One was constantly being assailed in Irkoutsk by mysterious individuals with documents which they wished delivered to their friends in Europe. I was asked to do this by at least a dozen suspicious-looking characters, who forced their way into our room at the hotel without knocking, and often declined to leave. The mention of the word “Police,” though usually had the desired effect. One of these letters was, I remember, addressed to a house in Greek Street, Soho. I passed the latter only the other day, and was sincerely glad that I had not undertaken the commission. Judging from the look of the place, one would have stood a good chance, even in the day-time, of being robbed and murdered, to say nothing of the danger of being caught by the Siberian police with a compromising paper in one’s possession.
The exiles do not have such a bad time of it as we, in England, are generally led to believe. Their term of imprisonment over, they are free to come and go as they please, and enjoy absolute freedom so long as they behave themselves, and do not give vent to their opinions too freely. I met many, of good birth and position, but from none did I hear the harrowing tales of persecution and cruelty that in England seem inseparable from the very name of Siberia. Cruelty may, and no doubt does, exist in the convict settlements of Kara and Nertchinsk in the Trans-Baikal districts, where the worst characters are sent,——Black nihilists, for instance, or those who have attempted the life of the Czar. The latter do not, like minor political offenders, get their ticket-of-leave, but remain in the mines for life. There is a prevailing impression at home that “in the mines” means literally what the words convey, that prisoners are sent down a pit to work all day and a greater part of the night, never again to see daylight till they have become reduced to a dying state by the poisonous exhalations of quicksilver. As a matter of fact, there is not a quicksilver mine in the whole of Siberia, those at Kara and Nertchinsk being of gold and silver. Quicksilver may exist in small quantities, but is not, and never has been, worked.
In former days exiles made the journey from European Russia to Irkoutsk, or whatever district they were sentenced to, on foot, but nearly half the journey to Kara (the most remote penal settlement excepting Yakoutzk and Sakhalien) is now done by steamboat and railway. Prisoners are sent from all parts of Russia to Moscow, where they are divided into gangs of three or four hundred. From Moscow they travel by rail to Nijni Novgorod, and thence to Perm in a prison ship or barge. From Perm the railway conveys them to Tiumen, whence another prison barge carries them down the Obi River, distributing en route all those destined for places in Western Siberia, until at Tomsk the remainder are disembarked, and the long tramp across Asia commences. No travelling is done in winter. The transportation season commences on the 15th of April and ends on the 7th of October. As for the march itself, it is a very different thing to what I pictured it before I saw with my own eyes how well Russian prisoners are treated. I shall perhaps hardly be believed when I say that crimes are sometimes committed by the lower orders in European Russia on purpose to be sent to Siberia. The criminals know that their term of imprisonment over, they will (if well behaved) have a grant of land and a house given them, and begin life afresh in a new country.
We passed many hundreds of prisoners on the post-road between Irkoutsk and Tomsk, but in no single instance did I see a case of cruelty such as that mentioned by the author of “The Russians of To-day.” Were the voyage to Siberia anything like the following description, it would indeed be a “Via Dolorosa.” He says:——
“The convicts are forwarded to Siberia in convoys which start at the commencement of spring, just after the snows have melted and left the ground dry. They perform the whole journey on foot, escorted by mounted Cossacks, who are armed with pistols, lances and long whips, and behind them jolt a long string of springless tumbrils to carry those who fall lame or ill on the way. The start is always made in the night, and care is taken that the convoys shall only pass through the towns on their road after dark. Each man is dressed in a grey kaftan, having a brass numbered plate fastened to the breast, knee-boots and a sheep’s-skin bonnet. He carries a rug strapped to his back, a mess-tin and a wooden spoon at his girdle. The women have black cloaks with hoods, and march in gangs by themselves with an escort of soldiers like the men, and two or three female warders, who travel in carts.”
In another part of the book:——“Nihilist conspirators, patriotic Poles, and young student girls are all mixed up, and tramp together with the criminals.”
This is indeed a sensational picture, but I cannot think the author has ever visited the scene he so graphically describes. As for “care being taken that convoys shall only pass through towns on their road after dark,” the largest gang of prisoners I ever saw was in the streets of Irkoutsk at three o’clock in the afternoon. The Cossacks who accompany the prisoners are not mounted at all, nor are they armed with lances or whips, but simply loaded rifles.
Whenever we passed a gang, once a day on an average, the prisoners seemed to be the last thing the Cossacks were thinking of, as, at intervals of about twenty yards, the latter lounged slowly along, picking berries and smoking cigarettes, while the convicts in the roadway chatted, laughed and joked among themselves (and sometimes with their guards) in a very different frame of mind from that described by the author I have mentioned. The women, it is true, marched with the men, but the bare idea of “nihilist conspirators” being “mixed up and tramping together” with the criminals is as absurd as it is incorrect. Political prisoners are allowed in Siberia to “mix up” with no one, but sent alone in charge of two gendarmes to whatever town or village they are destined. Not only are they kept apart in the prisons, where separate cells are provided for them, but also on the road. Nor are they sent with gangs of criminals, or in the prison barges, but taken by passenger-steamer to Tomsk, and thence in a four-wheeled cart or téléga, to their destination. Should it be indispensable to send them with a gang, they travel in carts at an interval of one or two miles from the main body. The gendarmes never let them out of sight, and allow them to speak to no one, though they may retain and wear their own clothes till they arrive at the mines, if condemned there. Many are simply sent to reside at some town or village till their term of punishment is over.
A VILLAGE OSTROG.——CONVICTS ON THE MARCH.