foot, on the backs of the convicts, for a distance of sixty miles;4 and one can easily guess what M. Polyakoff's words about a " lack of provisions " really mean. As to the few free settlers who were induced by false promises to leave their homes in Tobolsk and to settle at Takoy, starting there a village of twenty- five houses, they were compelled to leave Sakhalin after a three years' desperate struggle against the inhospitable climate and soil. No subsidies of the Crown would help them. They were compelled to migrate again and to settle on the continent, on the Pacific coast.
Surely, Sakhalin will never become an agricultural colony. If settlers are maintained there as they are in the lower Amur, they will remain a burden upon the State; the Govern - ment will be compelled, sooner or later, to permit most of them to emigrate elsewhere, or to provide them for years and years with food. Cattle-breeding might be more successful. But all that could be expected would be that a few colonists, living bj means of their cattle and a little fishing, would remain there.
Much ado was made in Russia about the Sakhalin coal-mines. But in this direction, 4 Dr. Petri, I.e.
2 1 6 In Russian and French Prisons.
too, there was much exaggeration. The Sakhalin coal is reputed in the East as preferable to the Australian; but ifc is con- sidered as much inferior to the Newcastle or Cardiff coal.5 The extraction of coal on Sakhalin was already begun in 1858, and during the first ten years 30,000 tons were extracted. But mixed as it was with stone, it was of a bad quality, while the extraction (which was carried on by the light of stearine candles)6 cost iu reality fabulous prices. But the coal in stock rapidly accumulated, while batches upon batches of convicts were sent every year; so that now they are occupied in laying down roads on the shore to bring Due into easy communication with Alexandrovsk. A tunnel is therefore pierced in the rocks; but this famous tunnel which was to add to the fame of Sakhalin when its completion was announced in the Russian Press, was not yet terminated at all in 1886: it was a loop-hole through which men could pass only creeping.
5 According to Dr. Petri the Sakhalin coal costs from seven to seven and a half dollars per ton, while the Japanese and Australian are paid only five dollars.
' Koppen's "Sakhalin; its Coal Mines and Coal In- dustry," St. Petersburg, 1875. A most reliable work.
The Exile on Sakhalin. 2 1 7 The worst is, however, that on the whole circumference of Sakhalin there is not a single harbour, and that the approach to its coasts is always difficult owing to the fogs, the late arrival of summer, and the want of beacons in the Tartarian Strait. At Due, the roadstead is open to all winds. The great bay of Patience is too shallow, the depth being only four fathoms at a distance of half a mile from the coast. The best bay — the Aniva — which freezes only for a few weeks, is also open to all winds and has no harbours. Only the Mordvinoff Bay has a good anchorage.
Decades and decades must elapse before the Sakhalin coal could compete with European coal in the Chinese ports; and in the mean- time, a hundred and twenty men would fully supply the Siberian flotilla of the Russian navy with the 5000 tons which represent its annual consumption. Thousands of convicts have thus nothing to do on Sakhalin, and the coal they could raise would be years and years without finding any use.
The first batch of eight hundred convicts was sent to Sakhalin seventeen years ago, in 1869. Following the established traditions, the Administration could invent nothing better 2 1 8 In Russian and French Prisons.
than to send them across Siberia; that is, those who were shipped from the Kara gold- mines had to make a journey of 2000 miles down the Amur, and those who were brought from Russia had a journey of no less than 4700 miles to be done, before reaching Niko- laevsk at the mouth of the Amur.
The results of such a journey were really terrific. When the first party of 250 men reached Nikolaevsk, all, 250, except the dead, were suffering from scurvy; fifty were entirely laid up with the same disease; 7 and these were the men who were to begin the colonization of Sakhalin! No wonder that during the first years the mortality was 117 in the thousand, and that each man was taken to the hospital on an average of three times a year.8 It was only after a series of like blunders which were loudly denounced even in the gagged Press, that the transport of convicts to Sakhalin via Siberia was abandoned, and they were sent via Odessa and the canal of Suez. It must be fresh in the memories of Englishmen in what conditions the transport was made on 7 Tablberg, " Exile to Sakhalin," in Vyestnik Evropy, May, 1879.
8 Koppen, I.e.
The Exile on Sakhalin. 219 this new route, and what a cry of indignation was raised in the English Press. Things are a little better during the last few years, and we have before us reports of medical officers which state that the transport of convicts on ships from Odessa has latterly been made under reasonable conditions. But again, last month, the news came that the last transport sent out in 1886 was overtaken by an epidemic of small pox, and that the mortality was once more dreadful. The customary official denial will surely appear, but whom will it convince?
Little is known about the condition of convicts on Sakhalin itself. In 1879, a report appeared in the Eussian Press, signed by a Eussian merchant, stating that the arbitrary conduct of the chief commander at Sakhalin knew no limits. The Prison Adminis- tration was accused of stealing the last coppers of the convicts. A doctor, Mr. A. A., wrote in October, 1880, from Alexaudrovsk: "I am ordered to the Korsakoff hospital (on the south coast), but I cannot reach it before next June. My colleague abandons his post...he can no longer bear all that is going on there! " Significant words, which permit a Eussian reader to guess the truth, especially when they are 2 2O In Russian and French Prisons.
followed by these: " The chief of the settle- ment seldom visits the barracks; he does not appear otherwise than surrounded by armed warders. The governor of the prison dare not appear amongst the convicts." * Later on, we saw in the Strana (a St. Petersburg newspaper),1 an account of the disorders discovered on Sakhalin by the Chief Commander of the Russian Pacific squadron. It appeared that while the poorer convicts were compelled to heaviest labour, in chains, rich scoundrels and thieves were kept in a quite privileged position; they lived free on the island, squandered money, and made festivals to the authorities.
The above-mentioned revelations provoked an official inquiry. The newspapers announced it with great rejoicing, but what became of it nobody knows; and no news have penetrated since in the press, except those brought in by Dr. Petri. The overcrowding in the Alexandrovsk prison must be terrible. It has been built for 600 inmates, but it had 1103 men in 1881, and 2230 in 1882. Some pro- 9 The Poryadok, published by Professor Stasulevitch (suppressed since), September 8 (20), 1881. 1 January 31, 1882. Dr. Petri, Ic.
The Exile on Sakhalin. 221 visional barracks must have been erected, I suppose. But I imagine what " provisional barracks " must be in Sakhalin!
It is evident from what was said above that the greatest difficulty for the Sakhalin adminis- tration is to lodge the convicts, and to invent an occupation for those who are liberated. There being no place, either in Russia or in Siberia, where hard-labour convicts can be kept, more and more of them are sent every year to Sakhalin. In Siberia, after their liberation, they receive an allotment of land and agricul- tural implements, and then, after two years, the Government troubles no more about them. But, what is to be done for them on Sakhalin? Agriculture being almost impossible, people are literally starving in the new settlements, and food for them must be brought from Russia, subject to accidents of all kinds. So for in- stance, last summer, it appeared in the (semi- official) paper, published at Vladivostok, that the shipment of flour destinated for Sakhalin arrived all damaged, and full of worms and beetles. An inquiry had been ordered; of course, it will be made, but people on Sakhalin will remain in the meantime without food.
Sakhalin is merely a new edition of what 222 In Russian and French Prisons.
I saw twenty years ago on the Amur and the Usuri, but in still worse conditions. As to buying food, they have to pay twenty roubles for a sack of five puds of rye flour of the worst quality (fifty shillings the 160 Ibs.), and certainly double that price as soon as some accident has happened to the Crown stores. The agriculturists, who were supposed soon to supply the prison with all necessaries, and who surely would have done so in reasonable cir- cumstances, must themselves be saved from starvation. It is not on two acres per family, cleared from beneath the marshy forests, that they can possibly subsist.
One of the great inducements of Sakhalin in the eyes of the Administration was that escapes will be exceedingly difficult. This inducement surely exists. Not that escapes are impossible. In 1870, no less than sixteen per cent, of the prisoners escaped nevertheless. But most of them are taken by the indigenes, and either killed by them when they have been captured far away from the military posts, or returned to the post, if the natives find it worth while to make the journey. Each prisoner captured in Siberia by indigenes is valued at ten roubles when brought back alive, and five The Exile on Sakhalin. 223 roubles when killed. Three roubles in the latter case and six roubles in the former do serve, on Sakhalin to induce the Ghiliaks to hunt the runaways. They do so in the most barbarous way, especially since the Sakhalin authorities have distributed rifles among them. Dr. Petri writes that once they came across a party of nonconformists belonging to the sect of byeguny (runners), whom their religious beliefs prescribe to break completely with the present world — given up to the Anti-Christ — and to live a life of restless wanderers, who never have a house or any kind of property. They were twelve, they had infants in arms. All were killed by the Grhiliaks. The most remark- able thing is that these wretched creatures have no hatred against the runaway convicts: they keep on the best terms if the convict can give them something worth the three roubles. But if he cannot pay the redemption, they kill him pitilessly, in order to receive the three roubles from the prison administration. As soon as the premium was temporarily abolished, they were the first to help the escapes. " What will you" — our runaways say — "they are starving themselves, and three roubles and our cloth are a great temptation for a starving people."
224 In Russian and French Prisons.
And still escapes are numerous. The run- aways make their way to the south-east with the greatest difficulties, across hills and forests, and wait till they sight from the coast an American whaler. Some of them cross the Tartarian Strait, six miles in width at Gape Pogobi, when an ice-bridge connects Sakhalin with the continent; whilst others, again, make a raft of three or four trees, and entrust them- selves to the rough sea. The schooner " Vostok" recently met with such a raft in the channel. A black point having been sighted from the schooner, she approached it, and found two men on a raft of four logs. They had with them a pail of soft water, some black bread biscuits, two pieces of brick-tea, and so they floated along without having any idea where the current would land them. When asked where they were going — " There, to Russia! " they answered, pointing towards the West. Most of them perish from the squalls, others during the dreadful snowstorms — Amur snow- storms, which sometimes bury Nikolaevsk for several days under the snow. And when on the continent, they endure the most terrible sufferings before reaching the inhabited parts of the Amur. Cannibalism has been spoken of.
The Exile on Sakhalin. 225 And yet some runaways succeed to return to Russia. A few years ago, one of them, Kamoloff, who had reached his native village, but was betrayed by some personal enemy, was brought before a Court; and his simple speech moved the hearts through Russia. He had wandered for two years across lakes and rivers, through the forests and over the Steppes, before reaching his house. He found his wife awaiting for his return. He was happy for a few weeks. " The streams, the stormy Baikal, the terrible snowstorms did me no harm," he said; " beasts pitied me. Men — my own villagers — were pitiless; they betrayed me! " " There, to Russia! " that is the idea which haunts every exile. They may send him to Sakhalin — his thoughts will always draw him westward, and even from Sakhalin he will try to return to his native village, to find out his abandoned house. The system of exile has served its time if the exiles must be sent to the lonely island in order to prevent escapes.
We hope the days are not far distant when it will be definitely done away with. The sooner the better; because Siberia is large, and administrative fancies have no bounds. Who knows if to-morrow the whim will not Q 226 In Russian and French Prisons.
seize them to create new agricultural colonies in the Land of the Tchuktchis, or on Novaya Zemlya, and sacrifice new hecatombs of sufferers for no other purpose than to provide a few officials with lucrative appointments?
At any rate, the ignoramuses of St. Petersburg seem to have abandoned theirfantastical schemes of making a penal colony of Sakhalin. The last news is that they are planning to enlarge the Kara prisons, and to send there one thousand more convicts; while the abandoned silver-mines of Nertchinsk are to be reopened. In the matter of exile, as in so many others, we are reverting to the very same point where we were thirty-five years ago, on the eve of the Crimean war.
A Foreigner on Russian Prisons. 227 CHAPTER VII.
A FOREIGNER ON RUSSIAN PRISONS.
THE foreigners who have visited Russia, and have been sufficiently keen observers, have often noticed a characteristic feature of the Russian Administration. People who belong to it know well its deficiencies, its worst features; very well indeed, because they them- selves are not the last in contributing to its bad repute. They not only know it: they franklj- acknowledge it when in company with their Russian friends. Even in official reports to the heads of the ministries, they do not conceal the bad organization of their respective departments.
But let a foreigner enter a drawing-room where, a few minutes before, the Administration was sharply criticized, and the critics will be unanimous in repeating to the foreigner that " surely there are some minor deficiences in the Q 2 228 In Russian and French Prisons.
Administration; but the sun itself has its black spots, and His Excellency So and So is just now taking the most energetic measures for removing the very last remains of the disorder which unhappily crept into the Administration under his predecessor, General So and So." And if the foreigner is a man who writes for some newspaper in his own country, and shows an inclination to trumpet through the world what he hears, those very same people who thought everything worse than ever a few minutes before, will be happy to show the foreigner everything in its best light, and thus to confound all " vindictive writers " who " divulge to foreigners " the reports written for home-use by those very same officials. I have remarked the same feature in the Mantchurian Administration, and I often noticed it both at Irkutsk and St. Petersburg. Surely I never saw a more disheartening picture of wholesale robbery in the higher Administration of Russia than that drawn in the reports of the Comptroller- General to Alexander II. as the Comptrol was first introduced in Russia, and nothing more characteristic than the open recognizance of the truth of these Comptroller-General's views, which was written by the Tsar on one of the A Foreigner on Russian Prisons. 229 reports. Everybody in the upper circles of the Russian society knew the contents of the reports and the answer of the Tsar. But what a chorus of maledictions would greet the Russian who should translate these reports, and circulate them in the foreign press! Soru iz izby ne vynosi! " Do not take the dirt out of the house! " would be the unanimous outcry.
One can easily understand how difficult it is for a foreigner to ascertain the truth under such circumstances, especially if he moves only in the Administrative circles, if he does not know Russian, and does not take the trouble to look through the Russian literature bearing on the subject. Even if he were inspired with the most sincere desire to know the truth, and not to be a puppet in the hands of Adminis- trators, who are only too glad to find docile in- struments in the foreign press, his way would be beset with difficulties.
This simple truth has not been understood by an Englishman, Mr. Lansdell, who has crossed Siberia a few years ago, and, after having hastily cast a glance on a few Siberian prisons, published a book, in which he tried to represent Russian and Siberian prisons under a smiling aspect. No wonder that his 230 In Russian and French Prisons.
description did not agree with mine. It was quite natural also that he should try to explain the contradiction, and so he did, in an article contributed to the English press in February, 1883. The following from my re- joinder will complete the above picture of Russian prisons:l — Mr. Lansdell does not contradict my state- ments. He even seems not to notice the facts which I have divulged, and which represent the Russian prisons in quite another light than his own account of them. When I say, for instance, that the St. Petersburg House of Detention — which is quoted by Mr. Lansdell as a sample of " what Russia can do " —was recognized by the Commission under State-Secretary Groth as a building that must be built anew to be -rendered inhabitable, notwithstanding the fabulous sums of money it has cost (see the summary of the official report given in the Golos for the 24th of January, 1881); when I mention the whole- sale stealing which was discovered in the same prison in 1881; when I call to mind the dis- graceful treatment of political prisoners in this " model-prison " by General Trepoff, which 1 The following pages are reprinted, "by permission, from the Nineteenth Century, June, 1883.
A Foreigner on Russian Prisons. 231 treatment was condemned, so to say, even by a Russian Court, during the trial of Vera Zassoulitch; Mr. Lansdell turns a deaf ear to all this, and does not say if, in spite of all this, the St. Petersburg House of Detention still " may be supposed to represent the very beau- ideal of what a House of Detention ought to be." When I produce, further, the narrative of an inmate of a central prison, published in Eussia (under the responsibility of a Conser- vative editor, M. Eug. Markoff), and the relia- bility of which was recognized at once by all St. Petersburg newspapers; when I describe how the jailor of this central prison flogs his inmates, and how his successor gives free play to his own fists, Mr. Lansdell does not say if he still believes that in Russian prisons " justice and mercy go hand-in-hand " —he likes better jiot to touch these subjects — but he asks me several questions about other things.
Mr. Lansdell asks me first, what I meant when I wrote: " In the space of fourteen hours, indeed, he breakfasted, he dined, he travelled over forty miles, and he visited the three chief jails of Siberia: at Tobolsk, at Alexandrovsky Zavod, and at Kara." I simply meant to say that, whilst crossing the continent at the speed 232 In Russian and French Prisons.
of a Siberian courier who outstrips the post, Mr. Lansdell has devoted less than fourteen hours to the study of the three chief penal establishments of Siberia. In fact, it appears from his own book (chapters v. ix. xxi. xxxvi. and xxxvii.), that he has spent a couple of hours in visiting the Tobolsk prison, two hours at Alexandrovsky Zavod, and less than ten hours in visiting the prisons of Kara, as in the space of one day he had not only to visit the jails, but also to travel between the different prisons scattered over a space of nearly twenty miles, and to experience the well-known Siberian hospitality in the shape of breakfasts and dinners (fully described in his book). As to the second day of his stay at Kara, during which day he had to visit the prisons of Lower Kara, it proved to be the name-day of the Superintendent of the works, Colonel Konono- vitch, and in the evening Mr. Lansdell was bound to take the steamer at Ust-Kara, so that " when we came to the first prison," he writes, " where the officer was standing ready to receive us, I was afraid we should not have time, and that our staying might involve the missing of our steamer. I therefore begged that we might push on, which we did, to Ust-Kara."
A Foreigner on Russian Prisons. 233 In fact, I even would not have mentioned this " less than fourteen hours' knowledge " of the chief centres of penal servitude in Siberia, if it were not necessary to reduce to its true value the following affirmation of Mr. Lansdeli (vol. ii. page 5): "I think it only right to say that I have visited Russian Houses of Detention from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea and Persian frontier in the south, and from Warsaw in the west to the Pacific in the east." The truth is that Mr. Lansdeli has cast a hasty glance on what the authorities were willing to show him; that he has not seen a single central prison; and that had he visited every prison in Russia in the way he visited some of them, he still would remain as ignorant as he is now about the real conditions of prison-life of Russia.
Still — if Mr. Lansdeli were able to appreciate the relative value of the information he ob- tained in the course of his official scamper through the Siberian prisons, and especially if he had taken notice of existing Russian literature on \ the subject, his book might have been a valu- \ able one. This he did not, and so he is abso- \ lutely ignorant of what has been written in ^Russia on the subject. Himself does not par- tike of this opinion, and he writes: — 2 34 IH -Russian and French Prisons.
" Yet there is a fair sprinkling on my list of 120 works 'consulted or referred to,' of Russian authors, and of those whom I have called the * vindictive class of writers ' (some of them escaped or released convicts), who, trading upon the credulity and ignorance of the public, have retailed and garnished accounts of horrible severities, which they never profess to have witnessed, nor attempt to support by adequate testimony. One of these was Alex- ander Herzen, who wrote My Exile to Siberia, though he never went there, but only as far as Perm, where one of the prisons is situated of which Prince Kropotkin complains so bitterly."
It is true that at the end of Mr. Lansdell's book there is a list of 120 works " consulted or referred to " (that is, quoted by the authors whose works he has consulted). I find even in this list Daniel Defoe's Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. But the " fair sprinkling of Russian names " (if we exclude the authors who deal with Church matters, or merely with geography, as MM. Venukofl: and Prjevalsky) must be reduced to the following: — (1) M. Andreoli's paper on Polish Exiles in 1863—1867, appeared in Revue Moderne, and which Mr. Lansdell contradicts without knowing anything A Foreigner on Russian Prisons. 235 about the sad story of Polish exile but what he has learned from occasional conversations during his hasty travel. (2) Dostoevsky's Buried Alive, dealing with seclusion in the Omsk fortress, thirty-five years ago; (3) Piotrovsky's romantic Escape from Siberia, thirty-eight years ago; (4) Baron Rozen's Memoirs, dealing with the Decembrists, fifty - Jive years ago; and (5) Herzen's My Exile to Siberia, telling his sojourn in exile at Perm, nearly forty years ago. But, of course, I do not find in this list either M. Maximoff's Siberia and Hard Labour, which is the result of serious studies made in Siberia, with the authorization of Government; nor the results of M. Nikitin's many years' official inquiry into the state of our prisons; nor the Siberian slryapchiy (or Procureur) M. Mishlo's papers on the Prisons submitted to his own control in Siberia; nor M. Yadrintseff's Siberia as a Colony; nor any of the official reports; not even M. Mouravioff's papers on prisons, pub- lished by M. Katkoff in his arch-conservative review. Shortly, none of the works which con- tain any information about the present state of Russian prisons. This ignorance of works which contain reliable information about our 236 In Russian and French Prisons.
prisons is the more remarkable, as none of the just-mentioned authors belong to the " vindic- tive class of writers who villify the land of their punishment," but they all were, and several are, officials in the service of the Government.
Let us see now if these authors are not more in accordance with the "vindictive writers" than with Mr. Lansdell's testimony. The chief lock-up for prisoners waiting for trial at St. Petersburg, the so-called Litovskiy Zamok, appears as follows under the pen of M. Nikitin:— " It contains 103 rooms for 801 inmates...The rooms are dreadfully dirty; even on the staircase you. feel the smell which suffocates you. The black holes produce a dreadful im- pression (potrijasayuslicheie vpechatlenie); they are almost absolutely deprived of light; the way to them leads through dark labyrinths, and in the holes themselves all is wet: there is nothing but the rotten floor and the wet walls. A man coming from the open air rushes away asphyxiated...Specialists say that the most healthy man will surely die, if he be kept there for three or four weeks. The prisoners who were kept there for some time went out quite exhausted; several could hardly stand on their A Foreigner on Russian Prisons. 237 feet. Only a few prisoners of the less im- portant categories are allowed to work. The others remain with crossed hands for months and years." When M. Nikitin asked for accounts of the money brought to prisoners by their kinsfolk, or earned by themselves, he met with an absolute refusal from the authorities high and low. — Nikitin, on the St. Petersburg Prisons.
The same author writes about the prisons at the police-stations of the capital: — " In the rooms for common people the dirt is dreadful; they sleep on bare wooden platforms, and half of them sleep beneath the platforms on the floor. Each prison has its black holes; they are very small holes, where rain and snow enter freely. There is nothing but the floor to sleep upon; the walls and the floor are quite wet. The privileged prisoners who are kept in cells fall soon into melancholy; several are very near to insanity...No books are given in the common rooms, excepting religious ones, which are taken for making cigarettes." — Police Prisons at St Petersburg.
The Official Eeport of the St. Petersburg Committee of the Society for Prisons, pub- lished at St. Petersburg in 1880, described 238 In Russian and French Prisons.
the prisons of the Russian capital as fol- lows:— " The prison (Litovskiy Zamok) is built for 700 inmates, and the depot-prison for 200 men; but they often contain, the former from 900 to 1000 persons, and the depot-prison from 350 to 400, and even more. Besides, long since, these buildings correspond no more, neither to the hygienic conditions, nor to those of a prison altogether."
M. Katkoff's review, the Rmskiy Vyestnik, does not give a better idea of Russian prisons. After having given a description of the police- stations, the author, M. Mouravioff, says that the ostrog is not better; it is usually an old, dirty building, or a collection of such buildings enclosed by a wall. It is not better inside: moisture, dirt, overcrowding, and stench, such is the type of all ostrogs in the capitals and in provincial towns.