The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
convicts, which they could not get over; in their eyes the unhappy
fellows were mere wild beasts, without a single recognisable human
quality. Everything in their previous career and their present
circumstances combined to produce this unhappy feeling in them.
Their life at the jail was perpetual torment to them. They were kindly
and conversible with the Circassians, with the Tartars, with Isaiah
Fomitch; but for the other prisoners they had nothing but contempt and
aversion. The only one they had any real respect for was the aged “old
believer.” For all this, during all the time I spent at the convict
establishment, I never knew a single prisoner to reproach them with
either their birth, or religious opinions, or convictions, as is so
usual with our common people in their relations with people of different
condition, especially if these happen to be foreigners. The fact is,
they cannot take the foreigner seriously; to the Russian common people
he seems a merely grotesque, comical creature. Our convicts had and
showed much more respect for the Polish nobles than for us Russians, but
I don’t think the Poles cared about the matter, or took any notice of
the difference.
I spoke just now of T--ski, and have something more to say of him. When
he had with his friend to leave the first place assigned to them as
residence in their banishment to come to our fortress, he carried his
friend B---- nearly the whole way. B---- was of quite a weak frame, and
in bad health, and became exhausted before half of the first march was
accomplished. They had first been banished to Y--gorsk, where they lived
in tolerable comfort; life was much less hard there than in our
fortress. But in consequence of a correspondence with the exiles in one
of the other towns--a quite innocent exchange of letters--it was thought
necessary to remove them to our jail to be under the more direct
surveillance of the government. Until they came M--tski had been quite
alone, and dreadful must have been his sufferings in that first year of
his banishment.
J--ski was the old man always deep in prayer, of whom I spoke a little
earlier. All the political convicts were quite young men while J--ski
was at least fifty years old. He was a worthy, gentlemanlike person, if
eccentric. T--ski and B--ski detested him, and never spoke to him; they
insisted upon it that he was too obstinate and troublesome to put up
with, and I was obliged to admit it was so. I believe that at a convict
establishment--as in every place where people have to be together,
whether they like it or not--people are more ready to quarrel with and
detest one another than under other circumstances. Many causes
contributed to the squabbles that were, unfortunately, always going on.
J--ski was really disagreeable and narrow-minded; not one of those about
him was on good terms with him. He and I did not come to a rupture, but
we were never on a really friendly footing. I fancy that he was a strong
mathematician. One day he explained to me in his half-Russian,
half-Polish jargon, a system of astronomy of his own; I have been told
that he had written a work upon the subject which the learned world had
received with derision; I fancy his reasonings on some things had got
twisted. He used to be on his knees praying for a whole day sometimes,
which made the convicts respect him exceedingly during the remnant of
life he had to pass there; he died under my eyes at the jail after a
very trying illness. He had won the consideration of the prisoners, from
the first moment of his coming in, on account of what had happened with
the Major and him. When they were brought afoot from Y--gorsk to our
fortress, they were not shaved on the road at all, their hair and beards
had grown to great lengths when they were brought before the Major. That
worthy foamed like a madman; he was wild with indignation at such
infraction of discipline, though it was none of their fault.
“My God! did you ever see anything like it?” he roared; “they are
vagabonds, brigands.”
J--ski knew very little Russian, and fancied that he was asking them if
they were brigands or vagabonds, so he answered:
“We are political prisoners, not rogues and vagabonds.”
“So-o-o! You mean impudence! Clod!” howled the Major. “To the
guard-house with him; a hundred strokes of the rod at once, this
instant, I say!”
They gave the old man the punishment; he lay flat on the ground under
the strokes without the slightest resistance, kept his hand in his
teeth, and bore it all without a murmur, and without moving a muscle.
B--ski and T--ski arrived at the jail as this was all going on, and
M--ski was waiting for them at the principal gate, knowing that they
were just coming in; he threw himself on their neck, although he had
never seen them before. Utterly disgusted at the way the Major had
received them, they told M--ski all about the cruel business that had
just occurred. M--ski told me later that he was quite beside himself
with rage when he heard it.
“I could not contain myself for passion,” he said, “I shook as though
with ague. I waited for J--ski at the great gate, for he would come
straight that way from the guard-house after his punishment. The gate
was opened, and there I saw pass before me J--ski, his lips all white
and trembling, his face pale as death; he did not look at a single
person, and passed through the groups of convicts assembled in the
court-yard--they knew a noble had just been subjected to
punishment--went into the barrack, went straight to his place, and,
without a word, dropped down on his knees for prayer. The prisoners were
surprised and even affected. When I saw this old man with white hairs,
who had left behind him at home a wife and children, kneeling and
praying after that scandalous treatment, I rushed away from the barrack,
and for a couple of hours felt as if I had gone stark, staring, raving
mad, or blind drunk.... From that first moment the convicts were full of
deference and consideration for J--ski; what particularly pleased them,
was that he did not utter a cry when undergoing the punishment.”
But one must be fair and tell the truth about this sort of thing; this
sad story is not an instance of what frequently occurs in the treatment
by the authorities of transported noblemen, Russian or Polish; and this
isolated case affords no basis for passing judgment upon that treatment.
My anecdote merely shows that you may light upon a bad man anywhere and
everywhere. And if it happen that such a one is in absolute command of a
jail, and if he happen to have a grudge against one of the prisoners,
the lot of such a one will be indeed very far from enviable. But the
administrative chiefs who regulate and supervise convict labour in
Siberia, and from whom subordinates take their tone as well as their
orders, are careful to exercise a discriminating treatment in the case
of persons of noble birth, and, in some cases, grant them special
indulgences as compared with the lot of convicts of lower condition.
There are obvious reasons for this; these heads of departments are
nobles themselves, they know that men of that class must not be driven
to extremity; cases have been known where nobles have refused to submit
to corporal punishment, and flung themselves desperately on their
tormentors with very grave and serious consequences indeed;
moreover--and this, I think, is the leading cause of the good
treatment--some time ago, thirty-five years at least, there were
transported to Siberia quite a crowd of noblemen;[9] these were of such
correct and irreproachable demeanour, and held themselves so high, that
the heads of departments fell into the way, which they never afterwards
left, of regarding criminals of noble birth and ordinary convicts in
quite a different manner; and men in lower place took their cue from
them.
Many of these, no doubt, were little pleased with that disposition in
their superiors; such persons were pleased enough when they could do
exactly as they liked in the matter, but this did not often happen, they
were kept well within bounds; I have reason to be satisfied of this and
I will say why. I was put in the second category, a classification of
those condemned to hard labour, which was primarily and principally
composed of convicts who had been serfs, under military superintendence;
now this second category, or class, was much harder than the first (of
the mines) or the third (manufacturing work). It was harder, not only
for the nobles but for the other convicts too, because the governing and
administrative methods and _personnel_ in it were wholly military, and
were pretty much the same in type as those of the convict establishments
in Russia. The men in official position were severer, the general
treatment more rigorous than in the two other classes; the men were
never out of irons, an escort of soldiers was always present, you were
always, or nearly so, within stone walls; and things were quite
different in the other classes, at least so the convicts said, and there
were those among them who had every reason to know. They would all have
gladly gone off to the mines, which the law classified as the worst and
last punishment, it was their constant dream and desire to do so. All
those who had been in the Russian convict establishments spoke with
horror of them, and declared that there was no hell like them, that
Siberia was a paradise compared with confinement in the fortresses in
Russia.
If, then, it is the case that we nobles were treated with special
consideration in the establishment I was confined in, which was under
direct control of the Governor-General, and administered entirely on
military principles, there must have been some greater kindliness in the
treatment of the convicts of the first and third category or class. I
think I can speak with some authority about what went on throughout
Siberia in these respects, and I based my views, as to this, upon all
that I heard from convicts of these classes. We, in our prison, were
under much more rigorous surveillance than was elsewhere practised; we
were favoured with no sort of exemptions from the ordinary rules as
regards work and confinement, and the wearing of chains; we could not do
anything for ourselves to get immunity from the rules, for I, at least,
knew quite well that, _in the good old time which was quite of
yesterday_, there had been so much intriguing to undermine the credit of
officials that the authorities were greatly afraid of informers, and
that, as things stood, to show indulgence to a convict was regarded as a
crime. Everybody, therefore, authorities and convicts alike, was in fear
of what might happen; we of the nobles were thus quite down to the level
of the other convicts; the only point we were favoured in was in regard
to corporal punishment--but I think that we should have had even that
inflicted on us had we done anything for which it was prescribed, for
equality as to punishment was strictly enjoined or practised; what I
mean is, that we were not wantonly, causelessly, mishandled like the
other prisoners.
When the Governor got to know of the punishment inflicted on J--ski, he
was seriously angry with the Major, and ordered him to be more careful
for the future. The thing got very generally known. We learned also that
the Governor-General, who had great confidence in our Major, and who
liked him because of his exact observance of legal bounds, and thought
highly of his qualities in the service, gave him a sharp scolding. And
our Major took the lesson to heart. I have no doubt it was this
prevented his having M--ski beaten, which he would much have liked to
do, being much influenced by the slanderous things A--f said about
M----; but the Major could never get a fair pretext for doing so,