# Siberia and the Exile System/Volume 1/Chapter XII

Siberia and the Exile System Volume 2
CHAPTER XII
THE PROVINCE AND THE CITY OF TOMSK
The rapidity with which the season of good weather and good roads was passing, and the length and arduous nature of the journey that still lay before us, compelled us to make our stay in the city of Ust Kámenogórsk very brief. The work that we accomplished there, however, had an important bearing upon the prosecution of our researches in the field of political exile, and rendered our success in that field almost certain. I had always anticipated great difficulty in ascertaining where political exiles were to be found, and how they could be approached without the asking of too many dangerous questions. We could not expect in every town to stumble, by good luck, upon a liberal and sympathetic official who would aid us in our search, and yet experience had shown us the absolute necessity of knowing definitely in advance where to go and whom to approach. We had already passed through half a dozen towns or villages where there were colonies of interesting political exiles, and where, if we had been aware of their existence, we should have stopped; but we had no clues whatever to them, and I feared that if, in searching for clues, we made a practice of asking questions at random, we should soon attract the attention of the police and be called upon to explain what business we had with political exiles, and why we were everywhere looking them up. At Ust Kámenogórsk this source of embarrassment was finally removed. We not only obtained there a mass of ​useful information and a great number of valuable hints and suggestions, but we carried away with us notes of recommendation to people who could aid us, letters of introduction to liberal officials in the towns through which we were yet to pass, and a manuscript list, or directory, in which were set forth the names, ages, professions, and places of banishment of nearly seven hundred political exiles in all parts of Siberia. After we had obtained these letters of introduction and this "underground" directory, the Government could have prevented us from investigating the exile system only by removing us forcibly from the country. We no longer had to grope our way by asking hazardous questions at random. We could take every step with a certainty of not making a mistake, and could go, in every village, directly to the persons whom we wished to see.
Barnaül is a large town of 17,000 inhabitants, and is the center of the rich and important mining district of the Altái. It contains an unusual number of pretentious dwelling-houses and residences with columns and imposing facades, but most of them have fallen into decay. They were erected many years ago, at a time when a mining officer of the Crown in Barnaül received 2000 or 3000 rubles a year as salary, and stole 100,000 rubles a year by means of "cooked" accounts, and when, according to tradition, he paid twice the amount of his own salary to a French governess for his children, and as much more to a French culinary chef, and sent his soiled linen to Paris by mail to be washed and starched.
Mr. Frost, with an amount of enterprise which was in the highest degree creditable to him, explored the city with sketch-book and camera, and took photographs of the bazar, ​of peasant women carrying stones on hand-barrows near the mining "works," and of a curious building, not far from our hotel, which seemed to have been intended for a Russo-Ionic temple, but which afterward had apparently been transformed into a jail, in order to bring it more nearly into harmony with the needs of the place. I should have accompanied him upon some of these excursions, but I was nearly sick from sleeplessness. The dirty hotel in Barnaül was alive with bedbugs, and I was compelled to sleep every night on a table, or rather stand, about four feet long by three wide, set out in the middle of the room. Owing to the fact that I generally rolled off or capsized the table as soon as I lost consciousness, my sleep was neither prolonged nor refreshing, and before we left Barnaül I was reduced to a state bordering on frenzy. Almost the only pleasant recollection that I have of the city is the memory of receiving there eighteen letters from home—the first I had had since our departure from Tiumén.
Tuesday afternoon, August 18th, we left Barnaül for Tomsk. The part of Western Siberia that lies between these two cities is a fertile rolling country, diversified by birch groves and wide stretches of cultivated land, and suggestive a little of the southern part of New England. Mr. Frost, whose home is in Massachusetts, said he could easily imagine that he was "up Berkshire way." The scenery, although never wild, is everywhere pleasing and picturesque; the meadows, even in August, are carpeted with flowers, and the greenness and freshness of the vegetation, to a traveler who comes from the desert-like steppes of the upper Írtish, are a source of surprise and gratification. Near the first station we passed the small lake of Koliván, which is celebrated in all that part of Siberia for the picturesque beauty of its scenery, and Mr. Frost made a sketch of some fantastic rocks by the roadside. It is a favorite place of resort in summer for the wealthy citizens of Barnaül and Tomsk. It had been our intention to spend a day or two ​in exploring this picturesque sheet of water, but we finally decided that we could not spare the time. We crossed the river Ob on a curious paróm, or ferry-boat, consisting of a large platform supported upon two open hulks and propelled
by a paddle-wheel at one end, the crank of which was turned by two ragged-bearded old muzhiks. Most of the Siberian rivers are crossed by means of what are known as "pendulum ferries," in which the boat is anchored by a long cable made fast in the middle of the stream, and is ​swung from shore to shore pendulum-wise by the force of the current. The Ob ferry-boat, of which Mr. Frost made a sketch, was the first one we had seen propelled by a paddle-wheel.
So far as I can remember, there was little on the route between Barnaül and Tomsk to attract a traveler's attention. I was terribly jaded and exhausted from lack of sleep, and spent a large part of the time in a state which was little more than one of semi-consciousness.
At four o'clock on the afternoon of Thursday, August 20th, we rode at last into the city of Tomsk. We had made, with horses, in the 51 days which had elapsed since our departure from Tiumén, a journey of more than 1500 miles, in the course of which we had inspected two large prisons, made the acquaintance of three colonies of political exiles, and visited the wildest part of the Russian Altái. We drove at once to the European Hotel, which is the building shown at the extreme right of the illustration on page 300, secured a fairly comfortable room, and as soon as possible after dinner removed our clothing and stretched our weary bodies out in civilized beds for the first time in nearly two months.
Tomsk, which is the capital of the province of the same name, is a city of 31,000 inhabitants, and is situated partly on a bluff, and partly on low land adjoining the river Tom, a short distance above its junction with the Ob. In point of size and importance it is the second city in Siberia, and in enterprise, intelligence, and prosperity it seemed to me to be the first. It contains about 8000 dwelling-houses and other buildings, 250 of which are brick; 33 churches, including a Roman Catholic church, a Mohammedan mosque, and 3 Jewish synagogues; 26 schools, attended by about 2500 scholars; a very good public library; 2 tri-weekly newspapers, which, however, the Minister of the Interior keeps closed a large part of the time on account of their "pernicious tendency"; and a splendid new university ​building. The streets of the city are not paved and are very imperfectly lighted, but at the time of our visit they seemed to be reasonably clean and well cared for, and the town, as a whole, impressed me much more favorably than many towns of its class in European Russia.
The province of which Tomsk is the capital has an area of 330,000 square miles, and is therefore about seven times as large as the State of Pennsylvania. It contains 8 towns, each of which has on an average 14,000 inhabitants, and 2719 villages, each of which has on an average 366 inhabitants, so that its total population is about 1,100,000. Of this number 90,000 are aborigines, and 30,000 communal exiles, or common criminals banished from European Russia. The southern part of the province is very fertile, is well timbered and watered, and has a fairly good climate. The 3,600,000 acres of land which it has under cultivation yield annually about 30,000,000 bushels of grain and 4,500,000 bushels of potatoes, with smaller quantities of hemp, flax, and tobacco, while the pastures around the villages support about 2,500,000 head of live stock.
to it were allowed, it might soon become as densely populated and as prosperous as any of our northwestern States. Its resources are almost illimitable, and all that it needs is good government and freedom for the play of private ​enterprise. As long, however, as a despotic administration at St. Petersburg can gag its newspapers for months at a time, keep its university closed, choose the teachers and prescribe the courses of study for its schools, prohibit the reading of the best books in its libraries, bind its population hand and foot by a rigid passport system, govern it through corrupt and wretchedly paid chinóvniks, and pour into it every year a flood of common criminals from European Russia, just so long will it remain what it now is—a naturally enterprising and promising colony strangled by oppressive and unnecessary guardianship. The Government, just at the present time, proposes to develop the resources of the province by building through it a railroad. It might much better loosen the grasp in which it holds the people by the throat, permit them to exercise some judgment with regard to the management of their own affairs, allow them freely to discuss their needs and plans in their own newspapers, abolish restrictions upon personal liberty of movement, stop the sending there of criminal exiles, and then let the province develop itself. It does not need "development" half as much as it needs to be let alone.
Our first step in Tomsk was to call upon the political exiles, and upon several army officers to whom we had letters of introduction, and ascertain from them the facts that were necessary for our guidance. We were received by everybody with the utmost courtesy and kindness, and Colonel Yágodkin, the chief military officer of the district, not only welcomed us to his house with cordial hospitality, but took a friendly interest in all of our prison investigations. Only a day or two after our arrival he called at our hotel to inform us that a convict barge from Tiumén had arrived that morning at the steamer-landing two or three miles from the city, and to say that if we would like to see the reception of a convict party, he would go to the landing with us and introduce us to the chief officer of the local exile bureau. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and in ten ​minutes Mr. Frost, Colonel Yágodkin, and I were driving furiously over a muddy road toward the prístan, or landing-place. Although we made all possible haste, the prisoners had disembarked before we reached our destination. We found them assembled in two dense gray throngs at the ends of a long wooden shed, which was surrounded and turned into a sort of cattle-pen by a high plank wall. Here they were identified, counted, and turned over by the convoy
officer to the warden of the Tomsk forwarding prison. The shed was divided transversely through the middle by a low wooden barricade, at one end of which was a fenced inclosure, about ten feet square, for the accommodation of the officers who had to take part in the reception of the party. About half the exiles had been formally "received" and were standing at the eastern end of the shed, while the other half were grouped in a dense throng at the western end, waiting for their names to be called. The women, ​who stood huddled together in a group by themselves, were mostly in peasant costumes, with bright-colored kerchiefs over their heads, and their faces, I thought, showed great anxiety and apprehension. The men all wore long gray overcoats over coarse linen shirts and trousers; most of them were in chains, and the bare heads of the convicts and the penal colonists had been half shaved longitudinally in such a way that one side of the scalp was smooth and blue while the other side was hidden by long, neglected hair. Soldiers stood here and there around the shed, leaning upon their bayoneted rifles, and inside the little inelosure were the convoy officer of the party, the warden and the surgeon of the Tomsk forwarding prison, the chief of the local bureau of exile administration, and two or three other officers, all in full uniform. Colonel Yágodkin introduced us as American travelers who desired to see the reception of an exile party, and we were invited to stand inside the inclosure.
The officer who was conducting the examination of the convicts drew a folded paper from a large bundle in his hand, opened and glanced at it, and then shouted, "Nikolai Koltsof!" A thin, pale man, with heavy, wearied eyes and a hopeless expression of face, who was standing in the front rank of the exile party, picked up the gray linen bag that lay beside him on the floor, and with a slow clink, clink, clink of chains walked to the inclosure. The examining officer compared his face carefully with a photograph attached to the statéini spísak or "identification paper," in order to make sure that the pale man had not "exchanged names" with some other exile, while a Cossack orderly examined him from head to foot and rummaged through his bag to see that he had neither lost nor surreptitiously sold the articles of clothing that he had received in Moscow or Tiumén, and that his statéini spísak called for.
​"Everything," replied the Cossack.
"Stupái!" [Pass on!] said the lieutenant; and the pale-faced man shouldered his bag and joined the ranks of the "received" at the eastern end of the shed.
"The photographs are a new thing," whispered Colonel Yagodkin to me; "and only a part of the exiles have them. They are intended to break up the practice of exchanging names and identities."
"But why should they wish to exchange names?" I inquired.
"If a man is sentenced to hard labor at the mines," he replied, "and has a little money, he always tries to buy secretly the name and identity of some poor devil of a colonist who longs desperately for a drink of vódka, or who wants money with which to gamble. Of course the convoy officer has no means of preventing this sort of transaction, because he cannot possibly remember the names and faces of the four or five hundred men in his party. If the convict succeeds in finding a colonist who is willing to sell his name, he takes the colonist's place and is assigned a residence in some village, while the colonist takes the convict's place and goes to the mines. Hundreds of hard-labor convicts escape in this way."
"Hassán Abdállimof!" called the examining officer. No one moved.
"Hassán Abdállimof!" shouted the Cossack orderly, more loudly.
"Go on, Stumpy; that's you!" said half a dozen exiles in an undertone as they pushed out of the throng a short, thickly set, bow-legged Tatar, upon whose flat, swarthy face there was an expression of uncertainty and bewilderment.
"He doesn't know Russian, your High Nobility," said one of the exiles respectfully, "and he is glupováti "[dull-witted].
​"Bring him here," said the officer to the Cossack orderly.
When Hassán had been examined, he did not shoulder his bag and go to his place as he should have done, but began to bow and gesticulate, and to make supplications in
the Tatár language, becoming more and more excited as he talked.
"What does he say?" inquired the officer. "Find some soldier who knows Tatár." An interpreter was soon found and Hassán repeated his story. ​"He says, your High Nobility," translated the interpreter, "that when he was arrested they took eight rúbles from him and told him the money would be given back to him in Siberia. He wants to know if he cannot have some of it now to buy tea."
"Nyettoo chai!" [No tea!] said the Tatar mournfully, with a gesture of utter desolation.
"To the devil with him!" cried the officer furiously. "What does the blank blank mean by delaying the reception of the party with such a trifle? This is no place to talk about tea! He 'll receive his money when he gets to his destination. Away with him!" And the poor Tatar was hustled into the eastern end of the shed.
"Iván Dontremember — the red-headed," shouted the examining officer.
"That 's a brodyág" (a vagrant or tramp), whispered Colonel Yágodkin to me as a sun-burned, red-headed muzhík in chains and leg-fetters, and with a tea-kettle hanging from his belt, approached the inclosure. "He has been arrested while wandering around in Western Siberia, and as there is something in his past history that he does n't want brought to light, he refuses to disclose his identity, and answers all questions with 'I don't remember.' The tramps all call themselves 'Iván Dontremember,' and they 're generally a bad lot. The penalty for belonging to the 'Dontremember' family is five years at the mines." The examining officer had no photograph of "Iván Dontremember, the red-headed," and the latter's identity was established by ascertaining the number of teeth that he had lost, and by examining a scar over his right ear.
One by one the exiles passed in this way before the examining officer until all had been identified, counted, and turned over, and then the warden of the Tomsk forwarding prison gave a receipt to the convoy officer of the barge for 551 prisoners, including 71 children under 15 years of age, who were accompanying their fathers or mothers into exile.
​At the end of the verification and reception some of the officers returned to the city; but Colonel Yágodkin, Mr. Frost, and I remained to see the surgical examination of the sick and disabled, and to inspect the convict barge. Doctor Órzheshkó, the surgeon of the Tomsk prison, then took the place that had been occupied by the examining officer, laid a stethoscope and two or three other instruments upon a small table beside him, and began a rapid examination of a long line of incapacitated men, some of whom were really sick and some of whom were merely shamming. The object of the examination was to ascertain how many of the prisoners were unable to walk, in order that the requisite number of telégas might be provided for their transportation to the city. The first man who presented himself was thin, pale, and haggard, and in reply to a question from the surgeon said, with a sepulchral cough, that his breast hurt him and that he could not breathe easily. Dr. Órzheshkó felt his pulse, put a stethoscope to his lungs, listened for a moment to the respiratory murmur, and then said briefly, "Pass on; you can walk." The next man had a badly swollen ankle, upon which his leg-fetter pressed heavily, evidently causing him great pain. He looked imploringly at the doctor while the latter examined the swollen limb, as if he would beseech him to have mercy; but he said not a word, and when his case was approved and a wagon was ordered for him, he crossed himself devoutly three times, and his lips moved noiselessly, as if he were saying softly under his breath, "I thank thee, O God!"
There were forty or fifty men in the line of prisoners awaiting examination, and the surgeon disposed of them at the rate of about one a minute. Some had fever, some were suffering from rheumatism, some were manifestly in an advanced stage of prison consumption, and all seemed to me sick, wretched, or weak enough to deserve wagons; but the experienced senses of the surgeon quickly detected ​the malingerers and the men who were only slightly indisposed, and quietly bade them "Pass on!" At the end of the examination Dr. Órzheshkó reported to the prison
warden that there were twenty-five persons in the party who were not able to walk to the city, and who, therefore, would have to be carried. The necessary wagons were ordered, the sick and the women with infants were placed ​in them, and at the order "Stroisa!" [Form ranks!] the convicts, with a confused clinking of chains, took positions outside the shed in a somewhat ragged column; the soldiers, with shouldered rifles, went to their stations in front, beside, and behind the party; and Mr. Pépeláief, the chief of the local exile bureau, stepping upon a chair, cried, "Nu rebatta" [Well, boys], "have you anything to say or any complaints to make?"
"No; nothing, your Nobility," replied seventy-five or a hundred voices.
"Well, then, S'Bógem" [Go with God].
The soldiers threw open the wooden gate of the yard or pen; the under-officer shouted "Ready — March!" and with a renewed jingling of multitudinous chains, the gray column moved slowly out into the muddy road.
As soon as an opportunity presented itself, Colonel Yágodkin introduced us to Mr. Pépeláief, the chief officer of the local exile bureau, who supervised the reception and the forwarding of exile parties, the equipment of the convicts with clothing, and the examination and verification of their papers. Mr. Pépeláief, a rather tall, thin man, with a hard, cold face, greeted us politely, but did not seem pleased to see us there, and was not disposed to permit an inspection of the convict barge.
"What do they want to go on board the barge for?" he inquired rather curtly of Colonel Yágodkin. "There is nothing to see there, and besides it is inconvenient; the women are now cleaning it."
Colonel Yágodkin, however, knew that I was particularly anxious to see in what condition the floating prison was when the convicts left it, and, a few moments later, he introduced us to the convoy officer, and again suggested a visit to the barge. This time he was successful. The convoy officer evidently did not see any reason why Colonel Yágodkin should not go on board the barge with his friends if he wished to do so, and he at once cheerfully ​offered to accompany us. The barge was, apparently, the same one that I had inspected in Tiumén two months before. Then it was scrupulously clean, and the air in its cabins was fresh and pure; but now it suggested a recently vacated wild-beast cage in a menagerie. It was no more dirty, perhaps, than might have been expected; but its atmosphere was heavy with a strong animal odor; its floors were covered with dried mud, into which had been trodden refuse scraps of food; its nári, or sleeping-benches, were black and greasy, and strewn with bits of dirty paper; and in the gray light of a cloudy day its dark kámeras, with their small grated port-holes, muddy floors, and polluted ammoniacal atmosphere, chilled and depressed me with suggestions of human misery.
The Rev. Henry Lansdell, in a magazine article published two or three years ago, says, "I have seen some strong statements, alleging the extreme unhealthiness of these barges,. . . and I do not suppose that they are as healthy as a first-class sanatorium."
If Mr. Lansdell made a careful examination of a convict barge immediately after the departure from it of a convict party, the idea of a "sanatorium" certainly could not have been suggested to him by anything that he saw, touched, or smelled. It suggested to me nothing so much as a recently vacated den in a zoölogical garden. It was, as I have said, no more dirty and foul than might have been expected after ten days of such tenancy; but it could have been connected in one's mind with a "sanatorium" only by a violent wrench of the imagination. As a proof, however, that a convict barge in point of healthfulness does not fall far short of "a first-class sanatorium," Mr. Lansdell quotes a statement made to him by "an officer who had charge of the prisoners between Tiumén and Tomsk," to the effect that "during the season of 1882, 8 barges ​carried 6000 prisoners a voyage of nearly 2000 miles, and yet only two [and one of them a child] died on the passage, while only 20 were delivered invalided at Tomsk."
Inasmuch as I once took the same view of the exile system that Mr. Lansdell now takes, and have been forced to confess myself in error, it may be proper for me to say, without reflecting in any way upon Mr. Lansdell's conscientiousness and sincerity, that the statement which he quotes has not the slightest foundation in fact, and was probably made to him by the convoy officer with a deliberate intention to deceive. According to the official report of the inspector of exile transportation for 1882,—the year to which Mr. Lansdell's information relates,—the number of prisoners carried on convict barges was not 6000, but 10,245. Of this number 279 were taken sick on the barges, 22 died, and 80 were left dangerously sick at river ports, or were delivered in that condition at Tomsk. These, it must be remembered, were the cases of sickness and the deaths that occurred in a voyage which averages only ten days in duration. If, in a population of 10,245 souls, 279 persons were taken sick and 22 died every 10 days, we should have an annual sick-rate of nearly 99 per cent., and an annual death-rate of nearly 8 per cent. It would not, I think, be a very popular "sanatorium" in which 99 per cent. of all the persons who entered it comparatively well became seriously sick in the course of the year, and eight per cent. of the whole number died. But sickness on the convict barges has been far more prevalent than this—and within recent years. In 1879, 724 prisoners were taken sick between Tiumén and Tomsk, and 51 died; and in 1871, 1140 were taken sick out of a whole number of 9416 carried, and 111 died. Such a rate of mortality as that shown by the death of 111 persons out of 9416 in 10 days would entirely depopulate ​in a single year, not only "a first-class sanatorium," but a village of 4000 inhabitants.
In a foot-note below will be found a tabulated statement of the cases of sickness and death which occurred on the convict barges between Tiumén and Tomsk in the fifteen years beginning with 1870 and ending with 1884. I copied the figures myself from the manuscripts of the official reports, and so far as transcription is concerned, I will guarantee their accuracy.
It will be seen that during this period there has been, on the whole, a steady improvement in the hygienic condition of the barges, and a corresponding decrease in the sick- and death-rates. The mortality now is chiefly among children, ​who, of course, are less able than adults to endure the hardships, the privations, and exposures of barge life. I am glad to be able to say that, in my judgment, the inspector of exile transportation and the local Siberian authorities
are now doing all that lies in their power to do for the comfort and health of exiles on the voyage between Tiumén and Tomsk. The barges are thoroughly cleaned and fumigated after every trip, and the prisoners are as well fed and cared for as they can be with the limited sum ​of money that the Government appropriates for the purpose. The suffering and disease which still exist are attributable mainly to overcrowding, and overcrowding the Siberian officials cannot prevent. Ten or twelve thousand exiles are turned over to them every summer, and they must send them eastward as best they can while the season of navigation lasts. They have only three barges, and eighteen round trips are all that can be made during the time that the river remains open. They are therefore compelled to send from 600 to 800 exiles in a single barge at every trip, and this inevitably results in a great deal of sickness and suffering.
* ↑ The building of the Tomsk university had been completed at the time of our visit, hut the Government seemed to be unable or unwilling to throw the institution open for the reception of students. It was thought and said, by a certain class of reactionists and obscurantists, that a Siberian university would be a nucleus or rallying-point for "Siberian patriots," that it would foster a spirit of independence and a desire for separation from European Russia, and that, consequently, it ought not to be opened at all. Prince Meshchérski, for example, in his newspaper Grazhdanín, attacked the Tomsk university repeatedly upon this ground. [Grazhdanín, Nos. 275 and 279, St. Petersburg, 1888.] In July, 1888, however, after three years' consideration, the Government decided to open one "faculty," or department, of the new university, and selected, as the most useful and least "dangerous," the department of medicine. Since that time it has been possible for young Siberians to get a university training in medicine, but not in any branch of human knowledge that has a tendency to "excite the mind," such as history, political economy, or law.
* ↑ I shall explain this practice of exchanging names more fully in a later chapter.
* ↑ "Russian Convicts in the Salt Mines of Iletsk"; Harper's Magazine, May, 1888, pp. 894-910.
* ↑ Annual Report of the Inspector of Exile Transportation for Western Siberia, p. 12 of the manuscript.
* ↑   Sickness and Mortality on Convict Barges Between Tiumén and Tomsk — Ten Days.