The opposition of these two powerful ministers was fatal to the reform in the Council of the Empire, and in the winter of 1889–90 a new commission was appointed to draw up another "project." When the new project will reach the stage of consideration, and what will be its fate, I have no means of knowing; but my anticipations, so far as a reform of the exile system is concerned, are by no means sanguine. The region that comprises the great mountain-range of the Caucasus has recently been governed by an officer who bears one of the double names that in Russia are so common, viz: Dóndukof-Korsákof. The quick-witted Caucasian mountaineers, who soon discovered that it was virtually impossible to get a desirable thing done by any of the bureaucratic methods of Prince Dóndukof-Korsákof's administration, invented a proverb, based on his name, to express their opinion with regard to the nature of the trouble. It was, simply, "Dóndukof promises and Korsákof hinders." To the proposed reform of the Siberian exile system the witty saying of the Caucasian mountaineers is strictly applicable. The prison administration promises and the Council of the Empire hinders. Then they exchange places, and the Council of the Empire promises while the prison administration hinders. Finally, they both promise and the hindrance comes from an investigating "commission" that has not yet obtained all the money that it hopes to get in the shape of salaries and mileage from the imperial treasury, and that, consequently, has not yet finished its researches in a field that has been examined, surveyed, and investigated ten or fifteen times already.
I hope, with all my heart, that the Siberian exile system may be abolished; but I greatly fear, nevertheless, that it will remain, for many years, one of the darkest blots upon the civilization of the nineteenth century.
