Siberia and the Exile System/Volume 2/Chapter II
CHAPTER II
UNDER POLICE SURVEILLANCE
IN order that I may set forth in a connected and intelligible form the results of my investigation of the Russian exile system, I find myself compelled, at this point, to break the continuity of my narrative, and to bring together, in a single chapter, a quantity of material relating to only one branch of my subject, but gathered piecemeal, at different times and in many widely separated parts of Siberia. To present a large number of closely related facts in the chronological order in which they were obtained would be to scatter them through half a dozen chapters, and thus deprive them of much of their cumulative force and significance. It seems best, therefore, to group such facts in a single chapter dealing exclusively with that particular feature of the subject to which they all relate. In a previous chapter, entitled "Exiled by Administrative Process," I grouped a number of related facts to show the working of what is known in Russia as the "administrative" banishment of political offenders. I purpose, in the present chapter, to group in a similar way a few facts with regard to the life of political offenders under police surveillance in the places to which they have been administratively banished.
The forcible deportation of "politically untrustworthy" citizens by executive order and without trial first became common in the later years of the reign of Alexander II. Administrative banishment had been resorted to, as I have said, before that time as a means of getting rid of obnoxious persons, but in 1878 and 1879, when the struggle between the police and the terrorists grew hot and fierce, exile by administrative process became a common thing, and people who were known to hold liberal opinions, or who were thought to be in sympathy with the revolutionary movement, were sent to Siberia by the score. If forbidden books, or copies of the "Messenger of the Will of the People," were found by the police in a young man's room, the fact was regarded as a sufficient warrant for his banishment. If an enthusiastic university student, inspired with an unselfish desire to do something to elevate the lower classes, ventured to open an evening school for factory operatives in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, he was sent to Siberia by administrative process. If a dozen or more young people were surprised together at night under suspicious circumstances, their names were recorded in the "untrustworthy" list of the police, and the next time the Government found it necessary to "take more vigorous measures for the preservation of public order," these unfortunate young men and women, who perhaps had assembled merely to read and discuss the works of Herbert Spencer or of John Stuart Mill, were arrested and sent to Siberia as conspirators. Friends and relatives of convicted revolutionists were banished by administrative process as a matter of course, and long before the assassination of Alexander II. six or eight hundred young people, representing all classes and all social grades, had been swept into the prisons by the drag-net of the police, and sent thence to Siberia by administrative process without even the pretense of a trial.[1] Before the end of the year 1889 there was hardly a town or large village in Western Siberia that did not contain administrative exiles, and there were whole colonies of such offenders in Tará, Tiukalínsk, Ishím, Yalútorfsk, Semipalátinsk, Kókchetav, Akmolínsk, Kurgán, Surgút, Ust Kámenogórsk, Omsk, Tomsk, and Berózof.
No rules for the government of these exiles were at that time in force. Banishment by administrative process was, in a certain sense, an extra-legal measure — a measure not defined and regulated by legislative enactment, but rather set in operation and directed by personal impulse. As a natural consequence it was pliant, changeable, and wholly subservient to the will of the higher authorities. By administrative process a man might be banished to Siberia for a year, for ten years, or for life; he might be sent to the hot sun-scorched plains of the Írtish, or to the snowy wilderness of Yakútsk; he might be treated like an infant ward, like a forced colonist, or like a hard-labor convict; and, as against the Minister of the Interior, he had not a single legally sanctioned and enforceable right. His situation was in many respects worse than that of a common felon. The latter knew at least how long and for what reason he had to suffer; his political status was definitely fixed by law, and to some extent he was protected by law from capricious ill-treatment at the hands of petty Siberian officials. The administrative exile, however, had no such protection. He stood wholly outside the pale of promulgated law; his term of banishment was not fixed, but could be indefinitely extended by the authorities at pleasure; he had no ascertainable rights, either as a citizen or as a criminal, and no means of knowing whether the local officials in dealing with him overstepped or did not overstep the limits of their rightful authority. The only checks upon their power, so far as he was concerned, were the "secret" letters of instruction that they received now and then from the Minister of the Interior. Even these checks were nominal rather than real, since the letters were often inconsistent one with another; they did not provide for half of the multifarious cases that arose; and the local authorities, when in doubt, acted upon their own judgment, and when irritated or excited disregarded the letters of instruction altogether. The natural results of such a state of affairs were confusion, disorder, and constant abuse of power. In one place the administrative exiles were required to appear every day at the police-station, sign their names in a book, and report personally to the isprávnik; in another place they were subjected to a constant and humiliating surveillance, which did not respect even the privacy of young women's bedrooms. One isprávnik would allow them to earn a little money by teaching or practising medicine, while another would throw them into prison for merely giving a music lesson or prescribing a single dose of quinine. An exile in Ust Kámenogórsk might go three or four miles from his place of banishment without receiving so much as a reprimand, while another exile, in Íshim, might be sent to an ulús in the province of Yakútsk for merely walking two hundred yards into the woods to pick berries. Everywhere there were irregularities, inconsistencies, and misunderstandings which brought the administrative exiles almost daily into collision with the local authorities.
This state of things continued until the year 1882, when the present Tsar approved a code of rules for the government of all persons living at home or in exile under police surveillance.[2] I purpose to review briefly this Code, and then to illustrate, by means of selected cases, its bearing upon the life of administrative exiles in Siberia. The Code comprises forty sections and fills five closely printed octavo pages; and it is a somewhat singular fact that, although its provisions relate almost wholly to persons who have been administratively banished, they do not contain anywhere the word "exile," nor the word "banishment," nor the word "Siberia." The author of the Code seems to have been ashamed to let it clearly and definitely appear that these are regulations for the government of men and women who have been torn from their homes and banished without trial to the remotest parts of Siberia. The only suggestion of exile in the whole document is contained in the words:
Police surveillance, over persons assigned to definite places of residence, takes effect by virtue of such assignment, and for the period of residence fixed. [Sect. 2.]
There is nothing whatever in these colorless words to indicate that the "definite places of residence" to which the offending "persons" have been "assigned" may be situated within the arctic circle, 5000 miles east of St. Petersburg; and I am confident that an uninstructed reader might commit the whole Code to memory without even suspecting that it relates to men and women who have been banished without trial to the wild frontiers of Mongolia, or to Yakút ulúses near the Asiatic pole of cold. The author of the Rules has made police surveillance the most prominent feature of his legislation, and has artfully hidden behind it, in the background, what he euphemistically calls "assigned to definite places of residence."
It might have startled the moral sense even of the Russian community if he had entitled his Code, as he ought to have entitled it, "Rules to govern the behavior of men and women exiled without trial to Siberia by the Minister of the Interior." The plain, blunt words, "exile without trial to Siberia," sound badly; but there is nothing to shock the most sensitive mind in the periphrastic statement that "Persons prejudicial to public tranquillity may be assigned by administrative process to definite places of residence."
When one is told that a Russian citizen, not accused of any crime, may be arrested by the police, may be sent, by virtue of a mere executive order, to a peasant village in Siberia, and may be forced to reside there for a term of years, one naturally asks, "What are the conditions of the life that such a person is compelled to live? What provision does the law make for his support? What is he allowed to do? What is he forbidden to do? and How in general is he treated?" To each of these questions the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" furnish an answer; and as the official replies to such questions naturally carry more weight than the replies that might be made by the banished persons themselves, I will briefly summarize the Code, which administrative exiles sometimes humorously call their "Constitution," or "Bill of Rights." It is as follows:
The maximum limit of banishment with police surveillance shall henceforth be five years. [Sect. 3.]
As soon as an exile reaches his destination he shall be deprived of his passport, and shall be furnished with another document setting forth his name, rank, and previous residence, and giving notice to all concerned that he is authorized to live in the village of X. [Sect. 5.]
He shall not leave the place to which he has been banished without permission from the proper authorities; and if he move from one house to another, he shall notify the police within twenty-four hours. [Sect. 7.]
He may be allowed to absent himself temporarily, in a case of particularly urgent importance, if his behavior has been such as to meet the approval of the police; but in every such case he shall obtain the permission of the governor before going outside the limits of the district, and the permission of the Minister of the Interior before going outside the limits of the province. [Sect. 8.]
An administrative exile to whom such permission has been granted must be provided with a pass and a detailed description of the route to be followed; he shall not stop on the way unless sick or unable to proceed, in which case he must give notice at once to the nearest authorities; he shall report to the police in every town or village through which he passes; and he may be sent back to his place of banishment at any time and from any point in his journey, without regard to his permit, if his behavior shall seem to be suspicious. [Sects. 9-16.]
Administrative exiles shall always report in person to the police at the first summons. [Sect. 17.]
The local police authorities shall have the right to enter the house or room of an administrative exile at any hour of the day or night, and they shall also have the right to search such house or room and to take away any of its contents. [Sect. 19.]
Administrative exiles shall not hold any position in the service of the state or of society, and shall not do any writing for any state, municipal, or other institution, without special permission from the Minister of the Interior. [Sect. 21.]
Administrative exiles shall not be the founders, the presiding officers, nor the members of any private society or company; and they shall not act as guardians, or as curators, without permission from the Minister of the Interior. [Sects. 22, 23.]
Administrative exiles are forbidden to engage in any kind of pedagogic work; they are forbidden to give instruction in the arts or trades to scholars or apprentices; they are forbidden to deliver lectures or public addresses; they are forbidden to take part in public meetings of scientific societies; they are forbidden to participate in theatrical performances or scenic representations; and they are forbidden, generally, to exercise any public activity. They are also forbidden to have anything to do, in the capacity either of proprietor, overseer, clerk, or laborer, with any photograph gallery, lithographic establishment, printing-office, or library; they are forbidden to deal in books or other productions of the press; they are forbidden to keep tea-houses or grog-shops; and they are forbidden to trade in any way in intoxicating liquor. [Sect. 24.]
Administrative exiles shall not be received into state, municipal, or private schools, or educational institutions, without special permission from the Minister of the Interior, approved by the educational authorities. [Sect. 25.]
Administrative exiles shall not appear and plead in the courts except in behalf of themselves, their parents, their wives, or their children. They shall not act as physicians, accoucheurs, apothecaries, or chemists, without permission from the Minister of the Interior. [Sects. 26, 27.]
All lawful occupations, not above mentioned, shall, as a rule, be open to administrative exiles; but the governor of the province may nevertheless, in his discretion, forbid an exile to engage in any business that may, by virtue of local conditions, enable such exile to attain illegal ends, or render him a menace to public peace and order. [Sect. 28.]
The Minister of the Interior shall have the right to withhold from administrative exiles all letters and telegrams, and to subject their whole correspondence—including both letters written and letters received—to police supervision. [Sect. 29.]
Failure to submit to any of the rules set forth in Sections 11-29 shall be punished with imprisonment for a period of not less than three days nor more than one month. Administrative exiles who leave their places of banishment without permission may also be tried and punished under Section 63 of the Code providing for offenses within the jurisdiction of justices of the peace. [Sect. 32.]
Administrative exiles who have no pecuniary means of their own shall receive an allowance from the Government treasury for their support, and for the support of their families, if the latter voluntarily go with them to their places of banishment. This allowance, however, shall not be made to exiles who fail to obtain employment through bad conduct or habitual laziness. [Sects. 33-37.]
Administrative exiles and their families shall be treated in the local hospitals, when sick, at the expense of the Government. [Sect. 38.]
Administrative exiles who may not have means to defray the expense of return to their homes at the expiration of their terms of banishment shall receive aid from the Government, in accordance with the imperial order of January 10, 1881, unless special directions with regard to the return of such persons shall have been given by the Minister of the Interior. [Sect. 40.]
Such, in brief, is the administrative exiles' "Constitution." I have everywhere substituted the words "administrative exiles," "banishment," and "places of banishment," for the ambiguous or misleading expressions, "persons under police surveillance," "assignment to definite places of residence," and "places of domiciliation," which are used in the text; but in so doing I have merely given clearer expression to the real meaning of the Code. Men and women banished by administrative process are not known to Russian law as "exiles." They are pod-nadzórni, or "persons under surveillance," and their banishment is called by a euphemistic legal fiction vodvorénia, or "domiciliation" in "definite places of residence." It must, of course, mitigate the grief of a bereaved mother to learn from a perusal of this law that her only son has not been "exiled," but merely "domiciled" in an "assigned place of residence" near the spot where Captain De Long and the sailors of the Jeannette perished from cold and hunger.
When an administrative exile, after weeks or months of travel "by étape," reaches at last the Siberian town or village to which he has been "assigned," and in which he is to be "domiciled," he is conducted to the police-station, is furnished with an identifying document called a vid na zhítelstvo, or "permit to reside," and receives, from the isprávnik or the zasedátel, a printed copy of the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance." He is informed at the same time that he cannot go outside the limits of the village without permission; that his correspondence is "under control," and that, as a precaution against escape, he will be required to report personally at stated intervals to the chief of police, or will be visited as often as may be necessary by an officer detailed to watch him. His first need, of course, is shelter; and taking his exile passport and his copy of the "Rules" in his hand he goes in search of a "domicile." The fact that he is a political exile is not stated in his "permit to reside," but everybody knows it, — he has been seen to arrive in the village under guard, — and householders are naturally unwilling or reluctant to give him lodgings. A political exile is presumably a dangerous man, and, moreover, a man who is liable to be visited at all hours of the day and night by the police. A peasant villager does not care to have his house invaded every day, and perhaps half a dozen times a day, by a suspicious police officer; and besides that, he (the householder) may be required to watch the movements of his dangerous lodger, and at inconvenient times may be summoned to the police-station to answer questions. In view of these unpleasant possibilities, he thinks it safest not to have anything to do with a person about whom nothing is known except that he is a state criminal under police surveillance. As the tired political goes from house to house, seeking lodgings, and as he finds himself regarded everywhere with fear or suspicion, he understands and appreciates the feeling that impels a common criminal colonist to call an exile's "permit to reside" a "wolf's passport."
At last, with the aid perhaps of other political exiles, he finds and rents a single scantily furnished room in the house of some poor peasant, unpacks his portmanteau, and proceeds to make the acquaintance of his environment. The first and most important question that arises in his mind is the question of subsistence. How is he to live? He has left his wife and young children entirely unprovided for in European Russia; he has long been tortured by a vivid consciousness of their helpless and destitute condition, and now he finds himself suddenly confronted with the question of maintenance for himself. What is he to do? He examines the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," and learns from Section 33 that "administrative exiles who have no pecuniary means of their own shall receive an allowance from the Government treasury for their support." This "allowance," as he soon ascertains, is six rúbles, or a little less than three dollars, a month. He makes inquiries in the town or village market-place, and finds, as the result of his investigations, that if he receives the Government allowance, and buys only the things that he regards as absolutely essential to life, his monthly budget will stand as follows:[3]
| RECEIPTS. | EXPENDITURES. | ||
| Government allowance | $3.00 | Rent of a single room | $1.00 |
| Deficit | 1.72 | 40 lbs. of meat | 1.50 |
| 40 lbs. of wheat flour | .58 | ||
| 40 lbs. of rye flour | .33 | ||
| 10 eggs | .12 | ||
| A "brick" of tea—cheapest | .79 | ||
| 1 lb. of sugar | .10 | ||
| 1 lb. of tobacco, cheapest sort | .25 | ||
| 1 lb. kerosene | .05 | ||
| $4.72 | $4.72 | ||
From this balance-sheet it appears that although an administrative exile in the province of Tobólsk limits himself to the barest essentials of life, spends nothing for service, for washing, for fuel, or for medicines, and uses only five cents' worth of kerosene and ten cents' worth of sugar in a month, he exceeds by $1.72 his monthly allowance. It is evident, therefore, that the question of personal maintenance is not to be solved in this way. The thoughts of the exile then turn naturally to employment. He cannot expect, of course, to find in a remote Siberian village as many opportunities for the exercise of trained intellectual ability as he might find in St. Petersburg or Moscow; but he does not insist upon profitable employment, or even upon employment that shall be pleasant and congenial; he is ready to undertake work of any kind that will enable him to keep soul and body together. He has had a university training; he knows three or four languages; he is, perhaps, a skilful physician and surgeon like Dr. Biéli in Verkhoyánsk, a photographer like Mr. Karélin in Ust Kamenogórsk, or a journalist like Mr. Belokónski in Minusínsk; he is an expert penman, a good accountant, a competent teacher, and a fair musician. It seems to him that he can hardly fail, even in Siberia, to earn fifty cents a day; and fifteen dollars a month would enable him to live in comparative decency and comfort. However, upon again consulting the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," he finds that he is strictly forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to act in the capacity of teacher, doctor, chemist, photographer, lithographer, librarian, copyist, editor, compositor, contributor, reporter, lecturer, actor, lawyer, bookseller, or clerk. He cannot hold any position in the service of the state or of society; he cannot be an officer or a partner in any commercial company; he cannot be a member of any scientific body; he cannot have anything to do with drugs, medicines, photographic or lithographic materials, books, weapons, or newspapers; and, finally, he cannot "exercise any public activity." What is there left for an educated man to do? All the pursuits for which his life and previous training have qualified him are absolutely closed to him. He has not the manual skill necessary to fit him for the work of a carpenter, a shoemaker, a wheelwright, or a blacksmith; he cannot turn merchant or trader, for lack of the requisite capital; and he cannot become a driver or a teamster, on account of his inability to leave the village to which he has been assigned. The only occupation, therefore, that seems to be open to him is the cultivation of the soil. The "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" do not forbid him to raise potatoes, turnips, and cabbages, — there is no danger that he will infect the soil with his "seditious" ideas, — and in agricultural labor he determines to seek a solution of the hard problem of life. He soon learns, however, that all of the arable land in the neighborhood of the village belongs to the village commune, and has already been allotted to its members. He cannot find a single acre of unappropriated soil without going four or five versts away, and if he steps outside the narrow limits of the settlement he renders himself liable to arrest and imprisonment. In this disheartening situation — banished to Siberia and tied hand and foot by the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" — he can do absolutely nothing except make an appeal to the governor, the governor- general, or the Minister of the Interior, and beg, as a favor, for a recognition of his right to labor for his daily bread.
In 1883 the political exiles in the town of Akmolínsk applied to General Kolpakófski, the governor-general of the steppe territories, for permission to give music lessons. They found it almost impossible, they said, either to live on the Government allowance, or to support themselves by any of the means that the "Rules" left open to them. They could, however, teach music, and they begged to be allowed to do so. This seemed — or would seem to an American — a very modest, natural, and reasonable request. There is nothing "dangerous" or "prejudicial to public order" in a piano, and it was hardly to be supposed that Siberian children would become nihilists as a result of learning five-finger exercises. Governor-general Kolpakófski, however, either thought that the petitioners would undermine the loyalty of the children of Akmolínsk by teaching them revolutionary songs, or believed that destitution and misery are the natural and proper concomitants of administrative exile. He therefore replied to the letter by saying that teaching was an occupation forbidden by the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," and that if the administrative exiles in Akmolínsk needed work, in order to obtain the necessaries of life, they might "hire themselves out to the Kírghis, who pay from five to seven cents a day for laborers." This was almost as cruel and insulting as it would be to tell post-graduate students of the Johns Hopkins University, who had been banished without trial to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, that if they needed employment they might catch grasshoppers for the Digger Indians.
About the same time, the political exiles in Ust Kámenogórsk asked General Kolpakófski for permission to occupy and cultivate a tract of Government land near their place of banishment. They offered to improve the land, to pay rent for it as soon as it should become productive, and to leave all their improvements to the state, without reimbursement, at the expiration of their term of exile. This, again, was a reasonable proposition, and, moreover, a proposition advantageous in every way to the state. The governor-general, however, made to it the same reply that he had made to the petition of the administrative exiles in Akmolínsk, viz., that if they needed work they might hire themselves out as day-laborers to the Cossacks.[4]
The "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" are not enforced with uniform strictness at all times, nor in all parts of Siberia, and the extent to which they debar exiles from employment is largely dependent upon the character of the officials who are intrusted with their enforcement. General Tseklínski, the late governor of the territory of Semipalátinsk, treated the exiles in his jurisdiction with humanity and consideration; not because he was in sympathy with their views, but simply because he was a gentleman and a humane and considerate officer. The same statement may justly be made, I think, with regard to Mr. Nathaniel Petukhóf, who at the time of my visit was acting-governor of the province of Tomsk. In the province of Tobólsk, on the other hand, the administrative exiles have always been treated with harshness, and at times with brutal severity. In April, 1888, the political exiles in the town of Surgút,[5] to the number of nineteen men, addressed a respectful letter to the Minister of the Interior, protesting against the treatment to which they were subjected, declaring that their situation had become insupportable, and solemnly giving notice that, whatever might be the consequences, they would no longer submit. A copy of this protest has been sent to me from Siberia, and lies before me as I write. It is too long to be quoted here, but a translation of it will be found in Appendix C. How desperate the situation of these exiles must have been appears from the fact that some of them had almost finished their terms of banishment, and had only to suffer a little longer without complaint in order to be free; but they could suffer no longer. There is a limit to human endurance, and that limit the Surgút exiles had reached. All that I know of their fate, and of the result of their protest, I learn from a brief paragraph in the Siberian Gazette, which announces that "nineteen audaciously impudent political exiles" in the town of Surgút "have been removed"; and that the isprávnik of Surgút and the chief of police of Tobólsk have been officially "thanked" by the provincial governor, Mr. Troínítski, for the distinguished services rendered by them on the occasion of this "removal." To what lonely and far-away corner of Siberia these nineteen unfortunate politicals have been sent for their "audaciously impudent" attempt to touch the heart and awaken the sympathies of Count Dmítri Tolstói, the Minister of the Interior, I do not know. There are only a few "places of domiciliation" worse than Surgút. One of them is Berózof, near the mouth of the river Ob, 2700 miles from St. Petersburg; another is Turukhánsk, a "town" of 32 houses and 181 inhabitants situated near the arctic circle, 4100 miles from St. Petersburg; and the third is the dreaded province of Yakútsk.[6]
The administrative exile who, upon reaching his place of banishment, finds himself within the jurisdiction of a governor like Mr. Troinítski is probably forced by imperious necessity to petition the Minister of the Interior for relief. He is without pecuniary means of his own; he cannot live on the allowance of three dollars a month made to him by the state; and the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" are enforced by the governor with such pitiless severity that a man who is subject to them cannot possibly earn his daily bread and at the same time keep out of jail. Under such circumstances the banished political offender, who perhaps is a physician, writes to the Minister of the Interior a statement of the facts, informs his Excellency that there is no physician in the town or village to which he (the exile) has been assigned, and asks if he cannot be allowed to resume the practice of his profession. This, apparently, is even more than a reasonable request. The petitioner is a trained and skilful physician. He is living perhaps in a district containing twenty thousand inhabitants, scattered over hundreds of square miles, and urgently in need of medical advice and help.[7] To an American it would seem as if the request of an exiled physician to be allowed to practise in such a country as this must not only be granted, but be welcomed with gratitude. Does the Minister of the Interior so treat it?
In 1883 the Medical Society of the city of Tver[8] sent a memorial to the Minister of the Interior setting forth the facts with regard to the lack of medical assistance and the urgent need of trained medical officers in Siberia, calling his Excellency's attention to the large number of physicians and medical students living in that part of the empire under sentence of banishment, and asking whether the Government would not consider favorably a suggestion that such physicians and medical students be exempted from the disabilities imposed by Section 27 of the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," and be allowed to practise in the provinces to which they had been banished. Nothing certainly could have been more wise and humane; nothing could have been more worthy of respectful consideration than such a suggestion from such a source. With what reception did it meet? I am sorry to say that it met with swift punishment. For sending this memorial to the Minister of the Interior — for venturing to intercede in behalf of physicians banished upon suspicion of political "untrustworthiness" — the Medical Society of Tver was closed and forbidden to hold further meetings, and two of its members who happened to be in the service of the state as surgeons in the Tver hospital were summarily dismissed from their places.[9]
If persons who merely suggest that exiled physicians be allowed to practise are punished in this way by the Minister of the Interior, one can imagine how exiled physicians themselves who practise without permission are punished by that minister's subordinates.
In the year 1880 there was living in the city of Kharkóf a young medical student named Nifónt Dólgopólof. He had finished his course of instruction in the medical faculty of the Kharkóf University, and was about to take his final examination, when there occurred one of the scenes of tumult and disorder that are so common in Russian universities, when a large number of students, excited by some real or fancied grievance, undertake to hold an indignation meeting in the street opposite the university buildings. In Kharkóf, on the occasion to which I refer, the disturbance became so serious that the university authorities were unable to deal with it, and a troop of mounted Cossacks was sent to break up the meeting and to disperse the mob of excited undergraduates. Irritated by the resistance that they encountered, and determined to clear the street at all hazards, the Cossacks rode through the crowd of hooting students, striking right and left at random with the short, hinged riding-whips known in Russia as nagáikas.[10] Mr. Dólgopólof, who was not a revolutionist, nor even an "untrustworthy" person, had nothing to do with the disorder; but he happened to be present in the street as a spectator, and when the Cossacks began using their whips he turned to a chinóvnik — an officer of the civil service — who stood near him, and exclaimed indignantly, "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! It is cowardly and disgraceful to strike men with whips!" The chinóvnik called the attention of the police to Mr. Dólgopólof, and caused him to be arrested and thrown into prison as a person who was aiding and abetting the disorder. Some months later the young medical student, without even the pretense of a trial, was exiled by administrative process to the town of Kurgán, in Western Siberia. In March, 1881, he was required to take the oath of allegiance to the new Tsar, Alexander III., and as a punishment for refusing to do so was sent to the town of Tiukalínsk. At that time the isprávnik of Tiukalínsk was a hot-tempered, unscrupulous, and brutal man named Ílyin; and with this official the young medical student soon came into collision. The first skirmish grew out of Dr. Dólgopólof's failure to obey strictly the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance." He was a man of generous and sympathetic disposition, as well as a skilful surgeon, and he found it extremely difficult at times to avoid acting in a professional capacity. He never sought practice, nor made it a means of support; but when a peasant in the incipient stage of typhus fever asked him for advice, or a man suffering from cataract came to him for relief, he gave the requisite advice, or performed the necessary operation, without pay, simply because he regarded the rendering of such service as a duty imposed upon him by humanity. The fame of Dr. Dólgopólof's cures soon reached the isprávnik, and that official, summoning the young surgeon to the police-station, called his attention in an offensive manner to Section 27 of the "Rules," and forbade him thereafter, upon pain of arrest and imprisonment, to treat sick peasants under any circumstances, with pay or without pay. Dr. Dólgopólof, after some hot words, submitted, and discontinued entirely his irregular and unauthorized practice; but his relations with the isprávnik at once became hostile. At that time the mayor of Tiukalínsk was a prominent and wealthy merchant named Balákhin. In the autumn of 1883 Mr. Balákhin's son, while handling a revolver, accidentally shot his mother in the leg. The wound was a dangerous one, and the extraction of the ball would necessitate a difficult surgical operation. The only regular physician in the place, a nervous and rather timid man named Hull, was called in, and succeeded in stopping the hemorrhage from the cut artery; but he declined to undertake the operation for the removal of the ball, and advised Mr. Balákhin to send for Dr. Dólgopólof. "He is a skilful surgeon," said the local practitioner, "and I am not. He can do what is necessary far better than I can, and I don't like to undertake so serious an operation." Mr. Balákhin thereupon hastened to Dr. Dólgopólof and asked his aid.
"I am not allowed to practise," said the young surgeon.
"But this may be a case of life or death," urged Mr. Balákhin.
"I can't help it," replied Dr. Dólgopólof; "my relations with the isprávnik are strained. I have already been once in trouble for practising without authority; and I have been strictly forbidden to act professionally, under any circumstances whatever, upon pain of imprisonment."
"You were exiled to Siberia," said Mr. Balákhin, desperately, "for your humanity — because you showed sympathy with people in distress. Have you not courage and humanity enough now to come to the help of a suffering woman, even though you may be imprisoned for it?"
"If you put the question in that way," replied Dr. Dólgopólof, "I have. I will perform the operation and take the punishment."
Upon making an examination, Dr. Dólgopólof found that Mrs. Balákhina was not in immediate danger, and he thereupon suggested that a telegram be sent to Governor Lisogórski, at Tobólsk, asking that Dr. Dólgopólof be authorized to perform a grave surgical operation which the local practitioner declined to undertake. The telegram was sent, and in an hour an answer came, saying that the case was not one over which the governor had jurisdiction, and directing the mayor to apply for the desired permission to the medical department of the Ministry of the Interior.
"You see," said Dr. Dólgopólof, contemptuously, to Mr. Balákhin, "how much regard your rulers have for human life."
He then performed the operation, extracted the ball, tied up the artery, and left Mrs. Balákhina comfortable and out of danger. On the following day the isprávnik, Ílyin, caused the young surgeon to be arrested and thrown into prison, and began proceedings in a case which still stands on record in the archives of the province of Tobólsk as "The affair of the unauthorized extraction of a bullet, by the administrative exile Nifónt Dólgopólof, from the leg of Madam Balákhina, wife of the mayor of Tiukalínsk." While these proceedings dragged along in the Circumlocution Office of the provincial administration at Tobólsk, Dr. Dólgopólof lay in the foul district prison at Tiukalínsk, where he finally contracted typhus fever.[11]
Of course the case of Dr. Dólgopólof excited intense feeling in the little provincial town, and when he was taken sick, people came to the prison every day to inquire about him and to bring him food or flowers. These manifestations of public sympathy were not without their effect even upon the isprávnik, and, in view of them, that official finally ordered that the young surgeon be released and taken to his home. At the same time, however, he wrote officially to Governor Lisogórski that the administrative exile Nifónt Dólgopólof, while awaiting trial upon a criminal charge, was exerting a very dangerous and pernicious influence in the town; that people were showing him sympathy by bringing him food and flowers; and that this sympathy would very likely go even to the extent of furnishing him with means of escape. Under such circumstances he (the isprávnik) felt burdened with a responsibility that he thought should not be laid upon him, and he begged leave to suggest to his Excellency that the prisoner be removed forthwith to the town of Surgút or to some other part of the province where he would not be known, and where he might be more securely guarded. There was not an intimation in the letter that Dr. Dólgopólof was lying dangerously ill from typhus fever; and Governor Lisogórski, ignorant of this important fact, telegraphed the isprárnik to send the prisoner at once "by étape" to the town of Surgút. The isprávnik summoned the nachálnik of the local convoy command, acquainted him with the governor's orders, and directed him to carry them into effect. The convoy officer, however, declined to do so, upon the ground that he was strictly forbidden to receive from the local authorities prisoners who were sick; that Dr. Dólgopólof was in a dangerous condition; that he would very likely die on the road; and that he himself (the convoy officer) might then be held to serious accountability for violation of law in taking charge of him. The isprávnik, determined not to be thwarted in his attempt to get rid of a man whom he hated, obtained a peasant's cart, detailed two or three of his own police officers to act as a convoy, and went with them to the young surgeon's house. Dr. Dólgopólof was lying in bed and was so weak that he could not stand. His wife resisted forcibly the attempt to remove him, whereupon she was tied hand and foot, and her husband, clothed only in a night-shirt, was carried out in a sheet and put into the cart. This transaction occurred on the 24th of October, 1883. The weather was cold and raw, and Dr. Dólgopólof would almost certainly have perished from exposure had not a sympathetic bystander taken off and thrown over him his own fur "shuba," or overcoat. In this condition the sick prisoner was carried to the circuit town of Ishím, a distance of 126 miles. In Ishím there were at that time eleven political exiles, including the well-known Russian novelist Máchtet. Many of them knew Dr. Dólgopólof personally, all of them knew his history, and as soon as they discovered his condition they went to the Ishím isprávnik and declared that they would resist to the uttermost, with force, any attempt to carry the young surgeon on. They had him examined by the local medical officer; they induced the isprávnik to draw up a "protocol," or statement of the circumstances of the case; and they telegraphed Governor Lisogórski at Tobólsk, asking whether he had authorized the isprávnik of Tiukalínsk to send a dying man out on the road, at that season of the year, with no other covering than a night-shirt. As soon as the governor learned that Dr. Dólgopólof was sick he telegraphed the isprávnik at Ishím to have the young surgeon taken to the hospital and properly cared for, and suspended the order for his removal to Surgút. It was currently reported in Ishím that his Excellency also availed himself of this favorable opportunity to "squeeze" five hundred rúbles out of the isprávnik of Tiukalínsk as the price of immunity from prosecution on the charge of violating law by sending an exile out on the road while dangerously sick. The report may or may not have been well founded, but it was a notorious fact that the governor sold to the highest bidder most of the provincial offices at his disposal, and that he received payment in money intentionally lost to him at cards by the office-seekers.[12]
Dr. Dólgopólof remained in the Ishím hospital until he recovered his health, and was then sent forward to his destination. He was eventually transferred to the province of Semipalátinsk, where his condition was greatly improved, and where, when I last heard of him, he was engaged in making craniological measurements and anthropological researches among the Kírghis.[13]
I have, perhaps, devoted a disproportionate amount of space to this "affair of the unauthorized extraction of a bullet, by the administrative exile Nifónt Dólgopólof, from the leg of Madame Balákhina, wife of the mayor of Tiukalínsk"; but it is a typical case, and not only illustrates the inherent defects of the Russian method of dealing with "untrustworthy" citizens, but shows clearly the specific nature of the grievances against which the Surgút exiles protested in their letter to the Minister of the Interior in April, 1888. In that case one of the politicals, the late Mr. Leo Ivanof, had been virtually murdered by official cruelty and indifference, and two others had been reduced to such a physical condition that, to use their own word, they regarded themselves as "doomed." As these two sick men have since been "removed" to Berózof, Turukhánsk, or some worse place, they are, perhaps, by this time dead and out of their misery.
When an administrative exile has succeeded in solving the problem of personal maintenance, and when he is relieved from anxiety with regard to the necessaries of life, such as food, shelter, and clothing, he begins to feel the humiliating restraints of police surveillance and "controlled" correspondence. The officers whose duty it is to watch him are often men of degraded character and criminal antecedents. Many of the zasedátels, or chiefs of police in the vólosts, or districts, and a still greater number of písars, or district police secretaries, are common malefactors, sent to Siberia for felony, and taken into the Government service under assumed names at the expiration of their terms of forced colonization. The initials and places of residence of at least a score of these felons in police uniform have been published in the liberal Siberian newspapers. To men of this character are intrusted, in many parts of Siberia, the health, the honor, and the lives of refined and highly educated political exiles of both sexes, and it is not a matter for surprise if the latter are sometimes outrageously insulted and brutally treated. I personally know police officers in Siberia — and I now particularly remember two, one of them the chief of police in Minusínsk — whom I should hesitate to meet anywhere at night unless I had a revolver. Even in a comparatively well-governed city like Tomsk, the history of the police has been a history stained with acts of violence, outrage, and crime, including the arrest and imprisonment of innocent citizens by the hundred, the taking of bribes from notorious criminals, the subornation of perjury, the use of torture, and the beating nearly to death of pregnant women. According to the Tomsk Provincial Gazette, an official journal, one of the recently appointed governors of that province received, on the occasion of his very first visit of inspection to the city prisons, no less than three hundred complaints of unjust imprisonment. Upon investigation, two hundred of them were shown to be well founded, and the complainants were set at liberty.[14] So boundless is the power of isprávniks and chiefs of police in the smaller Siberian towns and villages, that among the peasants the expression once became proverbial, "In heaven, God; in Okhótsk, Koch." How many Kochs there are among the isprávniks and zasedátels in the remoter parts of Siberia only God, the peasants, and the political exiles know. The nature of the surveillance maintained by such officers as these over the banished politicals varies in different parts of Siberia; but to what extent the supervision may go is shown by an extract from the letter of an administrative exile published in the Juridical Messenger, the organ of the Moscow Bar Association. It is as follows:
The surveillance maintained over us is of the most unceremonious character. The police officers strive to earn distinction by surpassing one another in assiduous watchfulness. They enter our quarters repeatedly every day to see that we are at home, and that no one else is there, and they go through all our rooms. They walk past our houses constantly, looking in at the windows and listening at the doors. They post sentries at night on the corners of the streets where we reside, and they compel our landlords and our neighbors to watch our movements and report upon them to the local authorities.[15]
A young lady who was in exile at Tunká, a small East-Siberian village on the frontier of Mongolia, told me that it was not an unusual thing to come back to her apartments after a short walk, or a call upon some other exile, and find a police officer in cap and boots asleep on her bed. Fear of insult or outrage has forced most of the banished women in Siberia to live in the same houses with the exiled men. Madame Dicheskúla lived in one half of the house occupied by Mr. Lobonófski in Semipalátinsk; Madame Breshkófskaya occupied a room adjoining that of Mr. Shamárin in Selengínsk; and I found the same state of affairs existing in a dozen other parts of Siberia. In fact, it is inevitable. Among the political exiles are defenseless girls from sixteen to twenty years of age, and young married women whose husbands are in other parts of Siberia or in penal servitude at the mines. They cannot live entirely alone under a system of surveillance which authorizes a runaway convict, in the uniform of a police officer, to enter their apartments at any hour of the day or night.
Another feature of administrative exile life, which exasperates and embitters the politicals almost as much as surveillance, is the supervision of their correspondence. An exile whose correspondence is "under control" cannot send a letter to his wife without previously submitting it to the isprávnik for supervision and approval. The isprávnik may, in his discretion, forward it to its destination, destroy it, or send it to the Minister of the Interior. Letters for an exile received at the local post-office are turned over to the same official, who opens and reads them, crosses out anything that may seem to him objectionable, and delivers them, after such mutilation, at his leisure. If he wishes to torture or punish an exile who is personally obnoxious to him, or who has been "audaciously impudent," he may withhold such exile's letters altogether, and deprive him for months of all news from the wife and children whom he has been forced to leave uncared for in European Russia. The isprávnik of Tará, in the province of Tobólsk, used to take the letters of exiles to the local official club, read them aloud to his friends, and ask advice with regard to the erasure or "blacking out" of particular passages. More than one political in Tara heard of his letters for the first time on the street from some person to whom the isprávnik had shown them. The reader can perhaps imagine, without any assistance from me, the feelings of a political exile who knows that the sacred words of love and tenderness written to him with agony and tears by the unhappy wife who is dearer to him than his own soul have been read aloud by the isprávnik between drinks of vódka to a circle of boon companions at the club. Even when an exile, by a fortunate accident, has heard of a letter addressed to him, he may not be able to get it. The isprávnik, after reading it to his friends, may conclude that it contains a hidden cipher, and that delivery of it is inexpedient. I have seen exile letters that had been scorched with heat and treated with chemicals by suspicious officials who believed, or pretended to believe, that there was invisible writing in sympathetic ink between the lines. Such letters are frequently held by the isprávnik or the chief of police for months, and then, scorched or blistered by experimental tests, and with all of the suspiciously vague or ambiguous expressions carefully crossed out, they are finally delivered. Sometimes an exile is summoned to the police station and subjected to a searching examination with regard to the contents or the meaning of a letter that he has never seen and that is still in the possession of the isprávnik. How maddening such treatment of private correspondence must be to a man who has never been accused of crime, who has never been tried, who has never been legally deprived of his rights as a citizen, and who is already aflame with just indignation, the reader can perhaps imagine.
Another source of exasperation to the administrative exile — and it is the last that I now have space to mention — is the anomalous position in which he is placed by virtue of banishment without trial and subjection to the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance." He is neither a citizen living under the protection of law, nor a criminal deprived of civil rights by law. He is subject to all the obligations of a citizen, and he does not enjoy even the rights of a criminal. He is, in short, completely at the mercy of irresponsible power. The peculiar situation, from a legal point of view, of a man who has been exiled by administrative process is clearly shown in the following petition or memorial, sent by an administrative exile in the year 1881 to the "Governing Senate" — the Russian High Court of Appeals. Of course the petitioner did not expect by means of this document to improve his condition, or to secure any guaranty of rights. On the contrary, he was almost certain to render his situation worse by sending to the Governing Senate so "audaciously impudent" a communication. He had just been asked, however, to take the oath of allegiance to the new Tsar, Alexander III., and it relieved him, I presume, to give expression to his feelings in this half-satirical production. I do not personally know the petitioner, and it is not necessary to state how I became possessed of a copy of his petition. I can, however, vouch for the authenticity, not only of the document itself, but of the indorsement made upon it by the Governing Senate.
Kurgán, Province of Tobólsk,
Western Siberia, March 31, 1881.
To the Governing Senate of the Russian Empire: On the 28th day of March, 1881, I [an administrative exile] received a notification from the police authorities of the town of Kurgán to appear at the police station and take the oath of allegiance to the present reigning Emperor of Russia, Alexander Alexándrovich. This requirement seems to me to be inconsistent with the Emperor's manifesto of March 1, 1881. The reason assigned in that manifesto for requiring the oath of allegiance from the peasants of the empire was that such peasants, by virtue of the decree of emancipation, had ceased to be serfs, had become free citizens, and were therefore subject to the laws made for the government of such citizens. I have all proper respect for these words, and I regard as perfectly just, not only the reasoning itself, but the conclusions that logically flow from that reasoning. One of these conclusions is, that if Russian peasants [and other Russians] had not been free citizens, and had not been subject to the general laws of the Empire, they would not have been required to take the oath of allegiance. The Imperial manifesto of March 1 exacts the oath of allegiance only from free citizens subject to the operation of all the laws of the State. The question now arises, "What am I; am I a free citizen?" My father was an hereditary noble of the Russian Empire, and my mother was my father's legal wife. According to Russian law I must inherit the rank of my father, and consequently the rights of a free citizen. The most important rights guaranteed by law to a free citizen are, first, the right to personal liberty [so long as he does not commit a crime], and, second, the right to protection for his family and for his property. I myself, however, am deprived of liberty; my family has been broken up; my property has been confiscated by the Third Section,[16] and I am forbidden to engage in the lawful occupations for which I have been specially fitted. I am not allowed to go a step outside the limits of the town of Kurgán; I have been transported to a distance of 3000 kilometers from my family, and I cannot send a letter even to my wife without previously submitting it to strangers for inspection. In view of these facts it is clear that I am neither a nobleman nor a free citizen.
My forcible detention in Siberia, then, raises the question, "Have I not been deprived of all civil rights and sent hither as a forced colonist?" I turn to the laws of the Empire relating to forced colonists deprived of all civil rights, and I find that their situation is precisely analogous to mine with one exception. A forced colonist may hope gradually to reacquire, by successive steps, a part of the rights that have been taken away from him. He may, in time, recover the right to go from place to place within the limits of his province, or even within the limits of Siberia.[17] I, however, can indulge no such hope. I am interned in the town of Kurgán for an indefinite period. It is clear, therefore, that I am not a forced colonist, and this conclusion is confirmed by the fact that forced colonization is a punishment inflicted only by sentence of a court and for crime. What, then, am I? If I am neither a freeman, representing the highest grade of Russian citizenship, nor a criminal, representing the lowest grade, I am debarred from Russian citizenship altogether, or, in other words, I am a foreigner. Indeed I must be a foreigner — unquestionably a foreigner! The Russian State does not recognize me as a free citizen, nor does it put me on the level of a criminal whose rights as a citizen have been taken away. It has refused — and worse than refused — to protect my liberty, my family, and my property. I must, there- fore, be regarded as a foreigner. But am I a free foreigner? No; I am not free. If I were a free foreigner I should have the right to leave Russia; and I trust that I could find a civilized country — perhaps more than one — that would receive and recognize me as an honest and loyal citizen. I am, however, deprived of this right; consequently, if a foreigner, I must be a prisoner of war. But to what nation do I belong, where is my fatherland, and in what war was I captured? Has peace been concluded, and if so, why have not I been returned to my countrymen with other prisoners of war? I am unable to answer these questions; but the situation of a prisoner of war is an intolerably hard one, and in that situation I have been for five years.
I most humbly beg the Russian Governing Senate to accept me as a Russian subject; i.e., to declare me a free Russian citizen liv- ing under the protection of the laws. Then, having received all the rights of a citizen, I will gladly perform all a citizen's duties. If, however, the Governing Senate is not willing to accept me as a Russian subject, can it not allow me to leave the Russian Em- pire, in order that I may find for myself a fatherland?
It seems to me that the oath of allegiance not only imposes cer- tain obligations, but recognizes, at the same time, certain rights. The exaction of that oath from me, therefore, is equivalent to a recognition of my free citizenship. Is not this assumption true? I await an answer. If the Governing Senate, the highest judicial tribunal in Russia, makes it clear to me that I am mistaken, or, in other words, shows me that I must perform all the duties of a Russian subject without enjoying any of a Russian subject's rights, then, as a prisoner of war, I must submit.
(INDORSEMENT ON THE ABOVE PETITION.)
On this the 4th day of June, 1881, the Governing Senate, having heard the within petition, orders: That since such petition does not bear the highest title,[18] and is not in the form prescribed by law (Article 205, part 2, Vol. X of the Collection of Laws, edition of 1876), it shall be returned to the petitioner without consideration (in accordance with Article 225 of the same part and volume). A ukáz to carry this resolution into effect will be sent the provincial administration of Tobólsk.
Chief Secretary N. Brud—— [remainder of name illegible in the original.]
By Ass't Chief Secretary Baron Bukshevden.
The result of putting an innocent man into the extra-legal position described by Mr. Sidorátski, and treating him as if he had no rights that any official need respect, is to exasperate and infuriate him to the last degree. The well-known but now suppressed Russian newspaper, Gólos, in a review of the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," said, with force and justice, that "administrative exile is a double-edged weapon. It removes from a certain place a man who is thought to exert an injurious influence, but by depriving him of his civil rights and putting him into the position of an outlaw, it frequently rouses in him such anti-human feelings as to transform a possible criminal not only into an actual one, but into a wild beast, capable of anything. Almost all of our noted political criminals — and especially the leaders — have been through this school."
- ↑ In 1882 the number of persons who had been dealt with by administrative process and were living under police surveillance was officially given as 1500. Most of these people were in exile. (Review of the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," in magazine Juridical Messenger, p. 557. Moscow, December, 1882.)
- ↑ Polozhénie o Politséskom Nadzóre [Rules Relating to Police Surveillance]. Approved by the Tsar, March 12, 1882.
- ↑ This is a real, not an imaginary exile balance-sheet, and the prices are those that prevailed in the town of Surgút, province of Tobólsk, Western Siberia, in the spring of 1888.
- ↑ These illustrations of official harshness and indifference were given to me in writing by a political exile in the province of Semipalatinsk whose statements I have every reason to trust, I did not meet General Kolpakófski while in Omsk, and I have no personal knowledge of his character; but I did meet there the governor of the territory of Akmolínsk, and he impressed me as a man who would be quite capable of preparing for the governor-general's signature just such a letter as that which was sent to the Akmolínsk exiles in response to their petition for leave to teach music. In some parts of Eastern Siberia official acts even more extraordinary and incredible than these came under my direct personal observation.
- ↑ Surgút is a small town of 1300 inhabitants, situated on the right bank of the river Ob, in the province of Tobólsk about five degrees south of the arctic circle. It is 575 miles northeast of the city of Tobó1sk, and 2500 miles from St. Petersburg.
- ↑ To these places are sent political offenders who, after their banishment to Siberia, manifest an insubordinate disposition, or, in other words, address "audaciously impudent" complaints of ill-treatment to the Minister of the Interior.
- ↑ In a report made by the governor-general of Eastern Siberia to the Tsar in 1881, a copy of which is in my possession, it is stated that "the number of physicians in the country is utterly insufficient. I shall not depart from the truth if I say that in the cities only is there any possibility of taking medical measures for the preservation of the health of the people. In every other part of Eastern Siberia physicians are almost wholly lacking, and the local population is left helpless in its struggle with diphtheria and other contagious diseases which desolate the country. The adoption of measures to prevent the spread of disease among cattle is out of the question. Immense numbers of cattle die every year from plague, causing the people incalculable loss." (Second report of Governor-general Anúchin to the Tsar; section entitled "The Construction and Medical Departments.")
- ↑ Tver is a city of European Russia, situated on the Nikoláievsk railroad a short distance from Moscow. It is the capital of the province of the same name.
- ↑ My authorities for the facts of this case are four or five citizens of Tver, including two members of the Tver Medical Society.
- ↑ There was nothing extraordinary in this method of breaking up a street meeting of indignant students. It was common enough at that time, and it has often been resorted to since. Precisely in this way began, on the 26th of November, 1887, the notorious revolt of the students in Moscow, which led eventually to the closing of all the great universities in the empire. A peaceful meeting of students on the Strástnoi Boulevard had been broken up by a sótnia of Cossacks with whips, under circumstances that made the outrage absolutely intolerable. The sufferers sent a circular letter of complaint and protest to their fellow-students in St. Petersburg, Kazán, Kiev, Kharkóf, and Odessa; the excitement extended, with growing intensity, from university to university; and the agitation finally culminated in the "going out" of 10,000 students and the arrest, rustication, or exile of more than 1000. The Russian Government attributes the spread of "nihilism" in the empire to the efforts of a few desperate fanatics and assassins who seek to overthrow all existing institutions. It is, perhaps, pertinent to inquire whether the horse-whipping of university students in the streets may not have some remote bearing upon the distressing phenomenon, and whether it may not explain to some extent the lamentable state of affairs that forces a naturally benevolent government to send its erring subjects to Siberia without trial.
- ↑ The sanitary condition of the Tiukalínsk prison in 1884 was such that thirty per cent. of its inmates were treated in the prison hospital. (Report of the Prison Admnistration for 1885.)
- ↑ There were isprávniks in Siberia, at the time of my visit, against whom were pending as many as ten criminal charges. They had contrived, however, by means best known to themselves and their superiors, to stave off trial year after year, and I have no doubt that they are still holding their places.
- ↑ A fairly accurate account of the treatment of Dr. Dólgopólof by the isprávnik of Tiukalínsk was published in the Siberian Gazette at Tomsk, and the substance of it was reprinted in the London Times of January 11, 1884 (weekly edition), under the head of "Russia." The Russian censor, however, would not allow the Siberian Gazette to say that the victim of this brutality was a political exile, and consequently the London Times was unaware of the fact. The circumstances that led to the final collision between the isprávnik and the young surgeon are now published for the first time.
- ↑ "Police Law in Siberia," Eastern Review (St. Petersburg, Oct. 13, 1883), No. 41, p. 1.
- ↑ Review of the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance," in magazine Juridical Messenger, Vol. XIV, No. 12, p. 561. Moscow, December, 1882.
- ↑ The Third Section of the Tsar's chancellery formerly included the Department of Imperial Police. That department, however, has since been put under the direct control of the Minister of the Interior.
- ↑ Russian law provides for an amelioration of the condition of poseléntsi, or forced colonists, who have, by continuous good conduct, shown a disposition to reform. After the lapse of more or less time they may obtain permission to move from place to place within certain prescribed limits, and may even attach themselves eventually to rural Siberian communes, and recover some of their lost rights of citizenship. The point made by Mr. Sidorátski is that he cannot be a criminal colonist because he is denied even the privilege, which is granted to the latter, of improving his condition and reacquiring civil rights. He is in an anomalous position not recognized or provided for by law.
- ↑ The meaning is that it is not addressed in the name of the Tsar.