Evening star., 1952-01-07
Another Remnants Adventure in Russia
By George Kennedy

By George Kennedy
A SUBSCRIBER has written The Star
IA suggesting an article about George
Kennan who wrote an account of his
travels in Siberia for Century Magazine
in 1889-1890. Presumably" the sub
scriber with the long memory writes,
"he was the father of George F. Ken
nan, our newly appointed ambassador
to the U. S. S. r."
Although the George Kennan of the
Siberian journeys was not the ambas-
sador's father but great uncle, he
must have been remarkable man. He
learned the Russian language on his
first trip to the Cars dominions well
enough to get along without an inter-
prefer. His death at IS closed career
in which he started as telegraph OPP
orator and became noted author,
lecturer, news editor and war corre-
spondent. He was great favorite with
his grandnepheW, who was 19 when
his uncle died. The ambassador re-
: members the wonderful stories he used
to tell of his Siberian adventures and
it may well be that the future diplomats
great interest in all things Russian
started on Uncle Georges knee.
George Ke1lnan was born in Norwalk,
Ohio in 1845, the year after Samuel
F. B. Morse invented the telegraph.
At IS, Kennan was telegraph opera
tor in Cincinnati and after the Civil
War he went to Siberia as telegraph
engineer. The Siberia Alaska Telegraph
Co. was constructing a communications
i.n %tn eA
young Kennan wrote book on his
experiences.
He was night manager for the As
sociated Press in Washington in 1885
when the opportunity came to go back
to Russia to investigate the Cars pc
nal system in Siberia, then the scandal
Of the civilized world.
Accompanied only by an artist, George
A. Frost (it is coincidence that the
Ambassadors middle name is Frost, since
he was named after family friends in his
native Milwaukee), Kennan crossed the
Urals. His travels by droshky and sledge
to the Trans-Baikal region as the Si-
berian winter set in are exciting ad-
venture stories. However, he subordi-
mated the adventure elements to a de-
tailed account of what happened to in
tellectual liberals and revolutionists who
were sent to Siberia Published in Amer
lea Is years after the Civil War tales of
our own dank prisons, they caused
mounting indignation against the alb
solutism of the Czars. Read today. they
are reminiscent of accounts that have
been brought to our attention all too
recently.
Kennan was little impatient with the
Cars prison administration "It is hard
for an American" he wrote, "to under
stand or make allowances for the corrup-
ton, shiftlessness, indifference and ineff1-
cheney that are everywhere manifested
throughout the Nerchinsk silver mining
district. The mines themselves are not
half worked: hundreds of hard-labor
convicts lie idle, month after month, in
dirty overcrowded cells: plans and esti-
mates for new buildings go back and
forth, year after year, between the mines
and st. Petersburg; and when, at last
new prison is authorized work upon it
drags along, in lazy shiftless fashion,
for a whole decade. without the least
apparent reason"
AS for atrocities, it was the Cars own
officers who came to him with tales of
the horrors of the mines. A colonel
asked Kennan had he seen the Naked
Command at Kara-a cell filled with Is
convicts stark naked. Another officer
told of solitary confinement cells that
were not high enough for man to stand
or long enough for him to lie down.
Kennan had not been shown these
things.
Long after he was back in the States
and several months after publication of
his articles on his travels, he wrote
short postscript for Century entitled,
"The Latest Siberian Tragedy"
The London Times had printed an
account of a massacre of political pris-
oners at Yakutsk in Siberia. A few
weeks later st. Petersburg letter
signed "By An Occasional Correspond
ent" appeared in the New York Tribune
giving the Imperial Russian Govern
ment's account of what had happened.
The account made it appear that the
incident at YakutSk was the suppression
of an armed uprising of prisoners, rather
than massacre. The st. Petersburg
letter in the Tribune ended with: "The
explanation thus vouchsafed by the
Government obtains universal credence
here
George Kennan took his pen in hand.
ut is gratifying" he wrote, ito see even
such evidence as this that the Cars
ministers are not wholly Indifferent to
the opinion of the civilized world, and
that they can be forced into an explana-
tion-even although it be shamelessly
false explanation-of some of their ex-
traordinary acts.
MY first information in regard to
the Yakutsk tragedy came to me. in
private letter from Siberia last summer.
Since that time have received eight
separate and independent accounts in
manuscript Of the whole series of events,
with copies of the official documents re-
lating to the case: plans of the house and
courtyard where the massacre occurred:
the names of all the officials and exiles
concerned: the full text Of the sentence
of the court martial that tried the sur
vivors; the last letters Of the three men
who were hanged; and all the minute
details that are essential to complete
understanding of the situation and the
circumstances. . !. do know that the
account of the Yakutsk massacre that
the Times has published is, in every es-
sential detail, absolutely true"
He said that q group Of political