[3]. In the latter part of his book Dostoyevski corrects this early account of the supposed parricide, and tells us that it was all a mistake. It was a grave case of judicial error. The convict, when he had served ten years’ imprisonment, was proved to be entirely innocent. When the real murderers had been discovered and had confessed their crime, the wronged man was set at liberty.
This animal insensibility carried so far was no doubt phenomenal. It showed an organic defect in the man’s nature, but conscience still lurked in its lowest depths, and there were times when he was vexed and tormented by great agitation in his sleep, when he cried aloud, “Hold him! Cut off his head!” Outwardly, in his waking hours, he never showed the slightest signs of remorse or repentance, and this is characteristic of the great bulk of criminals. Dostoyevski avers that in all the years he mixed with them he never noticed even the most fugitive indication of regret or moral compunction for crimes committed. “The criminal,” he adds, “who has revolted against society, hates it, and considers himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Is he not, moreover, undergoing his punishment? Accordingly, he is absolved, acquitted in his own eyes.”
Most convicts exhibited similar personal traits. A few showed a gay, frivolous demeanour, which drew down on them the unmixed contempt of their fellows; the larger number were morose, envious, inordinately vain, presumptuous, susceptible and excessively ceremonious. Their first endeavour was to bear themselves with dignity; to submit to discipline and obey the rules, but with self-respect, so long as they were enforced fairly and reasonably. Established usage had great weight, almost as much as official regulations. Every new arrival was soon brought into line and found his level with the rest. A man at first reception might seek to show off and astonish his fellows by bold talk and loud threats, but it was all wasted breath; he soon yielded submission, willingly or unwillingly, unconsciously perhaps, to the predominant tone of the place.
Class distinctions were not ignored in this Russian ostrog, but convicts of noble birth, of title even, and educated as gentlemen, had an especially hard time. In English prisons such persons receive a certain consideration from their fellows, are addressed civilly and treated with some respect. At Omsk they were cordially disliked and subjected to many annoyances. There were some half-dozen, like Dostoyevski, of noble rank, who had been degraded from their position and were looked down upon and despised by the other convicts, who would not admit them as members of their class. A gibe commonly heard was, “Ah, Monsieur’s carriage once drove people in the street; now Monsieur picks hemp.” Their comrades were aware of their peculiar sufferings and made sport of them. “It was above all when we were working together,” declares Dostoyevski, “that we had most to endure, for our strength was not equal to theirs and we were seldom of much use at labour. Nothing is more difficult than to gain the confidence of the common people; above all such people as these!”
The unequal effect of the punishment was very marked in the ostrog. “A common man,” says our author, “sent to hard labour, finds himself in kindred society, perhaps even in a more interesting society than he has known. He loses his native place and his family, but his ordinary surroundings are much the same as before. A man of education, condemned by law to the same punishment as the common man, suffers incomparably more. He must stifle all his needs, all his habits; he must descend into a lower sphere, must breathe another air. He is like a fish thrown upon the sand. The punishment he undergoes, nominally equal for all criminals according to law, is ten times more painful and more severe for him than for the common man. This is an incontestable truth, even if one thinks only of the material habits that must be sacrificed.”
The principle holds good in penal codes everywhere. As a general rule, there is no differentiating treatment, no regard for antecedent conditions of rank, position, or education, and it is argued, no doubt rightly, that the offender of the better class knows better and has no excuse for lapsing into crime. When he falls, it is under the impulse of irresistible evil nature, and his misdeeds will rival the worst. There were five ex-nobles at Omsk, and the majority, three at least, were incorrigible blackguards, criminal to the backbone. Dostoyevski sketches their portraits in a few incisive strokes and in the blackest colours. One was a man who offered the most repulsive example of degradation and baseness to which he may fall whose feeling of honour has perished within him. This youth acted as spy and informer for the governor, to whom, by the intermediary of a servant, he repeated all that was said and done in the prison. It was a base trade which he had adopted when at large in St. Petersburg and before he had completed his studies. Being short of funds, he sold himself to the police authorities after a quarrel with his parents, and betrayed a number of associates to obtain the means for satisfying the grossest and most licentious desires. At last, moved by insatiable greed, he joined in a mad plot which he should have seen was hopeless, for he was not without intelligence, and was arrested, tried and condemned to ten years as a hard-labour convict in Siberia. He accepted his fate without repining; he could fall no lower, and as a convict he might perpetrate any villainies without shame or compunction.
“I think of this disgusting creature,” says Dostoyevski, “as of some monstrous phenomenon. During the many years I lived in the midst of murderers, debauchees and proved rascals, never in my life did I meet a case of such complete moral debasement, determined corruption and shameless turpitude.... To me he was never more than a piece of flesh furnished with teeth and a stomach, greedy for the most offensive and ferocious animal enjoyments, and ready to assassinate anyone to compass them. He was a perfect monster, a mere animal restrained by no feelings, no rules of conduct.... Fire, plague, famine, no matter what scourge, is preferable to the presence of such a man in human society.... The common-law convicts maintained friendly relations with him and were more affable with him than with us. They thought nothing of his base actions; espionage and denunciation were in the air as natural products of the place, and the kindly attitude of the authorities, whose creature he was, gave him importance and a certain value in the eyes of his fellows.... He poisoned the first days of my imprisonment and drove me nearly to despair. I was terrified by the mass of baseness and cowardice into which I had been thrown. I imagined that every one else was as foul and contemptible as he.”
Some years later this man was the hero in an escape from the prison which caused considerable commotion at the time. A change had come over his circumstances, for his patron and protector, the major for whom he acted as spy, had left the prison, and his palmy days were a thing of the past. He then spent his time in forging passports, but pined for more remunerative employment, and at last resolved to make a bold stroke for freedom. He allied himself with another convict named Kulikov, a man of active, enterprising character, full of strength and self-reliance, who calculated the chances coolly and was prepared to take any risks to get away from the prison and lead his own life outside. They were well suited to each other, equally bold and determined, equally intelligent and cunning.
Their first step was to seduce a soldier to assist them in their flight. According to the rules, convicts were never suffered to go about without an escort of one or more soldiers, but thus attended they might leave the prison precincts and enter the town. The man selected for an escort was a Pole who had been in trouble, and had served in one of the disciplinary companies, but had at length rejoined his battalion, in which he rose to the rank of corporal. He was a prey to home-sickness in an acute form, and was prepared to risk much to return to his native country. He was quite willing to further the plans of the intending fugitives, and managed to form with them part of a force detailed to execute some repairs at a distant military barrack at that time empty of troops. In the middle of the job, the corporal took off his two prisoners, ostensibly to fetch some tools from another shop. Kulikov, with a wink, added that he would bring back some vodka, but the liquor never arrived nor the prisoners. They had gone into the town to a secure hiding place, where they changed their clothes and got rid of their irons and lay by waiting for a quiet moment to escape after the first excitement had blown over.
Their disappearance was not realised for some hours. The hue and cry was then raised and a thorough search instituted. The authorities were most unhappy, for stringent regulations had been neglected; the convicts should have been guarded by at least two men apiece and not allowed to come and go as they pleased. Inside the prison everything was turned upside down, and the prisoners were repeatedly searched and cross-questioned. The guards were doubled in the prison and beyond it, expresses were despatched to all police stations around, and mounted Cossacks beat up all the surrounding country. It was comparatively open ground; the forests were at some distance and no cover was at hand. At the end of a week the prison-breakers were recaptured in a village only seventy versts distant, and were brought back to the ostrog, chained hand and foot. Severe flogging was the certain retribution for attempted escape; Kulikov was adjudged by a court-martial to suffer fifteen hundred lashes, and the originator of the plot five hundred, but as he was consumptive, he was excused from a portion of the punishment by the doctor of the prison.