From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

And why should the bridegroom be angry for ever? Others have fared no better, and the future will equalize much. Paternal joys often blossom even under irregular circumstances, and they are paternal joys all the same. For even the poorest couple have no cares about their household expenses, if they will use their hands at all; people are willing to help them with this and that, and if a bountiful Heaven will only be moderate enough for a few years in the outpouring of its blessings, so that the price of grain and stock may not fall too low, a tea-caddy and cups will adorn a corner table, and silk coverlets the big double-bed, shining images the right-hand corner, and indescribably noble pictorial representations of the hunting of the lion, tiger, bear, wolf, elephant, stag, and crocodile the walls of the cleanly-kept “best room”, which is never awanting in the better class of peasant houses.

A domestic life scarcely differing from that already described beckons to every convict who is exiled to Siberia, to one sooner, to another later, if he wishes to attain to it, if he lives long enough, and is to a certain extent favoured by fortune. While in Siberia I came to have views about exiles and banishment very different from those I had held before visiting the country; but I may remark at the outset that I am not one of those who bestow more sympathy upon a murderer, a robber, an incendiary, a thief, or any other scoundrel, than upon the industrious paterfamilias who strives, in the sweat of his brow, to bring up a numerous family honestly, and that I have never been able to soar to that loftiness of view which seeks to mitigate all punishment and relax all confinement.

On an average, fifteen thousand people are sent from Russia, “verschickt”, as the expression is among the German Russians. Those who have been guilty of grave crimes are sentenced for life, of less serious offences for a number of years. It is not within my province to discuss the severities or deficiencies of the Russian penal code; but the fact that the penalty of death is imposed only for the gravest and rarest of all crimes does not suggest too great severity. But it is undoubtedly a hardship that exiles sentenced for political causes should be treated on the way to Siberia, and often when there, exactly like common criminals.

Condemned exiles are first transferred from the prison in the district town to that in the capital of the government, and thence transported by rail or by the ordinary peasant-wagon to Nijni-Novgorod, Kasan, or Perm. Whether criminals are still forced to march in chains, two abreast, and thus to carry their fetters for the whole journey, I do not know; I have never seen this, and I am firmly convinced that the well-known mildness of the late Czar would never have suffered this barbarous proceeding. In the towns already mentioned, as well as in Tjumen and Tomsk, there are spacious prisons, and, at intervals along such routes as have not been deserted because of the railway, there are less roomy buildings for the safe housing of the exiles during night. Whenever it can be avoided, the exiles are not compelled to travel on foot, but are conveyed to their destination by rail, by the wagons already referred to, or by regularly plying steamers: thus from Nijni-Novgorod or Kasan to Perm, from Tjumen via Thura, Tobolsk, Irtish, Ob, and Tom, to Tomsk. The prisons are simple buildings, but thoroughly clean; the hospitals connected with, but sufficiently far apart from them, are model institutions; the river-boats are unusually long, two-decked vessels, which may best be described as gigantic floating cages, for the whole upper portion above the deck is latticed after the fashion of a bird-cage. Each of these boats, which is towed by a steamer, affords the necessary accommodation for six hundred persons, and contains also a large kitchen, a sick-room, a small dispensary, quarters for the accompanying soldiers and for the crew. Between Perm and Tjumen run wagons, which also resemble bird-cages, and which serve for the transport of dangerous criminals.

Every exile receives from government a cloak of heavy gray woollen material, in the middle of the back of which is fastened a diamond-shaped piece of cloth of colours varying with the length of the sentence, so that the soldiers in charge may be acquainted with it as far as is necessary. For procuring food on the journey, ten, or in the case of “unfortunates” of higher social standing, fifteen kopeks a day are allowed to each; but during a prolonged stay in prison the rate is seven and fifteen respectively. This sum is so liberal that, if spent with care, it suffices to procure all the necessaries of life, although every day, except during Lent, three-quarters of a pound of meat are served out to each. If wife and children accompany a condemned criminal, each of these receives a similar sum. Additional earning is permitted, and money gained by work or begging flows, though perhaps not quite untaxed, into the pockets of the condemned himself, or down his throat in the form of vodki.

Fig. 75.—Exiles on the Way to Siberia.

I said that everyone was at liberty to take his wife and children with him into exile, and I may add that he usually does so. A long sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime is a ground of divorce even in Russia; every married woman is, therefore, free to choose whether she will accompany her husband into exile, or remain in her native land. Even children who have attained their fourteenth year have the right to decide for themselves whether they will leave Russia for Siberia with their parents or not. But the government prefer that wife and children should accompany the criminal, and they encourage it in every possible way, therefore they give much consideration to the question of how far it is practicable to lessen the difficulties and disagreeablenesses of the journey.

That it is oppressive under all circumstances cannot be denied; but the journey of the exiles is by no means so indescribably dreadful as it has been depicted. Only those convicted of the gravest crimes are conducted to their destination in chains; the rest enjoy more freedom than our convicts. The portion of the journey which has to be performed in the steamers or the boats they tow is the worst. Here all the exiles and their families are cooped up together, and excesses of all descriptions are committed by the most degraded criminals, who are only, or can only, be kept under sufficient restraint in rare cases. The expert thief steals from the bungler in the same disreputable calling, the more violent overpowers the weaker, or takes the soles off the boots of a sleeper to possess himself of the bank-notes supposed to be hidden there; the incorrigible shakes the resolution of the penitent, or destroys utterly those who had previously given ground for hopes of improvement. Male and female criminals are now separated from each other, but the members of a family remain with their head, and the wife and daughters of an exile are always in danger during the journey, no matter what attempts are made to avoid this. On the other hand, the steamer shortens the journey tenfold, and thus removes those who are not irretrievably ruined, and those who are not criminals, so much the sooner from evil influences. More difficult, certainly, yet less dangerous to the more hopeful criminals, is the journey by land. Driving along Russian roads in a Russian peasant-wagon drawn by galloping Russian horses is certainly a species of torture according to our ideas; but it is not so to those who have, from their youth upwards, been accustomed to no better conveyances or smoother roads. To be sure, the exiles are more closely packed in a wagon holding six or eight people than the peasant packs his when he drives with his family; the driver or the accompanying soldier is in no way more comfortable than the convicts, with the exception of the worst criminals, whose chains jar more uncomfortably than usual on such a journey. An exile belonging to a cultured family, and convicted, for instance, on political grounds, cries out under the torture of such a journey, and is fully justified in depicting it in the blackest possible colours from his own point of view; but if we take into account the local conditions, and the customs of the country, we must at least acquit the directors of these forced journeyings from the charge of cruelty under which they lie. And as for the journeys on foot, these never take place in winter, it is only strong and able men who are forced to make them, not more than forty versts a day are traversed, and every third day is spent in resting at one of the prisons on the way. The soldiers in charge walk too, they must keep constant watch over the prisoners for whom they are responsible, and must therefore exert themselves much more; for if the murderer has to drag his chains, the soldier has to carry his weapon, baggage, and ammunition. He, however, is the irreproachable servant of the state, the other an outcast from society!

But it is certainly unjust that an exile of higher social position who has been convicted of a common crime should, if he has still means at his disposal, or can obtain them, be treated otherwise than one of lower degree, who is sentenced for the same crime. The former is permitted to travel to his place of banishment at his own time, and with every comfort, guarded only by two Cossacks, whom he must pay for the double journey.