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Title: The History and Romance of Crime; Russian Prisons
Author: Griffiths, Arthur
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.
The position of illustrations have been adjusted slightly to avoid
falling in mid-paragraph.
Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text regarding the
few textual issues encountered during its preparation.
The History and
Romance of
Crime
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY
[Illustration]
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON
[Illustration:
_Young Girl Revolutionist Condemned to the Scaffold_
]
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.
~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._
[Illustration]
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
------------------
EDITION NATIONALE
Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.
NUMBER 307.
------------------
INTRODUCTION
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 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 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.
CONTENTS
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
List of Illustrations
YOUNG GIRL REVOLUTIONIST _Frontispiece_
FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL _Page_ 38
RUSSIAN PRISONERS ” 229
RUSSIAN PRISONS
CHAPTER I
GENERAL SURVEY
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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:—
a b c d e f
g h i k l m
n o p r s t
u v w x y z
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.
Punishments were the only break in the monotony 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 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
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 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. 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 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 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,
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 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 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 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. 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.”
CHAPTER II
TWO FAMOUS FORTRESSES
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.
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 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.
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
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.
[Illustration: _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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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.
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 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 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
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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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:—
“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.”
“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.
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 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 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, “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.
CHAPTER III
THE EXILE SYSTEM
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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.
Footnote 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.
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, 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.
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.
“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. 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 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 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 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, 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
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.
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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.”
CHAPTER IV
THE OSTROG AT OMSK
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.
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.
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.
Footnote 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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]
Footnote 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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, 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, 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.
CHAPTER V
LIFE IN THE OSTROG
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.
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
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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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! 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 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 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
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 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.”
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 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, 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 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 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!”
CHAPTER VI
TIUMEN AND TOMSK
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
CHAPTER VII
VAGABONDAGE AND UNIONS
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.
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. 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.
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.
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 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
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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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, 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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.
CHAPTER VIII
TREATMENT OF POLITICALS
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.
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 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, 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
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 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, 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.
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 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 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.
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’ 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, Bogomoletz 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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.
[Illustration:
_Russian Prisoners_
_After the painting by Marckl_
]
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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. 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
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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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.
CHAPTER IX
CHANGES IN SYSTEM
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 before.
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 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.
CHAPTER X
SAGHALIEN
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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
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 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 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
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 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
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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 Schlüsselburg,
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 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 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, 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.
Transcriber’s Note
Spelling and punctuation, where printer or editorial errors were
obvious, has been corrected, as summarized here:
221.4 Bogo[lom/mol]etz Transposed.
267.8 and the number had been much larger not long Replaced.
before[,/.]
289.25 the fortress of Sch[l]üsselburg, Added.
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