Through Siberia

Reasons for and history of deportation to Siberia.—Number of exiles.—Their education.—Crimes.—Sentences.—Loss of rights.—Privileges.—Proportion of hard-labour convicts.—Where located.—Release.—Escapes.—Causes and methods of flight.—Transport.—A convoy of exiles.—Moscow charity.—Conveyance to Perm and Tiumen.—Their distribution.—Order of march.—Sea-borne exiles.—Mistakes of English newspapers.—Conveyance of political exiles.

In dealing with criminals, the Russian Government has to act as best it can for the good of the community in general. If, in particular cases, it seems likely that the criminal may be reformed, he is sent to one of the prisons or houses of correction at home; but if, on the other hand, the crime of the malefactor demands a severe punishment, and, after repeated correction, he seems to be incorrigible, then he is banished to Siberia, the people being thus rid of a corrupting member of society, whilst another unit is sent to assist in developing the resources of a large territory of the Russian empire, which has great need of population. This, I presume, is the theory, or part of it, of the deportation of prisoners to distant parts of the empire.⁠[1] The number of ordinary exiles sent to Siberia for several years past has been from 17,000 to 20,000 per annum; but this includes wives and children who choose to accompany the prisoners. Of these nearly 8,000, on their arrival in Siberia, are set free to get their own living; about 3,000 of them being sent to Eastern and 5,000 to Western Siberia. The exiles come from all parts of Russia in Europe, and include about 300 a year from Finland. In 1879 there were 898 sent from Poland. Some idea may be formed of the education of the exiles from the fact that on the day we visited Tiumen prison there were, out of 470 prisoners, 42 who could read and write well, 32 who could do so a little, and 12 who could sign their names. At Tiumen, however, we heard from one who had to do with a great many exiles, and who had several statistics about them, that one-third of those with whom he had been brought into contact could read. Again, in the district of Kansk, in Eastern Siberia, in 1877, of 226 criminals, only two were marked as “well-educated,” whilst in 1878, of 182 prisoners, none stood high enough, intellectually, to be thus designated. The figures from Kansk are not quite to the point in speaking of European Russia, but they help, with others, to give an approximate idea, not only of the education, but also of the social rank of the Siberian criminals. Again, for statistical purposes, the Russians are sometimes marked off into five classes, thus: nobles, merchants, ecclesiastics, citizens, and peasants; and in prison the higher grades receive better allowance, and are not mixed with the peasant prisoners, but have rooms apart. In going through the principal prisons of Siberia, however, we found the number of rooms thus occupied decidedly small; so that this observation, taken with the educational state of the prisoners, would seem to confirm what I was told by one prison official, that probably not more than 3 or 4 per cent. of the exiles are from the upper classes.

As to the crimes of the exiles, they are not all political, nor even chiefly so. A large proportion—4,000 out of 18,000, or say 20 per cent.—of them are charged with no one particular offence, except that they have rendered themselves obnoxious to the community among which they lived. If a man in Russia be incorrigibly bad, and will not pay his taxes nor support his wife and family, but leaves these things to be done by his neighbours, his commune—which may consist of one or more villages—meet in their mir, or village parliament, vote the man a nuisance, and adjudge that he be sent, at their expense, to Siberia. This judgment is submitted to higher authorities, and, unless just cause be shown to the contrary, is confirmed. The man is then taken to Siberia, not to be imprisoned, but to get his living as a colonist. Those sent thus by the villages, I was told, are chiefly drunkards. We saw a whole wardful of them at Tiumen, dressed in private clothes, and not in prison garb; and a second ward, of a similar mixed multitude, consisting of men, women, and children. The perpetrators of political crimes, as those of the “black Nihilists,” are, when caught, usually accommodated with free lodgings in Siberia; and so with revolutionary offenders, who make insurrection in Poland, Circassia, or elsewhere. Of offenders such as these I must speak hereafter. Formerly religious dissenters were largely deported, but this has not been done since the proclamation of what may, in a fashion, be called religious liberty, unless in the case of one or two—more especially one sect—whose practices no enlightened Government could tolerate, and which are so extraordinary that, if they obtained universal acceptance, there would be no further increase of population, and the human race would become extinct. The fact is that the great mass of exiles are nothing more nor less than ordinary criminals, such as may be found in any of the prisons of Europe.⁠[2]

The sentences of the exiles vary widely according as they are condemned to one or the other of two classes, namely: those who lose all their rights, and those who lose only partial or political rights, which deprivations may be thus explained:—

Those who lose all their rights are not in an enviable position. These are some of the things they lose:—If a man have a title or official rank, he is degraded. An exile’s marriage rights are broken, so that his wife is free to marry another. Neither his word nor his bond is of any value. He cannot sign a legal document or serve any office, either municipal or imperial. He can hold no property, nor do anything legal in his own name. In prison he must wear convict’s clothes, and have his head half shaved; and, in the case of a woman, she cannot marry after her release from prison till by good conduct she has placed herself in a certain category; and, whether man or woman, they may, for new crimes, if the authorities see fit, after they have served their time in prison, and are living as colonists, be sent back again. They may be thrashed with rods and with the “plète,” and, even should they be murdered, probably little trouble would be taken to find the murderer. In fact, as the words imply, they lose all their rights, though I believe they can appeal to the law in case of being grossly wronged.

I have said that an exile’s marriage rights are broken, and I was told that it is the same with convicts in America. Were it not so, it might be very hard upon a young wife whose husband, for instance, had committed murder, and who, for her husband’s crime and banishment, should be compelled to remain single for the rest of her life. A Russian wife with her children, however, may accompany the husband if she chooses; in which case they go with the exile and receive from the Government prison food and accommodation. If, on the other hand, a husband wishes to accompany a convict wife, he travels at his own cost. To the honour of the Russian women be it said that the proportion of men accompanied by their wives and families is one in every six. The proportion of women accompanied by their husbands is, I am told, not exactly known, though it is very much less.

Those who suffer the loss of particular rights lose certain of their privileges (but not family or property rights), and are settled in Siberia, to get their living in any way they are able. They may, however, in some cases, have first to serve for a period in prison; or, again, they may be allowed to live in their own houses and give a portion of their time to Government work.

Commonly, they are condemned first to serve a certain time in confinement, with or without labour. If they behave well they are, after a while, and in some cases, allowed to live outside the prison with their families, if they have any, but still to do their allotted work, until the period arrives for them to be liberated and located like colonists. Some of the women who are condemned to the far east have the good fortune to be taken as domestic servants by officers, and even favoured civilians, who, in a new country where ordinary servants are not to be had, are allowed for this purpose to take the prisoners, subject to inspection, of course. Lastly, some exiles, though comparatively few, I believe, are condemned to prison, or to prison and labour, for life.⁠[3]

The localities to which the exiles are sent vary according to their crimes. Speaking generally, those deprived of partial rights are sent to Western, and those deprived of all their rights to Eastern, Siberia. On this point I have no official statistics, but a legal officer gave me these particulars concerning the location of convicts. Murderers are sent to Kara. My finding 800 there would seem to confirm this, only that their presence was manifest in so many of the other prisons also. Political prisoners go to Kara, to the Trans-Baikal district, and (as I heard from other sources) to the Yakutsk government; also to this latter province are sent those who commit fresh crimes in Siberia. Vagrants or vagabonds are dispatched to the far east, to the government of the Sea Coast and Sakhalin. On the other hand, Western Siberia would seem to be reserved for minor offenders, and those deprived of certain particular rights only. It should be observed, however, that exiles, wherever they may be, are under police inspection, are furnished with papers which they have to show at intervals, and which tie them to a certain place, whence they can move to a distance only by permission. When at large, and in some cases when in prison, the exiles may correspond with their friends through the post; but the letters must of course be read by the authorities. The hardest part of the lot of those who lose all their rights seems to be that they cannot look forward to the hope of returning. Not that a release is never granted even to these; for I am told that political offenders are sometimes seen hurried out of, as fast as they are hurried into, exile. The late Emperor, too, when he came to the throne, began his reign by an act of clemency on a larger scale, and allowed certain exiles whom his father had banished to return. Again, I have heard of a Polish exile in good circumstances who was fortunate enough to win the love of an English young lady connected (by name at all events) with one of the ducal families of Great Britain, through which it is said the ear was gained of a member first of the English royal family, then of the imperial family of Russia, and finally of the Emperor himself.⁠[4] I have met with another case of a released exile who was liberated under curious circumstances. He gave me his story thus:—When Alexander II. visited Paris in the time of Napoleon III., the Tsar asked the Emperor if there were anything he could do for him. Upon which the Emperor replied: “You have a Frenchman who, in young and silly days, joined the Polish insurrection. He was made prisoner, and is now in Siberia. Will you do me the favour to release him?” The request was granted, a messenger despatched, the happy prisoner in forty-five days and nights drove back from the mines to Moscow, not with a couple of horses merely, but troika fashion, between a couple of gendarmes, and received his pardon. But such cases, of course, are rare.

It is well known that many of the exiles escape—some from the prisons, and others from the districts where they are living free. A Russian authoress, “O. K.,” in “Russia and England from 1876 to 1880,” says that in January 1876, out of 51,122 exiles supposed to be in Tobolsk, only 34,293 could be found, which figures an Englishman living in the Tobolsk government (speaking offhand) told me he should doubt, though he thought “O. K.’s” statement might be right regarding the government of Tomsk, in which the same authoress states that 5,000 were missing out of 30,000. For my own figures I am indebted to a prison official very high in position, who told me that nearly 700 get away yearly, and in 1876 as many as 952 escaped the control of the police. Thus the mere feat of running away does not seem to be difficult; but this does not imply that it is equally easy to get away from the country. A few roubles slipped into the hands of a Cossack or petty officer have a wonderful effect in blinding his eyes. Again, an escape is sometimes made from the gold-mines thus:—The convicts work in gangs, and one lies in a ditch for the others to cover him with branches and rubbish. The numbers are called on leaving off work, and one is missing. Search proves fruitless, and, after all have left the mine, the man rises from his temporary grave and makes for the woods. The great difficulty is not to get away, but to keep away. The country is so vast that they cannot travel far before the approach of winter, and then, if they have escaped in company, they have the choice of returning to prison food or eating one another. They have, moreover, another difficulty with the natives. In the Trans-Baikal district, the Buriats are said to hunt down escaped convicts, and shoot them like vermin; which is probably explained by what was told me of the Gilyaks on the Lower Amur, that they receive three roubles a-head for every escaped convict they bring to the police, whether dead or alive. The natives argue thus: “If you shoot a squirrel, you get only his skin; whereas, if you shoot a varnak” (which is the nickname they give to convicts), “you get his skin and his clothing too.” Thus it is very difficult for them to get out of the country.

There are several reasons, however, which conduce to their running away. A long-term prisoner, for instance, condemned to twenty years’ labour, makes his escape from a penal colony, wanders about the country during the summer months, and, on the approach of winter, commits a crime and is caught. He is asked for his name, to which he replies that it is Ivan Nepomnoostchi—that is, “John Know-nothing.” He is asked where he comes from. He replies that he entirely forgets. What has been his occupation? His memory fails him. He is asked for his papers. He says that he has none, or perhaps trumps up a story that he has lost them—and so on. Accordingly he is tried, and is sentenced, say to five years’ hard labour, for which he inwardly thanks the Court, and goes off, it may be, to a new prison, having effected a saving of the sorrows of eighteen years. Should he not play his game aright, however, and should he be detected, then his past service goes for nothing; he is most likely flogged, and sent back to a harder berth than he had before. Some run away under the influence of drink, and discover their mistake too late. Again, other reasons which may be supposed to conduce to flight are—the fear of punishment for new faults committed, the desire to get back to social and family ties in Europe, or, in the case of those twice imprisoned, to ties which they have formed whilst settled in Siberia.

I am disposed to think that the severance of family and social ties is with many the really hard pinch of Siberian exile. One lady, who had a convict for her nurse, told me that she gave her her own clothes, paid her £1 a month, provided her a home in the best house in the province, to say nothing of sundry perquisites, and yet she sometimes found her, when alone, in tears; and, on asking what was the matter, the answer was—“Oh, if I only knew something of my friends in Russia!” She had not learnt to write, her friends were in the same position, and the difficulty of procuring an amanuensis, together with uncertainty as to address, made communication almost impossible; and so she said she could not tell whether her friends were dead or alive, or what might be their fate. I recollect, too, in a prison at Uleaborg, in Finland, finding a woman who had escaped from exile, of whom I asked how she liked Siberia; to which she replied that as regards the country she had nothing to complain of; but, she pathetically added, “I did so want to see my mother!” And to do this she had taken flight, during three years had traversed more than 2,000 miles, had reached her old home, and was then retaken!

But nothing has yet been said of the transport of the exiles. Of old they had to walk all the way, and the journey and stoppages occupied a long time. The woman at Uleaborg said she was eight months going from Petersburg to Tobolsk. In this matter, however, as in many others, the lot of the banished was much mitigated during the reign of the late Emperor, especially after 1867. The introduction of railways and river steamboats greatly facilitated this. Accordingly, those in Russia who are condemned to Siberia are now first gathered to a central prison in Moscow, where they may be seen entering the city in droves. A very affecting sight was the first of these droves I saw in 1874. The van consisted of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Behind them marched the worst of the men prisoners, with chains on their ankles, the clanking of which as they moved was most unmusical. Then followed men without fetters, but chained by the hand to what looked like a long iron rod; and next after them the women convicts; and then the most touching part of the whole—women, not convicts, but wives who had elected to be banished with their husbands. Then there were wagons containing children, the old and infirm, baggage, etc., the rear being brought up by armed soldiers. As the prisoners moved along the street, passengers stepped from the pavement to give them presents. To this the guards who walked at the side made no objection, and in this way, in some of the towns, the prisoners gather, or used to gather, a considerable sum of money; for the woman at Uleaborg said that the money given to her drove of 156 prisoners, during their three days’ stay in Moscow, amounted to about 30s. each.⁠[5] More recently, however, a Pole, who began his walking in 1871, farther east, at Perm, told me his receipts from the wayside charity of the people were insignificant.

Being gathered then at Moscow, the prisoners are sent off in droves of about 700 each by rail to Nijni Novgorod. This commences in spring, as soon as the river navigation opens, and two or three parties go off each week. They began, the year of my visit, on May 8th. On reaching Nijni Novgorod they are placed in a large barge built for the purpose, which carries from 600 to 800, and is tugged by steamer to Perm.

Hence they are taken twice a week by rail to Ekaterineburg; 350 on Wednesday, and 500 on Saturday. Their walking, however, does not yet begin; for the 200 miles remaining to Tiumen is got over by conveyances, each of which, drawn by three horses, carries about six prisoners; and thus they arrive at the first prison in Siberia proper.

Now begins their distribution. Those who are condemned to Western Siberia are assigned to particular towns or villages, whither they are sent by water, if possible, or, if not, on foot. Those, however, who are condemned to Eastern Siberia are placed in another barge, and taken on the Tura, Tobol, Irtish, Obi, and the Tom, to Tomsk, whence their walking eastward begins. When not hindered by accidental causes, they usually rest one day and walk two, marching sometimes twenty miles or more a day. Temporary prisons called étapes are erected along the road to receive them for the night, and in the towns are larger buildings called perisylnie prisons, in which they may rest, if necessary, a longer time, and where there are hospitals, medical attendants, etc. Thus they go on day after day, week after week, month after month, to their destined place or prison, to Irkutsk, to Yakutsk, to Chita, or, if perchance they are destined to Sakhalin, they continue to Stretinsk on the Shilka, thence by steam on the river Amur to Nikolaefsk, and so by ship to the island. Two years since, however, the Russian Government adopted a new and better plan with prisoners intended for Sakhalin, and, instead of sending them across Asia, shipped them from Odessa, viâ the Suez Canal, to the Pacific direct. A large merchant steamer, the Nijni Novgorod, was employed for the purpose, sailing under the Government flag, which made the passage in about two months, the prisoners arriving in excellent health, and without one death on the passage.

I mention this fact the more readily as I heard it in the Admiral’s house at Vladivostock, where the ship arrived a week or two before I did, and where it was said that one of the Japanese newspapers had copied from an English paper to the effect that half the prisoners had died on the passage, and that the rest were in a terribly sick condition. As an Englishman I was called to account for this, and I found that the minds of some of my Russian friends were very sore with the editors of English newspapers, by reason of alleged misrepresentations received at their hands. They complained, moreover, that whereas some of the newspapers were ready enough to publish against the Russians all they knew that was bad, they were slow to acknowledge the good, and were not always ready to recall what had been said, even when proved to have been false. Not having the facts before me, I could only put in a plea regarding the desire of English journals to be first in the field with news, and the consequent rapid manner in which editorial work has to be done. Knowing something of an editor’s difficulties, I felt justified in expressing the hope that there had been no intentional departure from fairness, uprightness, and integrity. I am not sure, however, that I should have been ready with an answer had I known how the case really stood.⁠[6]

I have thus described the transport of ordinary exiles to Siberia. There is another category of prisoners—arch-heretics in political or revolutionary affairs, Nihilists, etc., of whom the authorities wish to take special care, who are not sent with the common herd, but are individually placed between two gendarmes, and sent off to travel alone direct to their destination. I am of opinion that the popular notion as to their numbers is exaggerated, and that they are much fewer than is commonly supposed. I shall offer my reasons for thinking thus later on. These persons, while travelling, are never allowed, under any pretence, to be out of sight of their keepers, who are charged to allow no one to speak to them. This, however, is not always carried out to the letter; for a friend of mine, coming one day to a swollen river in Siberia, near Omsk, where a gendarme was also waiting with a young lady prisoner of seventeen, was allowed to speak to her, and she told him that since she left Petersburg, a distance of 1,700 miles, she had not once had a gendarme out of her presence. When there are several prisoners of this character travelling in a manner together, they are kept separate, and are not allowed to speak to each other. But even this cannot always be enforced; for not long before my arrival at Tiumen a batch of about ten such persons had passed. On arriving at Ekaterineburg, a separate carriage was taken for each; but when they came at Tiumen to the riverside, standing and waiting for the steamer, they were able to snatch a few moments for conversing together. I know of another instance, in which a young woman had been suspected of a political offence, and been warned by the authorities to desist; but, not profiting by the warning, she was arrested, sent off with a gendarme, and on her way met a gentleman whom she asked to convey a letter to her friends. This of course was against the gendarme’s orders, but, on being assured that the letter should be only of a private nature, and three roubles being put into his hand, he allowed it to be written and taken. This was in European Russia. Further east they become still more lax.

There is yet a third case, in which exiles are permitted to journey by themselves like ordinary travellers. We met a lady who was forced to quit Petersburg at twenty-four hours’ notice; but owing to her position, or through interest, she was allowed to travel alone; and in this manner, by reason of illness on the way, during which her money was stolen, she was a twelvemonth reaching her location in Eastern Siberia. This, however, was the only case we met with of an exile travelling privately, and I presume similar cases are very exceptional. Whilst the exiles are on the march, and, in certain cases, whilst they are living like colonists, they receive clothing and an allowance for food, either in money or in kind; but this subject will be best treated under the description of prisons, to which subsequent chapters will be devoted.