Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

When Washington or London or Paris is puzzled about Russia and what course to pursue with that country, I would like to take a group of the diplomats to such a Siberian prison as I saw and let them spend a single night in it with the doors locked and not quite sure how many years it would be before somebody bade them come out into the light of day. I believe they would appreciate better the doubts and suspicions of the Russian people about government in the making.

I wished to make a note of what was on the wall of that cell, but it was too cold to unbutton my coat and get out pencil and note book. I read it over and over—I can still see it in my mind’s eye. It was seventy-two below zero that morning, and I was willing enough to walk out and get into my drosky and go about my business. And I thought of Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and a lot of people who had done something for human liberties—and mine.

Chita was the place to which the group of revolutionists known as “The Decembrists” had been sent, back about 1840. And an old man in Chita who had spent years as an exile, had a collection of branding irons and other implements of torture used on convicts in a private museum. Among other things were figurines of convicts made by convicts, complete in every detail, even to the leg chains and the convict clothing. These figurines, including the chains, had been moulded out of convict bread!

And in Chita I saw “Damskaya Oolitsia,” or “The Street of the Dames.” This consisted of two rows of log houses near the railroad tracks, which had been built by the wives of the Decembrist exiles for habitations, these gentlewomen having followed their husbands into exile and having been granted the right to build a street for themselves.

These wives were not allowed to communicate with their husbands, who were worked outside the prisons in chain-gangs. But with that feminine ingenuity for outwitting locksmiths when there is love in the heart, these brave women managed to talk with their husbands. The clever trick was accomplished by hiring a carriage from the aborigine Buriats of the locality, and driving past the chain-gangs. When close to the working convicts, the horse was made to balk. The women, pretending to be arguing with the driver and demanding that he make the horse go on, shouted in French.

The Russian guards of course did not understand French, but the convict-husbands did. Thus messages of hope were transmitted, and news of what was going on in Petrograd and Moscow in revolutionary circles, with probably information that pardons were being sought, was given to the exiles.

Many of these brave and loyal women remained in Chita till their deaths. Most of the husbands died in prison, and the widows went back to the cities of Europe.

The new Czar came to the throne—he who was to lose it. There is a grotto in the forests back of Chita to commemorate his visit to the city while he was the Crown Prince. He made the journey by sledges, for at that time there was no railroad. He might have learned a lot in Chita about government, but the Second Nicholas was weak and stubborn and would not heed even the advice of his greatest statesman, Count Witte. And the prisons of Nicholas the Second brought about his ruin and the ruin of his Empire. After all, I wonder if prisons cannot teach lessons in freedom.

Some men are born a thousand years too late, and are a menace to our present civilization. Some men are born a thousand years too soon, and having ideals a cycle in advance of human progress, likewise may become a menace to organized society. But the Russian government lagged behind human progress—even such progress as its own people made under governmental oppression. So the government imprisoned thieves and murderers—what we call criminals. But it also classed as criminals, and rightly, nihilists and assassins who used violence against the government. But it also classed as criminals, and imprisoned them, men and women with the greatest visions and the greatest spirits in the Empire. Thinking became a crime.

The government’s attitude toward a Tolstoy differed in no way from its attitude toward a crack-brained agitator, except that it dared imprison or execute the agitator, but only dared scowl at Tolstoy.