SIBERIA, AS A LAND OF POLITICAL EXILE.
From the reign of Peter the Great to the present moment, exile to Siberia as a punishment for political offenses, has been of constant recurrence, and most of the romance of Russian history is connected with the frozen steppes of that country. To enumerate all the illustrious names that have swelled the list of exiles up to the reign of Alexander, would be to write the history of the innumerable conspiracies which at various periods have shaken the throne of Russia, of the cruel caprices of a race of absolute and unscrupulous despots, and of the various individual passions which, under governments such as that of Russia, can always find means of making the public authorities the avengers of private hatreds. From the reign of Alexander up to the present time, sentence of exile to Siberia for political offenses has perhaps been more frequently pronounced than before; and as within this period the victims have mostly suffered for opinions, not for criminal deeds, and in many instances for opinions which, judged from the point of view of absolute right, must be pronounced to be noble and generous, though, in opposition to the reigning system in the country, the fate of these exiles has elicited the sympathy of Europe in a far higher degree than was ever called forth by the fall of court favorites, whose change of fortune was generally caused by an inordinate and selfish ambition. That to the latter, life in Siberia was but a succession of hardships, privations, and humiliations, history affirms; but what may be the fate of the exiles in the present day, there are no more authentic means of ascertaining than the narratives of the few west Europeans who have visited Siberia, and the inferences which may be drawn from the general system of convict colonization followed in the country, and from the spirit which pervades society there.
A regular system of convict colonization was commenced in 1754, during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth, who was too tender-hearted to sign the death-warrant even of the most atrocious criminal, though she tolerated and countenanced the most barbarous cruelties; but it was carried on without any attention to the necessities of the various localities, and was found not to work as favorably as might be desired. The existing irregularities having been brought to light, by the census taken in Siberia in 1819, new regulations were issued in 1822; and these were further improved upon in 1840, and brought into harmony with the improved penal code of the country. Notwithstanding the energetic endeavors of Peter the Great to force European civilization upon his people, he took little pains with regard to the necessary preliminary process of humanizing the penal laws of the country, and the most barbarous and degrading punishments continued, during his and several subsequent reigns, to be inflicted on persons of all ranks and both sexes. Torture in its most cruel forms was frequently applied, and the bodies of the criminals mutilated in the most inhuman manner, their noses and ears being cut off, and their tongues torn out by the root. Under the reign of Catharine II., mitigations were, however, introduced: torture was abolished, and the nobles, as also the burghers of the two first guilds, were exempted from corporeal punishment. The cruel and capricious Paul I., however, again gave to the world the sad and degrading spectacle of individuals of high social position and refined education wincing under the lash of the executioner; and to this day the knout and the cat-o'-nine-tails are reckoned among the instruments of correction in Russia. The punishments, as regulated by law at present, consist, according to the nature of the offense committed, in money fines, restitution, church penitence, loss of office, forfeiture of privileges and of honor, and in corporeal punishments of various kinds and degrees—regarding which it is, however, expressly stipulated that the sentence must not contain a recommendation "to flog without mercy," as was formerly the case—and in banishment to Siberia, which, in case of heinous offenses, is further sharpened by forced labor in the mines and manufactories. Capital punishment is reintroduced, but for crimes of high treason only, and is even in such cases but very rarely applied. From the execution of the Cossack rebel Pugatscher, which took place in Moscow, in 1775, fifty years elapsed before sentence of death was again pronounced in Russia, when five of the leaders of the insurrection of 1826, which had nearly deprived the Emperor Nicholas of the throne to which he had just succeeded, were sentenced to lose their lives at the hands of the hangman. The knout, in addition to hard labor for life in the mines of Siberia, is the general substitute for capital punishment; and up to 1822, all criminals under this last sentence were branded on the forehead, though the practice of slitting up the ears and nostrils, which continued in force until the reign of Alexander, was discontinued. In cases when the criminals are condemned to banishment for life, the sentence may be rendered still more rigorous by condemnation to civil death, in which cases alone the families of the convicts are not allowed to follow them into exile, and they are neither allowed to receive nor to write letters.
Kasan, in which city there is a bureau of dispatch for exiles, is the starting point of the detachments of convicts and exiles which periodically leave Russia for Siberia—their halting-places being indicated along the line of route by large four-winged wooden buildings, with yellow walls and red roofs, and surrounded by a stout palisade, erected at every post-station opposite the crown post-house. According to the improved regulations of 1840, the convicts condemned to forced labor are not allowed to travel in company with the criminals of lesser degree destined for immediate colonization, as was previously the case, but are sent in separate detachments, care being also taken that several days shall elapse between the departures of the successive detachments, so as to preclude all possibility of contact on the road. As far as can be judged from the very imperfect records which are available, the number of convicts transported to Siberia up to the year 1818 averaged 2500 yearly; but among these it may be presumed were not numbered the political exiles. In the year 1819, 3141 persons were transported; in 1820, the number swelled to 4051; and from that period until 1823, the annual number was from 4000 to 5000. In 1823 a ukase was issued, ordering that all vagrants who had until then been subjected to forced labor in the fortresses should in future be sent to Siberia as colonists. This of course greatly augmented the number transported; and during the period of six years which elapsed from the date of this ukase to 1829, 64,035 persons, or 10,067 individuals annually, were sent to people these uncultivated wilds. Among these, persons convicted of vagrancy only were, however, in a great majority, the number of criminal offenders condemned to hard labor, amounting only to one-seventh of the whole number. The number of women in proportion to that of the men was one to ten. The convicts travel on foot, all being, on starting, supplied with clothing at the public expense. The men walk in pairs; but, except in cases of extreme criminality, are rarely burdened with fetters during the journey. When passing through towns, however, irons are generally attached to their ankles, and every attempt at escape is punished with corporeal chastisement, without any reference to the cause of exile or the former social position of the individual. To each detachment are generally attached some wagons or sledges for the women, the aged, and the infirm; and these usually lead the van, the younger men following, and the whole party, commonly numbering from fifty to sixty individuals, being escorted from station to station by a detachment of the Cossacks stationed in the villages. That a journey of several thousand wersts on foot, and through such a country as Siberia, must cause much suffering, can not be doubted; but the stations are not at very great distances from each other, and travelers agree in asserting that the ostrogs—that is, fortified places—in which the convicts rest from their fatigues, afford as comfortable accommodation as any post-house throughout Siberia; besides which the inhabitants of the towns and villages through which they pass, either from that perverse sympathy which so frequently leads the unthinking masses to look upon a doomed felon as upon a victim of oppression, or from a knowledge of how many sufferers for mere opinion may be mixed up with the really guilty individuals in the troop, contribute in every way in their power to mitigate the hardships of their position. The officer commanding the escort is intrusted with the sum stipulated by law for the daily subsistence of each convict, and this must never, under any pretense, pass into the hands of the latter. Many tales are told of the barbarous treatment to which the exiles are subjected during their passage to their various places of destination; but this, it would seem, must be attributed to the general brutality of the men forming the escort, and not to any desire in the government to render in an indirect way the punishment of the condemned more severe than expressed in the terms of the sentence; though in these cases, as in all others, it is of course the despotic character of the government in Russia which prevents the complaints of the oppressed from being heard, and thus perpetuates all abuses.
The convicts who have committed heinous offenses, such as murder, burglary, highway robbery, or who have been judged guilty of high treason, and are banished for life and condemned to forced labor, are chiefly under the superintendence of the governor of Irkutsk, who determines whether they are to be employed in the mines and salt-works, or in the distilleries, or other manufactories of the crown. For each of these convicts government allows thirty-six paper rubles yearly; but the price of the necessaries of life being in Siberia so very low that the half of this suffices for the support of the convict, the other half goes to form a fund which, in case, after the lapse of four or six years, he gives proofs of reform, is given to him to begin life with in some part of the wide-spread steppes which admits of cultivation, and where a certain portion of land and materials for building a house are assigned to him. The house must, however, be erected by his own labor, and the money laid by for him be applied to the purchasing of the necessary utensils and implements for commencing house-keeping and agricultural pursuits. From this moment the convicts become glebæ adscripti in the strictest sense of the term, as they are, under no pretense whatsoever, allowed to quit the lands assigned to them, or to change their condition; thenceforward also they pay the capitation tax and other imposts in like manner as the other crown peasants of Siberia, and enjoy in return the same rights, such as they are. The children of these convicts, born during the parents' period of punishment, are bound to the soil; but their names are not enrolled among those of the exiles, and the law orders that they shall be treated in the same manner as the overseers of the works.
The second class of convicts is subdivided into five classes, namely, 1. Exiles sentenced to labor in the manufactories; 2. Those sentenced to form part of the labor companies engaged on the public works; 3. Those allowed to work at their respective trades; 4. Those hired out as domestic servants; and 5. Those destined to become colonists. The last-mentioned of these are at once established on the waste lands allotted to them, each person obtaining an area of not less than thirty acres, and being besides furnished with materials for building a house, with a cow, some sheep, agricultural implements, and seed corn. During the first three years these settlers are exempted from all imposts; during the next seven years they pay half the usual amount of taxes, and in addition to this, fifteen silver copeks annually toward an economical fund erected for their benefit. After the lapse of these ten years they take their rank among the other crown peasants, and are subjected to the same burdens. Except when especially pardoned, these colonists are not either allowed to change their condition, or arbitrarily to quit the lands allotted to them. Colonization, according to this system, being found excessively expensive, and at the same time very precarious, on account of the frequent desertion of the colonists, who, living without families, were bound by no ties, was given up in 1822, but has since been resumed. In order to promote the speedy amalgamation of the convict population with the free population, the government bestows on every free woman who marries one of these colonists a donation of fifty silver rubles; while the free man who takes to wife a female convict receives a donation of fifteen rubles. Persons enjoying the privilege of collecting gold from the sands of the government of Tomsk, and who employ convicts for the washings, are bound to pay, in addition to the daily wages, one ruble and fifteen copeks in silver toward the economical fund. The convicts employed as domestic servants are fed by their employers, and receive in wages one silver ruble and a half per month. After eight years of such compulsory service, these exiles may also become colonists, and be enrolled among the peasants of the crown. Convict colonists may, should the authorities deem it expedient, be allowed to work at trades in the towns, but they must not become members of corporations or guilds, and must never be considered as being withdrawn from their condition of colonists.
The convicts condemned to forced labor, and employed in the manufactories, are the most leniently dealt with of this class, their position being, indeed, such as to render the sentence a reward rather than a punishment. In the manufactories of Telma more than eight hundred convicts are employed, who receive in wages, according to the work executed by them, from six to fifty rubles per month, besides bread flour; and their wives, who dwell in the village, earn from two and a half to five rubles per month by spinning and weaving hemp. The convicts employed in manufactories, and receiving wages, are, however, generally such as have previously been under stricter discipline, and are in a state of transition toward the position of liberated colonists. In several towns of Siberia there are establishments for them during the first stage of their punishment. In these establishments, called Remeslenui Dom, or the House of Trades, the convicts are employed as joiners, turners, saddlers, wheelwrights, smiths, &c., and are housed, clothed, and fed at the public expense, but do not receive wages, their wives and children finding employment in other ways. All orders must be addressed to the officers intrusted with the superintendence of the establishments; but persons having work executed there are at liberty to enter the workshops, and to communicate directly with the different craftsmen, who are not chained, but are guarded by military. In winter, the hours of labor are eight, in summer, twelve. The proceeds of the labor of the convicts go to pay the expenses of the establishment, and the surplus is applied to charitable purposes, such as the building and maintenance of hospitals. The convict laborers in the mines of the Ural, as well as those of Nertchynsk, dwell together in large barrack-like buildings, the worst criminals among them being alone chained; but owing to the unhealthy nature of the mines, particularly those of Nertchynsk, their existence is a very miserable one. The usual term of compulsory labor in the mines is twenty years, at the expiration of which the convicts are generally established as colonists in the vicinity of the mines, and continue to labor in them, but as free laborers, receiving wages. In case there be at any time a scarcity of mining laborers, the authorities are at liberty to apply to this purpose exiles who have not been especially sentenced to this punishment; but in such cases the exiles are paid for their labor, and are not confined to the mines for more than one year, which counts, besides, for two years of exile. Upon the whole, great latitude is allowed the central and local authorities in Siberia with regard to the employment and allocation of the convicts and exiles, it being merely laid down as a general rule that agricultural settlements shall always be made in the least populous districts of the localities capable of cultivation. It seems also to be the plan, as far as possible, to put each man to the work which he is most competent to execute; and the exiles belonging to the laboring classes are therefore, in preference, established as agricultural colonists, while those belonging to the higher classes, who are unaccustomed to manual labor, are generally located in the towns, where it is easier for them to find some means of subsistence, which may relieve the government from the burden of their support. Even independently of the political exiles, the number of the latter is great, for exile is the punishment which usually follows the detection of those peculations and abuses of power of which the Russian officials are so frequently guilty. On their first arrival, it seems, the exiles of this class are made to do penance in the churches, under the guardianship of the police, but after a time they are allowed to go about unguarded; and it is said that, when exiled for life, the Russians even of high birth bear the change of fortune with extraordinary equanimity, assimilating in a very short time, and without any apparent struggle, to the Cossacks and peasants among whom they are thrown. When, as is frequently the case, they marry Siberian women, their children in no way differ from the people among whom they live. In the city of Tobolsk, in particular, there are a great many exiles belonging to the class of unfaithful employés, the sentence being considered less rigorous the nearer the place of exile to the frontiers of Russia Proper. Political exiles are, on the contrary, sent further north and east, where the nature of the surrounding country is such as to make an attempt at flight impossible, or at least very difficult. The hardships to which these exiles are subjected seem, in by far the greater number of cases, to be exclusively such as are necessarily connected with their being torn away from all they hold dear, and transplanted from the luxurious life of European society (for these exiles mostly belong to the higher classes) to the uncultivated wilds and rigorous climate of a country but very partially redeemed from a state of nature; but the tenderest sympathies of the natives of all races seem, by all accounts, to be readily bestowed upon the exiles, who, whatever be the nature of the offense of which they have been guilty, are never named by a harsher term than that of "unfortunates." In many cases the lot of the political exiles is also mitigated by the kindness of the local authorities, who allow them the use of books and other indulgences, and even receive them as friends in their houses, when this can be done without risk of giving offense at St. Petersburg.
As in Russia nothing with which the government is concerned can be commented on by the press without especial permission, it is difficult to ascertain correctly how far the system followed in Siberia works beneficially as regards the moral reformation of the criminals, and their relations to society in general. The accounts of travelers are very conflicting—some extolling the extreme leniency with which even the worst offenders are treated, as the ne plus ultra of social policy, and dwelling with delight on its happy results; while others consider it disastrous in its consequences, and relate instances of the most atrocious crimes committed by the convicts, and of whole tracts of country in which life and property have been rendered insecure by their presence. The statistics of Siberia, however, prove the country to be improving; and all travelers agree as to the freedom from molestation which they have experienced while traversing its immeasurable steppes; and it is therefore but fair to conclude, that though the attempt at moral reformation may be unsuccessful in many instances, in general convict colonization has here borne good fruits. That great severity in the chastisement of new transgressions has been found necessary, is on the other side proved by the penal laws bearing exclusively on Siberia. According to these laws, drunkenness, fighting, idleness, theft of articles of small value, unallowed absence from the place of detention, are considered venial offenses, and are punished with from ten to forty lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails; while desertion among the colonists is punished, the first time with simple flogging, the second and third time with the cat-o'-nine-tails. If the offense be persisted in after this, sentence is to be pronounced by the local tribunals, and often consists in temporary removement to some distant and thinly-populated district, or incorporation in one of the penal labor companies. Convicts condemned to hard labor who attempt to escape are punished with the knout, and are branded on the forehead, in case this mark of ignominy have not previously been inflicted on them. Repeated thefts, robberies, and other like offenses are punished in the same way as desertion; but in these cases the value of the object stolen is not so much taken into consideration as the motives by which the criminals are actuated, and the number of times the offense has been repeated. A fourth repetition by an exile of a crime previously punished renders him liable to forty lashes with the knout, and to being placed in the category of the convicts condemned to forced labor. Murder, highway robbery, and incendiarism are, if the offender be a simple exile, punished with from thirty-five to fifty lashes with the knout, in addition to branding on the forehead, and forced labor in irons for a period of not less than three years—the term beyond this being left to the judgment of the local tribunals. The convict condemned to forced labor who renders himself guilty of similar crimes receives fifty-five lashes of the knout, is branded on the forehead, and is chained to the wall of a prison for five years, after which period he is allowed to move about, but must continue to wear fetters during his life. Criminals of this class are never to be employed beyond the prison walls, and are not even in illness to be taken into the open air beyond the prison-yard, or to be relieved from their chains, except by especial permission of the superior authorities, which can only be granted in consequence of a medical certificate.
The river Irtysh is the Styx of the Siberian Hades: from the moment they cross the ferry in the neighborhood of the city of Tobolsk, the Russian employés appointed to offices in Siberia are placed in the enjoyment of the higher grade of rank which they so much covet; and from the moment they cross this same ferry commences the extinction of the political life of the exiles. Here they exchange the name by which, until then, they have been known in the world, for one bestowed upon them by the authorities, and any change of the latter is punished with five years' compulsory labor over and above the original sentence. At Tobolsk sits the board which decides the final destination of each culprit or each martyr. It consists of a president and assessors, having under them a chancellerie divided into two sections, and has offices of dispatch in several of the towns of Siberia. Before their arrival at Tobolsk the convicts are, however, liable to be detained by the authorities of Kasan or Perm, for the public works, in their respective governments.
It is as the land of political exile that Siberia is generally known, and that it has gained so unenviable a reputation among the liberty-loving nations of Europe, whose imagination pictures it to them as a vast unredeemable desert, whose icy atmosphere chills the breath of life, and petrifies the soul. Yet the truly benevolent should rejoice in circumstances which have led a government that punishes a dissentient word as severely as the direst crime, to select exile as the extreme penalty of the law. Siberia is, it is true, the great prison-house of Russia; but it is a prison-house through which the blessed light of the sun shines, through which the free air of plain and mountain plays, and in which the prisoner, though he may not labor in a self-elected field, may still devote his faculties to the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and continue the great task of moral and intellectual progress. How different his lot from that of the Austrian prisoner of state, doomed to drag on long years of a miserable existence in the dungeons of Spielberg, or some other fortress, severed from all intercourse with the world beyond his prison-walls, deprived even of the light of day, and left in solitude and forced idleness to brood over his dark and despairing thoughts.