Omaha daily bee., 1881-07-23
RUSSIAN JAILS.
The Investigations Made by n Re-
formatory OMcial--His Fate.
From New York Tribune.

HIOul NtN lOTh AFlDune.
A man with a conscience has sud
denly emerged from the Russian civil
service. This is Pavel Birwanski, an
imperial state attorney, who has re.
Gently been commissioned by the
Government to make a special inves
tigation of the judicial and admins
trative abuses in Orenburg. An ac-
count of his experience during the
four months which his mission occu-
pied has been published in the Sjever.
ny Viestnik, and translated by the
Telegraph of London. 1t is a CHASTITY
record of misgovernment, heartless.
ness, tyranny and barbarity.
The Commissioner describes him
self as living III ''an atmosphere of
appalling groans and heartrending
signs" He liberated innocent cap.
tives who had been secretly tortured
and closely confined for years after
they had been publicly acquitted in
open court. He received the sworn
statements of peasant women whose
flesh had been pinched by red.hot
irons as a punishment for their pre-
sumption in pleading for their hus-
bands lives. He visited the State
prisons, where hundreds of prisoners
draped in rotton rags are condemned
TO lingering death without ever being
allowed to know what has been laid
to their charge or who has accused
them of wrong The roofs of these
charnel-houses wherein they grovel
are ready to fall in upon them at any
moment, the walls are lined with
damp and clammy fungus, and the air
in these loathsome dens Is so rank
and fetid from "the dirt of ages" and
''exhalations from every sort of abom.
nation" as absolutely to stop the
visitors breath. He learned that
absent.minded prisoners, who used
the familiar form of "Thou" in place
of "You" in addressing the officials
in charge of their dungeons, were
tied to a horses tail and flogged with
thorney rods stepped in salt water,
receiving sometimes as many as 125
blows. He found in the inirmaries
the majority of the patients stretched
upon the bare boards and often
among the dead bodies of their COM
panions. $50 vas it revealed to me"
says the Commissioner, chow our
Judges trample the laws under foot,
how cynical and wanton is the be-
havour of our police; how savagely
brute force is brought to bear upon
the weak and friendless."
The most schocking disclosures
which the Commissioner makes, re-
late to the town Jail of lick, not far
from Orenburg. All the prisoners
had been led out on one occasion to a
public square, and, not SC much
beaten as ''balf hammered to DEATH"
sc that the populace ''wept bitterly
and crossed themselves in utter con-
s%ternation." AS the details of this
horrible outrage are recited, they
were first logged until they tainted;
next they were soused with buckets
of water until they regained con-
seriousness, and then knocked about
with prison keys, iron chains and
rife stocks; and finally, they were all
tied together by the feet and driven
into the prison yard, "where they fell
from sheer exhaustion in bleeding and
disfigured heaps" The governor of
this Jail, who had ordered this pun
ishment to be inflicted upon all the
prisoners, without exception, and
solely for his own amusement, was
once a commissary of police and had
been dismissed from the service for
shameless corruption; yet he had
retained sufficient influence in high
quarters to secure another and more
responsible post, where he could
satisfy the bestial instincts of his
nature and wreak his savage ven
geance upon the helpless fellow
creatures committed to his charge.
The man with a conscience, who
used his eyes to such good purpose,
was not allowed to pursue his inves-
legations longer than four months.
He met with resistance from bench,
bureau and military headquarters.
He did not attempt to accomplish
very much. He only aimed to give
the wretched captjves a little more air
and a little light, and protect them
from torture neutrality-suspicious..
Yet he was dismissed from the public
service rs n of the secret allies of
the Nihilists, and the newspaper
which published his painful narrative
was suspended indefinitely.