1 92 In Russian and French Prisons.
for six months, two years, or more, according to the number of persons arrested in connection with, and the importance of, " the affair." One-tenth of them are committed for trial. As to the remainder, all those against whom there is no specific charge, but who were repre- sented as " dangerous " by the spies; all those who, on account of their intelligence, energy, and "radical opinions," are supposed to be able to become dangerous; and especially those who have shown during the imprisonment a "spirit of irreverence" — are exiled to some more or less remote spot, between the peninsula of Kola and that of Kamchatka. The open and frank despotism, of Nicholas I. could not accommodate itself to such hypocritical means of prosecution; and during the reign of the ' iron despot ' the Administrative exile was rare. But throughout the reign of Alexander II., since 1862, it has been used on so immense a scale, that you hardly will find now a hamlet, or borough, beyond the fifty-fifth degree of latitude, from the boundary of Norway to the coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk, not containing five, ten, twenty Administrative exiles. In January, 1881, there were 29 at Pinega, a hamlet which has but 750 inhabitants, 55 at The Exile in Siberia. 193 Mezen (1800 inhabitants), 11 at Kola (740 in- habitants), 47 at Kholmogory — a village having but 90 houses, 160 at Zaraisk (5000 inhabi- tants), 19 at Yeniseisk, and so on.
The causes of exile were always the same; « students and girls suspected of subversive ideas; writers whom it was impossible to prose- cute for their writings, but who were known to be imbued with " a dangerous spirit;" workmen who have spoken " against the authorities;" persons who have been " irreverent " to some governor of province, or ispravnik, and so on, were transported by hundreds every year to people the hamlets of the "more or less re- mote provinces of the Empire." As to Kadical people suspected of " dangerous tendencies," the barest denunciation and the most futile sus- picions were sufficient for serving as a motive to exile. When girls (like Miss Bardine, Soubbotine, Lubatovich, and so many others) were condemned to six or eight years of hard labour for having given one Socialistic pamphlet to one workman; when others (like Miss Goukovskaya, fourteen years old) were con- demned to exile as poselentsy for having shouted in the crowd that it is a shame to condemn people to death for nothing; when hard labour 1 94 In Russian and French Prisons.
and exile were so easily distributed by the courts, it is obvious that only those were exiled by the Administrative, against whom no palpable charge at all could be produced.4 In short, the Administrative exile became so scandal- ously extended during the reign of Alexander II. that, as soon as the Provincial Assemblies received some liberty of speech during the dictatorship of Loris-Melikoff, a long series of representations were addressed by the Assem- blies to the Emperor, asking for the immediate abolition of this kind of exile, and stigmatizing in vigorous expressions this monstrous practice.5 4 One of the most characteristic cases out of those which became known by scores in 1881, is the following: — In 1872, the Kursk nobility treated the Governor of the pro- vince to a dinner. A big proprietor, M. Annenkoff, was entrusted with proposing a toast for the Governor. He pro- posed it, but added in conclusion: — " Your Excellence, I drink your health, but I heartily wish that you would devote some more time to the affairs of your province."
Next week a post-car with two gendarmes stopped at the door of his house; and without allowing him to see his friends, or even to bid a farewell to his wife, he was trans- ported to Vyatka. It took six months of the most active applications to powerful persons at St. Petersburg, on behalf of his wife and the marshals of the Fatesh and Kursk .nobility, to liberate him from this exile (Golos, Poryadok, &c. for February 20th and 21st, 1881).
5 Extracts from the speech of M. Shakeeff at the sittings of The Exile in Siberia. 195 It is known that nothing has been done, and after having loudly announced its intention of pardoning the exiles, the Government has merely nominated a commission which examined the cases, pardoned a few — very few — and appointed for the greater number a term of five to six years, when each case was to be re- examined.6 They have been re-examined in- deed, and for very many the detention was prolonged for three years, after which term their cases will be re-examined again. A great many did not wait for the new re-examination, and last year there was a real epidemic of suicides in Siberia.
One will easily realize the conditions of these exiles if he imagines a student, or a girl from a well-to-do family, or a skilled workman, taken by two gendarmes to a borough numbering a hundred houses and inhabited by a few Lapo- nians or Russian hunters, by one or two fur- traders, by the priest, and by the police official. Bread is at famine prices; each manufactured the representatives of the St. Petersburg nobility are given in the Appendix C.
6 Iii the course of 1881, 2837 cases of " politicals," exiled by order of Administration, were examined; out of them 1950 were in Siberia (Poryadok, September 17th, 1881).
o 2 196 In Russian and French Prisons.
article costs its weight in silver, and, of course, there is absolutely no means of earning even a shilling. The Government gives to such exiles only four to eight roubles (eight to ten shillings) per month, and immediately refuses this poor pittance if the exile receives from his parents or friends the smallest sum of money, be it even ten roubles (I/.) during twelve months. To give lessons is strictly forbidden, even if there were lessons to give, for instance to the stanovoy's children. Most of the exiles do not know manual trades. As to finding employ- ment in some private office — in those boroughs where there are offices — it is quite impossible:— " We are afraid of giving them employment " (wrote the Yeniseisk correspondent of the Russldy Kurier), "as we are afraid of being ourselves submitted to the supervision of the police...It is sufficient to meet with an Administrative exile, or to exchange a few words with him, to be inscribed under the head of suspects...The chief of a commercial undertaking has recently compelled his clerks to sign an engagement stating that they will not be acquainted with ' politicals,' nor greet them in the streets."
More than that, we read in 1880 in our The Exile in Siberia. 197 papers that the Ministry of Finance brought forward a scheme for a law " to allow the common-law and political Administrative exiles to carry on all kinds of trades, with the per- mission of the Governor-General, which per- mission is to be asked in each special case." I do not know if this scheme has become law, but I know that formerly nearly all kinds of trade were prohibited to exiles, not to speak of the circumstance that to carry on many trades was quite impossible, the exiles being severely prohibited from leaving the town even for a few hours. Shall I describe, after this, the horrible, unimaginable misery of the exiles? — " Without dress, without shoes, living in the nastiest huts, without any occupation, they are mostly dying from consumption," was written to the Golos of February 2nd, 1881. " Our Ad- ministrative exiles are absolutely starving. Several of them, having no lodgings, were dis- covered living in an excavation under the bell tower," wrote another correspondent. " Ad- ministrative exile simply means killing people by starvation " — such was the cry of our press when it was permitted to discuss this subject. " It is a slow, but sure execution," wrote the Golos.
198 In Ritssian and French Prisons.
And yet, misery is not the worst of the con- dition of the exiles. They are as a rule sub- mitted to the most disgraceful treatment by the local authorities. For the smallest complaint addressed to newspapers, they are transferred to the remotest parts of Eastern Siberia. Young girls, confined at Kargopol, are com- pelled to receive during the night the visits of drunken officials, who enter their rooms by violence, under the pretext of having the right of visiting the exiles at any time. At another place, the police-officer compels the exiles to come every week to the police- station, and " submits them to a visitation, together with street-girls." 7 And so on, and so on!
Such being the situation of the exiles in the less remote parts of Russia and Siberia, it is easy to conceive what it is in such places as Olekminsk, Verkhoyansk, or Nijne-kolymsk, in a hamlet situated at the mouth of the Kolyma, beyond the 68th degree of latitude, and having but 190 inhabitants. For, all these hamlets 7 Golos, February 12th, 1881. Since April, 1881, the editors of newspapers were severely prohibited from pub- lishing anything about the Administrative exiles; and all newspapers having the slightest pretension to be independent were suppressed.
The Exile in Siberia. 199 consisting of a few houses each, have their exiles, their sufferers, buried there for ever for the simple reason that there was no charge brought against them sufficient to procure a condemnation, even from a packed court. After having walked for months and months across snow-covered mountains, on the ice of the rivers, and in the toundras, they are now con- fined in these hamlets where but a few hunters are vegetating, always under the apprehension of dying from starvation. And not only in the hamlets — it will be hardly believed, but it is so — a number of them have been confined to the ulusses, or encampments of the Yakuts, and they are living there under felt tents, with the Yakuts, side by side with people covered with the most disgusting skin diseases. " We live in the darkness," wrote one of them to his friends, taking advantage of some hunter going to Verkhoyansk, whence his letter took ten montlis to reach Olekminsk; " we live in the darkness, and burn candles only for one hour and a half every day; they cost too dear. We have no bread, and eat only fish. Meat can be had at no price." Another says: " I write to you in a violent pain, due to perios- tosis., I have asked to be transferred 2OO In Russian and French Prisons.
to a hospital, but without success. I do not know how long this torture will last; my only wish is to be freed from this pain. We are not allowed to see one another, although we are separated only by the distance of three miles. The Crown allows us four roubles and fifty kopeks — nine shillings — per month." A third exile wrote about the same time: " Thank you, dear friends, for the papers; but I cannot read them: I have no candles, and there are none to buy. My scurvy is rapidly progressing, and having no hope of being transferred, I hope to die in the course of this winter."
" I hope to die in the course of this winter! " That is the only hope that an exile confined to a Yakut encampment under the 68th degree of latitude can cherish!
When reading these lines we are transported back at once to the seventeenth century, and seem to hear again the words of' the protopope Avvakum: — " And I remained there, in the cold block-house, and afterwards with the dirty Tunguses, as a good dog lying on the straw; sometimes they nourished me, sometimes they forgot." And, like the wife of Avvakum, we ask now again: " Ah, dear, how long, then, will these sufferings go on? " Centuries have The Exile in Siberia. 201 elapsed since, and a whole hundred years of pathetic declamations about progress and hu- manitarian principles, all to bring us back to the same point where we were when the Tsars of Moscow sent their adversaries to die in the toundras on the simple denunciation of a favourite.
And to the question of Avvakum's wife, re- peated now again throughout Siberia,, we have but one possible reply: No partial reform, no change of men can ameliorate this horrible state of things; nothing short of a complete transformation of the fundamental conditions of Russian life.
2O2 In Russian and French Prisons.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EXILE ON SAKHALIN.
THERE is in the Northern Pacific, close by the coasts of Russian Mandchuria, a wide island — one of the largest in the world, — but so out of the way of seafarers, so wild and barren, and so difficult of access, that until the last century it was quite ignored and considered as a mere appendix to the continent. Few places in the Russian Empire are worse than this island; therefore, it is to Sakhalin that the Russian Government sends now its hard- labour common-law exiles.
A treble aim has always been prosecuted by exile to Siberia: to get rid of criminals in Russia at the lowest expense to the Central Government; to provide the mines which were the private property of the Emperors with cheap labour; and to colonize Siberia. For many years it was supposed that this treble The Exile on Sakhalin. 203 aim was achieved; as long as the Siberians could not make their voice heard otherwise than through the medium of governors nominated by Russia, the illusion could be maintained. But during the last twenty years it has become more and more difficult to stifle the voices both of the Siberians and of those who know the conditions of exile, and a whole literature has grown up of late which has destroyed all the above illusions. The St. Petersburg Govern- ment was compelled to order inquiries into the present condition and results of exile; and the inquiries fully confirmed the opinions expressed by private explorers.
It appeared, first, that if the Imperial Cabinet really gets cheap labourers in the hard-labour convicts, who extract silver and gold from its mines, it gets them at too heavy a sacrifice of human life. The scandalous manslaughter which was going on at these mines revolted the public conscience. If hundreds of men could be slaughtered twenty years ago at Kara, in order to raise gold to the amount prescribed from St. Petersburg; if they could be over- worked and underfed so as to die by hundreds in the course of one summer, and nobody dared to utter a word about it, it became impossible 204 In Russian and French Prisons.
to do the same when the facts were brought to public knowledge. After the opening of the navigation on the Amur, the Imperial gold- mines at Kara and the Imperial silver-works on the Gasimur were no longer at the end of the world. As to the supposed cheapness of labour, it appeared that, while the Imperial Cabinet really had the convicts for a few pence a day, their transport from Russia, their terrible mortality, and the maintenance of a large administration, as also of soldiers and Cossacks, and the incredible number of runa- ways— all this implied so heavy a charge on Russia and Siberia, that the country would certainly be able to present the Imperial family with twice the amount of gold and silver ex- tracted by the convicts at a much lower cost.
As to the benefits derived by Siberia from colonization by exiles, this fallacy could nob be easily got rid of. There stood the figures showing that from 1754 to 1885 nearly 1,200,000 exiles had been transported to Siberia, and, whatever the number of runaways and prema- ture deaths, still many hundred thousands had been added in this way to the population of the country. It was even argued that if Siberia has now a population of 4,100,000 souls, it has The Exile on Sakhalin. 205 been chiefly indebted for this population to the exiles.
The figures given in the preceding chapter, and many others of the same kind, have weakened, however, this fallacy too. The official inquiries made in 1875 have shown that, although there is a notable percentage of descendants from exiles in the 4,000,000 in- habitants of Siberia, nevertheless the free im- migration has contributed much more towards the colonization of the country, and introduced much better elements, than the batches of exiles, demoralized by protracted detention in prisons, emasculated by hard labour, and settled without having the slightest intention of be- ginning a new life in Siberia. If statistics do not entirely support the extreme view of some Siberians, who are inclined to deny that almost any part has been played by exiles in the in- crease of the population of their country, it must be recognized, at least, that this increase is achieved by too great an amount of human suffering, because far less than one-half of those who cross the Urals in convict-parties become permanent settlers. "With regard to the other half, it is a mere burden upon the colony.1 i See Yadrintse/'s Siberia, and Vostochnoye Olozrenie.
206 In Russian an A French Prisons.
The poor results obtained in Siberia from colonization by exiles would certainly not have been accepted as an inducement to extend the practice if the lives of the convicts had been taken into any account. Nevertheless, the desire of having a settled Russian population on Sakhalin — backed by the desire of the Governor-Generals of Siberia, anxious to get rid of the yearly increasing numbers of hard-labour convicts brought to the Nertchinsk mines — in- clined the Government to make a new experiment in the hard-labour colonization of this wild island. Such being the views held at St. Petersburg, the Governor-General of Siberia found no lack of complacent officials to repre- sent the island as a most appropriate place for such experiments, and to describe its coal- mines as so many hidden treasures. The voices of honest explorers — scientific people, mining engineers, and officers who represented the island for what it was worth — were stifled; and since 1869 the stream of hard-labour convicts has been directed thither.
For several years nothing was heard about this foolish attempt. But finally the truth began to leak out, and we now know sufficient to have, at least, a broad idea of the experiment.
The Exile on Sakhalin. 207 Although its superficial area entitles it to occupy the first rank amidst the islands of the globe, Sakhalin ranks amidst the last in suita- bility for habitation. Novaya Zemlya and New Siberia certainly lay behind it; but not many islands besides. It is, properly speaking, a link between the Japanese archipelago and the Kurilians, and Japan considered it as a part of its territory until the Russians established there, in 1853, their first military post in the southern part of the island. Three years later another post was settled at the Due coal-mines, opposite the mouth of the Amur. Russia thus took possession of the island, and it was explored by a series of scientific expeditions in the course of 1860 to 1867. The military stations were reinforced; some attempts were made to raise coal from the Jurassic coal-layers at Due, and in 1875 Japan, which continued to consider South Sakhalin as its own territory, abandoned it to Russia in exchange for the Kurilian islands.
In fact, there is nothing attractive on the island, and although it is 670 miles in length, and from 20 to 150 miles in width, its popu- lation hardly numbers 5000 inhabitants. Some 2000 Ghilaks carry on a wretched 'existence 208 In Russian and French Prisons.
by hunting in the north; some 2500 Ainos — a bearded people akin to the Kurilians — are scattered in a few settlements in the south; and a few hundred of Oroks, i.e. Tunguses, lead a nomadic life in the mountains. The Ainos are real serfs to a few Japanese merchants who supply them with corn, salt, and other neces- saries, and in exchange make this wretched people work hard for them: they take all the fish they can catch in the gulfs and at the mouths of a few rivers, and leave the Ainos just what is strictly necessary to maintain their poor existence. Throughout its history, that is, under the Chinese dominion, and later on, under the Japanese, nobody except poverty- stricken hunters and fishers would settle on Sakhalin.
In fact, only hunters and fishermen could find there the means of living. Not that the island is situated in very uncongenial latitudes. Its southern extremity reaches the 46th de- gree, and its northern point does not extend farther than the 54th degree. But the warm sea-current, which might bring it some of the warmth of the Chinese waters, does not reach it; while the ice-bound cold current issuing from the ' great cellar ' of the Pacific — the sea of The Exile on Sakhalin. 209 Okhotsk — washes its eastern coast. In the midst of the summer Russian explorers found the east coast bound with ice-fields and heaps of floating ice which were brought by north- east winds. And to the west, the narrow elongated island has that immense refrigerator — the cold and high mountain tracts of Siberia — separated from it only by a narrow and shallow channel. The rays of the sun are concealed by heavy clouds and dense fogs. When M. Polyakoff landed at Due (in Middle Sakhalin), at the end of June, he found the neighbouring hills covered with patches of snow, and the soil was frozen at a depth of twenty-one inches. The summer crops were hardly germinating, and vegetables could not be bedded out before June 20th. June was drawing to a close, and still the thermometer had never risen above 64° Fahr. Nor had there yet been a single fine day, while thick fogs enveloped coast and hills for eight days in the course of the month.
Several chains of mountains, from 2000 to 5000 feet high, intersect the island. Their damp or stony slopes are covered from top to bottom with thick forests — poor forests, con- sisting of species characteristic of the sub-arctic region; and between the hills one finds but p p 2 1 o In Russian and French Prisons.
narrow, damp, marshy valleys, quite unfit, as a whole, for agriculture. The steep slopes of the mountains run down to the waters of the channel, so that no road could be laid out along the sea-coast, unless by piercing the stony crags; and, in fact, there are but two larger valleys which intersect the mountains: that of the Due river, continued to the north-east by the Tym; and that of the Poronai in the south of the island.
It is to the former, close by the spot where coal-layers are found, that the hard-labour convicts have been directed. M. Polyakoff, who visited Sakhalin in 1881-2, on a scientific mission from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, describes thus the valley which in the fallacies of the Russian rulers was to become a centre for Russian civilization on the island. The hills which enclose the narrow valley are mostly barren, and their slopes are too steep to be adorned with corn- fields. As to the bottom of the valley, it is covered with a thick layer of heavy clay, coated but with a thin sheet of arable soil. The whole is exceedingly marshy. " One can walk on it without sinking very deeply in the mud; but it is intersected by peat-moors and deep marshes...Nowhere is the ground fit for The Exile on Sakhalin. 2 1 1 agriculture...It mostly resembles that of the worst parts of Olonets, with this difference, that it is often covered with pools of water, even in the forests, and that even the kind of cultivation which is carried on in Olonets by > i-l.
means of clearing and burning the forests is rendered impossible by the marshy ground of the forests themselves." " These conditions render both agriculture and gardening impos- sible in the vicinity of Due." Only a very few patches higher up the valley, and on the upper Tym can be utilized for agricultural and gardening purposes. But these few patches which are met with sporadically, are already mostly under cultivation.2 It is, however, precisely there, that is, in the vicinity of the Due coal-mines, that the hard- labour convicts are settled after having finished their terms of imprisonment at the hard-labour prison of Alexandrovsk. The settlement around this prison is exceedingly gloomy. There are two big barracks which bear the name of prisons; a few houses are scattered 2 I. Polyakoff, Reise nach der Insel Sakhalin in den Jahren 1881-82. A. us dem Russischen iibersetzt von Dr. Arzruni. Berlin, 1884. — Kussian original in the Izveztia of the Russian Geographical Society, 1883.
p 2 212 In Russian and French Prisons.
round about; and beyond them begins the wilderness. Only Little Alexandrovsk, higher up the valley, and the few houses of Kor- sakova have the aspect of a more prosperous settlement; but there again all land available for gardening is already under cultivation. It was, however, precisely with the aim of having permanent agricultural settlements that the convicts were sent to Sakhalin. It was sup- posed that after having passed one part of their terms at work in the coal-mines they would be settled around the mines, and raise corn sufficient to support themselves and to provide the penal colony with supplies of food.
Further up the valley which — according to the concocted reports of the Administration- was to become a granary for Sakhalin, the soil is the same; and the small settlements of Rykovo and Malo-Tymovskaya — " the most ap- propriate spot for agriculture on all the island " — have to support the same struggle against Nature. Oats do not ripen there, and only barley can be grown. As to the roads which connect these settlements, they are simply im- passable. Tracks have been cut through the forests, but horses sink in the marshes. Much hope had been placed also in the valley of the The Exile on Sakhalin. 213 Tym, which continues the Alexandrovsk valley to the north-east, and reaches the Sea of Okhotsk. But its marshy soil, and still more the cold and fogs of the Sea of Okhotsk, render agriculture quite impossible in this valley, except at its top. Its vegetation is sub-polar; and on the sea-coast it has all the characters of the tundra. "If latter on," M. Polyakoff writes in an official report, " a few spots avail- able for orchards and corn-fields can be found in the valley of the Tym, after a careful search, it would be advisable to await the results ob- tained in the already existing settlements before creating new ones; and all the more as great difficulty is already experienced in supplying these settlements with food, and as there is already now a serious lack of provisions in the colony. As to the hope entertained of creating villages at the mouth of the Tym, it would be a delusion to entertain it, the region being a region of tundras and polar-birch.".
These conclusions, most cautiously expressed — too cautiously perhaps — are fully supported by those arrived at by Dr. Petti in 1883, with the difference that the Italian Doctor is less cautious than the Russian scientist. The whole " colonization of Sakhalin," he wrote to 214 IH Russian and French Prisons.
the Jahresbericht of the Bern Geographical Society for 1883-84, is a big lie circulated by the authorities. While the local authorities show on paper that there are already 2700 acres under cultivation, the survey of M. Karaulovski has shown that only 1375 are cultivated; the 700 families of hard-labour convicts who were promised to have twenty acres of arable soil per male soul, have suc- ceeded in clearing less than two acres per family.3 Dr. Petri's conclusion is that the island is quite unfit for agriculture, and that the Government has been induced to take this false step by the false reports of people interested in the undertaking.
As far as we can now judge, experience has fully confirmed the views held by M. Polyakoff and Dr. Petri. The raising of corn is subject to such difficulties and uncertainty, that the new settlers have had to be maintaired until now on food brought from Russia, and there is no hope of improvement. Food is transported from the valley of the Due to that of the Tyni (Derbinskoye), across a chain of mountains, on 3 " Jaliresbericht der Geographisclien Gesellschqft von Bern," 1883-84, pp. 129 and 39. See also St. Petersburg's Herold, NK 353-356. 1884.
The Exile on Sakhalin. 215