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CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTORY 1 I. — MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH RUSSIAN PRISONS...8 II. — RUSSIAN PRISONS 24 III. — THE FORTRESS OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL 84 V. — THE EXILE IN SIBERIA...154 VI. — THE EXILE ON SAKHALIN...202 VII. — A FOREIGNER ON RUSSIAN PRISONS.. 227 VIII.— IN FRENCH PRISONS 257 IX.— ON THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF PRISONS ON PRISONERS...299 X. — ARE PRISONS NECESSARY?. 338 APPENDIX A.— Trial of the Soldiers accused of having carried Letters from the Alexis Ravelin. 373 iv Contents.
PAGE APPENDIX B. — On the part played by the Exiles in the Colonization of Siberia. 377 APPENDIX C. — Extract from a Report on " Ad- ministrative Exile," read by M. Shakeeff at the Sitting of the St. Petersburg Nobility on February 17, 1881.. 379 APPENDIX D. — On Reformatories for Boys in France 382 INDEX...383 IN RUSSIAN AND FRENCH PRISONS.
INTRODUCTORY.
IN our busy life, preoccupied as we are with the numberless petty affairs of everyday exist- ence, we are all too much inclined to pass by many great evils which affect Society without giving them the attention they really deserve. If sensational " revelations " about some dark side of our life occasionally iind their way into the daily Press; if they succeed in shaking our indifference and awaken public attention, we may have in the papers, for a month or two, excellent articles and letters on the subject. Many well-meant things may then be said, the most humane feelings expressed. But the agitation soon subsides; and, after having asked for some new regulations or laws, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of regu- lations and laws already in force; after having made some microscopic attempts at combating 5" B 2 In Russian and French Prisons.
by a few individual efforts a deep-rooted evil which ought to be combated by the combined efforts of Society at large, we soon return to our daily occupations without caring much about what has been done. It is good enough if, after all the noise, things have not gone from bad to worse.
If this remark is true with regard to so many features of our public life, it is especially so with regard to prisons and prisoners. To use Miss Linda Gilbert's — the American Mrs. Fry's —words, " After a man has been confined to a felon's cell, Society loses all interest in and care for him." Provided he has " bread to eat, water to drink, and plenty of work to do," Society considers itself as having fulfilled all its duties towards him. From time to time, somebody acquainted with prisons starts an agitation against the bad state of our jails and lock-ups. Society recognizes that something ought to be done to remedy the evil. But the efforts of the reformers are broken by the inertia of the organized system; they have to fight against the widely-spread preju- dices against all those who have fallen under the ban of the law; and soon they are left to themselves in their struggle against an im- Introductory. 3 Introductory. 3 mense evil. Such was the fate of John Howard, and of how many others? A few kindhearted and energetic men and women continue, of course, amidst the general indifference, to do their work of improving the condition of pri- soners, or rather of mitigating the bad effects of prisons on their inmates. But, guided as they are merely by philanthropic feeling, they seldom venture to criticize the principles of penal institutions; still less do they search for the causes which every year bring millions of human beings within the enclosure of prison walls. They try to mitigate the evil; they seldom attempt to grapple with it at its source. Every year something like a hundred thou- sand men, women, and children are locked up in the jails of Great Britain alone — very nearly one million in those of the whole of Europe. Nearly 1,200,000/. of public money are spent every year, in this country alone, for convict and local prisons; very nearly ten millions in Europe — not to speak of the expenses involved by the maintenance of the huge machinery which supplies prisons with inmates. But, apart from a few philanthropists and professional men, who cares about the results achieved at so heavy an expenditure? Are our prisons B 2 B 2 4 In R^lss^an and French Prisons.
worth the enormous outlay in human labour yearly devoted to them? Do they guarantee Society against the recurrence of the evils which they are supposed to combat?
Having had in my life several opportunities of giving more than a passing attention to these great questions, I have thought that it would be useful to put together the observa- tions which I have been enabled to make on prisons and the reflections they have suggested.
My first acquaintance with prisons and exile was made in Siberia, in connection with a committee for the reform of the Russian penal system. There I had the opportunity of learn- ing the state of things with regard both to exile in Siberia and to prisons in Russia, and then my attention was attracted first to the great question of crime and punishment. Later on, in 1874 to 1876, I was kept, awaiting trial, nearly two years in the fortress of Peter and Paul at St. Petersburg, and could appreciate the terrible effects of protracted cellular con- finement upon my fellow-prisoners. Thence I was transferred to the newly-opened House of Detention, which is considered as a model prison for Russia, and thence again to a military prison at the St. Petersburg Military Hospital.
Introductory.
Introductory.
When in this country, I was called upon, in 1881, to describe the treatment of political prisoners in Russia, in order to tell the truth in the face of the systematic misrepresentation of the matter by an admirer of the Russian Government. I did so in a paper on the Rus- sian Revolutionary Party, which appeared in the Fortnightly Review, June, 1831. None of the facts revealed in this paper have been, contra- dicted by the Russian agents. Attempts were, however, made to circulate in the English press accounts of Russian prisons, representing them under a somewhat smiling aspect. I was thus compelled to give a general description of prisons and exile in Russia and Siberia, and did so in a series of four papers, which appeared in the Nineteenth Century. Refraining as much as possible from complaints of the treatment undergone by our political friends in Russia, I preferred to give an idea of the general state of Russian prisons, of exile to Siberia, and of its results; and told the unutterable sufferings which scores of thousands of common- law prisoners are enduring in the jails through- out Russia, on their way to Siberia, and in the immense penal colony of the Russian Empire. In order to complete my own experience, which 6 In Russian and French Prisons.
might have been out of date, I consulted the bulky Russian literature which has been devoted of late to the subject. The perusal of this literature convinced me that things have remained in very nearly the same state as they were five-and-twenty years ago; but I also learned from it that although the Russian prison authorities are very anxious to have mouthpieces in West Europe, in order to circulate embellished accounts of their humane endeavours, they do not conceal the truth either from the Russian Government or from the Russian reading public, and both in official reports and in the Press they represent the prisons as being in the most execrable condition. Some of these avowals will be found in the following pages.
Later on, that is, in 1882 to 1886, I spent three years in French prisons; namely, in the Prison Departementale of Lyons, and the Maison Centrale of Clairvaux. The description of both has been given in a paper contributed last year to the Nineteenth Century. My sojourn of nearly three years at Clairvaux, in close neigh- bourhood with fourteen hundred common-law prisoners, has given me an opportunity of obtaining a personal insight into the results Introductory. 7 Introductory. 7 achieved by detention in this prison, one of the best in France, and, as far as my information goes, in Europe. It induced me to treat the question as to the moral effects of prisons on prisoners from a more general point of view, in connection with modern views on crime and its causes. A portion of this inquiry formed the subject of an address delivered in December last, before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution.
While thus reprinting some review articles, I have completed them with more recent informa- tion and data, mostly taken from official Russian publications; and whilst eliminating from them the controversial element, I have also eliminated all that cannot be supported by documents which can be published now without causing harm to anybody of our friends in Russia. The newly-added chapter on exile to Sakhalin will complete the description of the Russian penal institutions. I take advantage of this opportunity to express my best thanks to the editor of the Nineteenth Century for his kind permission to reprint the articles published in his review.
In Russian and French Prisons.
CHAPTER I.
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH RUSSIAN PRISONS.
MY first acquaintance with Russian prisons was made in Siberia. It was in 1862. I had then just arrived at Irkutsk — a young Lieutenant of Cossacks, not fully twenty years of age, — and a couple of months after my arrival I was appointed secretary to a committee for the reform of prisons. A few words of explanation are necessary, I suppose, for my English readers.
The education I had received was only what a military school could give. Much of our time had been devoted, of course, to mathe- matics and physical sciences; still more to the science of warfare, to the art of destroying men on battle-fields. But we were living, then, in Russia at the time of the great revival of thought which followed in our country the Crimean defeat; and even the education in military schools felt the influence of this great My first Acquaintance with Russian Prisons, g movement. Something superior to mere mili- tarism penetrated even the walls of the Corps des Pages.
The Press had received some freedom of expression since 1859, and it was eagerly discussing the political and economic re- forms which had to shake off the sad results of twenty-five years of military rule under Nicholas I.; and echoes of the intense intellectual activity which was agitating the outer world reached our class-room. Some of us were reading a good deal to complete our education. We took a warm interest in the proposed rebuilding of our institutions, and lively discussions on the emancipation of Serfs, on the reforms in administration, were carried on between lessons on tactics and military history. The very next day after the long- expected and often delayed emancipation of Serfs had been promulgated, several copies of the bulky and in coherently- worded Polozhenie (Emancipation Act) were busily studied and briskly commented upon in our small sunny library. The Italian Opera was forgotten for guesses as to the probable results and meaning of the emancipation. Our teachers, too, fell under the influences of the epoch. History, io In Russian and French Prisons.
and especially the history of foreign literature, became, in the lectures of our professors, a history of the philosophical, political, and social growth of humanity. The dry principles of J. B. Say's " Political Economy," and the com- mentaries upon Russian civil and military law, which formerly were considered as a useless burden in the education of future officers, became endowed with new life in our classes, when applied to the present needs of Russia.
Serfdom had been abolished, and a series of reforms which were to culminate in constitu- tional guarantees, preoccupied the minds. All had to be reformed at once. All had to be revised in our institutions, which are a strange mixture of legacies from the old Moscow period, with Peter I.'s attempts at creating a military State by orders from St. Petersburg, with the depravity bequeathed by the Courtiers of the Empresses, and Nicholas I.'s military despotism. Reviews and newspapers were fully devoted to these subjects, and we eagerly read them.
It is true that Reaction had already made its appearance on the horizon. On the very eve of the liberation of the Serfs, Alexander II. grew frightened at his own work, and the Reactionary Party gained some ground in the Winter Palace.
My first Acquaintance with Russian Prisons. 1 1 Nicholas Milutine — the soul of the emancipation of the Serfs in bureaucratic circles — had been suddenly dismissed, a few months before the promulgation of the law, and the work of the Liberal Emancipation Committees had been given over, for revision in a sense more favour- able to the nobility, to new committees chiefly composed of Serf-proprietors of the old school, — the so-called Jcryepostniki. The Press began to be muzzled; free discussion of the Emancipation Act was prohibited; the paper of Aksakoff — he was Radical then and advocated the sum- mon? of a Zemskoye Sobranie, and was not opposed to the recall of Russian troops from Poland — was suppressed number after number. The small outbreak of peasants at Kazan, and the great conflagration at St. Petersburg in May, 1862 (it was attributed to Poles), still reinforced the reaction. The series of political trials which were hereafter to characterize the reign of Alexander II. was opened by sentencing our poet and publicist, Mikhailoff, to hard-labour.
The wave of reaction, however, had not in 1862 yet reached Siberia. Mikhailoff, on his way to the Nertchinsk mines, was feted at a dinner by the Governor of Tobolsk. Herzen's 1 2 In Russian and French Prisons.
Koiokol ("The Bell") was smuggled and read everywhere in Siberia; and at Irkutsk I found, in September, 1862, a society animated by the great expectations which were already beginning to fade at St. Petersburg. " Reforms " were on all lips, and among those which were most often alluded to, was that of a thorough reorganiza- tion of the system of exile.
I was nominated aide-de-camp to the Gover- nor of Transbaikalia, General Kukel, a Lithu- anian, strongly inspired with the Liberal ideas of the epoch; and next month we were at Tchita, a big village recently made capital of Transbaikalia.
Transbaikalia is the province where the well- known Nertchinsk mines are situated. All hard-labour convicts are sent there from all parts of Russia; and therefore exile and hard- labour were frequently the subject of our con- versations. Everybody there knew the abomi- nable conditions under which the long foot- journey from the Urals to Transbaikalia used to be made by the exiles. Everybody knew the abominable state of the prisons in Nertchinsk, as well as throughout Russia. It was no sort of secret. Therefore, the Ministry of the In- terior undertook a thorough reform of prisons My first Acquaintance with Russian Prisons. 1 3 in Kussia and Siberia, together with a thorough revision of the penal law and the conditions of exile.
" Here is a circular from the Ministry," the Governor once said to me. " They ask us to collect all possible information about the state of prisons and to express our opinions as to the reforms to be made. There is no one here to undertake the work: you know how fully we are all occupied. We have asked for in- formation in the usual way, but receive nothing in reply. Will you take up the work? " I objected, of course, that I was too young and knew nothing about it. But the answer was: " Study! In the Journal of the Ministry of Justice you will find, to guide you, elaborate reports on all possible systems of prisons. As to the practical part of the work, let us gather, firsts reliable information as to where we stand. Then we all, Colonel P., Mr. A., and Ya., and the mining authorities also — will help you. We will discuss everything in detail with people having practical knowledge of the matter; but gather, first, the data — prepare material for discussion."
So I became secretary to the local com- mittee for the reform of prisons. Needless to 1 4 In Russian and French Prisons.
say how happy I was to accept the task: I set to work with all the energy of youth. The circular of the Ministry filled me with joy. It was couched in the most elegant style, and the Ministry incisively pointed out the chief defects of Russian prisons. The Government was ready to undertake the most thorough reform of the whole system in a most humane spirit. The circular went on to mention the peniten- tiary systems in use in Western Europe; but none of them satisfied the Ministry, and it ad- vocated a return " to the great principles laid down by the illustrious grandmother and grandfather of the now happily reigning Em- peror." For a Russian mind this allusion to the famous instructions of Catherine II., written under the influence of the Encyclopedists, and to the humanitarian tendencies professed during the earlier years of Alexander I.'s reign, con- veyed a whole programme. My enthusiasm was simply doubled by the reading of the circular.
Things did not go, however, so smoothly. The mining authorities under whom the exiles are working in the Nertchinsk mines did not care so much about the great principles of Catherine II. and were, I am afraid, of the opinion that the less things were reformed, the My first Acquaintance with Russian Prisons. 1 5 better. The repeated demands for information issued by the Governor left them quite unmoved — they depend directly upon the Cabinet of the Emperor at St. Petersburg, not upon the Go- vernor. Obstinate silence was their answer until they finally sent in a pile of papers, covered with figures, from which nothing could be obtained, not even the cost of maintenance of convicts, nor the value of their labour.
Still, at Tchita there were plenty of men thoroughly acquainted with the hard-labour prisons, and some information was gladly sup- plied by several mining officers. It appeared that none of the silver-mines where exiles were kept could be worked with any semblance of profit. So also with many gold-mines. The mining authorities were anxious to abandon most of them. The arbitrary despotism of the directors of prisons had no limits, and the dreadful tales which circulated in Transbaikalia about one of them — Bazghildeeff — were fully confirmed. Terrible epidemics of scurvy swept away the prisoners by hundreds each year, that a more active extraction of gold was ordered from St. Petersburg, and the underfed convicts were compelled to overwork. As to the buildings and their rotten condition, the 1 6 In Russian and French Prisons.
overcrowding therein, and the filth accumu- lated by generations of overcrowded prisoners, the reports were really heartbreaking. No repairs would do, the whole had to undergo a thorough reform. I visited a few prisons, arid could but confirm the reports. The Trans- baikalian authorities insisted, therefore, on limiting the number of convicts sent to the province; they pointed out the material impos- sibility of providing them not only with work, but even with shelter.
Things were no better with regard to the transport of exiles. This service was in the most deplorable condition. An engineer, a honest young man, was sent to visit all etapes — the prisons where the convicts stop to rest during the journey — and reported that all ought to be rebuilt; many were rotten to the foundation; none could afford shelter for the mass of convicts sometimes gathered there. I visited several of them, saw the parties of con- victs on their journeys, and could but warmly advocate the complete suppression of this ter- rific punishment inflicted on thousands of men, women, and children.
As to the local prisons, destinated to be lock-ups, or houses of detention for the local My first Acquaintance with Russian Prisons. 1 7 prisoners, we found them overcrowded to the last extent in ordinary times, and still more so when parties of convicts were stopped on the journey by inundations or frosts — Siberian frosts. They air answered literally to the well- known description of Dostoievsky in his "Buried Alive."
A small committee, composed of well-inten- tioned men whom the Governor convoked from time to time at his house, busily discussed what could be done to improve affairs without im- posing a new and heavy burden on the budget of the State and the province. The conclusions unanimously arrived at were: that exile, as it is. is a disgrace to humanity; that it is a quite needless burden for Siberia; and that Russia herself must take care of her own prisoners, instead of sending them thither. For that purpose, not only the penal code and the judicial procedure ought to be revised at once, as pro- mised in the Ministerial circulars, but also within Russia herself some new system of penal organization ought to be introduced.
The committee sketched such a system where cellular imprisonment was utterly con- demned, and the subdivision of the prisoners into groups of from ten to twenty in each c 1 8 In Russian and French Prisons.
room, short sentences, and productive and well-paid work in common were advocated. An appeal was to be made to the best energies of Russia in order to transform her prisons into reformatories. Transbaikalia was declared ready to transform her own prisons on these lines without imposing any fresh expenses upon the budget of the Empire. The kinds of work which could be done by prisoners were indicated, and the conclusion was that prisons ought to, and might, support themselves if properly organized. As to the new men and women necessary for such a re- organization of penal institutions on new prin- ciples, the Cornmitbee was sure of finding them; and while an honest jailer under the present system is very rare, there was no doubt that a new departure in the penal system would find no lack of new honest men.
I must confess that at that time I still be- lieved that prisons could be reformatories, and that the privation of liberty is compatible with moral amelioration...but I was only twenty years old.
All this work took several months. And by this time Reaction became more and more in favour at the Winter Palace. The Polish in- My first Acquaintance with Russian Prisons. 1 9 surrection gave to Reactionaries the long- expected opportunity for throwing off their masks and for openly advocating a return to the old principles of the time of Serfdom. The good intentions of 1859-62 were forgotten at the Court; new men came into favour with Alexander II. and were admirably successful in working upon his feeble character and his fears. New circulars were sent out by the Ministries; but these circulars — couched in a far less elegant and far more bureaucratic style — mentioned no more reforms, and insisted, instead, on the necessity of strong rule and discipline.
One day the Governor of Transbaikalia re- ceived an order to leave his post at once and return to Irkutsk, where he was left en disponi- bilite. He had been denounced: he had treated the exiled Mikhailoff too well; he had permitted him to stay on a private mine in the district of Nertchinsk; he sympathized too much with the Poles. A new Governor came to Transbaikalia, and our report on prisons had to be revised again. The new Governor would not sign it. We fought as much as we could to maintain its conclusions. We made concessions as to the style, but we insisted on c 2 2o In Russian and French Prisons.
the general conclusions of the report, and we did this so firmly that finally the Governor signed it and sent it to St. Petersburg.
What has become of it since? Surely it is still lying in some portfolios at the Ministry. For the next ten years the reform of prisons was completely forgotten. In 1872, however, new committees were nominated for the same purpose at St. Petersburg, and again in 1877- 78, and on several succeeding occasions. New men elaborated new schemes; new reports were written criticizing again and again the old system. But the old system remains un- touched. Nay, the attempts at making a new departure have been, by some fatality, mere returns to the old-fashioned type of a Russian ostrog.
True, several central prisons have since been erected in Russia, and hard-labour convicts are kept there before being sent to Siberia, for terms varying from four to six years. To what purpose? Probably to reduce their numbers by the awful mortality in these places. Seven such prisons have been erected of late — at Wilno, Simbirsk, Pskov, Tobolsk. Perm, and two in the province of Kharkoff. But — official reports say so — they have been modelled on the My first Acquaintance with Ritssian Prisons. 1 1 very same type as the prisons of old. " The same filth, the same idleness of the prisoners, the same contempt for the most primary notions of hygiene," says a semi-official report. All together they contained an aggregate of 2464 men in 1880 — too much for their capacity, too little to noticeably diminish the numbers of hard-labour convicts transported to Siberia. A new and terrible punishment inflicted on the convicts to no purpose, — that is all that they have accomplished after having swallowed millions from the budget.
Exile, in the meantime, remains very much what it was in 1862. Only one important modification has been introduced. It proved cheaper to transport the nearly 20,000 people yearly sent to Siberia (two-thirds of them with- out trial) on horses between Perm and Tumen * — that is from the Kama to the basin of the Obi — and thence on barges towed by steamers to Tomsk, instead of sending them on foot. And so they are transported now. Besidesj the extraction of silver from the Nertchinsk mines having been nearly abandoned, no exiles are sent to these most unhealthy mines, some of 1 The Siberian railway being now opened along the whole of this distance, they will be transported by rail.
22 In Russian and French Prisons.
which, like Akatui, were in the worst repute. But a scheme is now afloat for reopening these mines; and in the meantime a new hell, worse than Akatui, has been devised. Hard- labour convicts are sent now to die on the Sakhalin island.
Finally, I must mention that new etapes have been built on the route, 2000 miles long, be- tween Tomsk and Sryetensk, on the Shilka,— - this space being still traversed on foot by the exiles. The old etapes were falling to pieces; it was impossible to repair these heaps of rotten logs, and new etapes have been erected. They are wider than the old ones, but the parties of convicts being also more numerous, the overcrowding and the filth in these etapes are the same as of old.
What further " improvements " can I men- tion in glancing over these five-and- twenty years? 1 was nearly going to forget the House of Detention at St. Petersburg, the sho\v- prison for foreigners, with 317 cells and several rooms for keeping an aggregate of 600 men and 100 women awaiting trial. But that is all. The same old, dark and damp, and filthy lock- ups— the ostrogs — may be seen at the entrance of each provincial town in Russia; and all has My first Acquaintance with Russian Prisons. 23 remained in these ostrogs as it was twenty-five years ago. Some new prisons have been erected here and there, some old ones have been repaired; but the system, and the treatment of prisoners, have remained unaltered; the old spirit has been transported in full in the new buildings; and to see a new departure in the Russian penal institutions we must wait for seme new departure in Russian life as a whole. At present, if there is some change, it is not for the best. Whatever the defects of the old prisons, there was still a breath of humanita- rianism in 1862, which penetrated in a thousand ways, even into the jails. But now, the openly- avowed ideal of Alexander III. being his grand- father Nicholas, the Administration, too, seek their ideals in the old drunken soldiers patro- nized by the " Gendarme of Europe." " Keep Russia in urchin-gloves! " they say at the Gat- china Palace; " Keep them in urchin-gloves! " they repeat in the prisons.
24 In Russian and French Prisons.
CHAPTER II.
EUSSIAN PRISONS.