As a rule, they travel along byways and tracks known only to themselves through the taiga, or primeval forest, but they sometimes boldly appear upon the great highways to Moscow. They are often to be met with in couples or small bands, still in their prison rags, skirting the forest and keeping near the edge so as to hide quickly at the first alarm. Before the days of the railway, they would engage in conversation with friends in any passing party of convicts on the march, and even dared to salute the officers, who might know them perfectly but who would not interfere with them. Life is often very hard with them, but the Siberian peasants are usually charitable, partly from religious feeling, but not a little from fear, for the brodyaga is vindictive and capable of showing his ill-will murderously. The doors of dwelling houses are kept fast shut, but food is often placed outside on the window-sill,—a piece of bread and cheese or a bowl of thickened milk. Sometimes the bath-house, at a little distance, in a detached building, is left open to give a night’s shelter, but it is dangerous to admit a tramp into the main residence. Leo Deutsch tells the following story of the unfortunate results of incaution. It is from the lips of one of the principal actors.
“We’d been a few days on the road when one stormy night we came to a village. It was pouring in torrents, and we could find nobody who would let us in, till at last an old man opened the door of his hut. We begged him in God’s name to give us shelter. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘will you promise to leave us old folks in peace?‘ ‘What do you take us for, grandfather?‘ said we. ‘Have pity on us!’ So he let us in, and the old woman gave us something to eat, and they allowed us to lie on the stove by turns. Well, they went to sleep and we just did for them, and went off with everything that could be of any use to us. We didn’t get far: the peasants came after us and caught us; and then there was the usual game: trial and sentence to penal servitude.”
Frequently the recaptured brodyaga is sentenced to only a few years’ penal servitude, when he was originally sentenced for a much longer period, and thus escape not only gives him freedom for a time, but considerably lessens his punishment even after a second or third trial. This is the result of the impossibility of establishing the identity of persons arrested without passports, but the difficulty has largely disappeared in recent years with the more systematic methods of photographing the convicts.
The brodyagi were Ishmaelites against whom every hand was turned. The people of Siberia showed them little mercy and constantly hunted them down simply to rob them of anything they possessed. It was better than chasing an antelope, they said; the beast had only one skin, the convict had two; his coat, his shirt, boots and clothes, and something in his pockets. Again—quoting from Deutsch—there was the case of a tramp who had engaged himself as a labourer during the winter months. When paid his wages, a mere pittance, he wandered forth; his late master pursued him, shot him from behind a bush and repossessed himself of the money. The Siberian woods held many unrecognised corpses, about whom no questions were asked. Life is cheap in the great convict land.
With the advent of spring, when approaching summer renders life in the woods bearable, the “free commands,” comprising persons sentenced to simple banishment or conditionally released, begin to overflow into the forests, and a constant stream of fugitives bent upon changing their lot sets westward. The signal for the start is the first note of the cuckoo; hence the prison synonym for an escape is “to go to General ‘Kukushka’ for orders.” They pass around Lake Baikal, climbing the high, barren mountains that surround it, or they cross it on a raft or empty fish cask. Their fires are to be seen in the distance guiding the hunters who are out to avenge some new outrage of the runaways.
It is estimated that the numbers of vagabonds at large in the summer months exceed thirty thousand. By far the larger part of these reappear at the convicts’ settlements when winter arrives. They are not recognised and have steadfastly refused to recollect their proper names, so one and all are provided with the same appellation of “Ivan Dontremember,”—a large family, and the name carries with it the penalty of five years’ hard labour. When deportation to Saghalien was later adopted on a large scale, the hope was entertained that the fever for escape would in a measure be cured by the difficulties and dangers of the savage conditions of that wild and distant land. The prison administration strongly recommended that the most incorrigible runaways should be interned on that convict settlement, where, hemmed in by sea and ice, they were cut off from the mainland of Asia and circumscribed in their bids for freedom. The Saghalien brodyagi, however, have been as active for evil and as irrepressible as in Siberia; they have worked in gangs, and rendered more desperate by the poverty of the country and the greater difficulties of subsistence, they have become more recklessly criminal. Fugitives who had broken prison joined forces and terrorised whole districts, attacking posts and settlements, committing the worst outrages, and long defying pursuit and recapture. More detailed accounts of the prevailing lawlessness in Saghalien belong to a later date.
The multiplication of escapes by the most desperate characters in Siberia, and their almost inevitable recapture and reconviction, developed some detestable features in prison life. If anything were needed to emphasise the misusage of the comparatively innocent victims of Russian oppression, it will be found in the permitted predominance of the worst elements. The best were forever at the mercy of the worst; the hardened miscreants ruled the prisons; they might not be in the majority, but they depended upon the strength that came with combination of the truculent and masterful banded together. Where convicts gathered together in any number the first step was the organisation of the artel, or “union,” which governed the rest with irresistible despotism. In the days of marching by road the union was generally formed at the first halting place, when a starosta, or “chief,” was forthwith elected by the prisoners from among their own body, and nominally by the vote of the majority. But the decision lay really with the “Ivans,” the recidivists who had been in exile before; the old, experienced rogues and vagabonds, who imposed their will upon their comrades through their nominee. It was the ruthless rule of a secret oligarchy, wielding despotic and irresponsible power entirely in its own interests. The individual prisoner sacrificed his personal rights to gain the protection of the association which pretended to stand between him and the authorities. The union had funds acquired by means of a tax assessed on the whole body, and from other sources of revenue, such as the sale by auction to the highest bidder of the privilege of keeping a sutler’s shop where tea, sugar and white bread were sold openly, and where tobacco, playing cards and intoxicating liquor might be secretly purchased.
The will of the artel was law; its functions were far-reaching and its authority absolute over all the members. It worked secretly and out of sight, securing its ends by astute devices and a free use of bribes to officers and soldiers, and by utilising the knowledge that it was backed up by the whole number of prisoners. Among its duties were concerting plans of escape with the requisite assistance; the suborning of the executioner to flog lightly; the hiring of telyegas and sleighs for conveyance by the road of those who could pay for the privilege, frequently to the exclusion of the really weak and suffering; the bribery of all officials; and the enforcement of all contracts and agreements among the prisoners. It had its own unwritten code, its own standard of honour and obligation, its own penalties. A member might commit almost any crime, provided he was loyal and obedient to the organisation; if he betrayed it or revealed its secrets, no matter under what compulsion, he was already a dead man. The whole continent of Asia could not hide or save the unfaithful exile. If condemned by the pitiless tribunal, his fate would certainly overtake him somehow, somewhere, even at a long distance from the scene of his offence. The traitors might secure the protection of the authorities and live altogether in the strictest solitude, but immunity was only secured for a time. The blow would fall eventually. Kennan quotes two cases, in one of which the victim was choked to death on board a convict steamer on the voyage to Saghalien, and in the other, he was found dead, with his throat cut, in a Caucasian étape.
The chief of the union was a person of great importance; he had the whole strength of the society at his back and was the recognised intermediary with the authorities. An astute convoy officer would enter into relations with him, and in return for a promise that no escapes would be attempted, winked at the removal of leg irons on the road, which, as has been said, the wearer could always accomplish by altering the shape of the anklets. Even a high official, no less a personage than the inspector-general of exiles, would make a cash contribution to the funds of the artel to secure this same promise. If any daring convict should then escape, the union was eager to effect the recapture, either of the actual fugitive or of some runaway found at large. The ultimate fate of the fugitive has already been indicated.
The artel, acting through its leaders, the “Ivans,” who helped the starosta to his place and practically controlled him, claimed the right to enforce the strict observance of the agreements made between convicts, and especially in regard to “swops,” or the exchange of identities, with all the attributes and responsibilities attaching to each. In recent years, great pains have been taken to prevent this by such means as the obligation to carry photographs and personal description which are constantly compared with the individual. But the exchanges were long made with impunity, facilitated by the loose system prevailing. Every marching party consisted of two principal classes; the convicts sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour, and the ssylny, sentenced to exile only as forced colonists. The penalties are quite unequal, and many of those doomed to suffer the most severe would be glad to exchange positions with the colonists when any could be induced to accept the heavier burden. There were many such; it was only a question of price, and that was not generally high; often a ridiculously small compensation sufficed and the bargain was soon made.