Printed in Great Britain
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
The author of the following narrative is a leader in the Russian revolutionary movement. The German transliteration of his name is given here as being the form he himself uses in Western Europe; but he is called “Deuc” in the English version of Stepniak’s Underground Russia, which was translated from the Italian, retaining the Italian transliteration of names. A more exact rendering of the Russian would be Deitch, the “ei” pronounced somewhat as in the English word “rein.”
George Kennan’s valuable work, Siberia and the Exile System, the fruit of investigations carried on under circumstances of much difficulty and even danger, has made its many English and American readers acquainted with the true conditions of life among Russian political prisoners and exiles. The story given in the present volume of the painful and tragic events that took place in the political prisons at Kara after Mr. Kennan had left the Russian Empire was written to him by, among others, a friend resident in Kara at the time, whose letter he published in his book. In it are also to be found additional particulars concerning the earlier or later history of many persons whose names occur in the following pages; and it thus throws an interesting light on Mr. Deutsch’s story, which is told so quietly, with such an absence of sensationalism, that it is sometimes necessary to read between the lines in order to grasp fully the terrible realities of the situation.
It may, perhaps, be useful to readers unfamiliar with the history of the Russian revolutionary movement if I give here a rough sketch of its development, and of its position at the present time.
From the first consolidation of the Empire under the Tsars in the latter half of the sixteenth century, Russian despotism has consistently regarded with apprehension and disfavour all manifestation of independent thought among its subjects. There has never been a time when those bold enough to indulge in it, even in what English people would consider a very mild form, were not liable to persecution, and this traditional attitude of repression and coercion had the inevitable result. Even early in the eighteenth century secret societies had come into being, but these were mostly of the various religious sects or of the Freemasons. When they began to assume a political character they were at first confined entirely to the upper classes, and took the form of revolts organised among the military, the last and most important being that of the Decabrists (or Decembrists), who attempted to overthrow the monarchy on the occasion of Nicholas I.’s accession in 1825.
Liberal views were to a certain extent fostered by Alexander I. (1801-1825), who at one time openly talked of granting a Constitution. Russians who visited Western Europe, officers in the Napoleonic campaigns, and others, had “brought France into Russia,” had made the French language fashionable, and thus had opened a way for the importation of new philosophical, scientific, and political literature, eagerly appreciated by the developing acuteness of the Russian mind. Literary influence, even the purely romantic, has throughout ranged itself on the side of liberty, Pushkin heading the poets and Gogol the novelists. Indeed, one may safely say that up to the present day nearly every Russian author of any note has been implicated—some to a greater, some to a less degree--in the revolutionary movement, and has suffered for the cause.
Alexander I. in his later years, and his successor Nicholas I., fell back on a reactionary policy. Even Freemasonry was prohibited, mere literary societies of the early forties were considered seditious, and their members were punished with imprisonment and death. There now sprang up political secret societies, whose dream was of a federal republic, or at least of a constitutional monarchy.
The accession of Alexander II. in 1855 strengthened the hopes of the reformers. The study of political and social questions became the fashion; while professors, students, and the “intellectuals” of the upper and middle classes warmly engaged in the “underground” movement. With this period are associated such names as those of Herzen, Bakounin, and Tchernishevsky, whose writings were the inspiration of the party, and even influenced for a time the Tsar himself. But the emancipation of the serfs, on February 19th, 1861, bitterly disappointed those who had hoped great things of the new monarch, and who saw from the way in which this and other liberal measures were emasculated by officials, to whom the drafting of them was entrusted by the Tsar, how futile it was to expect any effective reform as a grace from an autocrat. The reform movement, now definitely socialistic, speedily took on a revolutionary character, and culminated in the active sympathy and support given to the Polish revolt of 1863.
Alexander II. resorted to the old coercive methods; all attempts to voice the aspirations and needs of the people, or even the academic discussion of political questions, were met with the savage punishments of martial law, imprisonment, exile, death. In face of a new enactment, which had professed to give fair trial to all accused persons, special courts were set up to try political offenders; and the practice of banishment by “administrative methods” (i.e. without any trial at all) was instituted.