The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-09-12
A RUSSIAN INQUIsITIoN.
Barbarities Inflicted Upon Political Prison
ers-A Statement from Sufferer.

ers-A Statement from a Sufferer.
ST. Petersburg Letter.
The following letter from political pris
oner in Siberia will be found interesting not
only as coming from such source, but as
ontalning facts not generally known. The
writer studied the English language from
books while in exile and without any op-
portunity for practice acquired SUCH pro-
ficiency that his letter loses none Of its in
terest from being presented exactly as he
wrote it:
Foreigners have such vague notions
about Russia that they are as yet unable to
understand the very reason and character OF
the revolutionary tendencies which prevail
to such an extent in that vast country. l
will tell here one fact which will show you
clearly the character of the Russian govern
ment In 1866. soon after the exc
cution of Karaxozoff, young
workingman, sitting in an inn
where two or three persons were present,
was foolish enough to say of the Gar, You
see he hanged now man who was perhaps
much better than he himself Immediately
he was arrested and brought to st. Peters
burg where they put him in the well-known
prison of SITS. Peter and Paul Then, without
any trial, merely by the order of the Gar, he
was sent to be imprisoned at the monastery
at Soozdall. There are in Russia two mon
asteries which have prisons for political or
religious libres- penseurs-the monastery
called SolovetZkee, on an island in the White
Sea, and the monastery at Soozdall. The
chiefs of these prisons are the holy fathers
the abbotS themselves. The young man
was locked up in small room. Once he
committed some insignificant offence against
the rules OF the prison. Then the abbot sub
mitted the prisoner to such punishment
as the civilized world has not heard of since
the times of the Inquisition. 1t is to make
the world know this punishment that /
decided to write this letter.
THE abbot ordered box to be brought
into the room of the prisoner just as high and
wide as the prisoner himself. On the inside
of the box there were fixed on every point
strong, large iron nails The prisoner was
put into this box and locked up. He could
not turn himself, he could not move at all,
because everywhere he would meet the iron
nails. He remained in the box two days.
Finally he could not bear any longer this
torture, and said to the guard he wanted to
see the abbot The latter came. Do you
wish, said the prisoner, to kill me? l can
not bear any longer this torture. I swear to
you that if you will not release me instantly
from this box l will kill you.' Only then
the abbot released him. But no sooner had
the prisoner left the box than he fell and
tainted on the floor. His feet were so swol-
len they would not bear him.
THE holy fathers of the monastery use
also several other kinds of torture. For in
of 100 pounds weight, and keep him thus
during some days Only man of great
physical power can, with these letters on his
feet, rise or at all change the position of his
body, as while sleeping he might desire.
"Snch are these monastery prisons, in
which they keep for many long years, with
out any legal trial, innocent people who dare
have their own opinions about religion diff
ferent from those of the states church.
remember plenty of other facts of the same
kind. Where, for instance, is now the we'll
known revolutionist, Naitsh9ff, sentenced
in 1871 to twenty years. Imprisonment at
hard labor2 Nobody knows exactly, but
in one OF the fortresses chained to the wall
and fettered with irons of 120 pounds
weight
"Where is the political criminal Tomeen
sentenced in 1879 by the martial court to
Imprisonment for life? Nobody knows, but
they say, and it is probably true, that he is
kept in one of the Siberian prisons-namely
at Tobolsk-and that there are two special
guards to watch him, who receive a greater
payment for this honor.
why were the three newly-condemned
revolutionists Sheeriaeff, Teechonoff and
Gessi Gelfman, not sent to the Siberian pris-
ons as the law commands, but are kept in
Slusselbourg this Russian Bastilica? Be-
cause in the Siberian prisons they would not
die so soon.
What right has the government, in spite
of the laws it created itself, to keep as it
does, since more than ten years, in pitiful
small village, Villinsk, 500 miles from va
koutsk, the celebrated Russian writer
Tcherneesheffski author of Remarks upon
John Stuart Mills Political Economy as
well as many other excellent books? BY
the Russian law Teherneesheffski has long
since the right of going through all Siberia,
but the government keeps him forcibly at
Villinsk. Eight gendarmes and Cossacks
sent from Yakoutsk for this special purpose
are always watching him. He must live and
sleep in the prison; only in the daytime he
has the right to go into the village. But to
him the most terrible punishment is that it
is forbidden to him forever to write anything
for publication. But the man is full of life
and energy. He cannot help writing; he
must write, and he does. He writes leaves
upon leaves; he covers piles of paper and
then-he puts them in the fire! Can you
imagine this? Is il not the tortures of Tan
talus?
"And, after all, the facts give to the reader
only too insufficient notion of what is in
fact the present government in Russia. And
with such a government will the European
statesmen make treaties to give up those
noble Russians, who have courage and self
sacrifice enough to protest against such bar
barities?'
As the writer is still prisoner in the
hands of the Russian authorities he does no:
wish his name published, and so also with
the name of the young workman first men
toned in this letter. who was imprisoned in
the monastery of Soozdall for three years
and exiled to one of the northern provinces
of Russia in Europe for fourteen years. He
was released in 1881, and all this punishment
inflicted without trial.
A Chinese Baby.
gfo Post