Avomen, who, as a rule, never have more than one dress at once; mostly reduced to starva- tion as soon as their husbands were taken into custody, they have buckled on their sole cloth when starting from Arkhangelsk or Astrakhan, and, after their long peregrinations from one lock-up to another, after the long years of preliminary detention and months of journey, only rags have remained on their shoulders from their weather-worn clothes. The naked emaciated body and the wounded feet appear from beneath the tattered clothes as they are sitting on the nasty floor, eating the hard black bread received from compassionate peasants.
Amidst this moving heap of human beings who cover each square foot of the plat- forms and beneath them, you perceive the dying child on the knees of his mother, and close by, the new-born baby. The baby is the delight of, the consolation to, these women, each of whom surely has more human feelings than any of the chiefs and warders. It is passed from hand to hand; the best rags are parted with to cover its shivering limbs, the tenderest caresses are for it...How many have grown up in this way! One of them 142 In Russian and French Prisons.
stands by my side as I write these lines, and repeats to me the stories she has heard so many times from her mother about the humanity of the " scelerates " and the infamy of their " chiefs." She describes to me the toys that the convicts made for her during the interminable journey — plain toys inspired by a good-hearted humour, and side by side, the miserable proceedings, the exactions of money, the curses and blows, the whistling of the whips of the chiefs.
The prison, however, is cleared by-and by, as the parties of convicts start to continue their journey. When the season and the state of the rivers permit it, parties of 500 convicts each, with women and children, leave the Tomsk prison every week, and begin their foot journey to Irkutsk and Transbaikalia. Those who have seen such a party on march will never forget it. A Russian painter, M. Jacoby, has tried to represent it on canvas; his picture is sicken- ing, but the reality is still worse.
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 and snow, spread as far as the eye can Outcast Russia. 14 • reach; the next village is twenty miles distant. Low mountains, covered with thick pine forests, mingling with the grey snow- clouds, rise in the dust on the horizon. A track, marked all along by poles to distinguish it from the surrounding plain, ploughed and rugged by the passage of thousands of cars, covered with ruts that break down the hardest wheels, runs through the naked plain. 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 grey 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 into rags — if the convict has collected enough of alms during his journey to pay the blacksmith for riveting it looser on his feet. 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 pack is felt by all his chain-companions; the feebler is dragged for- ward by the stronger, and he must not stop: 144 I'1 Russian and French Prisons.
the way — the etape — is long, and the autumn day is short.
Behind the hard-labour convicts march the poselentsy (condemned to be settled in Siberia) wearing the same grey cloth and the same kind of shoes. Soldiers accompany the party on both sides, meditating perhaps the order given at the departure: — " If one of them runs away, shoofc him down. If he is killed, five roubles of reward for you, and a dog's death to the dog!" In the rear you discover a few cars that are drawn by the small, attenuated, cat-like, peasant's horses. They are loaded with the bags of the convicts, with the sick or dying, who are fastened by ropes on the top of the load.
Behind the cars hasten the wives of the convicts; a few have found a free corner on a loaded car, and crouch there when unable to move farther; whilst the great number march behind the cars, leading their children by the hands, or bearing them on their arms. Dressed in rags, freezing under the gusts of the cold wind, cutting their almost naked feet on the frozen ruts, how many of them repeat the words of Avvakum's wife: — " These tortures, how long will they last? " In the rear comes Outcast Russia. \ 45 a second detachment of soldiers, who drive with the butt-ends of their rifles those women who stop exhausted in the freezing mud of the road. The procession is closed by the car of the commander of the party.4 As the party enters some great village, it begins to sing the Miloserdnaya — the " charity song." They call it a song, but it hardly is that. It is a succession of woes escaping from hundreds of breasts at once, a recital in very plain words expressing with a childish simplicity the sad fate of the convict — a horrible lamenta- tion by means of which the Russian exile appeals to the mercy of other miserables like himself. Centuries of sufferings, of pains and misery, of persecutions that crush down the most vital forces, of our nation, are heard in these recitals and shrieks. These tones of deep * According to law tlie families of the convicts must not be submitted to the control of the convoy. In reality they are submitted to the same treatment as the convicts. To quote but one instance. The Tomsk correspondent of the Moscoiv Telegraph wrote on the 3rd of November, 1881: — "We have seen on the march the party which left Tomsk on the 14th of September. The exhausted women and children literally stuck in the mud, and the soldiers dealt them blows to make them advance and to keep pace with the party."
L 1 46 In Russian and French Prisons.
sorrow recall the tortures of the last century, the stifled cries under the sticks and whips of our own time, the darkness of the cellars, the wildness of the woods, the tears of the starving wife. The peasants of the villages on the Siberian highway understand these tones; they know their true meaning from their own experience, and the appeal of the Nescliastnyie — of the " sufferers," as our people call all prisoners — is answered by the poor; the most destitute widow, signing herself with the cross, brings her coppers, or her piece of bread, and deeply bows before the chained " sufferer," grateful to him for not disdaining her small offering.
Late in the afternoon, after having covered some fifteen or twenty miles, the party reaches the eiape where it spends the night and takes one day's rest each three days. It accelerates its pace as soon as the paling that incloses the old log-wood building is perceived, and the strongest run to take possession by force of the best places on the platforms. The etapes were mostly built fifty years ago, and after having resisted the inclemencies of the climate, and the passage of a hundred thousand of convicts, they have become now rotten and Outcast Russia. 147 foul from top to bottom. The old log- wood house refuses shelter to the chained travellers brought under its roof, and wind and snow freely enter the interstices between its rotten beams; heaps of snow are accumulated in the corners of the rooms. The etape was built to shelter 150 convicts; that being the average size of parties fifty years ago. At present the parties consist of 450 to 500 human beings, and the 500 must lodge on the space parsi- moniously calculated for 150. 5 The stronger ones, or the aristocracy among the convicts — the elder vagrants and the great murderers — cover each square inch of the platforms; the remainder, that is, double the number of the former, lie down on the rotten floor, covered with an inch of sticky filth, 5 The Russian law, which mostly has been written without any knowledge of the real conditions it deals with, forbids to send out such numerous parties. But, in reality, the normal party numbers now 480 persons. In 1881, according to the Golos, 6607 convicts were sent in sixteen parties, making thus an average of 406 convicts per party. Some of them numbered 420 men. Besides, 954 women, with 895 children, followed these sixteen parties, raising thus the average number in each party to 521 persons. In 1884, the average size of parties was about 400 (300 men and 100 women and children).
L 2 148 In Russian and French Prisons.
beneath and between the platforms. What be- comes of the rooms when the doors are closed, and the whole space filled with human beings who lie naked on their nasty clothes impreg- nated with water, will be easily imagined.
The etapes, however, are palaces when com- pared with the half-etapes, where the parties spend only the nights. These buildings are still smaller, and, as a rule, still more dilapi- dated, still more rotten and foul. Sometimes they are in such a state as to compel the party to spend the cold Siberian nights in light bar- racks erected in the yard, and without fire. As a rule, the Jialf-etape has no special compart- ment for the women, and they must lodge in the room of the soldiers (see Maximoff's Siberia). With the resignation of our " all-enduring " Russian mothers, they squat down with their babies wrapped in rags, in some corner of the room below the platforms or close by the door, among the rifles of the escort.
No wonder that, according to official sta- tistics, out of the 2561 children less than fifteen years old who were sent in 1831 to Siberia with their parents, " a very small parf survived." " The majority," the Golos says, " could not support the very bad conditions of Outcast Russia. 149 Outcast Russia. 149 the journey, and died before, or immediately after, having reached their destination in Siberia." In sober truth, the transportation to Siberia, as practised now, is a real " Massacre of Innocents." 6 Shall I add that there is no accommodation for the sick, and that one must have excep- tionally robust health to survive an illness during the journey? There are but five small hospitals, with a total of a hundred beds, on the whole stretch between Tomsk and Irkutsk, that is, on a distance which represents at least a four months' journey. As for those who cannot hold out until a hospital is reached, it was written to the Golos, on January 5th, 1881: — " They are left at the etapes without any medical help. The sick-room has no bedsteads, no beds, no cushions, no coverings, and of course nothing like linen. The forty-eight and a half kopecks per day that are allowed for the sick, remain mostly in full in the hands of the authorities."
6 The number of children with the convict-paities reaches now from 5000 to 8000. Many of them must make a two years' journey before reaching their destination. According to the Yuriditcliesldy Vyestnik ("Law Messenger") of 1883, no girl of fourteen or less reaches the end of the journey without having been submitted to a gross offence.
150 In Russian and French Prisons.
Shall I dwell upon the exactions to which the convicts are submitted, notwithstanding their dreadful misery, by the warders of the etapes? Is it not sufficient to say that the warders of these buildings are paid by the Crown, besides the allowance of corn flour for black bread, only with three roubles, or 6s. per year? "The stove is out of order, you cannot light the fire," says one of them, when the party arrives quite wet or frozen; and the party pays its tribute for permission to light the fire. " The windows are under repair," and the party pays for having some rags to fill up the openings through which freely blows the icy wind. " Wash up the etape before leaving, or pay so much," and the party pays again, and so on, and so on. And shall I mention, too, the manner in which the convicts and their families are treated during the journey? Even the political exiles once revolted, in 1881, against an officer who had permitted himself to assault in the dark corridor a lady marched to Siberia for a political offence. The common- law exiles surely are not treated better than the political ones.
All these are not tales of the past. They are real pictures of what is going on now, at the Outcast Russia. 151 very moment when I write these lines. A Russian friend, who made the same journey a, few years ago, and to whom I have shown these pages, fully confirms all the above state- ments, and adds much more which I do not mention only for economy of space. What really is a tale of the past — of a very recent past — is the chaining together of eight or ten convicts. This horrible measure, however, was abolished only in January, 1881. At present, each convict has his hands chained separately from his com- rades. But still the chain, being very short, gives such a posture to the arms as renders the ten and twelve hours' march very difficult, not to speak of the insupportable rheumatic pain occasioned in the bones by the contact of the iron rings during the hard Siberian frosts. This pain, I am told and readily believe it, soon becomes a real torture.
I hardly need add that, contrary to the state- ments of a recent English traveller through Siberia, the political convicts perform the journey to Kara, or to the places where they are to be settled as poselentsy, under the same conditions as, and together with, the common- law convicts. The very fact of Izbitskiy and Debagorio-Mokrievitch having exchanged names 152 In Russian and French Prisons.
with two common-law convicts, and having thus escaped from hard labour, proves that the English traveller's information was false. It is true that a great number of Polish exiles of 1864, and notably all noblemen and chief convicts, condemned to hard labour, were transported in carriages, on posting horses. But, since 1866, the political convicts (con- demned by courts to hard labour or exile) have mostly made the journey on foot, together with common-law convicts. An exception was made in 1877 — 1879 for the few who were transported to Eastern Siberia during those three years. They were transported in cars, but following the line of the Stapes. Since 1879, however, all political convicts — men and women alike — have made the journey precisely in the way I have described, very many of them chained, contrary to the law of 1827. The only change was, that the " politicals " were sent in separate parties, and had a few cars for occasional relief of the sick. As to those exiled by simple order of the Administrative, they were, and are now, transported in cars, following the same lines of the etapes, and stopping at the c tapes and prisons with common-law prisoners. When writing his remarkable book on hard Outcast Russia. 153 Outcast Russia. 153 labour,7 M. Maximoff concluded it with the wish that the horrors of the foot-journey he had described might become as soon as possible matter of history. But M. Maximoff 's wish has not been realized. The Liberal movement of 1861 was crushed down by the Govern- ment; the attempts at reform were considered as " dangerous tendencies," and the transport of exiles to Siberia has remained what it was twenty years ago — a source of unutterable sufferings for nearly 20,000 people.
The shameful system, branded at that time by all those who had studied it, has maintained itself in full; and, whilst the rotten buildings on the highway are falling to pieces, and the whole system disintegrates more and more, new thousands of men and women transported for such crimes as those, "the very existence of which" was doubted twenty years ago, are added annually to the thousands already trans- ported to Siberia, and their number is increasing every year in an awful proportion.
7 Sibir i Katorga (" Siberia and hard labour"), 3 vols., St. Petersburg, 1871.
154 I'1 Russian and French Prisons..
CHAPTER V.
THE EXILE IN SIBERIA.
IT is not in vain that the word katorga (hard labour) has received so horrible a meaning in. the Russian language, and has become synony- mous with the most awful pains and sufferings. " I cannot bear any longer this Jcatorjnaya life," this life of moral and physical sufferings, of infamous insults and pitiless persecutions, of pains beyond man's strength, say those who are brought to despair before attempting to put an end to their life by suicide. It is not in vain that the word katorga has received this meaning, and all those who have seriously inquired into the aspects of hard labour in. Siberia have come to the conclusion that it really corresponds to the popular conception. I have described the journey which leads to the Icatorga. Let us see now what are the conditions of the con- The Exile in Siberia. 155 victs in the hard-labour colonies and prisons of Siberia.
Some fifteen years ago, nearly all those 1500 people who were condemned every year to hard labour were sent to Eastern Siberia. One part of them was employed at the silver, lead, and gold mines of the Nertchinsk district, or at the iron-works of Petrovsk (not far from Kiakhta) and Irkutsk, or at the salt-works of Usolie and TJst-Kut; a few were employed at a drapery in the neighbourhood of Irkutsk, and the remainder were sent to the gold-mines, or rather gold- washings, of Kara, where they were bound to dig out the traditional " hundred poods " (3200 Ibs.) of gold for the "Cabinet of his Majesty," that is, for the personal purse of the Emperor. The horrible tales of subterranean work in the silver and lead-mines, under the most abominable conditions, under the whips of overseers who compelled each ten men to accomplish a work that would be hard even for double this number; of convicts working in the darkness, charged with heavy chains and riveted to barrows; of people dying from the poisonous emanations of the mines; of prisoners flogged to death, or dying under five and six thousand strokes of the rod, by order of traditional 156 In Russian and French Prisons.
monsters like Kozghildeeff — all these tales, well known everywhere, are not tales due to the fancy of imaginative writers, they are true historical records of a sad reality.1 And they are not tales of a remote past, for such were the conditions of hard labour in the Nertchinsk mining district no farther back than twenty-five years ago. They might be told by men still in life.
More than that; many, very many, features of this horrible past have been maintained until our own times. Every one in Eastern Siberia knows of the terrible scurvy epidemics which broke out at the Kara gold-mines in 1857, when 1 The Ivutomara and Alexandrovsk silver-mines have always been renowned for their insalubrity, on account of the arsenical emanations from the ore; not only men, but also cattle, suffered from them, and it is well known that the inhabitants of these villages were compelled, for this reason, to raise their young cattle in neighbouring villages. As to the quicksilver emanations, every one who has consulted any serious work on the Nertchinsk mining district knows that the silver-ore of these mines is usually accompanied with cinnabar — especially in the mines of Shakhtama and Kul- tuma, both worked out by convicts who were poisoned by mercurial emanations — and that attempts to get mercury from these mines have been made several times by the Government. The Akatui silver-mines of the same district have always had the most dreadful reputation for their unhealthiness.
The Exile in Siberia. 157 — according to official reports perused by M. Maximoff — no less than a thousand convicts died in the course of one single summer, and the cause of the epidemics is a secret to nobody; it is well known that the authorities, having perceived that they would be unable to dig out the traditional hundred poods of gold, caused the convicts to work without rest, above their strength, until many fell dead in the very mines. And later on, in 1873, have we not seen again a similar epidemic, due to similar causes, breaking out in the Yeniseisk district, and sweeping away hundreds of lives at once? The places of torture, the proceedings were slowly modified, but the very essence of hard labour has remained the same, and the word katorga has still maintained its horrible meaning.
During the last twenty years the system of hard labour has undergone some modification. The richer silver-mines of the Nertchinsk mining district have been worked out; instead of enriching every year the Cabinet of the Emperor with 220 to 280 poods of silver (7000 to 9000 Ibs.), as it was before, they yielded but five to seven poods (150 to 210 Ibs.) in 1860 to 1863, and they were abandoned. As to the gold-washings, the mining authorities 158 In Ritssian and French Prisons.
succeeded about the same time in convincing the Cabinet that there were no more gold- washings worth being worked in the district; and the Cabinet abandoned the district to private enterprise, reserving for the Crown only the mines on the Kara river, a tributary of the Shilka (of course, rich mines, well known before, were " discovered " by private persons immediately after the promulgation of the law). The Government was thus compelled to find some other kind of employment for the convicts, and to modify to a certain extent the whole system of hard labour. The central prisons in Russia, of which I have given a description in a preceding chapter, were invented; and, before being sent to Siberia, the hard-labour convicts remain now in these prisons for about one-third of the duration of their sentence. The number of these sufferers, for whom even the horrible katorga in Siberia appears as a relief, together with those who are kept in the hard-labour prisons of Siberia, is about 7000. Besides, an attempt was made to colonize the Sakhalin island with hard-labour convicts.
As to the eighteen to nineteen hundred hard- labour convicts who are transported every year TJie Exile in Siberia. 159 to Siberia, they are submitted to different kinds of treatment. A certain number of them (2700 to 0000) are locked up in the hard- labour prisons of "Western and Eastern Siberia; whilst the remainder are transported, either to the Kara gold- washings, or to the salt-works of Usolie and Ust-Kut. The few mines and works of the Crown in Siberia being, however, unable to employ the nearly 10,000 convicts condemned to hard labour who ought to be kept in Siberia, a novel expedient was in- vented, in renting the convicts to private owners of gold-washings. It is easy to per- ceive that the punishment of convicts belong- ing to the same hard-labour category can be thus varied to an immense degree, depending on the caprice of the authorities, and a good deal on the length of the purse of the convict. He may be killed under the pletes at Kara or Ust-Kut, as also he may comfort- ably live at the private gold-mine of some friend, as " overseer of works," and be aware of his removal to Siberia only by the long delay in receiving news from his Eussian friends.
Leaving aside, however, these exceptional favours and a variety of subdivisions of less 1 60 In Russian and French Prisons.
importance, the hard-labour convicts in Siberia can be classified under three great categories: those who are kept in prison; those who are employed at the gold-mines of the Imperial Cabinet or of private persons; and those who are employed at the salt-works.
The fate of the first is very much like the fate of those who are locked up in central prisons in Russia. The Siberian gaoler may smoke a pipe, instead of a cigar, when flogging his inmates; he may make use of lashes, instead of birch rods, and flog the convicts when his soup is spoiled, whilst the Russian gaoler's bad temper depends upon an un- successful hunting: the results for the convicts are the same. In Siberia, as in Russia, a gaoler " who pitilessly flogs " is substituted by a gaoler " who gives free play to his own fists and steals the last coppers of the prisoners; " and an honest man, if he is occasionally nominated as the head of a hard- labour prison, will soon be dismissed, or ex- pelled from an administration where honest men are a nuisance.
The fate of those 2000 convicts who are employed at the Kara gold-mines is not better. Twenty years ago the official reports repre- The Exile in Siberia. 161 sented the prison at Upper Kara as an old, weather-worn log-wood building, erected on a swampy ground, and impregnated with the filthiness accumulated by long generations of overcrowded convicts. They concluded that it ought to be pulled down at once; but the same foul and rotten building continues to shelter the convicts until now; and, even during M. Kononovitch's reasonable rule, it was said to be whitewashed only four times each year. It is always filled up to double its cubical capacity, and the inmates sleep on two stories of plat- forms, as also on the floor that is covered with a thick sheet of sticky filth, their wet and nasty clothes being mattresses and coverings at once. So it was twenty years ago; so it is now. The chief prison of the Kara gold- wash- ings, the Lower Kara, was described by M. Maximoff in 1863, and by the official documents I perused, as a rotten nasty building where wind and snow freely penetrate. So it is de- scribed again by my friends. The Middle Kara prison was restored a few years ago, but it soon became as filthy as the two others. For six to eight months, out of twelve, the convicts remain in these prisons without any occupa- tion; and it is quite sufficient, I imagine, to M M 1 62 In Russian and French Prisons.
mention this circumstance to suggest what are the results of this confinement, and what influence it exercises. Let those who wish to know the real influence of Eussian lock-ups and prisons on their inmates peruse the re- markable psychological studies by Dostoevsky, MM. Maximoff, Lvoff, and so many others.
The work at the gold-washings is altogether very hard. True, it is carried on above ground; deep excavations being made in the aluvium of the valley, to extract the gold-bearing mud and sands, which are transported in cars to the gold-washing machine. But it is most un- healthy and difficult work. The bottom of the excavation is always below the level of the river, which flows at a certain height in an artificial channel to the machine; and there- fore it is always covered to a certain depth with the water which is leaking through its walls, not to speak of the icy water which flows everywhere down the walls, as the frozen mud thaws under the hot rays of the sun. The pumps are usually insufficient, and so (I write from my own experience) people are working throughout the day in an icy water that covers their feet to the knees, and sometimes to the stomach; and, when returned to the prison, The Exile in Siberia. 163 the convict obviously has nothing to change his wet dress for: he sleeps on it. It is true that the same work is done under the same conditions, by thousands of free working-men, on the private gold-washings. But it is well known that the owners of gold-washings in Siberia would have no hands for their mines if the enlistment of workmen were not practised in the same way as were the enlistments for the armies in the seventeenth century. The engagements are always made in a drunken state and in exchange for large sums of hand-money, which passes immediately to the pockets of the publicans. As to the settled exiles — the pose- lentsy — whose starving army furnishes the largest contingent of workmen for the private gold-washings, they are mostly merely rented by the village authorities, who seize the hand- money for the taxes, always in arrear. The intervention of the district authorities, and very often, a military convoy, are therefore necessary to send the " free hands" to the gold- washings.
It is obvious that the conditions of work at the Kara mines are still harder for the con- victs. The day's task which each of them must accomplish is greater and harder than oa M 2 1 64 In Russian and French Prisons.
the private mines, and many of them are loaded with chains; at Kara, they have more- over to walk five miles from the prison to the excavation, adding thus a nearly three hours' march to the day's task. Sometimes, when the auriferous gravel and clay are poorer than was expected, and the quantity of gold calculated on could not be extracted, the convicts are literally exhausted by overwork; they are com- pelled to work until very late in the nights, and then the mortality, which is always high, be- comes really horrible. In short, it is consi- dered as a rule, by all those who have seriously studied the Siberian hard-labour institutions, that the convict who has remained for several years at Kara, or at the salt-works, comes away quite broken in health, and unfit for ulterior work, and that he remains thenceforth a burden on the country.
The food — however less substantial than at the private gold-washings — might be con- sidered as nearly sufiicient when the convicts receive the rations allowed to the men when at work; the daily allowance being in such cases 3^- English pounds of rye bread, and the amount of meat, cabbage, buckwheat, &c., that can be supplied for one rouble per month. A The Exile in Siberia. 165