circumstances of the case, and then promised the politicals that, at the expiration of a certain fixed period, Masiúkof should be removed. The specified time elapsed, and Masiúkof still continued to hold his position as commandant of the political prisons. Then began in the women's prison a second hunger-strike, which was supported this time by the convicts in the men's prison, and which lasted twenty-two days. It ended in Masiúkof's promising that within three months he would leave Kará of his own accord. During these three months the women refused to send or receive anything that would have to pass through his hands — that is, they gave up correspondence with their relatives, and declined to take money, books, etc., sent to Masiúkof for them. The three months ended August 31, 1889. [You see the affair had dragged along for a whole year.] Madam Sigída [Hope Sigída] then tried to shame Masiúkof into leaving Kará by striking him in the face.[1] She was at once seized and thrown into the common criminal prison of Ust Kará [that is, separated from her companions]. Immediately after this, on the 1st of September, 1889, began the third hunger-strike in the women's political prison, which was finally broken up by the removal to the common criminal prison of Miss Kalúzhnaya, Miss Smirnítskaya, and Madam Kavaléfskaya. Madam Kavaléfskaya and Madam Sigída continued for a time to starve themselves, but were fed by force. Masiúkof made a report upon this series of occurrences, and, as a result of it, a proclamation was received from the governor of the Trans-Baikál and read to the political convicts, saying that, in view of the disorders at Kará, the governor-general had directed the commandant of the political prisons to resort to various severe disciplinary measures, among them corporal punishment. At the same time the governor or director of the Kará penal establishment[2] received an order from Governor-general Korf directing him to punish Hope Sigída with 100 blows of the "rods" in the presence of the surgeon, but without previous surgical examination.[3] The surgeon of the Kará prison hospital, Dr. Gúrvich, thereupon gave notice officially that, in his opinion, Madam Sigída could not endure so much as
- ↑ The other accounts that I have received from Siberia differ as to the circumstances in which this blow was given and the reasons for it. The precise facts, probably, will never be known.
- ↑ The officer who had taken the place filled at the time of my visit by Major Pótulof. [Author's note.]
- ↑ This was intended apparently to preclude the possibility of a report on the part of the surgeon that the punishment would endanger life. [Author's note.]
