CHAPTER X
SAGHALIEN
Failure of the scheme to utilise Saghalien as a convict settlement—Testimony of an official on the terrible condition of the exiles—Gambling and drunkenness universal—Prevalence of immorality—The prisons hot beds of vice—No classification of the prisoners—Convicts refuse to settle on the island as colonists at the expiration of their sentence—Account of two assassinations at Alexandrovsk—Description of the cemetery there—Female murderers on the island—Sophie Bluffstein, called the “Golden Hand”—Her adventurous career of crime—Sent to Saghalien as a political prisoner—Carried on criminal operations when released—Recaptured and again confined—Finally released and settled on the island until her death—The merchant of Alexandrovsk and his unfaithful wife—The vagrants in Saghalien—Barratasvili—His capture and death—Horrible story of the fate which befell the convict road-makers—Politicals on Saghalien—Their terrible sufferings.
The day will come when Russia, like the rest of the world, will learn that it cannot finally dispose of its worst elements by shooting them down on some distant dust heap. Siberia will act in its own defence as did Australia, and refuse to be forever the dumping ground for criminals. The prosperous development of that vast and richly endowed territory has been too long delayed and already a change is imminent. Enterprise has been stimulated by the construction of the great Trans-Siberian railway. As Siberia grows in wealth and importance it will surely resent and repudiate the exile system, whether enforced by the improved methods of railway travelling or facilitated by sea communications.
The old idea of removal still obtains, although an effort has been made to avoid the horrors of the prolonged pilgrimage on land, by substituting the long sea voyage from Odessa, through the Suez canal and the southern seas to far Saghalien. Banishment to that convict colony, although half the island has passed to the victorious Japanese, will still survive, despite its manifest failure.
After the experience of a quarter of a century, it may be most unhesitatingly asserted that the net result of the deportation to Saghalien has been most disappointing. Failure has met the Russian government on every side. Transportation has fulfilled none of the aims of penal legislation, has been neither reformatory nor deterrent, but merely painful and punitive without any return in benefit to the colony. The island has made no progress; its scanty natural resources have been little utilised, and no return has been obtained from the cultivation of the indifferent soil. At the best period, barely one-tenth of the convicts qualifying for conditional freedom, and labouring to become proprietors of farms with lands cleared and stocked with cattle, were of any value in carrying on the work; of the remaining nine-tenths, half had no heart in it, and the other half were frankly idlers and vagabonds hanging about the settlements, looking for free rations, and when the issue ceased, ranging the country as masterless men depending on theft and depredation for their bare living.
The social atmosphere was vitiated, and noxious evil elements predominated; general depravity had become almost universal. It was the old story of Australian transportation, and the later experience of New Caledonia. Once more, penal exile stands condemned as a secondary punishment, showing the same absence of any redeeming or compensating features in the improvement of these new lands or the amelioration of the individual. The system must be still more barren of results in the future, now that the southern half of the island—the part most favourable to agriculture—has been surrendered to Japan as part of the last war indemnity. This will seriously diminish the amount of land available for the “exile settlers,” as they are called.
The efforts made to colonise have been feeble and fruitless. Convict labourers were set to clear the forests and reclaim waste lands, but in a desultory, half-hearted fashion, without skill or knowledge, and wielding primitive instruments and imperfect tools. Much time was wasted in covering long distances to draw rations, and depending upon the administration for advances to provide seed and stock, both inadequate in quantity and of very inferior quality. As a general rule, the settlers were physically unfit for the work in hand; their health was not robust; they soon aged and broke down under the rough conditions of daily life. All were crushed with indebtedness to the government for advances, and also to private usurers who supplied means for self-indulgence. A fierce passion for gambling consumed them, and drunkenness was universal. Vodka was smuggled in freely from Japan, and numbers of illicit stills manufactured it secretly upon the island. One of the principal officials spoke as follows of the deplorable state of things:—
“Convict life on Saghalien is a frightful nightmare. It is a compound of debauchery, insolence and bravado, mixed with real suffering from hardship and privation, and tainted indelibly with crime and corruption.” Children born on or brought to the island are educated in the worst vices, and when still of tender years are already profligate or depraved. Modesty does not exist; young girls of twelve and thirteen are invariably seduced and abandoned to prostitution; men enter into the civil marriage so as to profit by the immorality of their temporary wives; many female convicts are retained in government hands, simply to purvey concubines for the colonial officials. The unsavoury and shameless relations of the sexes are among the principal reasons why colonisation has absolutely failed. There is no virtue among the female residents of Saghalien, whether they are “free” women who have come out voluntarily to join husbands or parents, or those condemned to deportation. The latter are in many respects better placed than the former, for they receive government shelter and allowances in food.
The prisons on the island are hot-beds of vice; all classes of offenders are herded together, with no system of classification but the one based upon the length of sentence. An attempt has been made to separate the uncondemned awaiting trial from the recidivist and hardened offender, but the division is not carried far, and too often the association is indiscriminate, and the wholly bad habitual criminals mix freely with the less hardened wrongdoers, who are rapidly corrupted and debased by their evil surroundings. The worst elements are concentrated in the “testing” prison of Alexandrovsk, including those who have graduated and grown gray in crime on the mainland. Prison discipline is generally slack and ineffective, and from ill-judged economy the staff of warders is too weak for supervision and control. The officers themselves are often of inferior stamp, drunken, untrustworthy, overbearing, given to “trafficking” with the prisoners, accepting bribes for the clandestine introduction of strong drink, or to assist in escapes, quick to oppress and misuse their charges.
Another impediment to colonisation is the noted and invincible dislike to the place constantly present in the minds of the enforced colonists or exiled class at large. No ex-convict would willingly remain on Saghalien. When their terms of detention are ended, all want to turn their backs on the island forever. Nothing would reconcile one to continued residence, not even the acquisition of comparative wealth and the possession of lands and herds, a house to shelter him, and domestic ties. Anyone who can happily scrape together the necessary means hungers to spend it in paying his passage home. He must possess his soul in patience for a long time. Six years must be spent as an exile settler after release from his prison probation; six more as a peasant, and then only permission is granted to cross to the mainland, but never to return to St. Petersburg or Moscow. Now and again a fugitive—and there is a large percentage of escapes as we shall see—may reach home, but he is in constant danger of rearrest. One political prisoner actually succeeded in reaching the capital, but had the bad luck to meet in the streets of St. Petersburg a gendarme officer who knew him. He was recognised and sharply interrogated. “How did you manage to come so far, and what brings you here?” asked the officer. “This brought me,” replied the exile, as he promptly drew his revolver and shot his inconvenient questioner down. Arrest followed immediately, and trial, with a fresh sentence of fifteen years. Once more he was sent to Saghalien, where he is still living as an exile settler with small hope of a second enlargement.