how long it will last; which law will be applied (the common or the martial); what will be the fate of the prisoner; — he may be acquitted, but also he may 'be hung. No counsel is allowed during the inquiry; no conversation nor correspondence with relatives about the circumstances which led to the arrest. During all this exceedingly long time, no occu- pation is allowed to prisoners. Pen, ink, and lead-pencils are strictly prohibited in the bastion; only a slate is allowed; and when the Council of the Geographical Society asked for me the permission to finish a scientific work, it had to obtain it from the Emperor himself. As to working-men and peasants, who cannot read throughout the day, to keep them for years without any occupation is merely to bring them to despair. Therefore the great propor- tion of cases of insanity. In all West- European prisons it is considered that two or three years of cellular confinement is too much, and there is great danger of becoming insane. But in Europe the convict does some manual work in his cell; not only can he read and write, but he receives all necessary implements for carrying- on some trade. He is not reduced to live ex- clusively on the activity of his own imagination; H 2 H 2 ioo In Russian and French Prisons.
the body, the muscles, are also occupied. And yet competent persons are compelled, by pain- ful experience, to consider two or three years of cellular confinement as too dangerous. In the Trubetskoi bastion the only occupation allowed is reading; and even this occupation is refused to convicts who are kept in another part of the fortress.
The few liberties given now as to the visits of relatives have been acquired only after a hard struggle. Formerly, the visit of a relation was considered as a great favour, and not as a right. It happened to me once, after the arrest of my brother, to see none of my kinsfolk for three months. I knew that my brother, to whom I was more closely bound than is usually the case between two brothers, was arrested: a letter of a few lines announced to me that for everything concerning the publication of my work I must address myself to another person, and I guessed the cause. But during three months I did not know why he was arrested; of what he was accused; what would be his fate. And I cer- tainly wish nobody in the world to have such a three months in his life as these three which I passed without having any news from the outer world. When I was allowed to see my sister, The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 101 she was severely admonished that if she said to me anything about my brother, she would be never allowed to see me again. As to my comrades, very many saw nobody during all the two or three years of their detention. Many had no near relations in St. Petersburg, and friends were not admitted; others had kinsfolk, but these last were suspected of having themselves acquaintances with Socialist or Liberal circles, and that was sufficient to deny them the favour of seeing their arrested brother or sister. In 1879 and 1880 the visits of rela- tives were allowed each fortnight. But it ought to be mentioned how an extension of the right was acquired. It was won, so to say, by fight; that is, by the famous famine strike, during which a number of prisoners in the Trubetskoi bastion refused to take any food for five or six days, and resisted by force all attempts to feed them by means of injections and the blows of the warders by which this operation was ac- companied. Of late, these rights have been again taken away; the visits are very scarce, and iron-rule has been re-introduced again.
The worst is, however, the manner in which secret inquiries are conducted, — the most IO2 In Russian and French Prisons.
4shameful proceedings being resorted to, in order to extort some^un cautious avowal from those who have shown a nervous temper. My friend Stepniak has given several instances of such treatment, and the various issues of the Will of the People contain many others. Nothing— not even the feeling of a mother — is respected. If a mother has a new-born child — a little creature born in the darkness of a casemate — the baby will be taken away from her, and retained as long as the mother refuses to be " more sincere," that is, refuses to betray her friends. She must refuse food for several days, or attempt suicide, to have her baby back...When such horrible deeds can be perpetrated, what is the use of speaking of minor tortures? And still, the worst is reserved for those who are abroad at liberty — for those who are guilty of loving their imprisoned daughter, their brother, or their sister! The basest kinds of intimidation — the most refined and cruel — are used with regard to them by the hirelings of the Autocracy, and I must confess that the educated pro- cureurs in the service of the State Police used to be much worse in this matter than the officers of the gendarmerie or of the Third Section. Of course, attempts at suicide — sometimes by The Fortress of St. Peter and St. PauL \ o; means of a piece of glass taken from a broken window, sometimes by means of matches care- fully concealed for whole months, or sometimes by means of strangulation with a towel, are the necessary consequences of such a system. Out of the hundred and ninety-three, nine went mad, eleven attempted suicide. I knew one of them after his release. He has made — he said to me — at least half-a-dozen such attempts: he is now dying in a French hospital.
And yet, when I remember the floods of tears shed throughout Russia, in each remotest village, in connection with our prisons; when I re- member the horrors of our ostrogs and central prisons; the salt-works of Ust-kut or the gold- mines of Siberia, my pen hesitates to dwell upon the sufferings of a few revolutionists. When I wrote about Russian prisons, I hastened to tell what is the real state of those prisons where thousands of people are groaning every day in the hands of omnipotent wild beasts. I hardly mentioned the state of political prisoners, only alluding to it as far as was necessary to show the development of the struggle that is going on now in Russia. Were it not for the praise bestowed on the Russian Government by its few — very few — admirers, IO4 /# Russian and French Prisons.
I even should not write at all about political prisons. But, as the facts have been mis- represented, let them be known as they are.
There is a much harder fate in store for political prisoners in Russia, than that of the inmates of the Trubetskoi bastion. After the "Trial of the Sixteen" (November, 1880), Europe learned with satisfaction that, out of five condemned to death, three had had their sentences commuted by the Tsar. We now know what commutation means. Instead of being sent to Siberia, or to a Central Prison, according to law, they were immured in cells of the Trubetskoi ravelin, in the west of the Petropavlovskaya fortress.3 These are so dark that candles are burnt in them for twenty- two hours out of the twenty-four. The walls are literally dripping with damp, and " there are pools of water on the floor." " Not only books are disallowed, but everything that might help to occupy the attention. Zubkovsky made geometrical figures with his bread, to repeat geometry; they were immediately taken away, the gaoler saying that hard-labour convicts 3 The authentic record of their imprisonment was pub- lished in the Will of the People, and reproduced in the publi- cation Na Rodinye ("At Home ").
The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 105 were not permitted to amuse themselves. ' ' To ren- der solitary confinement still more insupportable, a gendarme and a soldier are stationed within the cells. The gendarme is continually on the watch, and if the prisoner looks at anything or at any point, he goes to see what has attracted his attention. The horrors of solitary con- finement are thus aggravated tenfold. The quietest prisoner soon begins to hate the spies set over him, and is moved to frenzy. The slightest disobedience is punished by blows and black holes. All who were subjected to this regime fell ill in no time. After less than one year of it, Shiryaeff had become consumptive; Okladsky — a robust and vigorous working man, whose remarkable speech to the Court was re- Tikhonoff, a strong man likewise, was down with scurvy, and could not sit up in his bed. By a mere commutation of sentence, the three were brought to death's door in a single year. Of the other five condemned to hard labour, and immured in the same fortress, two — Martynovsky and Tsukermann — went mad, and in that state were constantly black-holed, so that Martynovsky at last attempted suicide. Others besides were sent to the same ravelin, io6 In Russian and French Prisons.
and the result was invariably the same: they were brought to the edge of the grave. During the summer of 1883, the Government decided to accord some of them the grace of a hard- labour prison in Siberia. On July 27th (August 8th), 1883, they were brought in cellular waggons to Moscow, and two persons who witnessed their arrival have left a descrip- tion of it. Voloshenko, covered with scorbutic wounds, could not move. He was brought out of the waggon on a hand-barrow. Pribyleff and Fomin fainted when they were carried into the open air. Paul Orloff, also broken down by scurvy, hardly could walk. " He is all curved, and one leg is quite turned," says the witness. " Tatiana Lebedeva had been con- demned to twenty years' hard labour. But she surely will not live so long. Scurvy has destroyed all her gums; the jaws are visible beneath; besides, she is in an advanced stage of consumption...Next came Yakimova with her eighteen months' old baby: every minute it seemed that the baby would die in her arms. As to herself, she did not suffer much, neither physically nor morally. As usual, she was quite calm, notwithstanding her condem- nation to hard labour for life. The remainder The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paid. 107 were strong enough to walk by themselves from one waggon to another...As to Mirsky, the four years' sojourn in the fortress has left no traces on him; he only has reached his maturity." 4 True that he was then only twenty-three years old.
But — how many of those tried at the same time were missing! How many have been buried in the Trubetskoi ravelin? Since direct communication has been interrupted, nothing has transpired of what is happening in the ravelin; and the worst rumours — rumours of a most abominable outrage — circulate at St. Petersburg as to the conditions which brought about the death of Ludmila Terentieva.
Is this all? No! There is something worse still. There are the oubliettes of the Alexis ravelin. Four years ago, when Mr. Lansdell, after having been admitted to look into two cells of the Trubetskoi bastion, boldly denied the very existence of the half under- ground cells in the Trubetskoi ravelin, described in the Times, and triumphantly exclaimed:— "What, then, have become of the cacliots and oubliettes and dismal chambers which have been 4 Vyestnik Narodnoi Volt, No. 3, 1884, p. 180. Stepniak's " Eussia under the Tsars," ch. xix.
loS /;/ Russian and French Prisons.
connected with the ' Peter and Paul ' by so many? " I replied then in the following lines: — " I should not deny the existence of oubliettes (in the fortress), as I know that even in our times people disappear in Russia without any- body knowing where they are concealed. I take one instance — Netchaieff. He killed a spy at Moscow, fled to Switzerland, and his extra- dition was accorded by the Federal Council on the distinct understanding with the Russian Government to treat him as a common-law- prisoner, and not as a political adversary. He was condemned by a jury at Moscow to hard labour, and, after having been ill-treated there in the wav I have described elsewhere, he dis- appeared. According to law he ought to be now at Kara, or at Sakhalin, or at any hard- labour colony in Siberia. But we know that in 1881 he was at none of these places. "Where is he then? Last year the rumour was current that he had managed to make his escape from the fortress, but it has not been confirmed since; and I have some reasons to suppose that he was, two years ago, and may be still, in some part of the fortress. I do not say he is ill-treated there: I suppose, on the contrary, that, like all other political prisoners, he won T/ic Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 1 09 at last the sympathies of his jailors, and I hope that he is kept in a decent cell. But he has the right to be now in Siberia, and to be enjoy- ing a relative liberty in the Kara village, close by the mines. He has also kinsfolk and friends, who surely would be happy to learn, at least, if he is in life, and where he is. And I ask the author of the report: Is he suffi- ciently sure of his informants to authorize us to write to Xetchaieff's friends that there are no oubliettes in the fortress, and that they must search for their friend elsewhere? " 5 Of course, the above question remained unanswered. But, since that time the Rus- sian Government has itself avowed the exist- ence of oubliettes in the fortress, leaving it to its English supporters to explain the contra- diction as they like. It has condemned soldiers for carrying letters from these very same oubliettes of the Alexis ravelin!
In 1882, eighteen soldiers who used to keep guard in the Alexis ravelin were committed for trial before a Court-martial, together with a medical student, Dubrovin.6 The soldiers were accused of having carried secret correspondence 3 Nineteenth Century, June, 1883.
* Their names and the condemnations are given in Appendix.
1 1 o In Russian and French Prisons.
between three -persons detained in the ravelin and the student Dtibrovin. The act of accusa- tion, signed by the military procureur, Colonel Masloff, has been published in full,7 and the condemnations have been announced in the St. Petersburg press. It appears from the official document brought before the Court- martial, that there were, in 1881, four persons detained in the ravelin. They are nob named; the procureur designates them under the names of prisoners occupying the cells No. 1, No. 5, No. 6, and No. 13. Until November, 1879— the accusation states — there were only two state prisoners in the ravelin — in cell No. 5 and in cell No. 6. In November a third prisoner was brought and confined in cell No. 1, and next year (November 19th, 1880), a fourth, who was confined in cell No. 13. This last — it appears from the same document — was Shiryaeff. The soldiers had conversations " of criminal intent " with prisoner No. 5; they carried letters be- tween prisoners Nos. 1, 5, and 13, and since the arrival of this last, they began to carry out letters from the ravelin to the student Dubro- vin, and smuggled in, on return, periodical 7 Vyestnik Narodnoi Voli, vol. i., November, 1883.
The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paid. 1 1 1 publications, letters, and money, which they remitted to the three prisoners.
The "conversations of criminal intent " which the soldiers carried on with prisoner No. 5 are related in the accusation exactly as the soldiers described them during the inquiry; and it appears that they had accurately committed them to memory. " There will be a time — No. 5 said — when the peasants will be no longer so oppressed as they are now. The Tsars will govern no more; but instead of them there will be responsible representatives. If the Tsar be good, he may be kept; if not — an- other will be elected in his place," and so on.
No. 5 — we know now — was nobody elso but Netchaieff. When publishing this most remarkable document, the Will of the People published also some of the letters received by the Executive Committee from Netchaieff. It is, therefore, no secret that, although the Imperial Government when demanding the extradition of Netchaieff had given the formal assurance to the Swiss Republic that he would be treated as a common-law convict, the assurance was a lie. Netchaieff never was treated as a common-law convict. The Moscow Court condemned him to hard-labour, not to H2 In Russian and French Prisons.
detention in the fortress. But he was not sent either to Siberia, or to any hard-labour pris on. Immediately after the condemnation he was simply immured in the Alexis ravelin, and has remained there since 1874. The official docu- ment of accusation directly calls him a state prisoner " gosudarstvennyi prestupnik."
What was the fate of Netchaieff in the ravelin? — It became known that the Govern- ment twice made him the proposal " to tell everything," — once through the medium of Count Levashoff, and another time through General Potapoff. He refused indignantly. The proposal of Potapoff was made in such terms that Netchaieff answered the great Satrap of Alexander II. by a blow in the face. He was dreadfully beaten for that, chained hand and foot, and riveted to the wall of his casemate. By the end of 1881, he had written in his own blood with his nail, a letter to Alexander III. — a most modest letter — merely stating the facts of his imprisonment, and asking the Emperor whether his terrible fate was known by the Monarch and prescribed by his own will? This letter, a copy of which was communicated by Netchaieff to the Execu- tive Committee, and which was printed later on The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 1 1 3 in the Will of the People, was entrusted by the captive to some of those persons who walked under his window when repairs were made in the ravelin — the commander of the fortress never coming to see Netchaieff, and he being sure that the governor of the ravelin never would deliver the letter to his superiors.
Since the summer of 1882, no direct news has been received from Netchaieff. A rumour only was afloat that in December, 1882, he lost his temper with the governor of the ravelin, and was dreadfully beaten — " maybe flogged," —and that a few days later he committed suicide, or died. The only thing certain was that on December 5th, or 8th (old style), one of the captives detained in the ravelin died. The Executive Committee considered Netchaieff as dead, and published by the end of 1883 extracts from his letters. But he may be still alive.
As to Shiryaeff, he died on September 28th, 1881. When the captives were deprived of the short walk, formerly allowed; when their windows were shut up with planks (after Netchaieff's letter), and even the hot-air openings of the stoves were shut up, con- sumption rapidly developed in the poor young i -1 1 4 In Russian and French Prisons.
man. Netchaieff wrote that lie died in a strange state of excitement, and supposed that his death had been accelerated by some exciting drug, in order to obtain avowals. — Why not? They gave drugs to Saburoff to send him to sleep — "in order to photograph him" they said. But, are we sure, — is Saburoff himself sure — that what they gave him contained nothing but chloroform or laudanum? Those who so carefully conceal their deeds must do something they dare not to avow publicly.
But — who are the prisoners No. 1 and No. 6? No. 1 must be a Terrorist. As to No. 6, who did not exchange letters with the three others, he is known now through Netchaieff's letters. He is Shevitch, an officer of the Military Academy, reduced to madness, whose insane talk and shrieks are heard in the night by those who pass by the walls of the ravelin. What is his crime? He never was tried in any political trial. He did not belong to any revolutionary organization; he is un- known to revolutionists. What is his crime? The Will of the People says that Netchaieff wrote that once, during a military parade, Shevitch left the ranks, addressed Alexander II. in a rough language, reproaching him for his TJic Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 1 1 5 conduct with regard to Shevitch's sister. Is it so? Or, has he committed some other crime to call down upon himself so base a revenge from Alexander II. as to immure him for ever in a cell of the ravelin? — I do not know. But Sbevitch's story must be known in St. Peters- burg, and surely it will transpire some time. One thing is, however, certain: Shevitch was not a political offender, he has not been mixed up with any political affair since 1866. He has been brought to madness in the oubliette of the Alexis ravelin for some other offence.
Are the oubliettes of the Alexis ravelin the only ones in Russia? — Surely not. Who knows how many like oubliettes there are in other fortresses? At any rate we know now — it has been openly avowed — that there are other oubliettes in the Empire, namely at the Solo- vetsky monastery, situated on an island of the White Sea.
In 1882, we read with immense pleasure in the St. Petersburg newspapers that one of those who had been kept in such an oubliette for fifteen years was at last set at liberty. I mean Pushkin. In 1858 he came to the conclusion that the orthodox religion is not in accordance with truth. He explained his ideas in a book 1 1 6 In Russian and French Prisons, and in schematic drawings, went to St. Peters- burg in 1861 and 1863, and asked the Church authorities to publish his work. — " The world," he said, " is rotten in its sins; Christ has not saved it completely, and a new Messiah will come." For these ideas he was arrested in 1866, and sent, between two gendarmes, to the Solovetsky prison — of course without having seen, or heard of, a judge. There he was put in a dark and damp cell, and kept therein for fifteen years. He has a wife; she was not admitted to see him during fourteen years, that is, nntil 1881. Loris-Melikoff — when nomi- nated Dictator after the explosion of the Winter Palace — granted her the permission. Until then Pushkin was kept as a state prisoner in the greatest secrecy. Nobody was allowed to enter his cell during all this time, excepting the archimandrite of the monastery, and Mr. H. Dixon. M. Prougavin, who is an official of the staff of the Governor of Arkhangelsk, visited him in 1881. Pushkin was fifty-five years old when M. Prougavin saw him, and he said, " I do not know what are my faults; how can I exculpate myself? They say to me: ' G-o to church, abandon your heresy, and you will be free.' But how can I do it? I have, sacrificed Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. \ 1 7 everything for my convictions — my fortune, the happiness of ray own family, my own life. Can I abjure my convictions? Time will show if I am right, and I hope so. But if I am wrong, if it only seems to me to be the truth, then let this prison be my grave! " In 1881 his wife was admitted to see him, and thence she went directly to St. Petersburg to ask for his release. By this time M. Prougavin had published all this awful story in a review, and in newspapers. The press called for clemency, and Pushkin was pardoned; but he had been kept for fifteen years in an oubliette.8 Is Pushkin the sole person who has been so tortured? I do not think so. Some fifteen years ago a German geologist, a friend of mine, discovered an artillery officer in the same condition as Pushkin. We made all kinds of applications at St. Petersburg to influential persons, in order to obtain his release. A Grand Duchess was interested in the fate of this ex-officer. "We obtained nothing, and 8 Let those who will not fail to express " a doubt " about this story, read M. Prougavin's paper in the November num- ber of the Panslavist review Russkaya Mysl for 1881, his papers in the Golos of the same epoch, the Moscow Telegraph of November IP, 1881, and so on.
1 1 8 In Russian and French Prisons.
probably he is still in an oubliette, if the prison has not been his grave.
A strange fate, however, has attached itself of late to the oubliettes of the Russian Govern- ment. In times past, when somebody had entered the vaulted archway of the fortress in company with two gendarmes, he disappeared. Ten, twenty years would pass before anything was heard of him, except such news as circu- lated in great secrecy among a few kinsfolk. As to those who had the misfortune of being- sent to the Alexis ravelin, the Autocrats were sure that nothing would ever oose through its walls as to their fate. Things have changed now; and the change is perhaps one of the best illustrations of how the prestige of Autocracy fades away. As the numbers of foes of the existing regime grew, people were sent to the fortress in such great numbers that it became materially impossible to bury them alive there, like their predecessors. Autocracy itself was compelled to make concessions to public opinion, and found it impossible to execute, or to trans- port for ever to Siberia all those who had been imprisoned in the fortress. Some of them, at least, were transported to " less remote parts of the Empire " — the peninsula of Kola, for The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. \ 1 9 instance — and thence they managed to escape. One of these has told in the European press the story of his imprisonment.9 Moreover, the fortress itself ceased to keep it secret. The suite of cells in the Trubetskoi bastion had been built in 1873. I was among the first who inaugurated its occupation early in 1874. Then, the bastion was a grave. Nothing but rigorously supervised letters could be brought out of it. There were only six of us occupying thirty-six cells in the upper story, and four or five empty cells separated us from each other. Five soldiers mounted guard in the corridor, so that nearly each one of us had a soldier at his door, and each soldier was closely watched by freshly nominated subalterns, who kept an eye upon the soldiers with all the zeal of novices. No communication whatever was possible between us; still less with the outer world. The system was just introduced, and worked admirably: mutual spying was as perfect as in a Jesuit monastery.
But two years had hardly elapsed, before the system disintegrated. In some unknown ways, the revolutionists were found informed 9 Pavlovsky, in a series of articles published by the Paris Temps, with a preface of Turgueneff.
1 20 In Russian and French Prisons.
about what was going on in the Trubetskoi bastion. The fortress kept no more secrets. The severest measures were taken with regard to the few interviews granted. By the end of 1875, we were prevented from approaching our kinsfolk who came to see us: the colonel in command of the bastion, and a gendarme officer placed between us. Later on, I was told that iron-gratings and other " last words of civilization " were introduced. But it was all useless, and my friend Stepniak says that piles of clandestine letters have been received since from the bastion.
A new suite of cells which had received no inmates for many years, was opened then, — the ispytatelnyia Jcamery of the Trubetskoi ravelin. There — the Government supposed — its enemies might be buried alive, and nobody would learn their fate. But letters managed to penetrate the thick walls of the ravelin: they were pub- lished. One of the most secure parts of the fortress thus yielded its secrets. And later on, some of those who had been imprisoned there, finally saw the daylight. It is most probable that the first idea of the Government was to keep them immured in the ravelin through- out the twelve or twenty years they were con- The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 1 2 1 demned to — perhaps for life. But again, so many people were sent to the terrible ravelin, and there they died, or went mad, so rapidly, that the original scheme was abandoned, and after having been brought to the edge of the grave, some of them were sent to Siberia.