Transcriber’s Note:

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

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

LONDON

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.

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

List of Illustrations

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.

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.

[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.

[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]]

[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.