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

Siberia and the Exile System Volume 2
CHAPTER XVI
DEPORTATION BY ÉTAPE
IN Tomsk, and during our journey from that city to Irkútsk, we had for the first time a satisfactory opportunity to study the life of Siberian exiles on the road. Marching parties of convicts three or four hundred strong leave Tomsk for Irkútsk weekly throughout the whole year, and make the journey of 1040 miles in about three months. Étapes, or exile station-houses, stand along the road at intervals of from twenty-five to forty miles; and at every étape there is a "convoy command" consisting of a commissioned officer known as the "nachálnik of the convoy," two or three under-officers, and about forty soldiers. As the distance from one étape to another is too great to be walked in a single day by prisoners in leg-fetters, buildings known as polu-étapes, or "half-étapes," have been constructed midway between the true étapes for the shelter of the convicts at night. These half-way houses are generally smaller than the regular étapes, as well as somewhat different from the latter in architectural plan, and they have no "convoy commands." Marching parties are expected to make about 500 versts, or 330 miles, a month, with twenty-four hours of rest every third day. If a party leaves Tomsk Monday morning, it reaches a polu-étape Monday night, arrives at the first regular étape Tuesday night, and rests in the latter all day Wednesday. Thursday morning it resumes its journey with another convoy, Thursday night it ​spends in the second polu-étape, Friday night it reaches the second regular étape, and Saturday it again rests and changes convoy. In this way the party proceeds slowly for months, resting one day out of every three, and changing convoys at every other station. Each prisoner receives five cents a day in money for his subsistence, and buys food for himself from peasants along the road who make a business of furnishing it. The dress of the exiles in summer consists of a shirt and a pair of trousers of coarse gray linen; square foot-wrappers of the same material in lieu of stockings; low shoes or slippers called katí; leather ankle-guards to prevent the leg-fetters from chafing; a visorless Glengarry cap; and a long gray overcoat. The dress of female convicts is the same, except that a petticoat takes the place of the trousers. Women and children who voluntarily accompany relatives to Siberia are permitted to wear their own clothing, and to carry severally as much baggage as can be put into a two-bushel bag. No distinction is made between common convicts and political convicts, except that the latter, if they are nobles or belong to one of the privileged classes, receive seven and a half cents a day for their subsistence instead of five, and are carried in telégas instead of being forced to walk.
Up to the year 1883 there was no separation of the sexes in marching parties; but since that time an attempt has been made to forward unmarried male prisoners apart from "family parties," and to include in the latter all children and unmarried women. This reform has lessened somewhat the demoralization resulting from the promiscuous association of men, women, and children for months in overcrowded étapes; but the state of affairs is still very ​bad, since even "family parties" contain large numbers of depraved men and boys.
Three or four days before we left Tomsk for Irkútsk, Mr. Frost and I, by invitation of Captain Gudím, the nachálnik of the Tomsk convoy command, drove to the forwarding prison at 7 a. m. to see the departure of a marching party. The morning was cool, but a clear sky gave promise of a warm, sunshiny day. As we drew up before the prison we saw that the party had not yet made its appearance; and, presuming that Captain Gudím was busy, we did not send for him, but sat in our dróshky watching the scenes at the gate. On each side of the lead-colored portal was a long wooden bench, upon which half-a-dozen soldiers, in dark green uniforms, were sitting in lazy attitudes, waiting for the party to come out, and amusing themselves meanwhile by exchanging coarse witticisms with three or four female provision-venders, squatted near them on the ground. An occasional high-pitched jingle of chains could be heard from within the in closure, and now and then half of the double gate was thrown open to admit a couple of fettered convicts carrying water in a large wooden bucket slung between them on a shoulder-pole. Every person who entered the prison yard was hastily searched from head to foot by one of the two sentries at the gate, in order to prevent the smuggling in of prohibited articles, and especially of vódka.
About eight o'clock telégas for the transportation of the weak and infirm began to gather in the street in front of the prison; a shabby under-officer who had been lounging with the soldiers on one of the benches rose, yawned, and went discontentedly into the prison courtyard; the soldiers put on their blanket-rolls and picked up their Berdan rifles; and a louder and more continuous jingling of chains from the other side of the palisade announced that the convict party was assembling. At last the prison blacksmith came out, bringing a small portable forge, a lap anvil, a hammer ​or two, and an armful of chains and leg-fetters, which he threw carelessly on the ground beside him; the soldiers shouldered their guns and took positions in a semicircle so as to form a cordon; an under-officer with the muster-roll of the party in his hand and another with a leather bag of copper coins slung over his shoulder stationed themselves near the gate; and at the word "Gatóva!" [Ready!] the convicts, in single file, began to make their appearance. The officer with the muster-roll checked off the prisoners as they answered to their names; the blacksmith, with the aid of a soldier, examined their leg-fetters to see that the rivets were fast and that the bands could not be slipped over the heel; and, finally, the second under-officer gave to every man ten cents in copper coin for two days' subsistence between étapes. When all of the kátorzhniki, or hard-labor convicts, had come out of the prison yard, they arranged themselves in two parallel lines so that they could be conveniently counted, and removed their caps so that the under-officer could see that their heads had been half shaved as required by law. They were then dismissed, and the poseléntsi, or penal colonists, went through the same routine—the soldiers of the convoy stepping backward and extending the limits of their cordon as the number of prisoners outside the palisade gradually increased. At length the whole party, numbering 350 or 400, was assembled in the street. Every prisoner had a gray linen bag in which were stored his scanty personal effects; many of them were provided with copper kettles which dangled from the leather belts that supported their leg-fetter chains; and one convict was carrying to the mines in his arms a small brown dog.
When the whole party had again been counted, and while the gray bags were being put into telégas, I availed myself of what seemed to be a favorable opportunity to talk with the prisoners. In a moment, to my great surprise, I was addressed by one of them in good English.
​"Who are you?" I inquired in astonishment.
"I am a vagabond," he said quietly and seriously.
"What is your name?"
"Iván Dontremember," he replied; and then glancing around, and seeing that none of the convoy officers were near, he added in a low tone, "My real name is John Anderson, and I am from Riga."
"How do you happen to know English?" I asked.
"I am of English descent; and, besides that, I was once a sailor, and have been in English ports."
At this point the approach of Captain Gudím put a stop to our colloquy. The number of "brodyágs," or vagabonds, in this party was very large, and nearly all of them were runaway convicts of the "Dontremember" family, who had been recaptured in Western Siberia, or had surrendered themselves during the previous winter in order to escape starvation.
"I have no doubt," said "Captain Gudím to me, "that there are brodyágs in this very party who have escaped and been sent back to the mines half a dozen times."
"Boys!" he shouted suddenly, "how many of you are now going to the mines for the sixth time?"
"Mnógo yest" [There are lots of them], replied several voices; and finally one gray-bearded convict in leg-fetters came forward and admitted that he had made four escapes from the mines, and that he was going into penal servitude for the fifth time. In other words, this man had traversed eight times on foot the distance of nearly 2000 miles between Tomsk and the mines of Kará.
"I know brodyágs," said Captain Gudím, "who have been over this road sixteen times in leg-fetters, and who have come back sixteen times across the steppes and through the woods. God only knows how they live through it!"
When one considers that crossing Eastern Siberia thirty-two times on foot is about equivalent to walking twice the ​circumference of the globe at the equator, one can appreciate the indomitable resolution of these men, and the strength of the influence that draws them towards home and freedom. In the year 1884, 1360 such brodyágs were recaptured in Western Siberia and sent back to the mines of the Trans-Baikál, and hundreds more perished from cold and starvation in the forests. M. I. Orfánof, a Russian officer who served many years in Eastern Siberia, says that he once found 200 "Ivan Dontremembers" in a single prison—the prison of Kaidálova, between Chíta and Nérchinsk.
Some of the brodyágs with whom I talked were men of intelligence and education. One of them, who was greatly interested in our photographic apparatus, and who seemed to know all about "dry plates," "drop shutters," and "Dallmeyer lenses," asked me how convicts were treated in the United States, and whether they could, by extra work, earn a little money, so as not to leave prison penniless. I replied that in most American penitentiaries they could.
"It is not so," he said, "with us. Naked we go to the mines, and naked we come out of them; and we are flogged, while there, at the whim of every nariádchik."
"Oh, no!" said Captain Gudim good-naturedly, "they don't flog at the mines now."
"Yes, they do, your Nobility," replied the brodyág firmly but respectfully. "If you are sick or weak, and can't finish your stent, you are given twenty blows with the cat."
I should have been glad to get further information from the brodyág with regard to his life at the mines, but just at this moment Captain Gudím asked me if I would not like to see the loading of the sick and infirm, and the conversation was interrupted.
"All prisoners who have certificates from the doctor, step out!" shouted Captain Gudím, and twenty-five or thirty "incapables"—some old and infirm, some pale and emaciated from sickness—separated themselves from the main body of convicts in the road. An under-officer collected and examined their certificates, and as fast as their cases were approved they climbed into the telégas. One man, although apparently sick, was evidently a malingerer, since, as he took his place in a partly filled teléga, he was greeted with a storm of groans and hoots from the whole convict party.
The number of prisoners who, when they leave Tomsk, are unable to walk is sometimes very large. In the year 1884, 658 telégas were loaded there with exiles of this class, and if every teléga held four persons the aggregate number of "incapables" must have exceeded 2500. Such a state of things, of course, is the natural result of the overcrowding of the Tomsk forwarding prison.
"Party—to the right! Party—march!" shouted one of the under-officers, and with a clinking of chains which sounded like the jingling of innumerable bunches of keys the gray throng, hemmed in by a cordon of soldiers, began its long journey of 1800 miles to the mines of the Trans-Baikál. The marching convicts, who took the lead, were closely followed by the telégas with the sick and the infirm; next came three or four carts loaded with gray linen bags; and, finally, in a tárántas behind the rear guard of soldiers rode Captain Gudím, the nachálnik of the convoy. The column moved at the rate of about two miles an hour; and long before noon it was enveloped in a suffocating cloud of dust raised by the shuffling, fetter-incumbered feet of the prisoners. In warm, dry weather, when there is no wind, dust is a source of great misery to marching parties—particularly to the sick, the women, and the children. There is no possible way of escaping it, and when a prisoner is suffering from one of the diseases of the respiratory organs that are so common in étape life it is simply torture to sit in a cramped position for six or eight hours in an open teléga, breathing the dust raised by the feet of 350 men marching in close column just ahead. I have traced the progress of an invisible exile party more than a mile away by the cloud of dust that hung over it in the air.
Five or six miles from Tomsk the party passed a chasóvnaya, or roadside shrine, consisting of an open pavilion, in which hung a ghastly wooden effigy of the crucified Christ. Here, as upon our departure from Tomsk, I noticed that two-thirds of the convicts removed their caps, crossed themselves devoutly, and muttered brief supplications. A Russian peasant may be a highway robber or a murderer, but he continues, nevertheless, to cross himself and say his prayers.
The conversation of the brodyágs in the party that we accompanied related chiefly, to their own exploits and adventures at the mines and in the taigá, and it did not seem to be restrained in the least by the presence of the soldiers of the convoy.
The distance from Tomsk to the first polu-étape is twenty-nine versts (nearly twenty miles), and it was almost dark before the tired prisoners caught sight of the serrated palisade within which they were to spend their first night on the road.
A Siberian polu-étape, or half-way station, is a stockaded inclosure about 100 feet long by 50 or 75 feet wide, containing two or three low, one-story log buildings. One of these buildings is occupied by the convoy officer, another by the soldiers, and the third and largest by the convicts. The prisoners' kazárm, which is generally painted a dirty yellow, is long and low, and contains three or four kámeras, each of which is provided with a brick oven and a double row of plank nári, or sleeping-platforms. According to the last official report of the inspector of exile transportation, which is confirmed by my own observation, "all of the étapes and polu-étapes on the road between Tomsk and Áchinsk—with ​a very few exceptions—are not only too small, but are old and decayed, and demand capital repairs." Their principal defect is that which is characteristic of Siberian prisons generally; namely, lack of adequate room. They were
built from thirty to fifty years ago, when exile parties did not number more than 150 men, and they now have to accommodate from 350 to 450. The result, as stated by the inspector of exile transportation, is that "in pleasant weather half the prisoners sleep on the ground in the courtyard, while in bad weather they fill all the kámeras, lie on the floors in the corridors, and even pack the garrets." The cells are not even as habitable as they might be made with a little care and attention. They are almost always dirty; their windows are so made that they cannot be opened; and notwithstanding the fact that the over-crowding, at certain seasons of the year, is almost beyond ​belief, no provision whatever has been made in them for ventilation.
When our convicts, after their toilsome march of twenty-nine versts from Tomsk, reached at last the red-roofed polu-étape of Semilúzhnaya, they were marshaled in rows in front of the palisade and again carefully counted by the under-officers in order to make sure that none had escaped, and then the wooden gate of the courtyard was thrown wide open. With a wild, mad rush and a furious clashing of chains, more than three hundred men made a sudden break for the narrow gateway, struggled, fought, and crowded through it, and then burst into the kámeras, in order to secure, by preoccupation, places on the sleeping platforms. Every man knew that if he did not succeed in preëmpting a section of the nári he would have to lie on the dirty floor, in one of the cold corridors, or out-of-doors; and many prisoners who did not care particularly where they slept sought to secure good places in order to sell them afterward for a few kopéks to less fortunate but more fastidious comrades.
At last the tumult subsided, and the convicts began their preparations for supper. Hot water was furnished by the soldiers of the convoy at an average price of about a cent a teakettleful; brick" tea was made by the prisoners who were wealthy enough to afford such a luxury; soup was obtained by a few from the soldiers' kitchen; and the tired exiles, sitting on the sleeping-platforms or on the floor, ate ​the black bread, the fish-pies, or the cold boiled meat that they had purchased from the provision venders. The evening meal is sometimes an exceedingly scanty one, on account
of the failure of the peasant women to bring to the étape for sale an adequate supply of food. They are not obliged to furnish subsistence to convicts on the road, and the exile administration attempts no regulation of the commissariat ​beyond furnishing the prisoners with money for rations, and allowing the peasants or the soldiers of the convoy to act as purveyors. In times of scarcity it is impossible to buy, with the money given to each exile for his subsistence, enough food to satisfy hunger. In one district of Eastern Siberia, where there had been a partial failure of the crops, the exiles could scarcely buy, with five cents a day, a pound and a half of black rye bread. The étape officers complained bitterly to me of the indifference of the Government to the sufferings of the prisoners, and declared that it was unjust and cruel to give men only a pound and a half of black bread, and at the same time force them to march twenty miles a day in leg-fetters, and in bitterly cold weather.
breathing the air of one of those cells when the doors were reopened in the morning, I decided not to make the experiment.
The second day's march of the convict party that left Tomsk on the 24th of Angust differed little from the first. A hasty and rather scanty breakfast in the kámeras was followed by the assembling of the convicts, the morning roll-call, and the departure; the day's journey was again broken by the privál, or halt for lunch; and early in the afternoon the party reached the first regular étape, where it was to change convoys and stop one day for rest.
The étape differs from the polu-étape only in size and in the arrangement of its buildings.
The courtyard is more spacious, and the kámeras are a little larger than in the PLAN OF THE ABOVE. polu-étape; but the buildings are old and in bad repair, and there is not room enough in them for half the number of prisoners now forwarded in every party. General Anúchin, the ​governor-general of Eastern Siberia, who saw the étapes along the great Siberian road at their best, describes them, in a report to the Tsar, as follows:
I have not myself said anything worse of étapes than this. If these buildings, after they had been pnt in the best possible condition for the governor-general's inspection, made upon him such an impression as this, the reader can imagine what impression they made upon me, when I saw them in their every-day aspect. I am quite content, however, to let Governor-general Anúchin's description stand as my own, with a few qualifications and exceptions. All of the étapes on the Tomsk-Irkútsk road are not of this character. I examined one at the village of Itátskaya, near Marínsk, which was clean, well cared for, and in perfect order, and I have little doubt that if I had had time to visit every exile station-house on the road, I should have found many to which the governor-general's description would not fairly apply. In the main, however, it is truthful and accurate.
The "lamentable condition" of the Siberian étapes seems to me to be mainly attributable to corrupt and incapable administration, and to the inherent defects of a bureaucratic system of government. For these very étapes, bad as they are, an immense amount of money has been appropriated; but the greater part of it has been divided between fraudulent contractors and corrupt Government officials. An inspector of exile transportation, who had excellent opportunities to know the facts, told me that it was hardly an ​exaggeration to say that if all the money that had been appropriated for the construction and maintenance of these "tumble-down buildings" could now be gathered together, it would be enough to pay for the erection of a line of solid silver étapes along the whole route from Tomsk to the city of Irkútsk. Governor-general Anúchin himself says, in the same report to the Tsar from which I have already quoted:
General Anúchin's foreboding has been fully justified. Both the inspector of exile transportation for Eastern Siberia and the assistant chief of the prison department in St. Petersburg admitted to me that the new étapes in the Trans-Baikál were "very unsatisfactory."
Our convict party spent Tuesday night in the first regular étape at Khaldéyeva, under almost precisely the same conditions that prevailed the previous night in the polu-étape of Semilúzhnaya. Half the prisoners slept on the floor, under the nári, and in the corridors, breathing all night an atmosphere poisoned by carbonic acid and exhalations from uncovered paráshas. Wednesday was a day of rest; and the exiles lounged about all day in the prison courtyard, or studied the "record of current events," on the walls of the étapes. The sleeping-platforms and the walls of every Siberian étape bear countless inscriptions, left there by the exiles of one party for the information or instruction of their comrades in the next. Among such inscriptions are messages and greetings to friends; hints and suggestions for brodyágs who meditate escape; names of exiles ​who have died, broken jail, or been recaptured; and items of news, of all sorts, from the mines and the forwarding prisons. For the convicts, therefore, the étape walls are equivalent to so many pages of a daily newspaper, containing an exile directory, open letters, obituary notices, a puzzle department of brodyág ciphers, and a personal intelligence column of the highest interest to all "travelers on Government account." One of the first things that an experienced convict does, after his arrival at an étape, is to search the walls for news; and his fortunes not infrequently turn upon the direction or the warning contained in a message that he finds there from a comrade who has preceded him. Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, chief of the prison administration, has come at last to appreciate the significance and importance of these mural inscriptions, and has recently ordered étape officers to see that they are carefully erased. I doubt, however, whether the order will secure the desired results. The prison authorities are constantly outwitted by convicts, and the latter will soon learn to write their messages in places where an étape officer would never think of looking for them, but where an experienced convict will discover them at once.
Soon after leaving Tomsk, usually at the first regular étape, every exile party organizes itself into an artél, or "union," elects a chief or head man known as the stárosta, and lays the foundation of an artél fund by levying an assessment upon each of its members, and by selling at auction to the highest bidder the privilege of keeping an exile sutler's store or maidán, where the prisoners can openly buy tea, sugar, or white bread, and where they can secretly obtain tobacco, playing-cards, and intoxicating liquor. The organization of the party into an artél has for its primary object concerted and combined action against the common enemy—the Government. A single convict, regarded as an individual, has neither rights nor means of self-defense. He is completely at the mercy, not only of the higher authorities in ​the forwarding prisons and the provincial towns, but of every petty officer in the convoy command that escorts him from étape to étape; and the only way in which he can acquire even a limited power of self-protection is by associating himself with his fellow-convicts in an artél, or union. This artél, as an organized body, exercises all of its functions in secret, and strives to attain its ends, first, by enforcing solidarity and joint action on the part of all its members, and, secondly, by deceiving, outwitting, or bribing the officers and soldiers with whom it has to deal. It concerts plans of escape; it contrives means of obtaining forbidden articles, such as playing-cards and tobacco; it hires telégas, or sleighs, from the peasants along the road, and sells, or grants, to its members the privilege of riding in them for short distances when exhausted; it bribes executioners to flog lightly; it pays soldiers for smuggling intoxicating liquor into the forwarding prisons and étapes; and, finally, it sanctions and enforces all contracts and agreements entered into by its convict members. It is, in short, the body politic of the criminal world; and it fills, in the life of the exile, the same place that the mir, or commune, fills in the life of the free peasant. Within the limits of its prison environment the power of the artél over its members is absolute. It has its own unwritten laws, its own standards of honor and duty, and its own penal code. Its laws recognize only two crimes,—disobedience and disloyalty,—and its penal code provides for only one punishment—death. The exile may lie, he may rob, he may murder if he will, provided his action does not affect injuriously the interests of the artél to which he belongs; but if he disobeys that organization, or betrays its secrets to the prison authorities,—even under the compulsion of the lash,—he may count himself as dead already. Siberia is not large enough to furnish a safe hiding-place for the exile who has been unfaithful to his artél. More than once, in the large convict prisons, I saw criminals who had been condemned to death as traitors by this merciless ​Siberian Vehmgerichte, who, therefore, dared not associate with their fellow-prisoners, and who were living, by permission of the prison authorities, in the strictest solitary confinement. Over the head of every one of these men hung an invisible sword of Damocles, and sooner or later, in one place or another, it was sure to fall. The records of Russian prisons are full of cases in which the sentence of death pronounced by an artél has been executed years afterwards, and in a place far removed from the scene of the offense. In one recent case the traitor was choked to death one night, at sea, while on his way in a convict steamer to the island of Saghalín, and in another the informer was found one morning with his throat cut in a Caucasian étape.
The prison officials throughout Siberia have long been aware of the existence of this secret criminal organization, but they have never been able to suppress it, and they now give to it a certain sort of recognition—putting up with its inevitable evils and making the most of its merits. A convoy officer, for example, wishes to be able to report to his superior at the end of the year that not a single exile has escaped while in his charge. He summons the stárosta, or chief of the artél, and says to him, "Call the boys together and tell them, from me, that if the artél will agree not to allow any escapes from the party on my beat, I will look the other way when they take off their leg-fetters." The stárosta replies, "Slúshiu, S'" [I hear, sir], and goes back into the kámera to lay this proposition before the artél. The artél accepts it, and every chained convict begins pounding at the ankle-bands of his leg-fetters. The convoy officer, of course, has himself committed a penal offense in entering into this sort of an agreement, but he knows that the artél will never betray him, and he is relieved at once from all anxiety with regard to escapes. If, after the ​negotiation of such a treaty, an exile should attempt to get away from the party within the limits of that officer's jurisdiction, he would have to answer for it to the artél, and sooner or later he would pay dearly—perhaps with his life—for thus breaking faith and dishonoring the organization of which he was a member. The late Colonel Zagárin, inspector of exile transportation for Eastern Siberia, told me that he himself had often made a substantial contribution to the fund of an exile artél merely in order to secure from the latter a promise that no attempts to escape should be made within the limits of his jurisdiction. Such promises, he said, were always faithfully observed by the artél in its corporate capacity, and were rarely disregarded even by individuals. If, however, an inexperienced "first-timer," tempted by a favorable opportunity, should try to escape, in defiance of the artél's prohibition, the veterans of the party, namely, the brodyágs, would always undertake either to recapture the fugitive, or to bring in some other runaway convict as a substitute, and thus save the honor of the artél. He could not remember a single case, he said, in which the artél had broken faith. It must not be supposed, however, that the prison commune, in such dealings with the authorities, is actuated by any high or honorable motives. In keeping its promise, in enforcing solidarity, and in punishing disloyalty and disobedience with death, it is merely protecting its own existence and securing what a majority of its members believe to be the greatest good of the greatest number. It has no sentimental regard for truthfulness or faithfulness in the abstract. It simply knows that, at certain times and in certain-circumstances, honesty is the best policy, and then it enforces honesty under penalty of death. If, however, circumstances so change as to render dishonesty the best policy, then the artél sanctions and compels the practice of deception, fraud, untruthfulness, and treachery, under the same tremendous penalty.
​One of the most important functions of the exile artél is the enforcement of agreements entered into by its members, and particularly agreements to exchange names and identities. Every exile party is made up of two great classes, namely: A—criminals sentenced to hard labor with imprisonment; and B—criminals sentenced merely to forced colonization without imprisonment. Every convict in class "A" strives to escape the hard labor and the imprisonment by exchanging his name and identity for the name and identity of some convict in class "B." It would seem, at first thought, as if the difficulties in the way of such a transaction would be virtually insuperable. It is not only strictly forbidden by law, but it is a transaction in which one of the parties, apparently, gets all the benefit. Why should convoy officers allow such exchanges of names, and why should the colonist be willing to go to the mines in the place of the hard-labor convict, even if permitted to do so? The difficulties are only apparent, and the questions are easily answered. The convicts in every marching party that leaves Tomsk for Eastern Siberia number about 400, and they change convoy every third day. It is utterly impossible for a convoy officer to so familiarize himself, in three days, with the faces of 400 convicts, that he can tell one from another. If Iván Pávlof answers to the name of Mikháiel Ivánof at the roll-call of the party, he virtually becomes Mikháiel Ivánof. The convoy officer does not know either of them by sight, and even if he called the roll himself, and looked attentively at every man, he would not notice the substitution. So far as the authorities are concerned, therefore, names and identities can be exchanged without the least difficulty or danger. The willingness of the colonist to exchange names with the hard-labor convict and go into penal servitude in the latter's stead may be explained almost as easily.
In every exile party there are a few reckless, improvident, hard-drinking peasants who have been condemned to forced ​colonization. When one of these poor wretches has spent all his money, and perhaps has gambled away all of his clothing and mortgaged his food-allowance for weeks in advance, he gets into such a condition that for five or ten rúbles and a bottle of vódka he will sell his very soul. The hard-labor convict, who is generally a bold, enterprising, experienced recidivist, and a man, moreover, who has won and saved some money on the road, then approaches the hungry, thirsty, half-naked, and wholly destitute colonist, and says to him, "If you will exchange names with me and go in my place to the mines, I'll give you my warm shúba [overcoat], five rúbles in money, and a bottle of vódka. You won't have to stay at the mines long. After I have had time to reach your place of colonization and run away, you can tell the nachálnik [chief] at the mines who you really are, and say that you have been sent there by mistake. He will make inquiries, and as soon as he finds out that you are not me, he will send you back to your place of colonization; and then we '11 both be all right."
The persuasive eloquence of the hard-labor convict, backed by five rúbles, a warm shúba, and a bottle of vódka, is generally too much for the resolution of the unfortunate colonist. He consents to the proposed exchange of names and identities, and the artél is at once convened to note, sanction, and mentally record the transaction. At the next and at every subsequent roll-call of the party, the hardlabor convict answers to the name of the colonist, and the colonist must answer to the name of the hard-labor convict. The more dangerous criminal, who, perhaps, should serve out a life sentence at the mines for murder, is turned loose in some East-Siberian village from which he immediately makes his escape, while the petty thief, drunkard, or wifebeater goes into penal servitude at the mines of Nérchinsk or Kará.
Although the exchanging of names has been practised by convicts in Siberia from time immemorial, and although it ​is manifestly unjust, prejudicial to the interests of the state, and detrimental in the highest degree to the welfare of the Siberian people, all suggestions made by experienced étape officers with regard to methods of stopping it have been disregarded. Ten years ago Colonel Zagárin, the inspector of exile transportation for Eastern Siberia, made a report upon the subject to Governor-general Anúchin in which he recommended that hard-labor convicts, as a class, be made distinguishable from forced colonists, as a class, by means of a different shaving of the head. Both classes now have their heads half shaven on the same side. Colonel Zagárin suggested that the heads of all hard-labor convicts be shaved on the right side and of all forced colonists on the left. The exchanging of names and identities between the two classes would then become impossible, for the reason that every étape officer and every soldier of the convoy could see at a glance to which class any particular criminal belonged. The forced colonist Iván Pávlof might answer, as before, to the name of the hard-labor convict Mikháiel Ivánof at roll-call, but it would be perfectly useless to do so, because the cut of his hair would at once betray him.
"What did the governor-general say to your suggestion?" I inquired, when Colonel Zagárin finished telling me about this report.
"Nothing," he replied. "It was never acted upon. Anúchin referred, even in his report to the Gossudár, to the bad results of this practice of changing names, but he never tried to stop it in the way that I suggested."
"What preposterous stupidity!" I exclaimed. "The method is simplicity itself, it would cost nothing, and it would make the exchanging of names absolutely impossible. What conceivable reason could Anúchin have for not adopting it?"
"I don't know any reason," replied Colonel Zagárin, "except that he did n't happen to think of it himself. Our high ​officials don't take suggestions very kindly—especially from their subordinates."
Since my return from Siberia an attempt has been made to secure certainty of identification in criminal parties by means of small photographs of the convicts attached to their statéini spíski, but I do not know how it has resulted.
Deportation by étape in Siberia is attended by miseries and humiliations of which a European or an American reader can form only a faint conception. I had many opportunities, during our journey from Tomsk to Irkútsk, to see convicts on the march in sunshine and in rain; to inspect the wretched étapes in which they were herded like cattle at night; to visit the lazarets where they sometimes lie sick for weeks without skilled medical attention or proper care; and to talk with intelligent officers of the prison department who had been familiar for years with every feature of the exile system. The result of my investigation was a deliberate conviction that the suffering involved in the present method of transporting criminals to Siberia is not paralleled by anything of the kind that now exists in the civilized world outside of the Russian Empire. Some of this suffering is due, of course, to negligence, indifference, or official corruption; but a very large part of it is the necessary result of a bad and cruel system, and it can be removed only by the complete abolition of the system itself, and by the substitution for it of imprisonment for life ​or for a term of years, in European Russia. Only a moment's reflection is needed to satisfy any one that, even under the most favorable circumstances, six or eight thousand men, women, and children cannot march two
thousand miles across such a country as Eastern Siberia without suffering terrible hardships. The physical exposure alone is enough to break down the health and strength of all except the most hardy, and when to such inevitable exposure are added insufficient clothing, bad food, the polluted air of overcrowded étapes, and the almost complete ​absence of medical care and attention, one is surprised, not that so many die, but that so many get through alive.
The exile parties that leave Tomsk in July and August are overtaken by the frosts and the cold rains of autumn long before they reach Irkútsk. They have not yet been supplied with winter clothing, and most of them have no better protection from rain, sleet, or cold wind than that afforded by a coarse linen shirt, a pair of linen drawers, and a gray frieze overcoat. Imagine such a party marching in a cold, northeast storm along the road over which we passed between Áchinsk and Krasnoyársk. Every individual is wet to the skin by the drenching rain, and the nursing women, the small children, and the sick lie quivering on water-soaked straw in small, rude telégas, without even a pretense of shelter from the storm. The mud, in places, is almost knee-deep, and the wagons wallow through it at the rate of about two miles an horn'. The bodies of the marching convicts, kept warm by the exertion of walking in heavy leg-fetters, steam a little in the raw, chilly air, but a large number of the men have lost or removed their shoes, and are wading through the freezing mud with bare feet. The Government, influenced, I presume, by considerations of economy, furnishes its exiles in summer and fall with low shoes or slippers called katí, instead of with boots. These katí are made by contract and by the thousand, of the cheapest materials, and by the Government itself are expected to last only six weeks. As a matter of fact they frequently do not last one week.
A high officer of the exile administration told me that it was a common thing to see exiles leave Tomsk or Krasnoyársk with new katí and come into the second étape barefooted—their shoes having gone to pieces in less than two days. Even when the katí hold out for their nominal period of service, they are not fitted to the feet of the wearers; they cannot be secured, because they have no ​laces; they are so low that they fill with mire and water and are constantly sticking fast or coming off in mud-holes; and on such a road as that between Áchinsk and Krasnoyársk scores of convicts either remove their shoes and hang them around their necks, or throw them away altogether, and walk for days at a time with bare feet, through mud whose temperature is little above the freezing-point.
As the party, wet, tired, and hungry, approaches one of the little log villages that lie along its route, the stárosta, or chief of the artél, asks the convoy officer to allow them to sing the "begging song" as they pass through the settlement. The desired permission is granted; certain prisoners are designated to receive the expected alms; the convicts all remove their gray caps; and entering the village with a slow, dragging step, as if they hardly had strength enough to crawl along, they begin their mournful appeal for pity.
I shall never forget the emotions roused in me by this song when I heard it for the first time. We were sitting, one cold, raw, autumnal day, in a dirty post-station on the great Siberian road, waiting for horses. Suddenly my attention was attracted by a peculiar, low-pitched, quavering sound which came to us from a distance, and which, although made apparently by human voices, did not resemble anything that I had ever before heard. It was not singing, nor chanting, nor wailing for the dead, but a strange blending of all three. It suggested vaguely the confused and commingled sobs, moans, and entreaties of human beings who were being subjected to torture, but whose sufferings were not acute enough to seek expression in shrieks or highpitched cries. As the sound came nearer we went out into the street in front of the station-house and saw approaching a chained party of about a hundred bare-headed convicts, who, surrounded by a cordon of soldiers, were marching slowly through the settlement, singing the "exiles' begging song." No attempt was made by the singers to pitch their voices in harmony, or to pronounce the words in unison; ​there were no pauses or rests at the ends of the lines; and I could not make out any distinctly marked rhythm. The singers seemed to be constantly breaking in upon one another with slightly modulated variations of the same slow, melancholy air, and the effect produced was that of a rude fugue, or of a funeral chant, so arranged as to be sung like a round or catch by a hundred male voices, each independent of the others in time and melody, but all following a certain scheme of vocalization, and taking up by turns the same dreary, wailing theme. The words were as follows:
Have pity on us, O our fathers! Don't forget the unwilling travelers, Don't forget the long-imprisoned. Feed us, O our fathers—help us! Feed and help the poor and needy! Have compassion, O our fathers! Have compassion, O our mothers! For the sake of Christ, have mercy On the prisoners—the shut-up ones! Behind walls of stone and gratings, Behind oaken doors and padlocks, Behind bars and locks of iron, We are held in close confinement. We have parted from our fathers, From our mothers; We from all our kin have parted, We are prisoners; Pity us, O our fathers!
If you can imagine these words, half sung, half chanted, slowly, in broken time and on a low key, by a hundred voices, to an accompaniment made by the jingling and clashing of chains, you will have a faint idea of the milosérdnaya, or exiles' begging song. Rude, artless, and inharmonious as the appeal for pity was, I had never in my life heard anything so mournful and depressing. It seemed to be the half-articulate expression of all the grief, the misery, and the despair that had been felt by generations ​of human beings in the étapes, the forwarding prisons, and the mines.
As the party marched slowly along the muddy street between the lines of gray log houses, children and peasant women appeared at the doors with their hands full of bread, meat, eggs, or other articles of food, which they put into the caps or bags of the three or four shaven-headed convicts who acted as alms-collectors. The jingling of chains and the wailing voices of the exiles grew gradually fainter and fainter as the party passed up the street, and when the sounds finally died away in the distance, and we turned to reënter the post-station, I felt a strange sense of dejection, as if the day had suddenly grown colder, darker, and more dreary, and the cares and sorrows of life more burdensome and oppressive.
At the first privál, or halt, that a party makes after passing through a village, the food that has been collected is distributed and eaten, and the convicts, somewhat refreshed, resume their march. Late in the evening they arrive, wet and weary, at an étape, where, after supper and the pereclíchka, or roll-call, they are locked up in the close, unventilated kámeras for the night. Most of them are in a shiver—or, as they sometimes call it, a "gypsy sweat"—from cold and from long exposure to rain; but they have neither dry clothing to put on nor blankets with which to cover themselves, and must lie down upon the hard plank nári, or upon the floor, and seek warmth in close contact with one another. Some of them have, perhaps, a change of clothing in their gray linen bags, but both bags and clothing have been exposed for eight or ten horns to a pouring rain, and are completely soaked through. If the Government really cared anything about the comfort or health of exiles on the road, it would furnish convoy officers with tarpaulins or sheets of oilcloth to put over and protect the exiles' baggage in rainy weather. This would add a mere trifle to the cost of exile transportation, and it would make all the difference between ​life and death to hundreds of weak or half-sick human beings, who come into an étape soaked to the skin after a march of twenty miles in a cold rain, and who have no dry clothing
to put on. The very money spent for the burial of the poor wretches who die from croup, pleurisy, or pneumonia, as a result of sleeping in wet clothes on the road, would buy a substantial tarpaulin for every exile baggage-wagon in Siberia—and yet the tarpaulins are not bought. If it be ​asked why not, I can only say, because the officials who care have not the power, and the officials who have the power do not care. I went through Siberia with the words "Why so?" and "Why not?" upon my lips, and this, in effect, was the answer that I everywhere received.
"I have recommended again and again," said a high officer of the exile administration to me, "that the convicts be taken to their destinations in summer and in wagons, instead of being obliged to walk throughout the whole year. I have shown conclusively, by exact figures and carefully prepared estimates, that the transportation of exiles from Áchinsk to Irkútsk in wagons, and in summer, would not only be infinitely more merciful and humane than the present method of forwarding them on foot the year round, but would actually cost fourteen rúbles less per man, on account of the saving in time, food, and winter clothing."
"Why, then, is it not done?" I inquired.
His only reply was a significant shrug of the shoulders.
"I have repeatedly protested," said another exile officer, "against the acceptance, from dishonest contractors, of articles of exile clothing that did not correspond with the specification or the samples; but I have accomplished nothing. Shoes so worthless that they fall to pieces in two days are accepted in place of the good shoes that ought to be furnished, and the exiles go barefooted. All that I can do is to lay before my superiors the facts of the case."
While in the city of Irkútsk, I called one day upon Mr. Petróf, the acting-governor of the province, and found in his office Colonel Zagárin, the inspector of exile transportation for Eastern Siberia. The latter had brought to the governor some katí, or exile shoes, that had just been accepted by the provincial administration, and was exhibiting them side by side with the original samples that had been furnished as models to the contractor. The accepted shoes did not resemble the models, they were perfectly worthless, and might have been made, I think, by the thousand, for ​ten or fifteen cents a pair. Colonel Zagárin was protesting against the acceptance of such shoes, and was asking for an investigation. The fraud was so manifest and so glaring, and the results of it would be so calamitous to thousands of poor wretches who would wear these katí for a day or two and then be forced to walk barefooted over icy ground or through freezing mud, that I thought something would certainly be done about it. Upon my return from the mines of the Trans-Baikál five months later, I asked Colonel Zagárin what had been the result of the protest that he had made to the governor in my presence. He replied, "It had no result."
"And were those shoes issued to marching exile parties?"
"They were."
I asked no more questions.
I could furnish innumerable illustrations of the way in which the life of convicts on the road is made almost intolerable by official indifference or fraud; but it is perhaps unnecessary to do so. The results of that life are shown by the records of the hospitals and lazarets, and by the extraordinarily high rate of mortality in exile parties. Hundreds of prisoners, of both sexes and all ages, fall sick on the road, and after being carried for a week, or perhaps two weeks, in jolting telégas, are finally left to recover or to die in one of the étape lazarets between Áchinsk and Irkútsk. It seems barbarous, and of course it is barbarous, to carry forward in a springless teléga, regardless of weather, an unfortunate man or woman who has been taken sick with pneumonia or typhus fever on the road; but, under existing circumstances, there is nothing else for a convoy officer to do. He and his soldiers must go on with the exile party, and he cannot leave the sick for five days in a deserted étape wholly without attendance. He is forced, therefore, to carry them along until they either die or reach one of the widely separated lazarets, where they can be left and cared for.
​Many times on the great Siberian road, when I had been jolted until my pulse had become imperceptible at the wrist from weakness, sleeplessness, and incessant shocks to the spinal cord and the brain, and when it seemed to me that I could endure no more, I maintained my grip by thinking of the hundreds of exiled men and women who, sick unto death, had been carried over this same road in open telégas; who had endured this same jolting while their heads ached and throbbed with the quick pulses of fever; who had lain for many hours at a time on water-soaked straw in a pitiless storm while suffering from pneumonia, and who had nothing to sustain them except the faint hope of reaching at last some fever-infected lazaret. If men can bear all this, I thought, we ought not to complain of our trivial hardships, nor break down under a little unusual fatigue.
The sick who live to reach an étape lazaret may hope to die under shelter and in peace; but, if the reports of the exile administration are to be trusted, they can hardly expect to be restored to health. Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, the chief of the prison administration, in an official report to the Minister of the Interior, describes the condition of the lazarets between Áchinsk and Irkútsk as follows:
A sick exile who reaches one of the étapes named in this report, and who is put into a common prison cell where there are "neither nurses, nor hospital linen, nor beds, nor bedding, nor even dishes for food," cannot reasonably entertain a very sanguine expectation of recovery. Most of them do recover, but, nevertheless, the death-rate in exile parties during their march from Tomsk to Irkútsk, if carried through an entire year, would amount to from twelve to fifteen per cent.
The life of exiles on the road, which I have tried to roughly sketch, continues, with little to break its monotony, for many months. In sunshine and in storm, through dust and through mud, the convicts march slowly but steadily eastward, crossing the great Siberian rivers on pendulum ferry-boats; toiling up the sides of forest-clad mountains in drenching rains; wading through mire in swampy valleys; sleeping every night in the heavy mephitic atmosphere of overcrowded étapes, and drawing nearer, day by day, to the dreaded mines of the Trans-Baikál.
* ↑ At one time politicals were sent to Siberia separately in post vehicles under guard of gendarmes, and were carried to their destinations almost as quickly as if they had been private travelers. That practice, however, has been abandoned on account of its inconvenience and expense, and all politicals are now forwarded with common criminal parties. The result of the change is to prolong by many months the miseries of étape life, and to increase enormously the chances of sickness and death.
* ↑ "V' Dali" (Afar), by M. I. Orfánof, p. 226. St. Petersburg, 1883.
* ↑ A petty officer who directs the work of the convicts in the razréiz or cutting, and who sets their tasks.
* ↑ Some convicts are extremely skilful in counterfeiting the symptoms of disease, and will now and then succeed in deceiving even an experienced prison surgeon. If necessary for the accomplishment of their purpose, they do not hesitate to create artificial swellings by applying irritating decoctions to a slight self-inflicted wound, and they even poison themselves with tobacco and other noxious herbs.
* ↑ Report of the Inspector of Exile Transportation for 1884, p. 31 of the MS.
* ↑ Yellow is the étape color throughout Siberia.
* ↑ The well-known Russian author Maxímof cites a case in which 512 human beings were packed into one of these étapes in Western Siberia ("Siberia and Penal Servitude," by S. Maxímof, Vol. I, p. 81. St. Petersburg, 1871); and Mr. M. I. Orfánof, a Russian officer who served ten years in Siberia, reports that an East-Siberian étape (at Vérkhni Údinsk), which was intended for 140 prisoners, never contained, when he visited it, less than 500, and sometimes held more than 800. ("Afar," by M. I. Orfánof, p. 220. St. Petersburg, 1883.)
* ↑ Brick tea is made of a cheap grade of tea-leaves, mixed with stems and a little adhesive gum, and pressed into hard dry cakes about eight inches in length, five inches in width, and an inch and a half in thickness. It resembles in appearance and consistency the blackest kind of "plug" tobacco.
* ↑ This was in the Vérkhni Údinsk district of the Trans-Baikál. According to the statements made to me by the étape officers, black bread of the poorest quality cost from six to seven kopéks a pound, and the prisoners received only eleven kopéks a day. This state of affairs existed throughout the entire fall of 1885, growing worse and worse as winter came on. No attention whatever was paid, so far as I know, to the complaints and suggestions of the étape officers, notwithstanding the fact that a circular had been issued by the Prison and Exile Department providing for such an exigency, and requesting the Siberian governors to increase, in times of scarcity, the daily allowance of prisoners on the road. (Circular Letter of the Prison and Exile Department, No. 10,887, December 15, 1880.)
* ↑ First and second reports of Governor-general Anúchin to the Tsar. Appendix H.
* ↑ The ankle-bands of Russian leg-fetters fit so loosely that when they have been pounded with a stone into the form of an ellipse they can generally be slipped off over the heel. Of course this cannot be done, however, without the connivance of the convoy officers and the soldiers of the guard.
* ↑ This remark, "Our high officials don't take suggestions very kindly," was made to me, in substance, by at least a dozen experienced officers of the exile administration in Siberia, including the inspector of exile transportation, the warden of one of the largest of the convict prisons, and two successive governors of the Kará mines, I have, in my note-books, a score or more of suggestions made by these officers to their superiors with regard to methods of reforming the exile system, or of dealing with some of the evils that had been found, in practice, to arise. Most of these suggestions seemed to me to be wise and judicious, and all of them deserved serious and attentive consideration. Not one, so far as I know, was ever adopted, and in several cases the higher authorities distinctly intimated to their over-zealous subordinates that when they—the higher authorities—felt themselves to be in need of information or advice, they would make a requisition for it in due form.
* ↑ Circular Letter of the Prison Department, No. 180.
* ↑ A feldsher is a sort of hospital steward, who, in the absence of a regular surgeon, performs the latter's duties.
* ↑ The distances between these étapes are as follows: Áchinsk to Birusínskaya, 352 miles; Birusínskaya to Sheragúlskaya, 200 miles; Sheragúlskaya to Tirétskaya, 90 miles; Tirétskaya to Irkútsk, 139 miles. A marching party of exiles makes, on an average, about 80 miles a week. The results of the state of affairs described by Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy may be seen in the official reports of the sickness and mortality in the lazarets of these three étapes. (Appendix G.)
* ↑ Report of Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, chief of the prison administration, for the year 1885.
* ↑ In 1883 seventy exiles died between Tomsk and Áchinsk, in the course of a journey that occupies about twenty-one days. This rate of mortality, if it had been maintained for a year, would have resulted in the death of 1217 exiles out of the whole number of 7865 making the journey. (Vide Report of the Inspector of Exile Transportation in Western Siberia for 1884, pp. 32, 33.)