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

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

While every unbiassed Russian or Siberian admits this injustice frankly, officials and exiles alike deny that there is cruelty on the part of the escorting soldiers, or of any other persons, whether of high or inferior rank, who are intrusted with the guardianship and government of the convicts. It does happen that mutinous exiles are shot or killed in some way on the journey; but such events occur very rarely, and only when all other means of quelling insubordination have failed. The Russian is not cruel like the Spaniard, the Turk, the Greek, or the Southern Slav; on the contrary, a mistaken compassionateness and sluggishness makes him mild and considerate rather than severe and harsh; he may force men and animals to exert themselves to the utmost, but he does not torture them in order to gloat over their torments. Even the name “unfortunate”, by which it is customary to describe all exiles, originates in a feeling deeply rooted among the people, and this feeling of compassion is shared by everyone, including soldiers and police-officers, and the inspectors and warders of the prisons. That even the most long-suffering and lamblike patience may now and again be excited to angry rage by one or more miscreants is intelligible enough; that miserable wretches at the convict stations levy tax even on misfortune in order to gain more money than the state promises them in salary, I was informed by some of the exiles; that the rebels who were sentenced to exile after the last Polish rebellion were treated by the accompanying soldiers more harshly than other exiles, indeed with pitiless severity, was the complaint of a former gendarme who told me the story of his life through a German-Russian interpreter. But to make the present government responsible for such excesses, to reproach them with constant barbarity, to persist in talking about the knout, which was abolished years ago, and in general to represent our Eastern neighbours as incorrigible barbarians, is simply senseless, because in every respect untrue.

All the laws, regulations, and arrangements in force at present prove that the government takes all possible thought for the exiles, and strives to render their lot less hard, and moreover gives to each an opportunity of sooner or later improving his lot. To treat exiles with unjust severity is strictly forbidden and heavily punished; to take anything unjustly away from them is looked upon as a grave offence. Everywhere there reigns the desire to lessen the severity of the punishment if it can be done, to give the convict back to human society, if that be possible. But it is only those who really deserve help that receive it, not those who pretend improvement. For they do not make hypocrites in Siberia as we do in our prisons. The mania for making prisoners canting hypocrites, which is too often seen among us, is unknown among the Russians, for they take it for granted that everyone honours and reveres the Church and the “dear saints”, fasts at the proper season, and generally performs what little is demanded by a church which is based wholly upon external forms. On the other hand, they deal with evil in the right way, and they achieve results which we might, nay, must envy.

Of the fifteen thousand banished, scarcely one thousand are sent to work in the mines each year; the rest are distributed among the different governments, being, as it is called, exiled to become colonists. In the larger prisons not only are men and women separately confined, but Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews are kept apart, and religion is taken into consideration in distributing the colonists. Whenever the convict sentenced to one of the lighter penalties has reached the place of his destination, he is presented, on behalf of the government, with a certificate of permission to reside there, and is thenceforward free to pursue any lawful calling; but he may not leave his district, or even his village, without the permission of the authorities, and he is under the constant surveillance of the police. About the reason for his banishment, or about his earlier life, he is never questioned, at least never with malevolent intentions, for “in the house of the hanged one does not speak of the hangman”. The people among whom he lives are, or have been, themselves unfortunates, or are descended from exiles; the few free settlers adopt the manners and customs of the other Siberians. The “unfortunates” are helped in every justifiable way. Even in the prisons on the way there are workshops where industrious prisoners may earn a little; schools also are established to prevent the ruin of the rising generation, and the orphans of criminals are brought up at such an expenditure of time and money that only the wilfully blind can fail to see this gleam of light, only the maliciously dumb refrain from speaking of it. In the prison at Tjumen we visited the prison school, in which a young priest imparted instruction to Christian, Jewish, and Tartar children alike, and it was a good face, a veritable head of Christ, that this long-haired and bearded, though still youthful ecclesiastic showed us. To be sure, the Jewish and Tartar boys had to read and repeat the catechism of the Orthodox Church as well as the Christian children, and a quiet hope of winning one or another of the former to Christianity may perhaps have lived in the breast of the priest; but what harm could priest or catechism do compared with the advantage gained? The boys learned to read Russian by means of the catechism, and they learned writing and arithmetic as well; that was the main thing. In the same place we visited an orphan asylum founded, built, and for the most part maintained and conducted, by a wealthy lady, and destined for the children of exiles who died on the journey or in the town prisons. It was a model institution in the best sense of the term, with happy child-faces, beautiful school-rooms and dormitories, workshops and play-rooms, a little theatre with all the necessary appurtenances, the whole a work of mercy whose value cannot be gainsaid. But we were to learn more than this.

Fig. 76.—Interior of a Siberian Peasant’s Dwelling.

In Tjumen, Omsk, Tobolsk, and not only in the towns, but throughout the various governments, we lived among and had constant intercourse with exiles who had for the most part been convicted of lighter offences, thieves, cheats, sharpers, tramps, and vagabonds, as well as with seditious Poles and other rebels. The bank director who received us hospitably was a Polish rebel sentenced to twelve years’ banishment, and the joiner who made us some boxes had robbed the post; the coachman who drove us had been guilty of a serious theft; the waiter who served us had picked the pocket of a guest in an inn; the friendly man from Riga who helped us to cross the Irtish had forged a document; Goldmacher, our Jewish valet, had sold little Russian girls to Turkish harems; the maid who cleaned our room had killed her child; the chemist in Omsk was said to have dealt in poisons with no good intentions. After a time we looked at every one in the light of the crime or misdemeanour which he might have committed, and we had only to inquire of the superintendent of police about some worthy men, among whom were merchants, notaries, photographers, actors, to hear of false coining, embezzlement, fraud, and so on. Yet all these people earned their daily bread, and something over, and many a one who wished to remain unknown would not have suffered inquiries as to his past to go unpunished, because he had completely broken with it.

That an exile who has been a criminal can thus break with his past is due entirely to his fellow-citizens and the government, who strive, by every means in their power, to further all honest endeavours to begin a new life. Those who desire work get it without mistrust; they are taken into service without anxiety; the former thief is employed as groom, coachman, or cook; the child-murderess is hired to wait upon children; the convict artisan plies his own trade when his services are required. And we are assured that those who employ them have seldom reason to regret it. Thus many a criminal is gradually restored to society as a respectable citizen, and his sins are not visited upon his children to the fourth, indeed scarcely to the second generation. What is practically impossible with us is quite possible in Siberia—to transform a criminal into an honest man. That this does not always succeed, that there are incorrigibles in Russia as well as among us, is freely admitted by the Siberians themselves; but it is a noteworthy fact that the idler who is cast off by his community in Siberia falls into crime much more readily than the criminal who has suffered punishment relapses into his former habits.

While the class of exiles whom we have hitherto considered are allowed to follow any occupation they may choose, those who have committed graver crimes are compelled to labour in the mines. With regard to Nertschinsk, in which on an average four thousand of these unfortunate exiles work, I have obtained through General von Eichwald, the present superintendent of the mines on the crown-lands, the most precise information, and what I learned about the convicts themselves may be shortly related as follows:—

All the criminals who are condemned to the mines are brought thither in chains, and are obliged to perform the same amount of work in their fetters as the miners who are free. The intelligent overseer of the mine, under whose command and surveillance they are, treats them well if only to secure his own life and the lives of his family, for he has not sufficient forces at his disposal to quell an insurrection should one arise. The crime of each convict is made known to him; so he asks no questions of the convict himself with regard to his past. But after some time the great majority pour out their hearts to him and beg for a mitigation of punishment. The families of a criminal condemned to the mines are also allowed to follow him, or he is not prevented from forming family ties. If he is bound to humanity in this way, he often, very often, becomes penitent, and with repentance awakens the hope that the past may be forgotten, followed by the endeavour to make it so. He works one, two years in chains, conducts himself well, and thus awakens confidence. His superior orders his fetters to be removed. He remains true to his resolutions, continues to work diligently, and begins to take thought for his family. This binds him fast to the land he had dreaded so unspeakably at first; it turns out not so bad as he had expected, and he begins to grow contented. Now is the time to restore him to society. The overseer gives him permission to till the soil. Years have passed since his crime was committed; he only remembers it like an evil dream. Before him he sees a growing peasant-estate, behind him his chains. His native land seems strange to him now, and he has become reconciled to the foreign one. He becomes a peasant, works, earns money, and dies a reformed man. With his death the bondage of his children ceases, and they continue as free Siberian subjects to till the piece of land with which the government presents them. This is no invention, but reality.