Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/235

I have not been able to speak favorably of many Siberian prisons, nor to praise many Siberian officials; but it affords me pleasure to say that of Colonel Kononóvich I heard little that was not good. Political convicts, honest officers, and good citizens everywhere united in declaring that he was a humane, sympathetic, and warm-hearted man, as well as a fearless, intelligent, and absolutely incorruptible official. Nearly all the improvement that has been made in the Kará penal establishment within the past quarter of a century was made during Colonel Kononóvich's term of service as governor. In view of these facts I regret to have to say that he was virtually driven out of Siberia by the worst and most corrupt class of Russian bureaucratic officials. He was called "weak" and "sentimental"; he was accused of being a "socialist"; he was said to be in sympathy with the views of the political convicts; and the isprávnik of Nérchinsk openly boasted, in the official club of that city, that he would yet "send Colonel Kononóvich to the province of Yakútsk with a yellow diamond on his back." How ready even high officers of the Siberian administration were to entertain the most trivial charges against him may be inferred from the following anecdote. During the last year of his service at Kará there came to the mines a political convict, hardly out of his teens, named Bíbikof. As a consequence of long-continued suffering and ill-treatment on the road, this young man was as wild, suspicious, and savage as a trapped wolf. He seemed to regard all the world as his enemies, and glared at every officer as if he expected a blow, was half afraid of it, but was prepared to die fighting. Colonel Kononóvich received him courteously and kindly; sent the wife of one of the political exiles to him with clean fresh underclothing; attended generally to his physical needs, and finally said to him, "Remember that nobody here will insult you or ill-treat you." The young convict was greatly surprised by such a reception, and in a letter that he subsequently wrote to a friend in European Russia he said, "I am glad to know, from the