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SIBERIA

Between the years 1871 and 1876 the police arrested 3147 runaway convicts in the province of Tobólsk, and more than 5000 in the province of Tomsk; while three times as many more, probably, crossed those provinces unmolested.[1] According to statistics published by the Russian exile administration, the number of forced colonists enrolled in the provinces of Irkútsk and Yeniséisk and the territory of the Trans-Baikál in 1886 was 110,000, and of that number 48,000, or 42 per cent., had run away and could not be found. In Western Siberia the number of runaways was still greater. A census of the exiles in the towns and villages of the two West-Siberian provinces of Tobólsk and Tomsk showed that only 33 per cent. of them were in the places where they had been colonized, and that 67 per cent. of them had disappeared.[2] Thousands of these runaways perished, doubtless, of hunger and cold, or were shot by the exasperated peasants whom they had robbed; but thousands more roamed about the country as brodyágs, begging, stealing, attacking freight caravans, and committing murders, in order to sustain their wretched lives.[3] The number of crimes committed by common-criminal exiles between 1872 and 1876 in the province of Tobólsk was 5036, and in the province of Tomsk 4856.[4] In certain parts of the province of Tobólsk, as for instance in the district of Tiukalínsk, the number of judicial condemnations for crime, in every thousand of the population, is

  1. ↑ Eastern Review, No. 35, p. 2. St. Petersburg, Sept. 3, 1887.
  2. ↑ Siberian Gazette, No. 48, p. 3. Tomsk, June 26, 1886.
  3. ↑ Freight caravans were attacked constantly by armed bands of highwaymen on the great Siberian road between Tomsk and Áchinsk in 1886, and several of the worst stretches were finally patrolled by a force of mounted police. Even the city of Tomsk itself was terrorized in February, 1886, while we were there, by a band of criminals who made a practice of riding through the city in sleighs at night and catching belated wayfarers with sharp grappling-hooks. See Eastern Review, No. 9, p. 5; Feb. 27, 1886, No. 40, pp. 1, 2; Oct. 2, 1886, and No. 48, p. 2; Nov. 27, 1886. See also Siberian Messenger, No. 23, p. 6; Oct. 17, 1885, and Siberian Gazette, No. 38, Sept. 21, 1886, and No. 4, Jan. 1, 1888.
  4. ↑ Eastern Review, No. 48, p. 3. St. Petersburg. Nov. 27, 1888.
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