: Russian Prisons St. Peter and St. Paul; the Schlüsselburg; the Ostrog at Omsk; the story of Siberian exile; Tiumen Tomsk Saghalien by Griffiths Arthur - Prisons Russia History; Exiles Russia (Federation) Siberia History

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RUSSIAN PRISONS

Commencement of judicial reform in Russia--Abandonment of knout and branding iron--The plet--Two classes of prisons, the "lock-up" and the "central" or convict prisons--Experiences of a woman exiled from Russia--Testimony of Carl Joubert--The state of the central prisons--The "model" prison in St. Petersburg--Punishments inflicted--The food in different prisons--Attempted escapes--Myshkin--His early history and daring exploits--Failure of his plan to rescue Chernyshevski from Siberia--His escape, recapture, and sentence of death--The prisoner Medvediev.

A definite movement toward judicial reform began in Russia in the early sixties. The old law courts with their archaic procedure and evil repute as sinks of bribery and corruption were abolished. Trial by jury was revived, and justices of the peace were established to dispose of the smaller criminal offences. Shortly afterward, two of the most disgraceful features in the Russian penal code, the knout and the branding iron, disappeared. The punishment of splitting the nostrils to mark ineffaceably the prisoners exiled to the salt mines of Okhotsk also ceased, and the simple Chinese no longer were surprised with the sight of a hitherto unknown race of men with peculiar features of their own. The knout, however, had long served its devilish purpose. It was inflicted even upon women in the time of Peter the Great, and was still remembered as an instrument which would surely kill at the thirtieth stroke, although in the hands of a skilful performer a single blow might prove fatal.

At one time trial by court-martial could sentence a soldier to the frightful ordeal of the "rods," flogging administered by comrades standing in two ranks between which he moved at a deliberate pace while they "laid on" the strokes with sticks upon his bare back. This is exactly the same penalty as that of "running the gauntlet," or "gantlope," well known in old-time military practice, and sometimes called "Green Street" in Russia, for the rods used were not always stripped of their leaves. The infliction might be greatly prolonged and the number of strokes given sometimes amounted to several thousand. Devilish ingenuity has now replaced the physical torture of knout and plet by a modern device for inflicting bodily discomfort, nothing less than riveting a wheelbarrow to a man's legs, which he must take with him everywhere, even to bed,--the apology for a bed on which he passed the night.

Russian prisons are of several classes. There are first the "lock-ups," or places of detention for the accused awaiting trial, scattered throughout the country, and quite unequal in the aggregate to the accommodation of the number of prisoners on hand. It has been estimated that to lodge all adequately, half as many more than the existing prisons would be required. Those of another class, the houses of correction, the hard labour or "central" prisons where compulsory labour is exacted, are very much like the "public works" convict prisons in the English system. Many of these are established in European Russia; more are to be found in Western Siberia, and, on somewhat different lines, in the penal settlements of Eastern Siberia.

The same author gives the experiences of a lady who was expelled from Russia for opening a school for peasants' children, and who was transferred to the Prussian frontier from prison to prison. "At Wilna," she says, "we were taken to the town prison, and detained for two hours late at night in an open yard under a drenching rain. At last we were pushed into a dark corridor and counted. Two soldiers laid hold of me and insulted me shamefully. After many oaths and much foul language, the fire was lighted and I found myself in a spacious room, in which it was impossible to take a step in any direction without treading on the women sleeping on the floor. Two women who occupied a bed took pity on me and invited me to share it with them.... The next night we were turned out from the prison and paraded in the yard for the start under a heavy rain. I do not know how I happened to escape the fists of the gaolers, as the prisoners did not understand the evolutions and performed them under a storm of blows and curses; those who protested were put in irons and sent so to the train, although the law prescribes that in the cellular wagons no prisoner shall be chained.

"Arrived at Kovno, we spent the whole day in going from one police station to another. In the evening we were taken to the prison for women where the superintendent was railing against the head gaoler and swearing that she would give him 'bloody teeth.' The prisoners told me that she often kept promises of this sort. Here I spent a week among murderesses and thieves and women arrested by mistake. Misfortune unites the unfortunate, and everybody tried to make life more tolerable for the rest; all were very kind to me and did their best to console me. On the previous day I had eaten nothing, for prisoners receive no food on the day they are brought to prison. I fainted from hunger, and the prisoners brought me round by giving me some of their black bread; there was a female inspector, but she did nothing but shout out shameless oaths such as no drunken man would use.

"After a week's halt at Kovno, I was sent on to the next town. After three days' march we came to Mariampol. My feet were wounded and my stockings full of blood. The soldiers advised me to ask for a vehicle, but I preferred physical suffering to the continued cursing and foul language of the chiefs. I was taken before the commander, who remarked that as I had walked for three days I could very well manage a fourth. On arrival at Volkovisk, the last halt, we were lodged provisionally in the prison, but the female side was in ruins and we were taken to the men's quarters, and had nowhere to sit but on the filthily dirty and foul-smelling floor. Here I spent two days and nights, passing the whole time at the window. In the night, the door was constantly thrown open for new arrivals; they also brought in a male lunatic who was perfectly naked. The miserable prisoners delighted in this, and tormented the maniac into a paroxysm of passion, until at last he fell on the floor in a fit and lay there foaming at the mouth. On the third day a soldier of the depot, a Jew, took me into his room, a tiny cell, where I stayed with his wife.

"The prisoners told me that many of them were detained by mistake for seven or eight months, awaiting their papers before being sent across the frontier. It is easy to imagine their condition after a seven months' stay in this sewer without a change of linen.... I had been six weeks on the road and was still delayed, but I got leave to send a registered letter to St. Petersburg, where I had influential friends, and a telegram came to send me on to Prussia immediately. My papers were soon found, and I was sent to Eydtkuhnen, where I was set at liberty."

Another writer of more recent date, Carl Joubert, whose works on Russia have been widely read, says, "I am aware that in no part of the world is the lot of a prisoner a happy one. It is not intended that it should be; but in civilised countries they are, at least, given the opportunity of keeping themselves clean and decent. They are treated as human beings and their health is considered; but in Russia it is different. The prisoners in Russia, whether before or after the trial--and a great many of the political prisoners have no trial--the Russian prisoners are considered beasts, and treated accordingly. The warders know what is expected of them; and if a warder shows any glimmering of humanity in his treatment of the prisoners committed to his charge, his services are dispensed with and a stronger-hearted warder takes his place.

"I said that Russian prisoners have no sex; but I must qualify that statement. In so far as the normal treatment of the women is concerned, they are separated from the men, but no other distinction is made. If they are young and attractive, however, their sex can procure for them, and worse still, for those who are dear to them, a certain amount of consideration from those in authority over them on the road to Siberia."

The penalties inflicted by the Russian code may be classed under four heads. The first is hard labour with the loss of civil rights, so that the convict's property passes to his heirs; he is dead in law, and his wife may marry another; he endures his term either after deportation to Siberia, or in one of the "central prisons" which have been built on purpose in European Russia, and where he spends a third or fourth of his entire sentence, until he goes finally to Siberia or Saghalien as a penal colonist. These central prisons were created to substitute a more regular and more severe treatment than was possible at a distance from home, and the aim was achieved. According to the best authorities, the central prisons are practically "hells upon earth." "The horrors of hard labour in Siberia," says Peter Kropotkin, "have paled before them, and all those who have had experience of them are unanimous in declaring that the day a prisoner starts for Siberia is the happiest in his life."

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