Centre of exile system at Omsk—Dostoyevski—His famous book “Recollections of the Dead House” based on his experiences in this Ostrog—Description of the prison and its heterogeneous inmates—Detestable character of an ex-noble—His attempted escape with another convict—Another well-born criminal of very different character—His industry and skill with his hands—The prison routine—Food—Extra delicacies could be obtained—Passion for gambling—Various devices for indulging it—Method of smuggling strong drink into the Ostrog—Drunken carousals—Gazin, the vodka seller—His history and atrocious crimes—Dostoyevski narrowly escapes being murdered by him.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century the exile system centred chiefly at Omsk, an ancient military post situated on the junction of the rivers Om and Irtysh. A place of arms had been erected here in 1719 to strengthen the Russian dominion among the nomads of the Asiatic Steppes. This was replaced by a formidable fortress and became a chief post on the Siberian boundary line. A large town sprang up around it, which grew into the headquarters of local administration, and was long the residence of the governor-general of Western Siberia.
Just outside the ramparts of the fortress stood a wooden prison, enclosed by a high stockade, which has an interesting penal history, having served for long years as a base and starting point for the convict exiles on their eastward march. The prison population constantly numbered about eight hundred and it was the place of durance for several remarkable prisoners. One of the greatest of Russian novelists, Dostoyevski, based his famous book, “Reminiscences of the Dead House” on his personal experiences in this old ostrog.[[2]] He was one of the early “politicals” who were subjected to the same régime as the common-law prisoner or ordinary gaol-bird, and he suffered four years as a hard-labour convict at Omsk. His offence was being involved in the Petrachevski affair in 1849, and with him in Omsk was the poet Dirov, who suffered a like term of four years for the same reason.
[2]. The ostrog was the name given to the stockaded entrenchment or rude fort built by the Cossack invaders of Siberia in the old days. As prisoners were confined more and more in these forts, the word ostrog came to define a place of durance, and is now applied to all local prisons in Siberia, and provincial lock-ups. The prison had disappeared when Kennan looked for it on his visit to Omsk. New buildings have been erected on the site.
Dostoyevski’s treatment, having regard to his offence, was a disgrace to civilisation, and it is satisfactory to know that intelligent Russian officials to-day are heartily ashamed of the episode. A full account of its enormities has been since written by a fellow prisoner named Rozhnovski, and was published in the Tiflis newspaper, Kavkaz. He was at the mercy of harsh taskmasters, endured the severest discipline, wore irons always and the prisoners’ dress, and was twice flogged. The first corporal punishment he received was for complaining in the name of the other prisoners of filthy foreign matter floating in the daily soup, and the second was for saving the life of a comrade from drowning, in direct defiance of his officer’s order to do nothing of the kind. The second “execution” was so terrible that the victim was taken up for dead; he lay insensible for so long that he was afterward nicknamed the “deceased.”
Never have the inner life and history of a Russian prison of that epoch—the middle of the nineteenth century—been so thoroughly explored and exposed as by the gifted writer, Dostoyevski. He draws on his own experience, speaking at first hand from his personal knowledge. He knew exactly what imprisonment meant, for he had been through it, constantly subjected to its irksome restraints and almost intolerable conditions. He had learned to habituate himself to its laws and penalties; to endure the most acute discomforts; to face with patient resignation the endless vista of the slow moving years, continually tortured and tormented by suffering and the complete absence of all that tends to brighten life and make it bearable. He had ample opportunities for studying and observing the convicts with whom he was so long obliged to consort. He draws them with photographic exactitude. He observed, and has effectively reproduced their traits, thoughts, feelings and inner nature. He saw them at their best and at their worst; he noted the generous emotions that sometimes swayed them, the evil passions that more often possessed them. He can do justice to the sympathy and compassion lavished on suffering comrades and reprobates; to the envy, hatred and uncharitableness constantly exhibited when moved by jealousy or consumed with temper and overmastering desire for revenge. The daily life of a Siberian place of durance at that time is brought before us with striking force: its generally wearisome monotony, to which severe toil is a welcome break; the petty, pitiful recreations enjoyed often at the risk of punishment; the vices of drunkenness and gambling, strictly forbidden although constantly indulged in; the gormandising at Christmas and other festivals. He describes the ambitious theatrical entertainment given in the convict barrack room, when the convicts, despite the difficulties raised by discipline and the dearth of means, produced a striking performance.
The old prison at Omsk was situated at the end of the citadel just under the ramparts. It was surrounded by a high palisade of stakes buried deep in the ground, enclosing a court-yard two hundred feet long by one hundred and fifty feet broad. A great gate in the stockade guarded by sentries gave admission to the prison. Looking through the interstices of the palisades from within, a narrow glimpse was obtained of the glacis of the fort sloping downward, and of a little corner of the sky above. The prison buildings consisted of a number of log huts of one story, each providing a separate barrack to accommodate roughly about two hundred convicts herded together in very close association. This was long before the extension of the cellular system to Russia, and the terrors of isolated confinement did not exist in those days. But life in common had its peculiar horrors, which our author enlarges upon. “I could not,” he says, “possibly have conjured up the poignant and terrible suffering of never being alone, even for one minute, during ten years. Working always under surveillance in the barracks, ever in the unvarying companionship of two hundred others; never alone, never! This enforced cohabitation was the sharpest and most painful sensation endured. Nowhere is it so horrible as in a prison, where the society must contain many with whom no one would willingly live.
“Among them were murderers by imprudence and murderers by profession, simple thieves and chiefs of thieves, masters in the art of finding money in the pockets of a passer-by or of lifting anything, no matter what, from the table.... The majority were depraved and perverted, so that calumnies and scandal rained among them like hail. Our life was a constant hell, a perpetual damnation.... Those who were not already corrupt on reception soon became so. Intrigues, calumnies, scandalous backbiting of all kinds, envy and hatred reigned above everything else. No ordinary tongue could hold its own against these adepts at abuse with insults constantly in their mouths.”
A curious trait in this heterogeneous assembly, in which the elements of evil predominated, was the reticence of the convicts. Some were malefactors of the worst kind, veterans in habitual crime, guilty of the most atrocious misdeeds, but they would not talk of them. On one occasion in the barrack room a miscreant who had killed and cut up a child of five began to relate the horrible details; how he had tempted the little one with a toy, inveigled it into a private place, and there used his murderous knife. He was one of the licensed buffoons of the establishment, who as a rule found a ready audience, but he was now received with one unanimous cry of indignant disgust; and he was shamed into silence. It was contrary to the unwritten law of the prison to speak of such things.
Another case was that of a parricide, a young man of noble birth who had filled the post of a public functionary. A wastrel, a spendthrift and a reckless gambler, he had been a cause of constant annoyance to his father, who remonstrated with him in vain. The son had reason to believe that he would inherit a substantial sum from his father, so he killed him in order to come into the estate more quickly and thus continue his debaucheries. Presently the corpse was unearthed from a drain; the head had been severed and placed on a cushion beside the body. The parricide’s crime was brought home to him, he was tried and convicted, degraded and deprived of his privileges, and sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour. At the ostrog he was despised by his fellow convicts because he was shameless and permitted himself to talk lightly of his crime. He sometimes spoke of his father with extraordinary callousness, and once, in boasting of the hereditary good health of his family, quietly remarked, “My father, for example, never was ill until the day of his death”—by the hand of his unnatural son.[[3]]