who had been permanently
“removed” to make a place for him. The price of
this atrocity was a few rubles, twenty or thirty at
.bn 206.png
.pn +1
most, and the blood money was to be divided among
the murderers, with a large contribution to the revenues
of the union.
It was to the interest of the artel to encourage
these exchanges and insist upon their punctual performance.
The substitute was never permitted to
back out of his bargain. He generally belonged to
the class contemptuously styled “biscuits,” and the
name suited these pale, emaciated creatures, the
pariahs of the party, upon whom fell all the dirty,
disagreeable jobs. These poor wretches had lost all
power of will, and cared for nothing but the cards
that had been their ruin. They stole all they could
lay their hands on, except from the “Ivans,” who
would have retaliated with a murderous thrashing,
justified on the ground that the thief had stolen from
his own people. The condition of these “biscuits”
was heart-rending, especially in bad weather, when,
clothed in rags that barely covered their nakedness,
they ran rather than walked on the line of march
so as to keep themselves warm. Their only pleasure
was in gambling, when anything and everything was
staked, even the government clothing for which they
were responsible and for losing which they were
punished cruelly.
Next in importance to the chief, the storekeeper
was a prominent official in the union. He had
bought his place, bidding the highest price for it
when put up at auction, and he had acquired the
exclusive right to sell provisions to the prisoners,
.bn 207.png
.pn +1
and to supply them secretly with tobacco, spirits and
playing cards. The last mentioned were in constant
use and the games were eagerly watched.
When a winner was lucky, it was customary for him
to stand treat to his starving comrades. The storekeeper
also, on the expiration of his office, would
entertain everyone with a feast when the prisoners
would hungrily eat their fill, crying, “It is the storekeeper
who pays.”
There is now, however, little chance of any such
extended organisation among the convicts on the
journey or in the forwarding prisons. The officials
have learned how to prevent and break up such combinations
and more recent regulations have rendered
them inoperative. So the old brodyagi must lament
for the good old days and the power that they once
exercised.
Some curious details of the organisation of the
artel in the Middle Kara, or state prison for politicals,
are given by Leo Deutsch. It was formed for
domestic administration and was worked fairly and
equitably for the general good. Coöperation was
the leading principle. All issues of food, the daily
rations for the whole number, were collected and
afterward divided with such additions as were provided
out of a common fund obtained by general
contribution of moneys received by prisoners from
their friends at home. This fund was expended in
three ways: one part went to the “stock pot” as
explained above, to supplement the food; a second
.bn 208.png
.pn +1
was applied to help prisoners about to be released;
and the third was divided as pocket money among
the whole number, to be spent according to individual
taste, in buying small luxuries or books approved
by the authorities. The starosta kept strict account;
no actual money passed hands; paper orders circulated
and were debited to each member on a monthly
balance sheet, with the result brought out as “plus”
or “minus.” It was the same as in ordinary life;
some thriftless people were always in debt; the
impecunious hoped to get clear at Christmas time
when gifts came in, but if still on the wrong side,
the “minus” was “whitewashed” by the consent
of the artel but not always with the concurrence of
the debtor, who was sometimes too proud to accept
the favour.
Under this union, life in common was admirably
organised, with a division of labour and a regular
roster of employment. Work was of two classes;
for private purposes, and for the general good. The
former included washing of clothes and mending,
the latter cooking, cleaning, attending to the steam
bath and the various domestic services. No pains
were spared to insure cleanliness. All rooms occupied
by the prisoners were scrupulously washed and
kept tidy; the bed-boards and floors were regularly
scrubbed with hot water; the beds were aired;
tables and benches were washed in the yard; all
sanitary appliances were thoroughly disinfected.
Proper ventilation was insisted upon, and close attention
.bn 209.png
.pn +1
was paid to hygienic conditions. All worked
cheerfully, and illness only was allowed as an exemption.
The cooking was done by groups of five
each which served for a week at a time. A head
cook, an assistant cook for invalids, and two helpers
made up the group. This was hard work, fatiguing
while it lasted, but a relief to the monotonous
life. The kitchen became a sort of club-house,
where men came to laugh and jest and play practical
jokes, a pleasant change in their gruesome existence.
The dietary was meagre and little varied on account
of dearth of materials. Thin soup and black bread
was the staple food, but the soup-meat was often
served as a separate dish with great ingenuity, a
favourite method being to mince it with groats.
This dish was nicknamed “Every-one-likes-it,” and
it was joyfully welcomed on the days it appeared
on the bill of fare. Another favourite dish was the
pirog, a sort of “resurrection pie,” containing
scraps saved up during the week. Except on rare
holidays, when roast meat and white bread were
supplied out of the fund, the food was neither nutritious
nor appetising. But many of the cooks were
skilful,—worthy, as the prisoners declared, of
“better houses.” The cook’s perquisite was the
issue of a rather increased portion of food.
Certain officials were appointed by the artel. A
“bread issuer” cut up the loaves and served them
out to the different rooms; it was his duty also to
collect the scraps, even to the crumbs, and send them
.bn 210.png
.pn +1
to the “free command,” where ex-prisoners in semi-liberation
resided; and the pieces helped to feed the
horses and two cows, the property of the union.
There was a poultry man, too, who took charge of
the fowls, which were raised and tended most carefully.
Two bath-keepers were in charge of the
steam bath, the one luxury in the prison, indulgence
in which once a week afforded a short period of delightful
ease and comfort. What the bath meant to
the convicts in the Omsk ostrog has already been
described.
One of the most important offices was that of
librarian of the prison. He was elected by ballot.
By degrees the library at Kara had reached a large
number of volumes, partly brought in by prisoners,
partly sent from Russia, always with permission.
It contained many standard works in several languages;
history, mathematics and natural science
were largely represented; the books were well cared
for and cleverly rebound by self-taught workmen.
The librarian at Kara was long a political named
Vladimir Tchuikov, a youth who had been condemned
to twenty years’ hard labour for being in
correspondence with a remarkable woman revolutionist,
who was long buried alive in the Schlüsselburg
fortress. It was also charged against him that
he was found in possession of implements for printing
and manufacturing false passports, and of a list
of subscriptions to the journal, Will of the People.
As a librarian he was invaluable; he had a prodigious
.bn 211.png
.pn +1
memory and could indicate any article on any
given subject which had appeared in a certain work
or pile of newspapers.
Leo Deutsch describes the effect made upon him
by Tchuikov at their first meeting. “I noted their
youthful but worn faces (Tchuikov and Spandoni);
both of them wore spectacles and on their heads
were round caps with no brims. With their yellow
sheepskins and rattling chains, my comrades gave
one the impression that they could not be real convicts,
but were just dressed up for the part—so
great was the contrast between their refined faces
and behaviour and this uncouth disguise.”
Other officials under this coöperative association
were the general “dividers,” one for each room,
whose duty was to parcel out with great care every
atom of food, and especially the tid-bits arriving
from friends, which he divided honourably and exactly.
He was also the carver for the room. As
has been said, the utmost generosity prevailed; no
prisoner claimed to retain any gifts he received
from outside; all linen, clothing, and boots were
handed over to the chief, and their final possession
was decided by lot, their nature being first declared,
so that any one in need might put in a claim to draw
for them.
Some further details of the common life at this
time in the Middle Kara state prison will be found
interesting. All the inmates were more or less acquainted
with one another; all were comrades devoted
.bn 212.png
.pn +1
to a common cause. Youth was a general
characteristic, and its buoyancy and sanguine spirit
animated every one. Light-hearted conversation,
with jokes and laughter, were not unknown; free
association was not forbidden; the prisoners were
not locked up singly or confined to a particular room,
but were at liberty to run to and fro exchanging
ideas and sometimes news when it came in, which
was but rarely.
Each room had its nickname, the survival of a
dim and distant past. One was called the “Sanhedrin,”
another the “Yakutsk,” a third the “Volost,”
and a fourth the “Nobles’ room.” There was always
a large contingent of clever and well educated
young men among the politicals, but the popular
idea of the lesser officials that they were all nobles,
princes and counts was ridiculously far-fetched.
Still, they profited by the civility and consideration
accorded to them. Many were deeply read; many
were members of the universities who were eager
to improve themselves. Some of them were known
as “Siriuses,” a prison name given to the ardent
students, who worked in the middle of the night,
taking advantage of the hours of perfect stillness
broken only by the snores of the sleepers. The
“Sirius” turned in early in the evening when the
noisy chatter of many voices was disturbing to
study, but he could sleep through it and, waking at
midnight, would light the shaded lamp at his table
and work till dawn. Then when Sirius, star of the
.bn 213.png
.pn +1
morning, arose, he again took a short rest for a
couple of hours.
The attainments of these students sometimes
reached a high standard; they were proficient in
metaphysics, abstruse mathematics, or languages,
and professors in each of these branches were glad
to take pupils. Marvellous skill in handicrafts was
also acquired, mainly from books of technical instruction,
and lessons in theory were admirably applied
in practice. One clever workman constructed
a pocket lathe out of a few old rusty nails, and by
its help fashioned all the parts of a clock which kept
good time, although he was no watchmaker. The
possession of the tools required for these productions
was forbidden by the rules, and they were kept
out of sight when the regular searches and inspections
were made. When the rules in this respect
were relaxed, there was a great development in arts
and crafts, a vise was set up in one of the rooms,
and an amateur photographer opened a regular
studio.
A mechanical genius, an original and inventive
character, was prominent among the politicals at
this period. He was Leo Zlatopolski, a student of
the Technological Institute of St. Petersburg, who
had joined the revolutionary party and through his
mechanical skill had been of great assistance in the
manufacture of bombs. Prison seclusion had stimulated
his inventive powers. He designed a flying
machine and planned a circular town, in which
.bn 214.png
.pn +1
everything was to be run by electricity, but he did
not despise working for the improvement of domestic
appliances, such as new schemes for the boiling
of potatoes and the making of shoes. He had advanced
theories for the heating of dwellings; he
invented new games of cards and aspired to regenerate
and reorganise daily life. But none of his
schemes were practical, and his comrades made him
their butt, although he was really a very capable
and learned man. The activity and productiveness
of the political prisoners reminds us of the same
qualities exhibited in the Omsk ostrog as described
by Dostoyevski.
Other amusements were much indulged in during
the more troublous times. Chess was played in the
long, dismal, and monotonous hours, and by first
class performers who had studied the game scientifically.
There were well-contested tournaments, the
result of which excited lively interest. Music was
greatly cultivated, and the prison choir had a large
repertory of the now widely popular Russian composers.
One of the gifted handicraftsmen constructed
a very passable violin which was constantly
in use, and less ambitious performers were proficient
with the simple hair-comb. Physical exercise was
obtained within the prison enclosure during the
winter on snow slides, after the fashion of the
modern toboggan at fashionable winter resorts in
Europe.
The relegation of political offenders to the Kara
.bn 215.png
.pn +1
mines began in 1873, but did not become a regular
practice till 1879, when the terrorists’ propaganda
seriously alarmed the Russian government. It was
then resolved to subject the worst cases to penal
servitude under the same painful conditions as
common criminals, with whom they worked side by
side at the gold placers. This was no child’s play,
but it was not unendurable. On the contrary, the
daily egress from prison for six or eight hours into
sunshine and open air was much appreciated. For
some time the supreme power at Kara was wielded
by the humane and rightly esteemed Colonel Kanonovich,
during whose mild régime the prisoners enjoyed
the privileges detailed above. But with the
changed temper of the government and the increased
severity decreed, Colonel Kanonovich proved restive
and declined to give effect to the new orders. He
had already protested against some of the penalties
enforced, especially that of chaining to wheelbarrows,
and although he was unable to abolish it or
relieve those subjected to it without permission
from St. Petersburg, he gave orders that whenever
he visited the prisons all suffering that inhumane
punishment should be released from the wheelbarrows
for the time so that his eyes might not be
offended by the sight.
This savage and abominable practice, although
discontinued on the Siberian continent, is still authorised
by law, and is constantly inflicted at Saghalien
on convicts condemned to a life sentence.
.bn 216.png
.pn +1
The penalty consists in making a prisoner fast to a
small miner’s wheelbarrow by means of a chain
attached to the middle link of the leg irons. While
the chain is long enough to allow of freedom of
movement, the victim cannot take any exercise, nor
cross his cell without trundling his wheelbarrow in
front of him. One political offender, Shchedrin,
indignant at the gross misconduct of Colonel
Soliviof, adjutant to the governor-general of Trans-Baikal,
struck him in the face. This man was sentenced
to the wheelbarrow and was sent back to
Russia to be imprisoned in the Schlüsselburg. He
travelled across Asia fastened to his wheelbarrow,
even when in a vehicle. When jolted on the rough
roads, he was so much bruised by his barrow that
it was found necessary to unchain him and lash the
implement behind the cart, and this strange spectacle
was witnessed by many. Shchedrin became insane
in the “stonebags” of Schlüsselburg, and he
died eventually in an insane asylum. At night it
was necessary to hoist the wheelbarrow into such
a position as to allow the sleeper to lie alongside.
A high-souled, chivalrous man of the stamp of
Colonel Kanonovich could not bear to witness the
miseries of his charges unmoved. He was not a
revolutionist, nor in sympathy with the reforming
spirit, but he was willing to admit that many of the
political offenders were disinterested patriots and
that there were among them numbers of refined
and cultivated men and women. He treated them,
.bn 217.png
.pn +1
as I have tried to show, with kindness and consideration,
and sought to lighten and brighten their
grievous lot. When at last he saw that he was to
be employed as an intermediary for the infliction
of fresh tortures, he resolved to resign rather than
be responsible for them. He wrote boldly to his
superiors saying he was not a hangman, and that
he would not do violence to his feelings by enforcing
the cruel orders recently issued. When his
resignation was accepted, and he was recalled to
St. Petersburg, he was sharply taken to task by
Governor-General Anuchin as he passed through
Irkutsk.
“No one holding your views,” said this great
official, “could expect to retain his appointment as
chief of the Kara prisons and mines. I question
whether any one like you can hold a post in the
government service.” “Very well,” was the sturdy
reply, “then I will get out of it forthwith. The
government has imposed an impossible duty on me,
and I cannot perform it and keep an approving conscience.”
Colonel Kanonovich fortunately had many influential
friends, and the accusations brought against
him could not injure him permanently. He was an
officer of the Cossacks and was appointed to another
command in the Trans-Baikal, and later promoted
to be a general officer, in charge of the enlarged
penal colony of Saghalien. He also supervised the
erection of the new Verkhni Udinsk prison, in which
.bn 218.png
.pn +1
a praiseworthy and conspicuous effort at reform was
subsequently made. The building of the political
prison at Middle Kara was under his direction, but
he left just before it was occupied and was in no
wise responsible for the atrocities committed there.
.bn 219.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER VIII | TREATMENT OF POLITICALS
.pm start_descr
Withdrawal of privileges accorded to politicals—Lunatics
confined in association with other prisoners—Suicides—Many
escapes attempted—Fresh deprivations—The politicals
separated and confined in common prisons of the Kara
district—Subjected to “dungeon conditions”—Much disease—Finally
transferred to the state prison—Hunger
strike which lasted thirteen days—Some remarkable female
revolutionists—A hunger strike instituted by the women—Attempts
to pacify them—The resignation of the governor
Masyukov demanded—Madame Sigida strikes Masyukov in
the face—Subjected to flogging and dies—Three of her
companions commit suicide—Thirteen of the men determine
to put an end to their lives—Governors, good and
bad—Deutsch’s account of Nikolin’s régime—The atrocities
committed by the governor Patrin at Saghalien.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
The changed attitude of the government toward
the state prisoners at Kara dated, as we have said,
from the end of the year 1880, under the initiative of
Loris Melikov, and this action, so inconsistent with
his supposed views as a liberal minister, has never
been explained. Kennan suggests that it was caused
by bad advice, carelessly adopted. But, as Leo
Deutsch tells us, the harsh régime was introduced at
a time when the revolutionary agitation had revived
in great strength, and the dominant bureaucracy was
.bn 220.png
.pn +1
more than ever on the defensive, ready to wreak its
revengeful feelings upon the captives it held in durance.
In any case, the orders issued evidenced a
retrograde policy and a revival of the old methods
of repression with new punishments superadded.
All existing privileges, even the most trivial, were
withdrawn. A peremptory stop was put to all correspondence
with relatives and friends; work in the
open air for ordinary criminal convicts was forbidden;
and all the politicals who had finished their
sentences of imprisonment and were living in the
“free command” were again immured, with the old
inflictions of leg irons and half shaved heads. At
three days’ notice they were sent back to prison,
many of them leaving their wives and children alone
and unprotected in a vicious and disorderly penal
settlement.
When they reëntered they were herded with the
rest in the new political prison at or near the Kara
Lower Diggings, a building somewhat better than
those for common criminals, being larger, more
spacious and better lighted, with four kameras, each
warmed with a brick oven and provided with the
conventional nary or sleeping platforms. At first
the windows looked out upon the valley, an open if
not very picturesque prospect. This was the case
in other prisons for all criminal convicts, but it did
not please Governor-General Anuchin, who ordered
the whole place to be shut in by a high stockade.
“A prison is not a palace,” he cynically declared,
.bn 221.png
.pn +1
as he condemned his fellow creatures to be deprived
of all view and restricted in the matter of light.
Anuchin, in his report to the Czar, dated two years
later, admits that the life of state criminals was
“unbearable,” but quite forgot how far he himself
contributed to their sufferings.
Under the brutal system in force, insane companions,
often raging lunatics, were confined with the
rest. There were no asylums in Siberia, and the insane
lived in association with the sane, adding much
to the miseries of both. “In more than one place
in the Trans-Baikal we were startled,” says Kennan,
“as we entered a crowded prison kamera, by
some uncared-for lunatic, who sprang suddenly
toward us with a wild cry or with a burst of hysterical
laughter.... It is easier and cheaper to make
the prison comrades of a lunatic take care of him
than to keep him in seclusion and provide him with
an attendant. For educated political prisoners, who
dread insanity more than anything else, it is, of
course, terribly depressing to have constantly before
them, in the form of a wrecked intelligence, an illustration
of the possible end of their own existence.”
Several painful episodes soon followed the recommittal
of the “free command” to prison. One was
the suicide of Eugene Semyanovski, a young journalist
connected with the underground journal Onward,
who had gained his conditional freedom and
lost it. He left a letter to his father bemoaning his
hard fate, written the night before his reëntry to
.bn 222.png
.pn +1
prison, and shot himself in his bed. Another political
hanged himself in the prison bath-house, and
a third poisoned himself by drinking water in which
he had soaked lucifer matches. Another most affecting
incident was the mental failure of Madame
Kovalevskaya, a brilliant woman, who had been
actively concerned in the revolutionary propaganda
as the only means of securing free institutions in the
empire. She was sentenced to penal servitude at
Kara, where she presently joined the “free command.”
Her husband was also exiled, but was sent
to Minusinsk in Eastern Siberia, so that no less than
a thousand miles intervened between the pair. Their
only child had been left behind at Kiev in Russia.
Madame Kovalevskaya’s insanity declared itself
after she went back to Kara prison and while Colonel
Kanonovich was still in command, and she was
then allowed to join her husband, but after partial
recovery she was returned to Kara. Eventually,
after the cowardly oppression of her comrades, she
committed suicide.
Another consequence of the increased severity in
the treatment of politicals was their widespread determination
to break prison. Many escapes were
attempted, and although they were for the most part
frustrated, the feeling of unrest was so general that
the authorities resolved to use more severe methods
of coercion. A high official stated that they meant
“to reduce the prison to order and give the politicals
a lesson.” Daily life was made more and more
.bn 223.png
.pn +1
irksome; privileges, great and small, were withdrawn;
all books were removed; money, underclothing,
beds and bedding were taken from them;
they might possess nothing more than the bare necessaries
allowed to ordinary convicts. But worse
than all, the whole number, kept hitherto in one
prison, was broken up into small parties and distributed
among the various common prisons of the
Kara district, where they were to be treated under
“dungeon conditions.” This treatment meant more
than the deprivation of small luxuries as above mentioned;
it also entailed the loss of all exercise in the
open air or communication with the outside, and a
diet of only black rye bread and water, with sometimes
a little broth thickened with barley.
The removal was made forcibly. Cossacks were
concentrated at the Lower Diggings in anticipation
of resistance, or perhaps to provoke it, and suddenly
a descent was made upon the prison in the dead of
night. A strong, armed force marched into the
prison with bayonets fixed, and seized the poor politicals
as they were roused from sleep. They were
stripped, searched, driven forth with blows and
otherwise cruelly maltreated. The next morning,
having been robbed and despoiled of all their private
possessions, they were marched off under escorts to
the other Kara prisons. They marched continuously
for ten miles without food or drink, or a halt for
rest, and one man who was chained to a wheelbarrow
rolled it all the way. Goaded to desperation,
.bn 224.png
.pn +1
those prisoners who were not ironed attacked the
Cossacks with stones, but they were speedily overpowered.
They arrived in a state of utter exhaustion
at the common prisons, and were lodged two
and two in “secret” cells, hitherto employed only
for the safe custody of the worst criminals, which
were bare rooms with no more furniture than the
open parasha, or bucket, and with only the stone
floor to sleep on.
These essentially “dungeon conditions” spent in
the secret cells of the ordinary criminals were continued
for two months, and at length the health of
the politicals became grievously impaired. Foul air,
insufficient food, close confinement and the lack of
all exercise brought on an epidemic of scurvy, which
resulted in serious illnesses in many cases. They
were still without underclothing, bedding or nourishing
food, although the authorities held prisoners’
moneys out of which the cost might have been defrayed.
All the politicals were then transferred to
the Lower Diggings, and lodged in the new cells of
the state prison. Seven or eight prisoners were
crowded into a narrow space obtained by dividing
each kamera into three parts by the creation of partitions.
The sleeping platform nearly filled each interior
and left little standing room, and the pollution
of the air was “simply maddening.” Protest and
remonstrance were continuous, and only ceased
when threats of flogging were made, a form of
punishment never yet inflicted on politicals.
.bn 225.png
.pn +1
At length the unhappy victims of such savage
repression had recourse to a “hunger strike,” the
last terrible weapon of the otherwise helpless prisoners.
It is a strange and almost incomprehensible
fact that the Russian prison authorities have always
yielded to the pressure exercised by a number of
prisoners resolutely determined to starve themselves
to death. Our deepest sympathy must be accorded
to the great courage that inspires this last appeal
against intolerable cruelties. We admire and understand
it, but are amazed that it should be so effectual
with the brutal and otherwise insensible oppressors.
When the much wronged politicals delivered their
ultimatum, the authorities at first received it with
indifference, but soon became anxious and at length
despairing, as the refusal to take food was steadfastly
persisted in. Not a morsel of sustenance was
taken. “As day after day passed, the stillness of
death gradually settled down upon the prison. The
starving convicts, too weak and apathetic even to
talk to one another, lay in rows, like dead men, upon
the plank sleeping platforms, and the only sounds
heard in the building were the footsteps of the sentries,
and now and then the incoherent mutterings
of the insane.”
Overtures were made and amelioration in their
condition was promised; fears of flogging were
ridiculous, the officials said, and nothing of the kind
had been contemplated. But the strike continued,
for the strikers had no confidence in the plausible
.bn 226.png
.pn +1
assurances of the governor. On the tenth day of
starvation, the state of affairs was desperate. The
indomitable sufferers had reached the last stage of
physical exhaustion, and release by death seemed
close at hand. The struggle was anxiously watched
from St. Petersburg. Telegrams passed daily between
the local authorities and the minister of the
interior, who could only suggest medical intervention,
which does not seem to have been tried beyond
feeling pulses and taking the bodily temperatures.
The wives of the strikers were finally granted the
unusual privilege of an interview, on condition that
they would implore their husbands to take food.
These loving entreaties, backed by fresh promises
from the commandant, finally overcame the resolution
of the politicals, and on the thirteenth day of
abstention the great hunger strike ended.
The physical endurance called forth by a hunger
strike has been well described by Leo Deutsch, who
was driven to refuse food by his ill-usage in the
Odessa prison in the early stages of his sentence.
His well-known character for sturdy defiance had
so disturbed the prison authorities that they had
taken extraordinary precautions to secure him, by
lodging him in a dark underground cell, with no
bedding except straw infested with rats, and no
ventilation. He decided to starve himself in protest.
They threatened to feed him artificially; he retorted
that he knew how to bring on sickness. Then they
listened to his very justifiable protest, and on the
.bn 227.png
.pn +1
fourth day he ended his strike. He says, “It was
only when I began to eat that I realised how fearfully
hungry I was. I could have devoured an ox....
During the two following days I felt very
seedy, as though I had had a bad illness.”
Hunger strikes were more especially the weapon
of the weaker sex, although there was no weakness
among the women revolutionists, and the movement
owed much of its vigour and vitality to their indomitable
courage and unconquerable strength of
character. In the days to come, when the great,
patient people of a cruelly oppressed and misgoverned
land have achieved its emancipation, ample
justice must be done to the feminine champions, who
entered boldly into the fray and fought strenuously
for the vindication of the rights of their fellow countrymen
to freedom and independence. Many of
their names will then be honoured and revered with
the greatest of those known to history. Russian
women of all stations, and some of them of the
highest rank, have won the admiration of the whole
world, for their disregard of self, the sacrifice of
all ease and comfort, and the braving of the worst
dangers and the most poignant sufferings in their
constant efforts to oppose political slavery. We may
be inclined to quarrel with their methods, overlooking
the greatness of their provocation, and believing
that nothing could justify the violent means
adopted, but we cannot withhold our sympathy for
the ardent souls who have dared employ them.
.bn 228.png
.pn +1
Some of the most remarkable female revolutionists
were concerned with the hunger strikes in Eastern
Siberia and were victims of the methods inflicted
in retaliation of outraged discipline. There were
those who emulated the crime of Vera Zassulich,
who in 1878 tried, but failed, to shoot General Trepov,
the chief of the St. Petersburg police, for ordering
the corporal punishment of a political prisoner.
Madame Kutitonskaya fired at General
Ilyashevich, the governor of the Trans-Baikal, to
avenge the intolerable ill-usage of the political prisoners
on the 11th of May, 1882. Madame Hope
Sigida struck Colonel Masyukov in the face, to
shame him into withdrawing from Kara, where he
was commandant of the political prisons, and where
his indignant female charges had boycotted him, insisting
upon his removal. Madame Elizabeth Kovalskaya
deliberately showed her contempt for the
governor-general of the Amur, Baron Korv, by refusing
to rise in his presence, and was in consequence
removed to the central prison in Verkhni-Udinsk.
The lives and antecedents of some of these female
exiles who suffered so bitterly for their opinions,
merit special notice. Maria Kutitonskaya was a
pupil in a girls’ school at Odessa and joined the revolutionists
while still a young girl. She was arrested
with Lisogub, a wealthy man who lived in extreme
poverty in order to devote his fortune to the revolutionary
funds, and she was condemned to four years’
.bn 229.png
.pn +1
hard labour. Madame Kutitonskaya was the uncompromising
foe of the prison officials and constantly
resisted the irksome rules imposed. With
three other women, Mesdames Kovalevskaya,
and Elena Rossikova, she was removed to
Irkutsk and there got into contest with the chief of
the police, against whom they organised a hunger
strike in which they persisted for ten or eleven days,
until the prison doctor grew alarmed and representation
was made to the governor of the district who
brought the police officer to reason.
Madame Kutitonskaya was a lady of great personal
attractions, with fair face and winning manner,
and was greatly admired. After her attempt
to assassinate General Ilyashevich, she was closely
confined on bread and water in a damp, gloomy
dungeon. The ordinary convicts brought her food,
fell at her feet and christened her “Cupidon Skaya,”
as a pet name in recognition of her beauty. The
story of her murderous attack is told in full by
Kennan.
“Stirred to the very depths of her soul by a feeling
of intense indignation” at the shameful ill-treatment
of the politicals at Kara, she did not hesitate
to sacrifice her life and that of her unborn child
by committing a deed that must give publicity to
the wrongs she and her companions had suffered.
When interned in the town of Aksha in the Trans-Baikal
district, she purchased a small revolver from
a released criminal colonist, ran away from her place
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
of banishment and made for Chita, where the governor
resided. She was too pretty to travel alone
without attracting attention and when she reached
Chita she was arrested. At the police station she
did not deny her identity but pleaded that she was
eager to have an interview with the governor. Accordingly,
she was detained in the reception room
while a message was sent to Ilyashevich which
brought the general to her. They had neglected to
search her, and she held her revolver ready cocked
under a handkerchief as the governor entered, shooting
him forthwith through the lungs. The wound
was not mortal, and the assailant was promptly
seized and carried off to the Chita prison.
Her subsequent treatment was abominable. She
was lodged in a “secret” cell, cold, dark, dirty, too
short to allow her to lie down at full length, and
too low to permit her to stand upright. Her own
dress and underclothing were taken from her, contrary
to the usual treatment of women politicals,
and a ragged petticoat infested with vermin was
given her in exchange. Despite her condition, she
was obliged to lie for three months without bed-clothing
on the bare floor. Serious illness seized
her, and she begged at least for a little straw to
sleep on; it was contemptuously denied her. But
for the succour brought by her criminal comrades,
she could not have survived until her trial. This at
last took place before a court-martial, and she was
sentenced to be hanged. Had she made known her
.bn 231.png
.pn +1
pregnancy, it might have gained her a reprieve, but
she forbore to speak, although she suffered bitterly
at the prospect of becoming the murderess of her
unborn child. The feeling was intensified by the
dreadful thought that it might remain alive after
she had died. The question was solved by the unexpected
leniency of the government, by whom the
death penalty was commuted to penal servitude for
life at the creditable intercession of her intended
victim. She was then removed in mid-winter to
Irkutsk, and would have been entirely unprovided
with warm clothing but for the charity of her criminal
comrades, who gave her felt boots and a sheepskin
overcoat. The immediate result of her treatment
was the birth of a still-born child, and she herself
succumbed eventually to lung trouble.
Madame Kovalevskaya is described by Deutsch,
who knew her well, as one of the most notable
women in the revolutionary movement. She was
the daughter of a landed proprietor named Vorontsov,
her brother was Basil Vorontsov, a well known
political economist, and she married Kovalevskaya,
a tutor in a gymnasium of Kiev. She had thrown
in her lot with the advanced party in the early sixties,
and she devoted herself constantly to the work.
In appearance she was short in stature, gipsy-like
in appearance, alert and energetic in manner, keen
witted, ready and logical in speech. She took the
lead in theoretical discussions, imparting life and
spirit into debate without becoming personal or
.bn 232.png
.pn +1
hurting people’s feelings. Her gifts were exceptional;
she was a brilliant creature born to play a
distinguished part in society. At an early age she
had opened a peasant school and sought to improve
the mental condition of the poorer classes. Her
efforts soon drew upon her the attention of the
police, and she was harried and thwarted by them
until they drove her into the ranks of the revolutionary
party. The circle in Kiev to which she belonged
was broken up, its members were arrested
and she and her husband were exiled to Siberia.
Her fiery and uncompromising temper kept her in
constant antagonism with the authorities, and her
active protest against the ill-treatment of her comrade
politicals brought her prominently to the front,
with the fatal consequences already described.
Of her three friends, one, Madame Kutitonskaya,
has been mentioned; a second was Sophia Bogomoletz,
whose maiden name was Prisyetskaya, and who
was the daughter of a rich landowner of Poltava.
She had graduated at a medical school in St. Petersburg
and, having married a doctor, threw herself
ardently into revolutionary work. She was arrested
as a member of the South Russian Workmen’s
Union and was sent to ten years’ hard labour in
Siberia with a companion, Madame Kovalskaya.
They escaped from the Irkutsk prison but were recaptured
in a few weeks, before they could leave
the city. When brought back, the customary search
was personally supervised by Colonel Soliviov,
.bn 233.png
.pn +1
an adjutant of the governor-general and a
man of vicious character, and by his order the two
women were stripped naked before him. After this
disgrace to humanity and the uniform he wore, he
went immediately to one of the men’s wards and
boasted of the shameful deed, adding contemptuously,
“Your political women are not much to look
at.” Whereupon one of those present, Shchedrin,
who had been a school-teacher before sentence,
struck the brute upon the mouth, calling him coward
and liar. For this violent protest Shchedrin was
condemned to be chained perpetually to a wheelbarrow
as already described.
Madame Bogomoletz was punished with an additional
five years’ penal sentence, to be passed as
a “probationer” prisoner, serving the full term
without the remission granted to others, and with
no prospect of the “time of alleviation” or that of
conditional release. She was quite indomitable, and
looked upon all prison officials as her natural enemies
to whom she would make no compromise and
yield no obedience. Nothing deterred her, no fear
of punishment, threats, or infliction of the most irksome
conditions, and the whole staff trembled before
her.
Elena Rossikova had been sentenced to a life
term for a daring robbery from the finance department
at Kherson. She was the wife of a country
gentleman who had been a school-teacher at Elizabetgrad,
and with a confederate she had succeeded
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
in seizing a large sum of public money, meaning
to devote it to revolutionary purposes. Her accomplice
was Anna Alexieova, afterward Madame
Dubrova, a convict and a professional burglar who
had escaped from Siberia. They had entered the
government treasury through a tunnel driven under
the stone floor in the vault of a house adjoining, a
wild and desperate scheme for two young and inexperienced
girls. That they planned and dared effect
it bears witness to the determined character of the
Russian women revolutionists. Kennan says the
thieves were caught before they could remove all the
stolen money, but, according to Leo Deutsch, they
succeeded in their attempt. The next day, however,
a woman was intercepted as she drove a cart laden
with sacks through the town, and the sacks were
found to be stuffed full of ruble notes, to the number
of a million. Arrest followed, including that of the
convict, who at once confessed her share in the transaction
and gave such information as led to the recovery
of the greater part of the stolen money.
Madame Rossikova, as the elder woman and originator
of the plan, was condemned by court-martial,
before which she was arraigned, to hard labour for
a long term at the mines; Anna Alexieova was sentenced
merely to exile as a forced colonist and she
married Dubrova, a missionary at Krasnoyarsk.
The two girls began as philanthropists, eager to
benefit and improve the peasant class, but developed
under the persecution of the authorities and their
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
unjust, overbearing treatment into pronounced revolutionists.
Both were large-minded women, capable
of the greatest self-sacrifice and acting in accordance
with a high moral standard. Madame Rossikova
had given proof of her sincerity by accepting the ordeal
known as “going to the people”; in other
words, she lived for seven or eight months like a
common peasant woman, in a peasant village, that
she might see how best to reach and help the people.
She had long disapproved of terrorism, but became
a pronounced terrorist herself, moved to the fiercest
indignation by the reports that reached her of the
sufferings of her exiled friends.
Perhaps one of the most celebrated of the female
revolutionists was Madame Vera Phillipova, born
Figner, who never found her way to the mines of
Kara, where she would undoubtedly have become
prominent among the most active champions of her
party. She was long the most popular personage
in the revolutionary movement; her name was in
everybody’s mouth, her fine traits, her unfailing and
unlimited constancy, her undefeated, self-sacrificing
devotion to the cause, her talents for organisation,
her boundless inventive powers, her tireless energy,—all
won for her profound respect from her comrades;
and even her enemies, the members of the
court-martial which condemned her, were forced to
admire her dignified demeanour when arraigned and
tried for her life. A mere girl, of striking beauty,
and possessing extraordinary personal influence,
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
she freely spent herself in the service of her fellows.
Like many other well-born girls, her chief aim was
to help the peasants, and she devoted herself to the
rough life in small villages on the Volga, enduring
all the hardships and privations of the labouring
classes, and her self sacrifice was greatly stimulated
by what she saw of misery, poverty and hopeless
ignorance.
It was borne in on her that reform could only
be effected by the most reckless measures, and she
became a terrorist heart and soul, vowed to violence,
and prepared to go to any extreme. In this
temper, she readily joined in the plot for the assassination
of the Czar, Alexander II, on his return
from Livadia to St. Petersburg, and the dynamite
for use in the bombs was stored in her house. This
did not absorb all her energies, and she was still
active in the organisation of secret societies and in
preaching revolutionary principles among people of
good society, to which she belonged by birth and
education; for she was the daughter of a distinguished
general and was well received by the best
people.
At Odessa she mixed much with the military set
and thus became identified with the conspiracy of
“the Fourteen.” Nearly all of those concerned
were military or naval officers, five of whom, with
Vera Figner and Ludmilla Volkenstein, were condemned
to death. She knew that she and her companions
had been betrayed, and she might have escaped
.bn 237.png
.bn 238.png
.bn 239.png
.bn 240.png
.bn 241.png
.pn +1
by timely flight into another country, but she
scorned to yield, although arrest was certain, and
she held her ground, only to be convicted and
thrown into the Schlüsselburg, condemned to imprisonment
for the term of her natural life.
.dv class='illo'
.il id=i229 fn=i_229fp.jpg w=361px ew=66%
.ca
Russian Prisoners
After the painting by Marckl
.ca-
The Fortress of Schlüsselburg is situated on an island in
Lake Ladoga, about forty miles from St. Petersburg. The
worst of all fates meted out to political prisoners in Russia
is imprisonment in the subterranean dungeons of this fortress.
No news penetrates the walls of the isolated prison and no
information from within leaks out. Few ever leave the
prison alive except to be transferred to an insane asylum.
.dv-
While in the Schlüsselburg, Vera Figner studied
Italian and English, and translated many of Kipling’s
works into Russian. After she had spent
altogether twenty years in prison, she committed the
offence of striking an officer. Her mother, who had
promised not to intercede for her, could no longer
keep silent; and appealed to the Czar, with the result
that the life sentence passed upon the famous
revolutionist was reduced to one of twenty years.
Instead of releasing her immediately, however,
Plehve kept her two more years in the Schlüsselburg,
saying, “There is still too much life left in
her.” To her unspeakable grief, her mother died
a few weeks before she was released in 1904.
She was exiled to a tiny village close to the arctic
regions, and a year and a half afterward she was
allowed to return to her estate in the Kazan province.
She has since made a trip to Italy for her
health, and although her nervous system received
such a shock that she has never fully recovered, she
has renewed activity for the cause to which she has
devoted her life by lecturing in foreign cities.
Another woman revolutionist who afterward suffered
greatly at Kara was Madame Anna Pavlovna
Korba, the daughter of a German nobleman naturalised
.bn 242.png
.pn +1
in Russia, named Meinhardt. She had married
a Swiss gentleman living in Russia. She was
the friend of Madame Löschern von Herzfeld, who
had been one of those banished, but afterward pardoned,
in “the case of the 193.” She was again
arrested at Kiev with arms in her hand, and suffered
a second exile with a long imprisonment at
Kara. On her return from the campaign of 1878–9
in Turkey, where she had worked as a nurse, she
adopted the revolutionary programme. The “white
terror” was at its height; the government was active
in pursuing the politicals who were pledged to
destroy the Czar; and in 1882, Soudyehkin, the
chief of the secret police, laid a heavy hand on them,
arresting them in batches, executing many and
burying the rest alive in St. Petersburg dungeons.
Anna Korba, undaunted, threw herself into the fight,
and strove earnestly to replace those who had fallen
in the ranks. She was arrested for being concerned
in the manufacture of dynamite bombs at a secret
laboratory, and her trial ended in exile at Kara with
twenty years at hard labour, which nearly killed her.
Madame Elizabeth Kovalskaya, whose fruitless
effort to escape from Irkutsk has been described, deliberately
planned to offend a great official in order
to secure her removal. One day, when Baron Korv,
the governor-general, visited the prison, she failed
purposely to rise from her seat in his presence.
Baron Korv objected harshly to this mark of disrespect
to a man in his position, and Madame Kovalskaya
.bn 243.png
.pn +1
quietly replied that she had not elected
him to it. The enraged official left the prison saying
he would send instructions how to deal with this
refractory female, and shortly afterward an order
came to remove her to the central prison at Verkhni
Udinsk, as her unruly behaviour had a demoralising
effect at Kara.
The new removal would have been in accordance
with Madame Kovalskaya’s wishes, but it was most
savagely carried out. The blame lay with the commandant
of the Kara political prison. Colonel
Masyukov, an officer of the gendarmerie, had held
this post for about ten years. He was a man of
weak character, of low mental calibre, without judgment
and quite unfitted for the functions he discharged.
Once an officer of the guards, he had
wasted his substance in riotous living and had accepted
this well paid post to discharge his liabilities
and his gambling debts.
Colonel Masyukov stupidly supposed that the female
prisoners stirred up by Madame Kovalskaya
would have risen to resist her transfer. He resolved,
therefore, that she should be conveyed away
secretly without a word of notice. A subordinate
officer, named Bobrovski, accompanied by a party
of gensdarmes and ordinary convicts, burst into her
cell at four o’clock in the morning and dragged her
out of bed, half naked, with no more covering than
her nightdress. She was hurried to the office and
here ordered to put on the coarse garments of a
.bn 244.png
.pn +1
common criminal. After this she fainted, and,
wrapped up unconscious in a blanket, was carried
out to the bank of the river Shilka, where an open
boat was in readiness to carry her to Stretensk, the
steamboat navigation not being yet practicable. In
this small boat she travelled seventy miles for three
days and nights with the soldiers of her escort who
had already treated her with shameful indignity.
This forcible seizure had aroused the whole
prison, and the other women, maddened by the victim’s
shrieks and believing that her honour was being
outraged, became perfectly infuriated. They
declared a hunger strike forthwith and refused food
unless Masyukov was dismissed from his post. The
commandant now deeply regretted his foolish action,
and took counsel a little too late from his more
sensible subordinates, especially one wise old sergeant,
Golubtsov, a tactful man of long experience
and much common sense. On his advice the male
prisoners were called in to pacify their incensed
women comrades and persuade them to abandon
their strike. They suggested that the commandant
should be requested to apologise to his offended
charges, a satisfaction altogether scouted as insufficient
by the strikers. The famishing women still
insisted upon the withdrawal of Masyukov. The
condition seemed impossible of concession by the
authorities, but it was hoped that the commandant
might himself solve the difficulty by applying for a
transfer elsewhere. This settled the question for the
.bn 245.png
.pn +1
moment, and the women consented to take food on
the clear understanding that if Masyukov had not
disappeared within a certain period, the hunger
strike would be recommenced.
This in effect came to pass. The commandant
held his ground. The malcontents again refused
food, and now the men, although they thought the
suggested apology would have been sufficient atonement
by Masyukov, joined in the protest and also
went out “on strike.” The commandant thereupon
came to terms; he produced a telegram accepting
his resignation; and once more food was eaten,
after a week’s starvation. But the women would not
forgive Masyukov and declined to hold any communication
with him. He was “boycotted” completely
to the extent even of a refusal on their part
to receive their letters from home after passing
through his hands. This high spirited resolve reacted
very painfully upon themselves. Mental torture
worse than the physical was superadded to their
sufferings, and they were all but driven to despair.
No letters were sent and all which were received
were returned unopened through the post to their
senders.
This absolute severance of home ties bore especially
hard upon one of the latest arrivals in the
prison,—Madame Hope Sigida, “a sensitive young
creature, gentle, affectionate and attracted by all that
was good and beautiful. She was deeply attached
to her family, who lived in Taganrock, a small town
.bn 246.png
.pn +1
in South Russia.” She had been a school teacher,
and was condemned to eight years’ hard labour
because a printing press and some bombs had been
discovered in the house where she resided with her
husband who was an officer in Taganrock circuit
court. The latter was condemned to death, but the
sentence was commuted to deportation to Saghalien,
and he died on his way to that island. Madame
Sigida, in her bereavement, felt acutely the cessation
of all relations with her distant home, and when her
comrades, goaded to desperation, were upon the
point of resuming the hunger strike, she determined
to sacrifice herself for the common good. Hoping
that relief might in that way come to the rest, she
planned to attack Masyukov alone. She sought an
interview with the commandant, and it was granted
in due course. A most dramatic incident followed,
as told by eye-witnesses. She was driven to the
office in a carriage under escort, and was taken in
to speak to Colonel Masyukov, who the next moment
was seen to jump out of the window, evidently
much excited and terrified, and take to his heels.
Then Madame Sigida came to the door, and after
caressing some warder’s children who stood there,
in a quiet, unperturbed voice begged that a telegraphic
message might be despatched to the proper
authorities informing them that she had assaulted
the commandant by striking him in the face. She
justified her violence as the only means of shaming
him into taking his departure. At least she succeeded
.bn 247.png
.pn +1
in forcing him to show himself in his character
of a mean, despicable coward.
Madame Sigida was forthwith cast into a secret
cell and subjected to “dungeon conditions,” while
awaiting trial for her grave breach of discipline.
Her self-sacrifice had not availed to avert the hunger
strike. It began immediately afterward by all
the women prisoners, and was persisted in for
sixteen days with the same argument, that Colonel
Masyukov, now ridiculed and disgraced, must
go.
Madame Sigida, still waiting judgment, refused
food and remained fasting for twenty-two days,
until medical intervention was decreed. Madame
Kovalskaya struck the doctor in the face when she
thought he was about to forcibly administer nourishment.
But he was a humane man and disclaimed
all such intention, and she begged his pardon.
For some time no formal inquiry into Madame
Sigida’s assault was made, and no steps were taken
to deal with her case. But after the lapse of a
month or more, when the matter had been reported
to St. Petersburg, a reply came directed against the
whole body of the politicals. Colonel Masyukov,
still holding his ground, assembled them and, escorted
by soldiers, behind whom he sought protection,
read aloud a letter from the governor-general
in which he warned the politicals that they were in
future amenable to corporal punishment. The penalty
was deemed necessary by the authorities for the
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
maintenance of discipline in the disturbed state of
the prison.
Consternation fell upon these long suffering victims
of a despotic government, who although defenders
of their undoubted rights, as admitted in
all civilised countries, had never rendered themselves
liable to such reprisals. The penalty was, moreover,
illegal in their case, and the threat to flog was considered
an undeserved and outrageous insult. The
desire to raise indignant protest possessed all, and
many would have gone so far as to counsel a general
suicide. The leader of this extreme view was Sergius
Bobohov, a man of the loftiest sentiments, who
had adopted revolutionary principles from a strict
sense of their justice and necessity. Deutsch’s estimate
of his character is worth quoting at length.
“Genuine sincerity, seriousness of purpose, and
boundless devotion to his ideal were his leading
traits. He was the most modest of men, but when
the honour of a revolutionist was at stake, or if it
were a question of duty, he would undergo a transformation
and become a fiery and inspired prophet.”
Bobohov took the threat of flogging very much to
heart, and passionately urged that an answering
threat of suicide should be addressed to the minister
of the interior. “I cling to life as much as any
man,” he said, “but I am ready to face death as
a means of protest.” His arguments had weight
with his comrades, but might not have prevailed
except for the disastrous course of events.
.bn 249.png
.pn +1
At this moment a catastrophe was precipitated by
the almost incredible news that Madame Sigida, the
assailant of Colonel Masyukov, was to be flogged
by order of Baron Korv, the governor-general and
persecutor of Madame Kovalskaya. The punishment
was to be inflicted with rods in the presence
of the prison doctor, but without previous medical
certificate. The surgeon of the Kara penal settlement
had given it as his opinion that the poor creature
was unfit to receive even a single blow, and
declined to be present, as the infliction was by administrative
order and without a sentence of court.
The governor hesitated to inflict the punishment, but
Baron Korv persisted in the flogging, surgeon or
no surgeon. The executioner was the same subordinate
official, Bobrovski, who had distinguished
himself in the misusage of Madame Kovalskaya.
He had received promotion for his brutal conduct
on that occasion, and was willing to curry favour
further with his merciless superiors.
Details of this horrible tragedy are wanting as
the lips of those who assisted are sealed. The authorities
have, indeed, dared to deny the facts
through their mouthpieces in the press, but they
were well known throughout Siberia and their truth
has been acknowledged by high officials who strove
to justify the infliction. Ill-considered attempts
have been made by at least imperfectly informed
champions to discredit the whole story, which
stands nevertheless as an indelible disgrace to Russian
.bn 250.png
.pn +1
penal administrators, whose only excuse was
that the nihilist women “had brought troubles upon
themselves by being excitable and intractable, and
an example was necessary.”
So the example was made. Madame Sigida was
stripped and beaten with rods, when in a state of
unconsciousness, for she soon fainted under the infliction,
and was carried back senseless from the
place of punishment to her cell. Two days later she
died, but whether from the effects of the flogging
or from deliberate poisoning is not positively
known. Three of her female companions undoubtedly
committed suicide, and on the men’s side seventeen
out of thirty-nine resolved to put an end
to their own lives. The result was not altogether
successful. The drug, opium, was either old or
adulterated, and many who lay down to die only
woke to excruciating agony and were saved in spite
of themselves. A few of them, Bobohov among the
number, tried again, choosing morphia as the means
of self-destruction, but once more the drug was
ineffective and only two actually died.
The fate of those in durance is largely dependent
upon the character and quality of those who have
them in charge. Nowhere does this fact stand out
more prominently than in Russian prisons. The
governor, director or commandant is a petty despot;
within his own narrow limits he is almost irresponsible,
though subject, of course, to the control of
superiors, but this has never been very closely exercised.
.bn 251.png
.pn +1
Inspections are for the most part perfunctory,
and abuses, especially that of power, may flourish
freely without detection or interference. This
ramifies through all the grades, and the prisoner,
of whatever class, is very much at the mercy of the
subordinate officials with whom he is brought into
daily personal contact. The ordinary warder is
very much the same everywhere: a man placed in
authority over others often superior to himself in
antecedents, birth, education and experience of life.
He is apt to become arbitrary, tyrannical and self-sufficient
from the authority he wields, whether
delegated or usurped. After all he is only an agent,
a deputy and go-between, carrying out the orders
of his masters, whose moods he reflects, whose attitude
he imitates, and whose temper animates him,
inspiring him to harass and oppress or, more rarely,
to be merciful and forbearing. Warders almost invariably
take their tone from their supreme chief;
hence the deep importance that attaches to the governor
in prison life.
There were good and bad rulers in Russian prisons,
the latter perhaps predominating, although
occasionally a humane, well-intentioned and considerate
man was to be met with, such as Kanonovich,
who for a time governed the Kara political
prison kindly and leniently, as has already been
described. After him came a succession of gendarmerie
officers from Irkutsk whose characters are
summed up by Kennan as follows:—“Khalturin
.bn 252.png
.pn +1
was brutally cruel, Shubin was a man of little character,
and Manaiev was not only a drunkard, but a
thief who destroyed hundreds of the prisoners’ letters
and embezzled 1,900 rubles of money sent to
them by their relatives and friends in European
Russia.” Then came Captain Nikolin, of whom
more directly. All these were men of much the
same stamp as the “Major” of the Omsk ostrog
described by Dostoyevski. He was, he says, “a
fatal being for prisoners, whom he had brought to
such a state that they trembled before him. Severe
to the point of insanity, ‘he threw himself upon
them,’ to use their expression. But it was above all
that look, as penetrating as that of a lynx, that was
feared. It was impossible to conceal anything from
him. He saw, so to say, without looking. On entering
the prison, he knew at once what was being
done. Accordingly the convicts, one and all, called
him the man with the eight eyes. His system was
bad, for it had the effect of irritating men who were
already irascible.” Fortunately for the prisoners,
he was under a superior, for, as the writer tells us,
“the commandant was a well-bred, reasonable man
who moderated the savage onslaughts of the major,
or the latter would have caused sad misfortune by
his bad administration.”
This major was universally loathed by the prisoners,
and more than once was on the verge of murderous
attack. There were times when the convicts
at Omsk were goaded to desperation by his brutality.
.bn 253.png
.pn +1
One day a dozen men from Little Russia swore
to take his life, and their leader had borrowed the
kitchen knife and secreted it about his person. The
grievance for the moment was the badness of the
food, and when the major came in to expostulate,
the assailant rushed at him, but found that his victim
was drunk, or, according to prison superstition,
“under special protection.” It was more than he
deserved, for he was a blasphemous and overbearing
wretch. After having carried the knapsack for
many long years, promotion to the grade of officer
had turned his head.
Captain Nikolin was an officer of gensdarmes
who had been specially selected at St. Petersburg
and sent out to govern the state prisons at Kara.
Kennan speaks of him as “an old and experienced
gendarme officer of the most subtle and unscrupulous
type, who had received his training under General
Muraviov, ‘the hangman, in Poland,’ and had
been about thirty years in the service.... He had
the suavity and courteous manners of the accomplished
gendarme officer, ... and he greeted me
with what he intended for frank, open cordiality,
softening, so far as possible, all the hard lines of his
face; but he could not bring a spark of good fellowship
into his cold, watchful gray eyes, and I felt
conscious that all his real mental processes were
carefully masked.” He was very proud of his position:
that he, a simple captain of gensdarmes, had
been sent to this important command, where he was
.bn 254.png
.pn +1
independent of local control and entitled to correspond
direct with the minister of the interior. His
whole object was to hoodwink Kennan, whom he
assured blandly and mendaciously that the prisoners
led a life of ease, even of luxury, sitting in a kamera
like a club smoking room, reading and writing and
pleasantly conversing. He further asserted that the
“politicals” received considerable sums from their
friends in Russia; that they bought what books
they pleased, had newspapers, including the London
Punch and other illustrated papers, and in a
word, were “treated with gracious clemency by an
enlightened and paternal government.” Nikolin
showed the cloven foot later when he urged his
colleague to seize Mr. Kennan’s baggage and search
it, by which high-handed proceeding, happily
avoided, much of the incriminating material so daringly
secured by the fearless American, would have
been lost to the indignant readers of the civilised
world.
We have another portrait of Captain Nikolin
from one who knew him but too well. Leo Deutsch
suffered for some years under his régime and describes
him “as a malicious, ill-natured man, continually
devising petty humiliations for the prisoners.”
In person he was a short, heavily built man,
some fifty years of age, “with a bald head, a full
gray beard, thin, tightly closed, rather cruel lips,
an impenetrable face and cold gray eyes. His broad
round face, cunning little eyes, and bristling moustache,
.bn 255.png
.pn +1
gave him the look of a fat, spiteful old tom-cat,
and he was always designated by that nickname.
The expression of his eyes was particularly catlike;
he looked as if just ready to pounce on a victim and
stick his claws into it. He always spoke in a low
voice, this ‘tom-cat;’ but he chattered unceasingly,
and kept smacking his lips all the time, his
expression being always peevish and discontented....
We petitioned our ‘tom-cat’ for leave to
plant a garden in the yard; there was space enough,
the work would have been beneficial, and then we
might have had vegetables for our table, the deficiency
in which particular had been so detrimental
to our health. The ‘tom-cat’ roundly refused.
‘We should need spades,’ he said, ‘and they might
be used to dig a hole whereby to get away.’ So,
again, when one of us was sent some flower-seeds
and sowed them in a wooden box, the box was
taken away by Nikolin’s orders; the earth in it
might have served to conceal some contraband article.
Such needless tyrannies embittered us still
more against the detested commandant. However
peaceably we might otherwise have been inclined,
our hatred of this man might well have blazed out
at any opportunity; he himself probably guessed
as much, for he became more and more mistrustful,
at last never entering our prison. He felt that he
had made enemies all round him, and sat lonely in
his own house, or squabbled with his cook, afraid
to show himself outside. It may be a matter of surprise
.bn 256.png
.pn +1
that one of his many enemies did not find a
way to put an end to him, that being a not unusual
course of events in Kara; but finally he could endure
such a life no longer, and applied to be transferred
elsewhere. In the spring of 1887 his application
was granted, and he departed, accompanied
by the anathemas of the entire population of Kara.”
Captain Nikolin was in due course succeeded by the
Colonel Masyukov of whom we have heard so much
in his conflict with the politicals of the state prison
at Kara.
Captain Nikolin’s colleague at Kara, coequal in
authority, but with independent functions, was
Major Potulov, who governed the ordinary criminal
prison at Kara. He was a man of a pleasanter
type, who was both civil and hospitable to George
Kennan, possibly to keep an eye upon his motions
and, perhaps, take the sting out of the condemnation
his command so richly deserved. He is described
as a tall, fine looking, soldierly man about fifty
years of age, affable in manner and disposed to act
fairly by his charges, so far as it lay within his
power. Where he failed was in loyalty to his superiors,
and he was gifted with rare talents for fraud
and embezzlement. He stole unblushingly, and enriched
himself largely at the expense of the state.
His chief device was to keep hundreds of prisoners
on the rolls who were mere “ghosts;” men who
had disappeared by flight or death, but for whom
rations were still drawn and the value thereof shared
.bn 257.png
.pn +1
between him and the purveyor. He was presently
detected and dismissed, but escaped justice through
his influential friends.
Patrin of Saghalien came to the front at a later
date, when deportation to the island colony was in
full swing, and his evil reputation became widespread
as the most brutal and rapacious official in
Russian penal annals. His character was so well
known far and wide that he figured as the prison
demon on the San Francisco stage. His was a
reign of terror in the Alexandrovsk prison, and he
drove through the town armed with revolver and
Winchester rifle, committing acts of atrocious criminal
violence in the open streets. Horrible stories
were current of his misusage of his charges, of constant
punishments in the dark cells or with the plet
till death was the result. He was equally harsh
with his officers. One of them, who had gone to
complain of the insulting and outrageous conduct
of a comrade toward his (the complainant’s) wife,
was struck on the mouth by Patrin and felled to the
ground. He had an abrupt way of dealing with recalcitrant
prisoners. One day there came before
him a young convict of an irascible temper, who had
obstinately refused to work. Patrin forthwith fell
upon him, striking him on the jaw. The prisoner,
although of slight build, closed with the governor
and, showing superhuman strength, dragged him to
the top of the staircase. Now the warders who had
been hanging about hurried to their chief’s assistance,
.bn 258.png
.pn +1
and the fight became a perfect mêlée in one
confused struggling group, all gravitating toward
the edge of the stairs, down which they suddenly
fell headlong. Patrin came out on top, with the
prisoner underneath. But the latter had seized a
revolver from one of the guards, and when he was
raised to his feet pointed the weapon to his own
forehead and shot himself, saying, “It was Patrin
I wanted to kill.”
The political prisoners at Saghalien were subjected
to the tender mercies of Patrin, and he also
had charge of the women’s prison, but his infamous
behaviour toward the women was too abominable
to be told.
.bn 259.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER IX | CHANGES IN SYSTEM
.pm start_descr
The Kara settlements—Descriptions of the prisons by Kennan—Filthy
state of the prison buildings at Ust Kara—Gold
mining—Illicit trade in “stolen gold”—Improvements
in the prison system—The new prison of Alexandrovsk—Mr.
Foster Fraser’s account of the excellent state
of the prison in 1901—The prison at Verkhni Udinsk—The
island of Saghalien used as a penal colony—Disadvantages
of the place—Coal mining chief industry—Climate
uncongenial—Exiles sent by sea from Odessa—Terrible
sufferings on the voyage—Convict marriages—Deplorable
conditions on the island—Prison discipline in
force at Alexandrovsk—Punishments inflicted—The plet.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
Of the partial attempts made by Russia to reform
the methods of inflicting penal servitude on wrong-doers,
I shall speak more at large. A detailed account
must be given of the new prisons erected
more in conformity with modern ideas; and the
persistent pursuit of that will-o’-the-wisp, penal colonisation
by deportation to the desert island of
Saghalien, with its futile processes and disappointing
results, claims attention. Before leaving the
older methods of enforcing hard labour, it will be
well to describe its last stronghold and the system
obtaining there until quite a recent date. “Kara the
Black,” so called from a Tartar word, aptly describes
.bn 260.png
.pn +1
the series of prisons and convict settlements
established in the valley of the Kara River to work
the mines, chiefly gold mines, the private property
of the Czar. There are other mines of salt and
silver, the latter chiefly at Nertchinsk, supposed to
have been worked out, and now leased to private
hands with profitable return, in spite of their deadly
unhealthiness from the quicksilver emanations that
poisoned them. The annals of Nertchinsk are as
horrible as any in Siberian prison history, and the
ancient prison of Akatui in the district still stands
to bear witness to the cruelties and tragedies practised
upon the unhappy politicals who inhabited it.
The silver mines were reopened at Algachi in the
neighbourhood, where there was a prison which
Kennan saw and unhesitatingly condemned. “As
a place of confinement,” he writes, “even for the
worst class of offenders, it was a disgrace to a civilised
state, and the negligence, indifference and incompetence
shown by the government in dealing
with its admitted evils were absolutely inexcusable.”
Speaking further of the Nertchinsk district and of
the mines at Algachi and Pokrovski and others, Mr.
Kennan was of opinion that the prisoners permitted
to work in them suffered less than those, the larger
proportion, who were doomed to unbroken idleness
in the overcrowded, foul-smelling prisons. It was
irksome enough to work eight or ten hours daily
in an icy gallery, three hundred feet below ground;
the mines were badly ventilated, and the gases liberated
.bn 261.png
.pn +1
by the explosives used may be injurious; but
there are no deadly exhalations from poisonous ores
to affect the health, and no doubt the worst feature
of penal servitude in Siberia was not the hard labour
in the mines but the almost inconceivably foul condition
and enforced idleness of the prisons.
Returning now to the Kara prisons, seven in
number, two of them were allotted to politicals, one
for each sex, and of the remaining five the total
population was approximately eighteen hundred
convicts. Half of them were detained as prisoners;
the other half were permitted generally to join the
“free command.” The latter were still convicts,
receiving rations and restricted to the settlement,
but residing in barracks or in their own houses.
The prison building of Ust Kara, at the Lower Diggings,
is compared by Kennan to “a long, low,
horse-car stable made of squared but unpainted logs,
which are now black, weather-beaten, and decaying
from age.” It was in the form of a square surrounded
by logs twenty-five feet high, closely set
together, and sharpened at the top like enormous
lead pencils. Entrance was gained after ascending
a few steps through a heavy wooden door opening
upon a long, low and very dark corridor with a wet,
slippery floor, much broken and damaged. The first
sensation was that of damp air laden with the fetid
odours that constantly vitiate all Siberian prisons.
Kennan was unable to compare it to any known bad
smell. He says, “I can ask you to imagine cellar
.bn 262.png
.pn +1
air, every atom of which has been half a dozen times
through human lungs and is heavy with carbonic
acid; to imagine that air still further vitiated by
foul, pungent, slightly ammoniacal exhalations from
long unwashed human bodies.... To unaccustomed
senses, it seems so saturated with foulness
and disease as to be almost insupportable. As we
entered the corridor, slipped upon the wet, filthy
floor, and caught the first breath of this air, Major
Potulov (the commandant) turned to me with a
scowl of disgust, and exclaimed, ‘It is a repulsive
prison.’” In the cells there was absolutely no ventilation
whatever. Even the brick oven drew its air
from the corridor. The walls of squared logs had
once been whitewashed, but had become dark and
grimy, and were blotched in many places with extensive
bloodstains, the life blood of countless insatiable
enemies, bed-bugs, crushed to death in unceasing
warfare. The floor was deeply encrusted
with dry, hard-trodden filth. The sloping wooden
platforms on which the convicts slept side by side,
closely packed, without bedding or covering, were
inconceivably dirty. All the cells were the same
except that in one a shoemaker’s bench diffused the
quite pleasing odour of fresh leather.
Small wonder that contagious diseases were rife
in such an atmosphere; scurvy, typhus and typhoid
constantly prevailed and the prison surgeon admitted
that the first was endemic, saying, “We have more
or less scurvy here all the year round.” The infected
.bn 263.png
.pn +1
were not at once removed to hospital, but lay
there to pollute and poison the air breathed by their
comparatively healthy comrades. All the conditions
of this were so manifestly odious that the commandant
did not attempt to explain, defend or excuse
them, but, as Kennan tells us, “he grew more and
more silent, moody and morose as we went through
the kameras.” He knew too well that it was beyond
his power to remedy the abounding evil; he might
listen to grievances, hear petitions and complaints,
but was powerless to relieve them.
The middle Kara prison was on precisely similar
lines, but the air was fresher during the day time,
when the bulk of the inmates were absent at the
mines, to which the hard-labour prisoners proceeded
in the early morning and where they spent the day.
Their midday meal was taken with them, to be eaten
beside the camp fire in any weather, even the fiercest
winter storms. They returned to the prison late
in the afternoon, and dined on a fairly good meal
of hot soup, bread and meat and a cup of brick tea.
This they ate on their sleeping platforms, and passed
the night without removing their clothing.
The gold “placers” at Kara were generally in
deep gravel pits, and the auriferous sand was located
beneath a stratum of clay, gravel or stones, in what
had once been the bed of the stream. The work
consisted in breaking up and removing this overlying
stratum, extracting the gold bearing sand
and carrying it to the machine, where it was washed
.bn 264.png
.pn +1
in several waters which in flowing away left deposits
of black sand and gold particles. Pick and crowbar
were in constant use by the convict labourers, working
in their leg irons silently and listlessly under the
close surveillance of a cordon of Cossack sentries.
The average daily task was of ten hours, but much
time was lost in going to and fro, and the annual
amount washed was some four hundred pounds. A
large quantity of gold was stolen by the surreptitious
washing of convicts of the free command. They disposed
of it to “receivers,” who ran great risks but
generally managed to smuggle it across the frontier.
This illicit trade flourishes in spite of the fact that
it is a penal offence to be in possession of the precious
metal or “golden wheat,” as it is technically
called. But the great profits accruing outbalance
the risks, and small speculators are always to be
found who will secretly buy the stolen treasure secured
by the convicts at large.
One notorious criminal at Kara living in the free
command acquired considerable wealth by illicit
trade in “stolen gold.” His name was Lissenko,
and his crimes had been many and heinous. In
one of his robberies he murdered a whole family,
men, women and children. Leo Deutsch came across
him and describes him as a man of about sixty
years who had still the strength of a giant. He
says: “He struck me as being crafty, cunning and
reckless, but not a malicious kind of fellow, and he
was extremely pious withal. No one who knew
.bn 265.png
.pn +1
him personally could easily believe him to have murdered
innocent children.” Deutsch asked him how
he could have the heart to kill a child. “Oh, I
cried all the time I was doing it,” he replied, “but
still I killed them. It was just God’s will.” His
questioner then asked, “Well, and would you murder
me if you met me in a safe place?” “If I knew
you had a lot of money about you I should certainly
wring your neck,” said the man, with cheerful
frankness. “But there! one doesn’t kill without
some good reason.”
The search for gold, belonging really to the government,
or more exactly to the Czar, was almost
openly practised at Kara. Whole families, both
men and women, engaged in it, taking out with
them a shovel and wooden vessel to the banks of
the neighbouring streams, and often obtaining gold
dust to the value of a couple of rubles a day. No
one protested, and the authorities hardly interfered,
for the officials themselves did not scruple to profit
by the illegal trade. Far more gold was obtained
by unlawful than lawful means. The middlemen
got a good price from the Chinese traders, who
could always find a way to pass the gold into China,
where it would fetch a higher price than that paid
by the imperial exchequer. It is contended that
these illicit gold finders have greatly benefited Siberia.
Their restless energy in prospecting has led
to the discovery of numberless gold mines, which are
now being very profitably worked, seldom to the enrichment
.bn 266.png
.pn +1
of the finders, but to that of the middlemen
and through them to that of the country.
The glaring shortcomings of Eastern Siberian
prisons were gradually recognised by the government,
and a commendable, if not extensive, attempt
has been made to provide new and improved buildings,
both to serve as forwarding prisons, and for
the confinement of penal-servitude convicts. A
larger scheme was introduced for the penal colonisation
of the island of Saghalien by the deportation
of exiles thither by sea, of which I shall have much
more to say. The best of the new prisons on the
mainland are those of Alexandrovsk, forty miles
above Irkutsk on the Amgara River, of Gorni Zerentui
at the Nertchinsk mines, and of Verkhni
Udinsk, fifty miles east of Lake Baikal and six hundred
miles from Kara.
The prison of Alexandrovsk, which was visited
by the untiring investigator, Kennan, had been
originally built to serve as a distillery, but was reconstructed
and turned into a great central prison
in 1874. When Kennan was there, it held about
a thousand prisoners and was deemed to be almost
a model prison. It is a large two-storied brick
building with a tin roof, standing in a spacious enclosure
surrounded by a high, buttressed brick wall.
It contains fifty-seven general cells, in each of which
from five to seventy-five occupants are locked
up; ten cells for separate confinement, and five
secret cells for the isolation of the most dangerous
.bn 267.png
.pn +1
and refractory prisoners. The cells, as Kennan
found, were large and lofty; the ventilation was
good and the air pure; floors and sleeping rooms
were kept scrupulously clean, the only fault in the
latter being the absence of bedding. The corridors
outside the cells were spacious, well lighted, and the
air was wholesome. Neatness, cleanliness and good
order prevailed in the great kitchen; the food prepared
was palatable and good. The daily rations
per week consisted of three pounds of rye bread,
seven ounces of meat, three ounces of barley, with
potatoes and other vegetables occasionally. The
prisoners were permitted to purchase tea and sugar
out of their own earnings and private funds. A
schoolroom, well furnished and supplied, existed in
the prison, and there were many citizens’ shops,—carpenters,
shoemakers, and tailors,—and two-thirds
of the money earned was at the disposal of
the handicraftsmen. Other labour intended to be
“hard” was enforced at the mills, where rye seed
was ground into meal and where the prisoners
worked for three or four hours daily. At night the
kamera was crowded and dimly lighted; and when
visited, was not quite so sweet and odourless as during
the daytime, but, on the whole, the prison was
infinitely superior to the foul dens already described.
Mr. Foster Fraser, the English traveller, who saw
the Alexandrovsk central prison in 1901–2, gives a
no less favourable report. He describes it as a great
square building, with lofty corridors, colour washed,
.bn 268.png
.pn +1
and with sanded floors, the kameras containing on
an average fifty men each. The prisoners, who
hailed from all parts of the polyglot and scattered
Russian Empire, were criminals of the worst stamp,
mostly heavy-jowled, sullen, brutish men, but there
were some few young and innocent looking lads.
In the cells large numbers lounged away the day in
complete idleness, but all asked for employment, and
were glad to get it by being taken into the various
shops. Some were clever and skilful at particular
trades, cabinet-making, tailoring, bookbinding, designing
patent locks, watch-mending or making
musical instruments. The impression conveyed was
that of workshops of well contented artisans. Conversation
was general and many were smoking
cigarettes. Care was taken to classify prisoners by
their religions; Mahometans, Tartars and Caucasians
were kept together in one hall; Jews were
in another with their synagogue hard by. The desire
to brighten the gloomy surroundings was to be
seen in the existence of a theatre with stage and
scenery, where excellent amateur performances were
given, and also musical entertainments, for singing
was much cultivated and there was no lack of good
voices among the convicts. A large library was
kept up, to which free access was permitted for several
hours daily to those who could read, by no
means a large proportion.
There is a second Alexandrovsk prison, one of
the étapes, or forwarding prisons, newly built in
.bn 269.png
.pn +1
1886–8, and on good lines, but much handicapped
by the common blot on all such places, overcrowding.
Great numbers, far in excess of available accommodation,
were collected here, awaiting distribution
to various points. Mr. Fraser’s verdict on
this étape prison is unfavourable. “The rooms
were overcrowded and the stench almost choked me.
The men looked dirty and uncared for. They had
no work; they were just huddled together, waiting
often six or eight months before they were sent off.
Among them were half a dozen young fellows in
ordinary clothes, with nothing of the criminal about
them, the youngest seventeen, the eldest twenty-one.
They were political exiles banished by ‘administrative
process’ for rashly joining in some socialistic
demonstration, and were on their way to Yakutsk
into the frozen depths of the sub-Arctic Circle.”
Verkhni Udinsk is the first halting place after
leaving Lake Baikal on the road to Kara, and all
exiles to Eastern Siberia passed through it, including
the political prisoners. For many years the
étape prison there was one of the foulest on the
whole route. It is to the credit of the Russian government
that this abominable prison has been abolished
and replaced (in 1886) by a new forwarding
prison constructed on the most approved lines. It
is a large building of four stories, built of brick,
with a stucco front painted white, and having two
spacious wings, a large inner courtyard and separate
buildings for political prisoners and military
.bn 270.png
.pn +1
guard. The kameras are even better than those at
Alexandrovsk, large, lofty, well ventilated, and each
above the basement floor has an extensive view
across the surrounding country through at least
three large windows. The corridors and imposing
staircases, and even the solitary confinement cells,
are of large size. It was built to lodge 440, but
of course was constantly occupied by a much larger
number. When Mr. Kennan expressed his unbounded
approval of the very best prison he had
seen in Russia, or indeed in any country, his conductor
assented, “Yes; if they do not overcrowd
it, it will be very comfortable. But as the old
prison intended for 140 was often filled with as
many as seven hundred, we shall probably be expected
to find room for three thousand in this.” I
have come across no later information on this point,
and it is to be hoped that the substitution of the
sea passage to Saghalien has had a beneficial effect
in reducing the numbers passing along the land
route, and that the Verkhni Udinsk prison has sufficed
to meet the demands on its accommodation.
After very considerable delay, a new prison at
Gorni Zerentui, to serve for the Nertchinsk mines,
was completed in 1888. The crying need for such
a prison was first realised in 1872, and in 1874 a
committee was appointed to report and submit plans.
Seven years later no more progress had been made
than the erection of a few log huts and the repair of
some older buildings, on which nearly 40,000 dollars
.bn 271.png
.pn +1
had been expended. Constant changes of plan
had tended to vexatious delay. Opinions were divided
as to whether brick or logs was the most suitable
material, but preference was finally given to
the latter, because the prison could not be permanent,
as the mines were certain to become worked
out. But already brick had been employed and the
building was far forward, so it was at length completed,
and was occupied at the date given.
The advantages offered by the island of Saghalien
as a place for penal settlement were very
early impressed upon Russian prison administrators.
They were rather sentimental than physical, for the
island was perhaps as unsuitable for human habitation
as any place on the face of the globe. The climate
was uncongenial, and worse even than its latitude
indicated. Alexandrovsk, the chief town, is
in the same latitude as Brighton in England, and
yet its mean annual temperature is just below freezing
point. No sea current wafted any warmth
northward from Chinese waters. On the contrary,
a bitterly cold stream swept its eastern coast, issuing
from the ice-bound sea of Okhotsk, and the western
shores of this narrow elongated island are, so to
speak, under an immense refrigerator, the snowy
mountain tracts of Siberia, separated from it by
only a narrow and shallow channel. Sparse sunlight
pierced through the heavy clouds and fogs that
enveloped this inhospitable land. The milder season
was too brief to allow of great success in the germination
.bn 272.png
.pn +1
of crops, and the long, low valleys between
the mountains were too damp and marshy to favour
agriculture. Dense forests clothed a large portion
of the island, containing poor trees of inferior,
stunted growth, with comparatively valueless wood.
A scant population of degenerate tribes eked out a
wretched existence as fishermen and seal hunters.
Few settlers came to it from China or Japan.
The report of experts definitely decided against
Saghalien as an agricultural colony. The soil forbade
all hope of raising grain to support those who
worked it. Food must be imported to maintain life;
cattle breeding might succeed, but with difficulty,
and fish must remain the staple diet. One source of
natural wealth which might be developed was the
coal fields, in which the island was supposed to be
rich, but the quality of the coal was inferior to the
Australian and very much below that of Newcastle
and Cardiff. Mr. Hawes, a later traveller (1903),
contests this, however, and describes the coal as a
good lignite, superior to the Japanese as a steam
coal, and says it commands a higher price. As an
article of commerce, it suffers from the difficulties
of lading for export. There is not a single harbour
on the whole circumference of the island, and approach
is often hindered by want of beacons and
constantly prevailing fogs.
Coal mining in Saghalien began in 1858, and
some 30,000 tons were extracted during the first
ten years. The production was very costly; the
.bn 273.png
.pn +1
mines were worked by candle light; the ore was bad
and much mixed with stone. The largest deposits
are upon the western coast, and it is mined chiefly at
Dui and Vladiminsk. Mr. Hawes saw a seam of
brown coal exposed on the banks of the river Tim.
At Vladiminsk the coal was on the ground, level,
and easily reached by tunnelling into the cliff, and
when it failed at one spot, another was soon discovered.
The coal sells to the merchants at twelve
shillings per ton, of which the convicts now employed
receive ten per cent.
The adoption of Saghalien as a penal colony
commended itself to the authorities for several reasons.
In the first place, the conditions of life were
more irksome than on the mainland; the work
would, it was thought, be much harder; and the
place itself was wilder, more savage and solitary,—all
of which would combine to increase the severity
of the punishment. Moreover, the prospect of
remaining forever as a settler upon a remote island,
after the term of hard labour was accomplished,
would still further act as a deterrent to crime. Accordingly,
it was resolved to inflict this harsher
penalty upon recidivists and recaptured fugitives,
the brodyagi, or runaway convicts, of whom so
many thousands were always at large and who,
when recaptured, as well as all the “Ivan-don’t-remembers”
who would not tell their names, were
sentenced to penal servitude for a fresh term of four
years in Saghalien. Again, Saghalien by sea was
.bn 274.png
.pn +1
better than Siberia by étape process, with its long
painful journey, the sufferings it entailed on the
travellers, and the burden of corruption inflicted
upon the local population by the way. Last of all,
it would tend to free Siberia of the convict element,
and assist the colonisation and development of the
new territory, with manifest benefit to the convicts
on release by the opportunities offered for rehabilitation
and betterment of character and position.
These were the views expressed by Governor-General
Anuchin in his famous reports to the Czar
in 1880. But they had already taken effect, and
deportation to Saghalien had begun practically some
years previously. The first body of convicts, eight
hundred in number, were sent there in 1869, but
they went across the whole continent of Asia, having
already travelled from Russia, and descending
the long length of the Amur River, some two thousand
miles, completed a total journey of 4,700 miles
before reaching its mouth at Nikolaevsk, where they
arrived decimated by disease and all more or less
suffering from scurvy. After that, sea transportation
was used, the party starting from Odessa and
voyaging through the Suez Canal by the Red Sea,
Indian and Northern Pacific Oceans, but under very
neglected and imperfect conditions, so that those
who embarked were subjected to terrible privations
and cruelties on this voyage half round the world.
As time passed, and the last century drew to its
close, deportation direct to Saghalien steadily increased.
.bn 275.png
.pn +1
Twice a year the steamer Yaroslav, one
of the Russian volunteer fleet, the appointed convict
ship, performed its sad mission and brought out its
living freight of eight hundred exiles from Odessa.
Besides these, many hundreds regularly arrived
from the mainland, who were convicts due to become
exiled settlers. The latest law provided that
the penal colony should be the receptacle of all males
sentenced to more than two years, of all females not
over forty years of age, sentenced to the same
period, and of any political prisoner at the discretion
of the imperial government. Criminals, on arrival,
are classified according to their sentences and
located in the various gaols in the three administrative
districts of Alexandrovsk, Timovsk and Korsakovsk.
The largest prison centre is at the first
named; the second in importance is at Korsakovsk;
and there are two prisons in the Timovsk district,
one at Derbensk, the other at Rikovsk.
When Mr. Hawes visited the island in 1902, he
found a principal gaol at Alexandrovsk known as
the “testing,” or probation prison, for the worst
criminals, those with a sentence of twelve years
and upward, whose fetters are not removed and who
are confined in a quarter styled the “chained”
prison. There is a second prison known as the
“reformatory,” for those with lesser sentences, into
which convicts from the testing prison, after passing
a minimum of four years, may be promoted.
These last-named prisoners are permitted to work
.bn 276.png
.pn +1
in gangs beyond the walls, under escort, without
very strict discipline, so that many leave their parties
to work on their own account in various forms
of depredation. The “ticket-of-leave” men, or
free commands, were entered on the lists of the
reformatory prison and included the vagrants,
brodyagi, who were deported after recapture on the
mainland. Immediate release from jail is the boon
conceded to any convict, even the very worst, whose
freeborn wife has elected to come out from Russia
and join him. He becomes then an exile settler of
one of the “peasant” class, so-called, whom it is
hoped will assist colonisation. The same boon is
conceded to female convicts. “Free” husbands,
however, are not often eager to share their lot.
According to Mr. Hawes, there were only six of
these loyal spouses on the whole island. But the
women convicts have the chance of being chosen to
join in a convict marriage or temporary coupling
of parties, which is not only permitted but strongly
encouraged. The consequences of such unions are
deplorable. The effect on the woman is most demoralising,
and too often the offspring, when children
are born, have inherited the criminal taint.
The civil contract cannot be entered into without
divorce in the case where a husband still exists in
Russia, although many widows have simplified the
matter by murdering their husbands before leaving
home, often, indeed, the cause of their deportation.
Figures quoted for one year, 1897, show that there
.bn 277.png
.pn +1
were 2,836 murderers in durance upon the island,
and a much larger number if ex-convicts were included,
and of this total, 634 were women who had
murdered their husbands. Clergymen on Saghalien
refused to give a religious sanction to these civil
contracts unless there had been a formal dissolution
of the Russian marriage. The civil bond sat
lightly on both parties; the women in particular
elected to go their own way, and if interfered with
or if they found their marriage ill-assorted or irksome,
they at once transferred themselves to some
other master. The results of this outrage upon the
most sacred of human institutions must assuredly
lead to its abolition; they are identically the same
as reported by Mr. George Griffith to be the case
in New Caledonia. He says: “I saw about seventy-six
separate and distinct reasons for the abolition
of convict marriages at the convict school. On
every face and form were stamped the unmistakable
brand of criminality, imbecility, moral crookedness
and general degeneration.”
The testing prison at Alexandrovsk generally
held some six hundred inmates, many of them in
chains and most of them in idleness; a few, barely
ten or twelve per cent., were occasionally sent out
to be employed in mining, road-making and log-hauling;
and the authorities justified this limitation
by the plea that the majority of them were such
desperate characters that they could not safely be
suffered to go beyond the walls. The unutterable
.bn 278.png
.pn +1
weariness of long-continued, unbroken idleness
bore so heavily upon this mass of caged and shackled
humanity that desperate and determined attempts
at escape were of constant occurrence. So
great was their longing to be free that they would
willingly risk their lives to breathe the fresh air.
The only break in the dull round of prison life was
surreptitious gambling. They would sacrifice everything
to secure the means of play; they would stake
the government clothing issued, and even their rations
a month ahead. In the latter case, as an alternative
to punishment, the convict put himself in
pawn to the authorities. He was lodged in a separate
cell and allowed himself to be starved for two
days out of every three; the rations saved were
accumulated and placed to his credit for the payment
of his debt.
The conditions of life at Alexandrovsk not
strangely incited the prisoners to turbulence, insubordination
and the commission of crime whenever
the chance came. When at large, even for a short
time after successful escape, they were veritable
brigands, robbing and slaughtering; when once
more incarcerated, they were intractable and incorrigible,
and no punishment could affright or keep
them in order.
The older brutal methods survive in Saghalien.
Physical tortures are superadded to the infliction of
prolonged sentences. As to the latter, many convicts
are well advanced in life with unexpired sentences
.bn 279.png
.pn +1
of forty or fifty years. Hawes tells us he
found thirteen in this class, and fifty-one others,
one of them a woman, with sentences of from
thirty to forty years, and 240 with from twenty
to thirty years of unexpired sentences. He also
found a couple of offenders chained to wheelbarrows,
and the number had been much larger not
long
Employment of corporal punishment has for the
most part disappeared in Russian and Siberian
prisons; its infliction at Kara on Madame Sigida
in 1889, and the universal horror inspired throughout
the civilised world by this terrible catastrophe,
largely led to its abandonment; but the practice is
still in force in Saghalien. Until 1902 females were
flogged with the rozgi, birch rods dipped in salt.
The infliction was within the power of the chief of
the prison, and although it might be lightly, was
ever arbitrarily imposed. It was not an excessively
cruel, but a most brutal and disgraceful punishment.
But the plet still flourishes, although the leaded ends
are said to have been replaced by knots, and may
be a very terrible weapon in the hands of a skilful
flagellator. Until recently, it was worthy to replace
the murderous knout of ancient times. The
patient was very much at the mercy of the executioner,
the so-called palach, a salaried convict-official,
to whom his comrades paid tribute in the
Saghalien prison in food and tobacco, to curry
favour with him and persuade him to lay the leaded
.bn 280.png
.pn +1
ends of the lash so as to catch the wooden flogging
bench rather than their bare backs. The palach
spared his victim at very considerable risk, and
might be flogged for neglect of duty. In one case,
an offending executioner, by name Komeleva, was
punished and flogged by the hands of his particular
enemy. So terrible was the infliction that although
it incurred in 1882, a photograph taken of the
wounds in 1899, seventeen years afterwards,
showed them to be still suppurating. Three strokes
of the plet were sufficient to kill, and another story
is told of a convict at Saghalien who promised the
palach a bottle of vodka if he would not hit him
with the leaded ends. The victim was a hardened
veteran, and when he had received ninety-five
strokes, thinking he had escaped, he called out,
“It’s no matter; you can’t hurt me now, you
needn’t think you’ll get your vodka.” But he had
not reckoned with his man, for after three more
strokes he was dead. It was only necessary to draw
back the plet as the stroke was spent for the ends
to injure the liver and send a clot of blood to the
heart.
.bn 281.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER X | SAGHALIEN
.pm start_descr
Failure of the scheme to utilise Saghalien as a convict settlement—Testimony
of an official on the terrible condition of
the exiles—Gambling and drunkenness universal—Prevalence
of immorality—The prisons hot beds of vice—No
classification of the prisoners—Convicts refuse to settle on
the island as colonists at the expiration of their sentence—Account
of two assassinations at Alexandrovsk—Description
of the cemetery there—Female murderers on the island—Sophie
Bluffstein, called the “Golden Hand”—Her adventurous
career of crime—Sent to Saghalien as a political
prisoner—Carried on criminal operations when released—Recaptured
and again confined—Finally released and settled
on the island until her death—The merchant of Alexandrovsk
and his unfaithful wife—The vagrants in Saghalien—Barratasvili—His
capture and death—Horrible
story of the fate which befell the convict road-makers—Politicals
on Saghalien—Their terrible sufferings.
.pm end_descr
.sp 2
The day will come when Russia, like the rest of
the world, will learn that it cannot finally dispose
of its worst elements by shooting them down on
some distant dust heap. Siberia will act in its own
defence as did Australia, and refuse to be forever
the dumping ground for criminals. The prosperous
development of that vast and richly endowed territory
has been too long delayed and already a change
is imminent. Enterprise has been stimulated by
.bn 282.png
.pn +1
the construction of the great Trans-Siberian railway.
As Siberia grows in wealth and importance
it will surely resent and repudiate the exile system,
whether enforced by the improved methods of railway
travelling or facilitated by sea communications.
The old idea of removal still obtains, although
an effort has been made to avoid the horrors of
the prolonged pilgrimage on land, by substituting
the long sea voyage from Odessa, through the Suez
canal and the southern seas to far Saghalien. Banishment
to that convict colony, although half the
island has passed to the victorious Japanese, will
still survive, despite its manifest failure.
After the experience of a quarter of a century,
it may be most unhesitatingly asserted that the net
result of the deportation to Saghalien has been most
disappointing. Failure has met the Russian government
on every side. Transportation has fulfilled
none of the aims of penal legislation, has
been neither reformatory nor deterrent, but merely
painful and punitive without any return in benefit
to the colony. The island has made no progress;
its scanty natural resources have been little utilised,
and no return has been obtained from the cultivation
of the indifferent soil. At the best period,
barely one-tenth of the convicts qualifying for conditional
freedom, and labouring to become proprietors
of farms with lands cleared and stocked with
cattle, were of any value in carrying on the work;
of the remaining nine-tenths, half had no heart in
.bn 283.png
.pn +1
it, and the other half were frankly idlers and vagabonds
hanging about the settlements, looking for
free rations, and when the issue ceased, ranging
the country as masterless men depending on theft
and depredation for their bare living.
The social atmosphere was vitiated, and noxious
evil elements predominated; general depravity had
become almost universal. It was the old story of
Australian transportation, and the later experience
of New Caledonia. Once more, penal exile stands
condemned as a secondary punishment, showing the
same absence of any redeeming or compensating
features in the improvement of these new lands or
the amelioration of the individual. The system
must be still more barren of results in the future,
now that the southern half of the island—the part
most favourable to agriculture—has been surrendered
to Japan as part of the last war indemnity.
This will seriously diminish the amount of land
available for the “exile settlers,” as they are called.
The efforts made to colonise have been feeble
and fruitless. Convict labourers were set to clear
the forests and reclaim waste lands, but in a desultory,
half-hearted fashion, without skill or knowledge,
and wielding primitive instruments and imperfect
tools. Much time was wasted in covering long
distances to draw rations, and depending upon the
administration for advances to provide seed and
stock, both inadequate in quantity and of very inferior
quality. As a general rule, the settlers were
.bn 284.png
.pn +1
physically unfit for the work in hand; their health
was not robust; they soon aged and broke down
under the rough conditions of daily life. All were
crushed with indebtedness to the government for
advances, and also to private usurers who supplied
means for self-indulgence. A fierce passion for
gambling consumed them, and drunkenness was
universal. Vodka was smuggled in freely from
Japan, and numbers of illicit stills manufactured it
secretly upon the island. One of the principal officials
spoke as follows of the deplorable state of
things:—
“Convict life on Saghalien is a frightful nightmare.
It is a compound of debauchery, insolence
and bravado, mixed with real suffering from hardship
and privation, and tainted indelibly with crime
and corruption.” Children born on or brought to
the island are educated in the worst vices, and when
still of tender years are already profligate or depraved.
Modesty does not exist; young girls of
twelve and thirteen are invariably seduced and abandoned
to prostitution; men enter into the civil marriage
so as to profit by the immorality of their temporary
wives; many female convicts are retained
in government hands, simply to purvey concubines
for the colonial officials. The unsavoury and
shameless relations of the sexes are among the principal
reasons why colonisation has absolutely failed.
There is no virtue among the female residents of
Saghalien, whether they are “free” women who
.bn 285.png
.pn +1
have come out voluntarily to join husbands or parents,
or those condemned to deportation. The latter
are in many respects better placed than the former,
for they receive government shelter and allowances
in food.
The prisons on the island are hot-beds of vice;
all classes of offenders are herded together, with no
system of classification but the one based upon the
length of sentence. An attempt has been made to
separate the uncondemned awaiting trial from the
recidivist and hardened offender, but the division
is not carried far, and too often the association is
indiscriminate, and the wholly bad habitual criminals
mix freely with the less hardened wrongdoers,
who are rapidly corrupted and debased by their evil
surroundings. The worst elements are concentrated
in the “testing” prison of Alexandrovsk, including
those who have graduated and grown gray in crime
on the mainland. Prison discipline is generally
slack and ineffective, and from ill-judged economy
the staff of warders is too weak for supervision
and control. The officers themselves are often of
inferior stamp, drunken, untrustworthy, overbearing,
given to “trafficking” with the prisoners, accepting
bribes for the clandestine introduction of
strong drink, or to assist in escapes, quick to oppress
and misuse their charges.
Another impediment to colonisation is the noted
and invincible dislike to the place constantly present
in the minds of the enforced colonists or exiled class
.bn 286.png
.pn +1
at large. No ex-convict would willingly remain on
Saghalien. When their terms of detention are ended,
all want to turn their backs on the island forever.
Nothing would reconcile one to continued residence,
not even the acquisition of comparative wealth and
the possession of lands and herds, a house to shelter
him, and domestic ties. Anyone who can happily
scrape together the necessary means hungers to
spend it in paying his passage home. He must possess
his soul in patience for a long time. Six years
must be spent as an exile settler after release from
his prison probation; six more as a peasant, and
then only permission is granted to cross to the mainland,
but never to return to St. Petersburg or Moscow.
Now and again a fugitive—and there is a
large percentage of escapes as we shall see—may
reach home, but he is in constant danger of rearrest.
One political prisoner actually succeeded in reaching
the capital, but had the bad luck to meet in the streets
of St. Petersburg a gendarme officer who knew him.
He was recognised and sharply interrogated.
“How did you manage to come so far, and what
brings you here?” asked the officer. “This
brought me,” replied the exile, as he promptly drew
his revolver and shot his inconvenient questioner
down. Arrest followed immediately, and trial, with
a fresh sentence of fifteen years. Once more he
was sent to Saghalien, where he is still living as an
exile settler with small hope of a second enlargement.
.bn 287.png
.pn +1
There are occasional, but very rare, exceptions
among ex-convicts who elect to remain and settle
down in the colony. Mr. Hawes tells us of one,
a Cossack from the Caucasus, probably an old insurgent,
who, with tireless industry, had made himself
a home at the village of Uskovo on the upper
waters of river Tim, some fifty miles from Alexandrovsk.
This man with infinite labour had cleared
enough of the primeval forest to sow a respectable
crop of corn, some 150 puds or upwards of 5,000
English pounds, which returned him a twelvefold
crop. He was a careful farmer, and sowed his seed
with judgment, unlike most of the peasants who
scattered it at one place insufficiently and at another
in excess. Yet good harvests might be secured by
steady industry, were the peasants only willing to
give agriculture a fair trial. Another similar case
was that of a free-command convict, whose wife
had followed him out from Europe. He was permitted
to live with her outside the prison on condition
that he performed his allotted task of hard
labour, which was to haul tree trunks into Alexandrovsk
to the number of one hundred and twenty.
He was energetic and thrifty, and by the aid of a
loan from the crown purchased a number of
draught ponies to help him in hauling, by which
means he contrived to get a certain amount of spare
time to work on his own account. He had struck
a new idea, inspired by the fact that a steady traffic
in oxen and ponies, bound to the town bazaar or
.bn 288.png
.pn +1
market, constantly passed his door. He established
a sort of livery stable in a little courtyard adjoining
his cottage, where he provided shelter for the cattle
and sleeping places for the drovers on beds of hay.
He soon did a large business and prospered greatly.
Sometimes there was a sad slip between the cup
and the lip. It is on record that an exile settler by
unremitting diligence had put by enough to pay
for his passage home at the expiration of his term
of exile. On his way to Alexandrovsk, he was resting
on a bridge when another villager of the free
command came and seated himself alongside. Suddenly,
as they chatted pleasantly together, the newcomer
knocked the other senseless with a heavy
blow on the head, and having rifled his body,
dropped it into the stream running below. He thus
became possessed of his victim’s pocket-book containing
his money and the certificate of the expiration
of his sentence. Fate was adverse, however,
and when he proceeded to make use of his ill-gotten
gains, the certificate was recognised as the property
of the deceased. Arrest and detention were followed
by full discovery of the crime and its punishment.
At Saghalien there was no security to life and
property in the towns and still less safety in the interior,
which was ravaged and harassed by the
vagrant convicts, continually moving to and fro.
Murder was committed daringly and unblushingly
on the smallest temptation, such as the possession
.bn 289.png
.pn +1
of even a small sum of money. When Mr. Hawes
was at Alexandrovsk, he met when on his way to
church a couple of men just out of hospital who had
evidently been drinking. One of them reeled a
little in his walk and was manifestly drunk. Within
a few hours this luckless creature lay, a corpse, in
the market place. He had been murdered by his
companion for the six or seven rubles he carried
in his pocket. Three days later, a man living near
the market place imprudently sat near the lamp
at an open window, and was shot through it.
Hawes describes the cemetery he visited on a hill
to the north of the town; it was filled with wooden
crosses, black, brown and green, clustering thickly,
and much the same epitaph was inscribed on all,
“Here lies —— murdered —— 18—.” No mention
was made of the assassin; that was quite unnecessary.
The victims were buried both singly and
in groups of three, four or five. The theatre of
the crime was usually the market place or bazaar
near-by, where quarrels were frequent and weapons
such as knives, daggers and revolvers were constantly
employed. Murderous assaults and hand-to-hand
fights were repeated almost daily, and the
police seldom took notice of the disturbance. Men
were often pointed out in the open road who had
half a dozen or more murders to their credit. Mr.
Hawes saw one hovering near his hut who had
slain eight victims, and it seemed inexplicable that
such a miscreant should be suffered to be still at
.bn 290.png
.pn +1
liberty. His immunity was due to his prompt escape
into the taiga or wild, wooded interior. Convicts
who did so might be captured some day, but
were seldom identified or there was insufficient evidence
to secure their conviction. The authorities,
too, were generally callous when one villain murdered
another, philosophically saying, “After all the
brutal crowd has been well diminished by one.”
Of course if an official was murdered, more serious
steps were taken to bring the offender to justice. A
Saghalien murderer was known to have committed
the capital offence nineteen times, and still evaded
punishment.
Female murderers were plentiful enough on
Saghalien, and one of the most remarkable was a
certain Sophie Bluffstein, commonly called the
“Golden Hand.” As a criminal, she had few
equals among wrong-doers in any land. She was
a Jewess, who, as a girl of rare beauty, had married
a man of her own race, a financial agent, but she
left him when his affairs became entangled. She
developed into a cosmopolitan adventuress who
made the capitals of Europe her stage, and was well
known in London, Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg.
Her business was to victimise tradesmen
and attract lovers over whom she gained extraordinary
influence. Her frauds were extensive and
on the well-known lines. She lived in great style
in a smart house, in the most fashionable part of
the city, and drove in her carriage to the best shops
.bn 291.png
.pn +1
where she made large purchases of jewelry and
valuables, for which, of course, she never paid. Her
depredations were on a colossal scale and she was
“wanted” by the entire police of Europe.
Sophie Bluffstein’s personal fascination was unrivalled.
Her chief charms were her wonderful
eyes, which seemed to have had magnetic effect
upon her admirers and drew them irresistibly to
her feet, tempting them to commit any crime to secure
her good graces. One of her greatest triumphs
was the beguilement of the governor of Smolensk,
where she had been arrested and incarcerated. Her
influence over him was such that she induced him
to connive at her escape, to desert his wife and
family, and to accompany her in her flight. The
connection was brief, and she resumed her evil
courses, until she was caught in a trap at a gay
supper party of young men, some of whom were
terrorists, and which was broken up by the police.
Arrested as a political offender, she was sent to
Siberia, where in due course she escaped, was recaptured
and deported to Saghalien.
Here she renewed her criminal activity, and when
released from prison to enter the free command, she
gathered round her a choice collection of the worst
characters, whom she employed as her tools in the
crimes she planned and had carried out. In one
case, a merchant, carrying on his person a large
sum in rubles, was robbed and murdered. The
money was so cleverly buried by her that it has not
.bn 292.png
.pn +1
yet been discovered. Her operations were greatly
aided by a ship her confederates had seized and
openly used as a pirate craft. To check her villainies,
she was shut up at last in the testing prison
at Alexandrovsk and kept constantly handcuffed.
Yet she eventually regained her liberty, and after
living more peaceably for a time at Rikovsk, she
was allowed to settle at Vladivostok, where she
kept an inn until her death.
That life was held cheap at Saghalien will be
shown by the following story. A merchant of Alexandrovsk
had reason to suspect his wife, a young
and beautiful Tartar woman, of infidelity, and when
he upbraided her she ran off and left him. She was
never seen again, and it came out afterward that
he had hired an assassin at the price of twenty-five
rubles to kill her, according to the provisions of
the Mahometan law. The assassin and his employer
quarreled over the ghastly business, and the
latter simplified the matter by hiring a second assassin
to murder the first. But the second murder
was not so successfully accomplished as the first;
the victim escaped; the merchant was arrested, and
a witness came forward to say she had seen him
preparing a noose to hang his wife on his own account.
No arrest was made for some time, and
even the merchant was let out on bail.
Thefts and highway robbery were of constant
occurrence, and burglaries also, both of private
houses and government stores. There was a large
.bn 293.png
.pn +1
floating population of desperadoes, which was continually
recruited by the fugitives from justice,
prison-breakers and vagrants from the free commands,
and exile settlers who preferred depredation
to industry. The brodyaga was a greater scourge
in Saghalien than in Siberia, another and a potential
check to the development of the colony on account
of the terrorism exercised over the well-disposed
settler, whom he robbed and maltreated.
They worked generally in organised gangs, armed
with stolen rifles which they readily used. The
most dangerous gang was that of which the chief
and captain was the notorious Barratasvili, the
Robin Hood of the island, whose feats are still remembered.
Barratasvili came to Saghalien first as an exiled
forger, and he passed through his prison probation
with an exemplary character. He was looked
upon as a mild and well-disposed man, quite amenable
to discipline. When he joined the free command,
he became a domestic servant and continued
to be well-conducted until suddenly he ran off and
escaped to Nicholaevsk on the mainland. He was
pursued, taken and brought back to Saghalien, only
to give his escort the slip and gain the recess of the
forest, where he all but died of starvation. By the
murder of a merchant on his way from Dui to
Alexandrovsk carrying the price of a horse he had
lately sold, Barratasvili obtained funds and became
the leader of the band which soon began to ravage
.bn 294.png
.pn +1
the district. He was like the typical brigand, waging
war with the rich but in sympathy with the poor,
whom he succoured instead of attacking. He was
daring and unscrupulous in his robberies, shooting
“at sight” all who offered the slightest resistance.
As he became more and more reckless and his
crimes multiplied, the hue and cry was raised
against him, and wide plans were laid to capture
him, all of which he successfully evaded, still boldly
showing himself where he was most “wanted.”
On one occasion at Alexandrovsk, a strong detachment
of soldiers searched the town, house by
house, in the small hours of the morning, bent upon
taking him, but quite fruitlessly. Yet four hours
after the search had begun, he was seen by a friend
in the neighbourhood passing along the street with
no more disguise than being muffled up in a fur-lined
coat. Again, he entered a store in the town
and having posted a sentry to keep watch, proceeded
to ransack the place, emptying the counter cases of
their jewelry, the tills and the safes of their cash.
The recklessness of these thieves was so great that
they entered the town and had their photographs
taken.
But the net was closing round Barratasvili. A
combined effort was set on foot to put an end to
him and his gang. It was winter time when the
end came. Overcome with fatigue, he one day
ventured off the road into the forest close to a deserted
saw-mill, and with his companions fell
.bn 295.png
.pn +1
asleep. An overseer, trudging along the road,
noticed the tracks of his skis, and they aroused his
suspicions. Ordinary travellers do not leave the
road to plunge into the deep snow of the dense forest.
He, too, was tired, but he went back to Derbensk
and secured the assistance of a posse of soldiers.
Following up the track, step by step, through
the forest, they came upon the long-sought robbers
resting. The alarm was given. Firing began on
both sides. The leader of the gang was hit in the
left shoulder, but still continued to fire. The soldiers
sought shelter behind tree trunks. Barratasvili,
in taking aim, exposed his head and in so doing
was shot in the forehead. Their leader killed, his
companions threw down their arms, were taken and
beaten by the soldiers with the butt ends of their
muskets. In encounters of this kind, the soldiers,
furious at the loss of their comrades, treat their
captives most brutally, and in some cases the latter
have died from injuries thus received. Three of
the four companions of Barratasvili were hanged
at the corners of the testing prison at Alexandrovsk.
In theory, capital punishment is supposed to have
been abolished in Russia, but the sentence is still
passed by court-martial and the island of Saghalien
in under martial law. These brodyagi were really
strangled, not hanged. A rope with a slip-knot was
fixed round the neck of the culprit, the other end
being carried up and made taut to a crosspiece supported
by two upright poles. The convict stood
.bn 296.png
.pn +1
on a box, which was kicked away from under his
feet, and strangulation often tardily ensued.
The brodyagi had little hope of permanent evasion.
Now and again a few determined fugitives
have seized a boat and attempted a passage across
the sea to the mainland. They might win through
the dangers of the sea, having evaded the native
trackers, half savage men of the Gilyak tribe, more
ready to shoot down than to capture, and they
might make good their landing at Cape Muraviev
or Pogob. But they must face starvation and almost
certain death from the terrible winter cold.
The alternative is voluntary surrender, with the certainty
of flogging and a prolongation of sentence.
More frequently, the brodyagi infest the taiga and
hang about the sparse settlements on the chance of
plunder, or, if in any numbers, combine for a descent
upon the villages. In one year, 1896, nine
convicts who had escaped from the Alexandrovsk
prisons at various times joined forces in the
Timovsk district and gave a great deal of trouble.
They were pursued by strong parties of soldiers, but
often turned to show fight, having become possessed
of firearms. Eventually they were captured, the
survivors of the gang ending as usual upon the
gallows.
When they are Chinese—and in Manchuria, the
Russians hunt them down and shoot as many as
they can at sight—those wounded and taken alive
are decapitated and their heads hung by the way-side,
.bn 297.png
.pn +1
but no real attempt has been made to rid Siberia
and Saghalien of this great pest and danger.
Statistics are not helpful, as so few arrests are
made, and so few crimes discovered. Garroting is
the chief device of the footpad. With a short stick
and a noose of twine, he approaches his victim from
the rear, slips the cord over his head and strangles
the man, woman or child, who is unable to utter a
cry; then he strips from the body everything likely
to lead to its identification, and decamps. If there
is an accomplice, he blocks the stranger’s advance
or engages his attention at the correct moment.
Nor is there perfect safety in numbers. “Whilst
at Khabarovsk,” says a recent traveller, “I paid a
visit to one of the lone pioneers of Anglo-Saxondom
in that far-off land. There, within a stone’s throw
of the governor-general’s house, three citizens were
attacked within five minutes of our passing. Their
assailants got away, but all three of the merchants
succumbed to their injuries. At Blagoveschensk, in
broad daylight, between two and three o’clock in the
afternoon, and quite close to the main hotel and
high street, I heard a series of revolver shots, and
turning, saw a man leisurely reloading his revolver.
His victim, a woman in this case, never uttered a
cry, merely fell. The street was almost deserted,
and the people who heard and saw took very little
notice, but with the aid of a passing soldier, we
arrested that man, and in the rough and ready
lock-up to which he was taken were electric lights
.bn 298.png
.pn +1
and telephone. In a few minutes the district superintendent
was summoned, but we were scarcely
thanked for our part, and we were told that our
action was not Siberian, and that the affair was
none of ours.
“From Cheliobinsk to Vladivostok crime is
equally common. In the latter place, I was told that
after each pay-day at the naval fitting yard men
were missing and never returned. On one occasion
thirty disappeared, and ordinarily eight or ten
bodies are found within a few days, stripped of
every shred of clothing, their tattooed marks gashed
over and the features hacked so that they could not
be recognised. Russians suffer more than the Chinese,
and Russians are usually the aggressors. Policemen
are too few and too wary. Unless the street
be crowded, men may shout loud and long before
any will venture to their assistance.”
The suburbs and villages in Siberia, says the
same authority, suffer from the vagrant bands who
raid settlements and houses, exacting all they dare
and often not falling short of other crimes. They
are the fugitives from justice, escaped criminals, the
reckless and daring convicts who have eluded their
prison guards. They have nothing but what they
have stolen, a wooden staff and a short length of
leather or twine. Whoever gets into their power
has a short shrift and theirs is not longer if they are
captured in the act or traced. For entering and robbing
a church in Vladivostok, some were hanged,
.bn 299.png
.pn +1
for in Siberia the death penalty is not in abeyance
as in Russia. In Siberia—and in Russia too—lynch
law is common among the peaceable, industrious,
well-to-do peasants as it is also among the
half Russianised natives. One method of dealing
with cattle thieves is to bend down two straight
young birch trees, tie the hands of the robber to one
and his feet to the other, then release the trees and
hurry away.
Later records describe the extraordinary career
of a convict, Nagorny by name, who is said to have
escaped seven times from Saghalien, his last having
been effected while he was chained to a wheelbarrow.
This man had been guilty of more than fifty
murders and several hundred robberies, many of
these having been perpetrated in the disguise of a
gendarme, when he entered the houses of his victims
under the pretext of making an official search.
He was tall, strongly built and had a ruffianly expression.
When he was arrested, Nagorny pointed
a loaded revolver at his custodian, but the lock of
the weapon proved damaged and it was useless.
A hideous story is preserved in Saghalien of a
tragic event that occurred in the summer of 1892,
when a party of a hundred convicts were sent from
Alexandrovsk to make a road through the taiga to
Rikovsk. It was a terrible task; the road followed
the course of the Boroni River, in a wide and
swampy valley, rendered impassable by unexpected
heavy rains, which cut the workmen off from their
.bn 300.png
.pn +1
base of supplies. Great numbers of the gang perished
from starvation, dysentery and fevers. Three
of them, maddened by their privations, escaped into
the taiga, and when pursued, wandered further and
further into the primeval forest. It was strongly
suspected, but never proved, that one of the three
was killed and eaten by his two comrades, for one
of them when caught was found to be carrying a
human bone in his pouch, but his mind was unhinged
and he could give no coherent account of
what happened. He was treated as a lunatic, and
his insanity saved him from punishment, but he was
ever afterward known as “Vasiliv the Cannibal.”
The other fugitive, Kalenik, was sentenced to
ninety-nine strokes of the plet, which killed him.
Political exiles have been deported to Saghalien,
but not in any great number. They were among
the earliest convicts transported by sea, and it is
worth noting that the Russian government in 1888
was anxious to make no distinction between them
and the common criminals. Mr. Kennan prints a
letter concerning some of them from M. Galkin
Vrasski, the well-known chief of prison administration,
directing that no difference should be made
between them and the ordinary criminals. They
were to be subjected to the same discipline, but to
be kept under stricter surveillance, if anything, and
were to be liable to more severe punishments inflicted
on Saghalien and in Siberia. Two, indeed,
were flogged at Alexandrovsk, after an unhappy
.bn 301.png
.pn +1
collision with the prison authorities caused by the
neglect of one of them to raise his hat on meeting
a subordinate official. Their sufferings were, of
course, greater owing to the remoteness of their
domicile and their savage surroundings. They were
naturally more in touch with the civilised world at
Tobolsk, Tomsk and Irkutsk, and were at a peculiar
disadvantage on Saghalien, because of the dearth of
educated people among the exiled population. They
were in request for more cultured employment as
schoolmasters, accountants or in scientific labours.
As a rule, they bore their expatriation and the hardships
of their daily life with equanimity, and were
quiet and well-conducted. Many of them had been
victims of Russian despotism and had suffered much
in the Russian state prisons. One of them whom
Mr. Hawes met on Saghalien was a lady who had at
one time belonged to a secret society unknown to
her husband. When Alexander II was assassinated
she fled the country. On returning later to Russia,
she was arrested on suspicion, but her identity could
not be proved until her husband was tricked into
recognising her when they were suddenly brought
face to face. This lady was consigned to the fortress
of , and was so entirely lost sight
of that her husband, presuming she was dead, married
again. Ten years later he heard that she was
alive and had been transported to Saghalien. Having
somehow settled matters with his second wife,
he followed his first to the other end of the world
.bn 302.png
.pn +1
and was eventually allowed to settle with her at
Vladivostok.
In spite of restrictions, hardships and almost intolerable
conditions, the political exile has been a
distinct aid and valuable factor in the settlement
and development of Siberia, carrying with him
ideals and standards and a degree of intelligence far
in advance of the native Siberian settler and peasant.
The infusion of such an element is all the more
needed because of the low average of intelligence
of the great mass of the convicts, many of whom
become permanent residents of Siberia. Mr. Henry
Norman has said of the prisoners in the prison of
Irkutsk, as he found them: “Never has it been my
lot, though I have visited prisons, civilised and uncivilised,
in many parts of the world, to see human
nature at such a low ebb.... From this point of
view, Russian criminology has a task unknown in
countries where civilisation has reached a higher
average of development.” It is the criminal exile
who has been a bar to progress in Siberia, and with
the cessation of the transportation of this class of
convicts, the future is brighter for the great exile
territory which is so rich in natural possibilities.
Siberia will no doubt become the granary of the
world. Its millions of fertile acres must ere long
develop its great food producing qualities. With
its great stretches of prairie waiting for the plough,
its huge forests and magnificent waters, “it is
evident that the Siberia of convicts and prisoners is
.bn 303.png
.pn +1
passing away and the Siberia of the reaping machine,
the gold drill, the timber yard, the booming,
flourishing new town is awakening into new life.”
The present condition of Russia is appalling.
Centuries of autocratic rule, backed by barbarous
methods, such as have been set forth at some length
in the foregoing pages, have culminated now in a
social upheaval that threatens the collapse of a vast
empire. The stability of the government is wholly
undermined; long continued, merciless repression
has failed; resistance to constituted authority becomes
daily more daring and embittered. The Czar
and his bureaucracy are more and more fiercely and
systematically assailed, despite the increased reprisals
of despotic power and the temporary triumph
of a reactionary policy.
Rulers, with their backs to the wall, plead these
outrages are imperative in self-defence. The malcontents,
ever increasing in numbers and violence,
have openly determined to make government impossible
and that terrorism by bomb-throwing and
assassination is the only argument left. They will
accept no compromise; they distrust all promises,
and move steadily on to social revolution. “We
cannot call our souls our own,” said a working man
in Moscow to an English writer; “we cannot discuss
affairs of our country without risk of Siberia;
we are taxed down to the last kopeck; we are black-mailed
by every petty official; we have no freedom
of the press; if anybody in authority does us wrong,
.bn 304.png
.pn +1
we have no redress ... we hate the bomb-throwing
as much as you do. But it is the only argument
left to us.” This is characteristic of the spirit animating
the “great mass of lethargic ignorant Muscovites”
goaded at last to action and gaining hourly
in strength and recklessness. Meanwhile the government
maintains the struggle. Its persistent answer
is to refuse reforms until order is restored, and
it still finds champions and supporters, especially in
the so-called “Black Hundred,” a powerful reactionary
organisation based upon an unofficial union
of the Russian people.
An examination of any of the recent budgets for
yearly expenses of this huge empire will show a
most astonishing percentage appropriated to the
maintenance of order,—the upkeep of the police
and censorship of the press,—and will furnish to
the intelligent observer a reason for present conditions,
as well as a reason for admiring the fidelity
of the educated members of the lower classes to their
ideal of liberty.
.dv class='tnotes'
.ce
Transcriber’s Note
Spelling and punctuation, where printer or editorial errors were obvious, has been corrected,
as summarized here:
.ta l:8 l:46 l:12 w=90%
| Bogo[lom/mol]etz | Transposed.
| and the number had been much larger not long before[,/.] | Replaced.
| the fortress of Sch[l]üsselburg, | Added.
.ta-
.dv-