seven changes of commandment[1] and the prison was managed in a hit-or-miss sort of way, according to the caprice of the man who was at the head of it. At one time the prisoners were allowed books, daily walks, money, and communication with their relatives, while at another time all these privileges were taken away from them. The partitions that were erected in the kámeras to reduce the size of the cells in 1882 were removed in 1884. The free command, which was abolished in 1881, was reëstablished in 1885. With every new officer there was a change in the regulations, and official whim or impulse took the place that should be occupied only by law. The best of the commandants, according to the testimony of the prisoners, was Burléi. Khaltúrin was brutally cruel, Shúbin was a man of little character, and Manáief was not only a drunkard, but a thief who destroyed hundreds of the prisoners' letters and embezzled 1900 rúbles of money sent to them by their relatives and friends in European Russia.[2] All of these officers were from the gendarmerie in Irkútsk. On the 16th of January, 1884, the political prison was put under the exclusive control of the imperial police, and early in 1885 Captain Nikólin was sent from St. Petersburg to take command of it.
Every word that Colonel Kononóvich said to Assistant Minister of the Interior Dúrnovo in 1881 with regard to the management of the political prison was shown by the subsequent course of events to be true. The Government forced an honest and humane man to resign, and sent, one after another, half a dozen cruel or incapable men to take his place, and it reaped, in tragedies and scandals, the harvest that might have been expected.
After we left Kará the state of affairs went from bad to
- ↑ Kononóvich, Pótulof, Khaltúrin, Burléi, Shúbin, Manáief, Burléi (a second time), and Nikólin.
- ↑ In January, 1887, three years later, Manáief was deprived of rank, orders, and nobility, and banished as a criminal to the territory of Yakútsk. (Newspapers Sibír, April 4, 1885, p. 8, and Vostóchnoe Obozrénie, Jan. 8, 1887, p. 4.)
