important requests are granted, while the most important are postponed. This is comprehensible. Every department supports that in which it is interested, and so it often happens that the resources of the imperial treasury are spent for things that are not the most important and vital. In order to avoid this, it should be decided how large a sum of money can be set apart annually for the needs of Siberia. Then the governor-general should be authorized to make suggestions with regard to reforms in accordance with local conditions and circumstances. Knowing what sum he will be allowed, he can make his representations correspond with it. I should fix this sum at first at 100,000 rúbles per annum. With such an amount it would be possible, the third or fourth year, to begin prison buildings of considerable importance. . . . With the adoption of such measures the local governor-general would be able to act energetically for the welfare of the country committed to his care.
If it please your Imperial Majesty to approve my suggestions, and if the annual sum that I have recommended for reforms in Eastern Siberia be granted, this remote country will be enabled to develop its economic resources and begin a new life.[1]
There has been some discussion in the newspapers of the question whether the Tsar is aware of the condition of the Siberian prisons and of the sufferings of the Siberian exiles. In the light of the above report the question must be answered unhesitatingly in the affirmative.
- ↑ Opposite this sentence, on the margin of the original report, stand, in the Tsar's handwriting, the words "I should greatly like to do this, and it seems to me indispensable." Upon the report, as a whole, the Tsar made the following indorsement: "I have read this with great interest, and I am more than troubled by this melancholy but just description of the Government's forgetfulness of a country so rich and so necessary to Russia. It is inexcusable, and even criminal, to allow such a state of affairs in Siberia to continue." Upon the part of the report relating to prisons and the exile system the Tsar has indorsed the words, "Grústnaya no ne nóvaya kartina" [A melancholy but not anew picture].
