woman, the suicide of three of her companions, and an at- tempt at self-destruction on the part of more than twenty men. I have received from political exiles in Siberia four separate and independent accounts of the series of events that led up to this tragic climax, and it would be easy to compile from them a graphic and sensational story of "Si- berian horrors." I have no desire, however, to exaggerate or color with imagination the facts of Siberian convict life, and I shall therefore lay aside these exile manuscripts, and offer the reader, instead, a translation of a private letter written to me by a Russian gentleman who lives near the mines of Kará, who is not an exile nor a political offender, who occupies a position that affords him every opportunity to know the truth, and who not only writes coolly and dis- passionately, but confines himself to a bare statement of facts. The letter is as follows:
X , Eastern Siberia, April 11-23, 1890.
My Dear Mr. Kennan: The events herein described seem to me so important that although I have already written about them once I am going to repeat what I said for fear that my first letter has not reached you. I give you facts only, and I assure you, upon my honor, that they are facts, and facts with regard to which there is no doubt or question.
On the 5th of August, 1888, Baron Korf, governor-general of the Amúr,[1] paid a visit to the Kará convict prisons. One of the political prisoners — Elizabeth Kaválskaya[2] — did not rise to her feet when the governor-general entered her cell, and upon his making some remark to her with regard to it she replied that she
- ↑ In the year 1884 Eastern Siberia was divided into two governor-generalships, one including the provinces of Irkútsk and Yeniséisk and the territory of Yakútsk, the other comprising the maritime territory, the Amúr territory, and the territory of the Trans-Baikál. This administrative rearrangement of the political divisions of the country took the mines of Kará out of the jurisdiction of the Irkútsk governor-general and subjected them to the authority of the governor-general of the Amúr, whose headquarters were at Khabarófka. [Author's note.]
- ↑ Elizabeth Kaválskaya was tried by court-martial at Kiev in May, 1881, and condemned as a revolutionist to penal servitude for life. While in Irkútsk, on her way to the mines of Kará, she made her escape, but was recaptured, stripped naked, and searched as described in this chapter. At the time to which this letter refers she was an
