Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1889-01-18
RUSSIAN METHODS.
The Life Of Political Prisoners In
PetropavioVsk

The following is an extract from Mr..
George Kennan's article on Russian
State Prisoners, to appear in the March
number OF the Century Magazine.
In considering the life of political
prisoners In the fortress of Petropa-
vlovsk, the reader must bear steadily
in mind the fact that the men and
women who thus languish for months
or years in the silent bomb-proof case
mates Of the Trubetskoi bastion are all
persons who have not had trial.
Their case is by no means that OF con-
demned criminals undergoing just pun
ishment for offenses of which they
have been duly convicted in a court OF
justice. 1t Is rather that of presume
bly, innocent persons, deprived for an
unreasonable length OF time of the
right TO be heard in self-defense, and
treated meanwhile as il their guilt was
UNREASONABLE. That very large
proportion OF the men and women
thrown into prison in Russia upon pO-
litical charges are in fact innocent is
not a matter Of opinion, it is n matter
OF official record. / have shown in
previous paper that out OF more than a
thousand persons arrested for alleged
participation in the so-called "revolu-
tiOnary propaganda" OF 1928
only 1913 were ever brought to
trial, and even OF this rel
atively small number 80 were
acquitted by court of judges of the
governments own selection. Nine
tenths, therefore, of these prisoners
were entirely innocent, not only of real
crime but even Of the vague and
shadowy offenses set forth in section
$50 OF the Russian Penal Code; and yet
all OF them were subjected before their
release to from six months to three
years OF rigorous solitary confinement
In the House of Preliminary Detention,
or in the damp prison sepulchers of the
Trubetskoi bastion. That system
which brings about such results is in
the highest degree arbitrary and I'm
just, and that the subsection of presum-
ably innocent persons to two or three
years OF such treatment pending the
trial is cruel in the extreme, are pro-
positions that hardly admit of argl-
ment. Whether such wrongs and
cruelties are adequate TO excuse the
violent measures of retaliation adopted
by the terrorists is question to which
different answers may be given by diff
ferent people; but it will, / think, be
generally admitted that the confine-
ment OF an innocent man for three years
in casemate of the Trubetsl<oi bastion
under the conditions that | have de-
scribed, and the final release OF such
man without PREPARATION or apology,
and perhaps without even the formal
ity of a judicial hearing, constitute ex-
treme provocation. Such was the view
taken by the eminent Russian advocate
Gerard when, in the trial of the regi-
cides at st. Petersburg in 1891, he en-
deavored to show that his client
kibalchich had been changed from
law-abiding citizen to revolusionist
by unjust treatment Of precisely this
character; and such was evidently the
view also of the court, which refused to
allow Mr. Gerard to finish his state
ment, and which, when he persisted,
informed him sharply that the govern
ment's treatment of its subjects was
not matter for his judgment
That undeserved Imprisonment and
cruel treatment before trial were i'm
portant factors in the development of
the Russian revolution movement clear
ly appears from the later history Of the
ninety prisoners who were acquitted at
the end OF the trial of the 1913 in jan
uary, 1873. According TO the judge
ment OF court not at all likely to err
on the side OF clemency, those ninety
young people were wholly guiltless of
any otfense against the law. They had
not even rendered themselves amenable
to the 250th section of the Russian
Penal Code by manifesting ian in
tention to bring about change of gov
eminent at q more or less remote
time in the future and yet they all
had been punished with three years OF
The strictest solitary confinement in the
House OF Detention or the Patropav-
lovsk fortress, and had finally been de-
MED even the poor boon of public
trial in an open court, where they
might at least have made apparent TO
the world the injustice from which they
had suffered. The result was that
which might have been anti, ,ated.
Almost every one of the person thus
/ punished and then found not guilty ul-
/ timately became a revolutionist, and
before 1885 more than a third of them
Andre Zheliaboff and Sophia Perofskaya
had persisted on the scaffold with the
blood OF Alexander III. upon their hands.
l do not know a more significant A.
lustration than this of one way in which
revolutionary impulses in Russia are
excited and kept alive. The agencies
which transformed these innocent young
people into revolutionists were unwar-
ranted arrest, denial for an unreasona-
bic length OF time the right to be heard
in their own defense, and prolonged i'm
prisonment under conditions that
threatened to deprive them OF health,
sanity or life. Three years-two years
or even one year of solitary confine-
ment in casemate of the Trubetskio
bastion is quite enough to embitter and
exasperate TO the last degree a con-
sciously innocent man; and il to such
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