Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-03-30
A TALE OF SIBERIA.
ALEXANDER BARAN0FF'S EXCIT.
ING EXPERIENCES.
a Siberian Exile-His Eight
Years Servitude.

Boston Advertiser, q man who can tell
stories of personal experience that almost
out-Kennan Remnants tales of Russian
cruelty
Alexander Baranotf, of this city is a
Russian by birth, but has long been res.
ident Of Boston and q naturalized Ameri-
can citizen. He came to Boston thirty
years ago, Russian exile who had made
a remarkable escape from the mines and
prisons of Siberia. Mr.. Baranoff has told
the story of his captivity and escape to an
-Adrertiser reporter. The narrative is one
of thrilling interest, and is briefly as fol-
lows:
SIN 1S4S | was Lieutenant in the
Shleselburg Regiment of the Russian
Sixth Army Corps My Colonel was
Count Tolstoi, either brother or an uncle
of the novelist. had been educated for
the army in the Cadets School at St. Pc
tersburg. | was very young officer in
lS4S, when the Hungarian revolution
broke out, and the Sixth Corps was sent
by Russia to the assistance of Austria.
While under orders to proceed to Hun
gary our regiment lay at Kretinga, city
in the province of wilma, Russian Poland,
and on the Prussian border. 1t was the
custom of number of us young officials
to go across the border at night to take
part in dances and other jollity. Some of
our officers were Poles, and the sympathies
of many of US were with the Poles in their
aspirations for freedom. Some of the off,
GERS had had communications with certain
| Polish mobiles. In our excursions across
the border we had managed to return in
season to avoid detection. But one morn
ing party of us returned belated and we
were arrested. discriminating letters were
found on the persons of some of us, and we
found ourselves no longer army officers, but
political prisoners.
Sixteen of us were Court-martiaIed
and sentenced to Siberia. We went direct
from st. Petersburg to the mines of Ner-
chinsk, walking all the way with our
ankles fettered with nine-pound chains.
The distance from st. Petersburg to the
gold mines Of Nerchinsk is 1900 versts,
and we were fourteen months and three
days making the journey. Our party of
exiles left Moscow 800 strong. Every
prisoner had his ankles fettered with a
nine-pound chain, which was not long
enough TO allow his taking stride OF the
| ordinary length. l have seen prisoners
with their ankles worn to the bone by the
| letters. 1t would have been impossible to
have journeyed long with the heavy chain
dragging behind one upon the ground. So
| we wore around our necks straps or ropes
which reached down in front and were
tied to the chains, lifting them up to our
knees and thus supporting their weight.
The prisoners on their march were
dependent mostly upon public charity for
| food. as the Government allowance per
man was only about five cents per day. On
our journey we averaged twelve English
miles per day, passing each night at one
of the station prisons. We marched two
days and rested on the third. The rooms
into which we were crowded by night at
| the stations were the worst things in the
whole journey. They killed the most
prisoners. In a room fit at the utmost for
| fifty people they would crowd 800 prison
ers. The stencil and filth of these rooms
were horrible, deadly, unmentionable. OF
our party of 800, $50 had succumbed and
died by the way when we arrived at
lrkutsk. As the prisoners died by the
road their bodies were thrown into a
wagon and brought along to the next sta
ton and buried.
In our march through Siberia to the
mines we passed through Tobolsk, Krasno-
yarsk and lrkutsk, besides many smaller
cities, towns and villages. We were
guarded by Kirgis troops. A few prison.
e-s escaped on the way, but / never heard
| what became of them.
THE last part of our iourney-between
| Irkutsk and the mines of Nerchinsk-was
| the worst. In tn is stage we lost forty men
on the road. Few Russians live in the
country between hkutsk and the mines.
The inhabitants are a race of Christian
lied Mongolians called Bratski. As we
crossed the Bratski desert we found these
people living, not in houses, but in round,
felt huts called yourli. They didn't have
much to eat themselves, and so the poor
prisoners had to carry months supply of
food along with them or else starye
"After a fourteen months journey we
arrived at the gold mines of Nerchinsk. [
worked in the mines two years. These are
rich gold mines, the gold being worth at
least SIS per ounce. The prisoners worked
all day long in the mines, but there was
no Sunday work. We lived in barracks,
100 or 200 together, and still wore our
chains. When the prisoners moved in
body the clanking of the chains could be
heard long ways. The food given us at
! the mines was poor. | stood the confine-
ment pretty well, for l had some money
with which could buy better food than
| that which was served out to us.
| Il remember one tyrannical overseer
who served out bad food to the prisoners.
The meat was bad and the vegetables poor
One day the soup, which was being made
for 200 men in a great iron kettle, had a
bad smell owing to the bad meat which
had been put into it. There was strong
prisoner who had been heavily ironed be-
cause of his repeated complaints about the
bad food. Never mind, boys said he,
I'll give you something for supper to-
day. When the overseer came along the
prisoner, ironed as he was, seized the over
seer in spite of his struggles and, lifting
him up, thrust him head first into the big
pot where the hot soup was boiling He
held him there until he was boiled to
death.
1.-TWO weeks after this occurrence, eighty
prisoners, of which / was one, ran away
from the mines. There was no difficulty
about escaping. No restraint was put upon
the prisoners so far as preventing their es-
cape was concerned.
1--WE took to the woods and broke our
chains, and marched across the border into
China. After week spent in China we
had to give up and turn back. We were
half-starved, and the people were hostile.
We had to fight our way as far as we went.
There was no trouble about that, for we
kept together and our party of eighty was
good for 1000 of the Chinese. But it be-
came clear that the further we advanced
the worse it would be. We saw it was nc
use and turned back.
ain Siberia we separated into small COM
panies and started for Irkutsk. Ny party
OF three was captured on the Chinese Dor
der. We were sent, not back to the Ner-
chinsk gold mines, but to the iron mines Of
Petrofski. We took assumed names, and
so concealed our identity. The iron mines
of Petrofski are $50 versts from the Chi
nese border. There were 1000 prisoners
working in them when was taken there
The work was harder in the iron mines
: than in the gold mines, and after year
could stand it no longer, and ran away