Part 39

“The land is becoming uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable; what does that mean?”

“Why, it is getting too small for us.”

“Too small; in what way?”

“Oh, the villages are springing up everywhere like mushrooms from the soil. One has scarcely room to turn now, and does not know where to lay out one’s fields. If I had not been too old I should have left this part.”

“The villages spring up like mushrooms from the soil? But where? I see none. How far is the next village from yours?”

“Fifteen versts” (ten miles).

Thus does the peasant of the crown estate speak and think. The vast land is not spacious enough for him, and yet the twentieth part of what he has at his disposal would suffice for him if he would cultivate it. For the land is so fertile that it richly rewards even a very small amount of labour. But if it does once fail, if the harvest does not turn out as well as usual, if the peasant suffers from want instead of from superfluity, he regards this not as the natural consequence of his own laziness, but as a dispensation of God, as a punishment laid upon him for his sins.

In reality, however, he is very comfortable in spite of his sins and their punishment, and has more reason to talk of his reward. For not scarcity but superfluity troubles him. The government allows each peasant fifteen hektars of the best land, usually at his own choice, for every male member of his family; but of the 400,000 square versts of the crown-estate, only 234,000 had been taken up till 1876, so it does not matter much even now whether a peasant restricts himself to what he has a right to or not. Some families use not less than twelve or fifteen hundred hektars, and to these it is certainly a matter of indifference whether they keep only the number of horses necessary for their work, or twenty or thirty more. In reality, it often happens that the superfluous animals relieve the peasants from a heavy care--that of turning to account the over-abundant harvest which the extremely deficient means of transport prevent his converting into money. In a country in whose capital, under ordinary circumstances, the pood or thirty-six pounds of rye-meal is sold at sixpence, of wheat-meal at ninepence, of beef in winter at about one shilling and twopence at most; where a sheep costs four shillings, a weaned calf ten, a pig eight, and an excellent horse seldom more than five pounds of English money, an unusually good season lowers prices so far that the too-abundant harvest becomes a burden. When the peasant, who in any case works only when he must, can only get about one shilling and twopence for about two hundredweights of grain, the flail becomes too heavy in his hand, and the harvest, according to his limited ideas, becomes a curse.

These conditions, which apply to the present day, explain most of the vices as well as many of the virtues of our colonist: his laziness, his incorrigible contentment, his indifference to losses, his liberality to the needy, his compassion for the unfortunate. They also explain the intense desire, innate in all Siberians, to increase the population. The vast land is hungry for inhabitants, if I may so speak. Therefore even now the Siberian looks with pride on a numerous family; and there is no foundling asylum in the whole country. Why should there be? Every woman who cannot bring up the child she has borne, or who wants to be rid of it, finds someone willing and anxious to take the little creature off her hands. “Give it to me,” says the peasant to the faithless mother: “I will bring it up;” and he looks as pleased as if a foal had just been added to his stock. In former times, when the population was considerably less than it is now, children were married while still immature, or scarcely mature, so that they might become parents as soon as possible and gain other hands to help them; now youths do not usually marry until the beginning of their eighteenth year, but they frequently wed older women who give promise of early child-bearing, and the designs of such women upon marriageable youths are not only winked at but encouraged by the bridegroom’s parents.

In order that romance may not be altogether awanting, I may mention that elopements of young girls with love-struck youths, and secret marriages, are by no means rare occurrences among the peasants of the Altai. But the great majority of these elopements take place with the consent of all concerned, thus also of the parents of both bride and bridegroom--to avoid the customary entertaining of the whole village at a meal, simple in itself, but accompanied by a great deal of brandy. As may be imagined, however, love overcomes all obstacles, particularly the disapproval of parents, on the crown-lands as elsewhere. The maiden, like every other on the round earth, is soon won over by the youth who desires to run away with her; a holy servant of the Church can also be procured at all times by the payment of an exorbitantly high fee; but the angry parents are not so easily reconciled. The mother curses her daughter, the father his son; both swear by all the saints never to see their depraved children again.

“And Heaven, full of kindness, Is patient with man’s blindness.”

But it is not from above that the reconciliation comes; that is brought about by a magic power beyond compare, known as schnaps among the races who inhabit German territory, as vodki among those living on the sacred soil of Russia. As soon as the father-in-law drinks, the young bridegroom has gained the day; for the mother-in-law drinks too, and the luscious nectar softens her inflexible heart also. If some friends arrive, as if by chance, to assist at the reconciliation festival, they are not denied admittance, for the cost of entertaining them is much less than if the whole village had assembled, and, drinking fervently, had called down the blessing of Heaven upon the newly-united pair. Who can deny after this that love, pure, holy love, makes even a peasant youth of the Altai inventive?

The bride of the Altai receives no dowry; her mother, on the other hand, expects a gift from the bridegroom, and sometimes demands it with much storming, weeping and howling, after the manner of women. Only under special circumstances, as, for instance, when, on the morning after the wedding, the nuptial linen does not fulfil the expectations of the assembled guests, the contrary takes place. The intelligent and experienced father-in-law makes use of the magic means already mentioned, produces an inspiriting number of bottles thoughtfully laid in beforehand, promises the indignant, or at any rate downcast son-in-law a foal, an ox, a sucking-pig, and the like; the minds of all are made easy again, and the reconciliation is effected.

And why should the bridegroom be angry for ever? Others have fared no better, and the future will equalize much. Paternal joys often blossom even under irregular circumstances, and they are paternal joys all the same. For even the poorest couple have no cares about their household expenses, if they will use their hands at all; people are willing to help them with this and that, and if a bountiful Heaven will only be moderate enough for a few years in the outpouring of its blessings, so that the price of grain and stock may not fall too low, a tea-caddy and cups will adorn a corner table, and silk coverlets the big double-bed, shining images the right-hand corner, and indescribably noble pictorial representations of the hunting of the lion, tiger, bear, wolf, elephant, stag, and crocodile the walls of the cleanly-kept “best room”, which is never awanting in the better class of peasant houses.

A domestic life scarcely differing from that already described beckons to every convict who is exiled to Siberia, to one sooner, to another later, if he wishes to attain to it, if he lives long enough, and is to a certain extent favoured by fortune. While in Siberia I came to have views about exiles and banishment very different from those I had held before visiting the country; but I may remark at the outset that I am not one of those who bestow more sympathy upon a murderer, a robber, an incendiary, a thief, or any other scoundrel, than upon the industrious paterfamilias who strives, in the sweat of his brow, to bring up a numerous family honestly, and that I have never been able to soar to that loftiness of view which seeks to mitigate all punishment and relax all confinement.

On an average, fifteen thousand people are sent from Russia, “verschickt”, as the expression is among the German Russians. Those who have been guilty of grave crimes are sentenced for life, of less serious offences for a number of years. It is not within my province to discuss the severities or deficiencies of the Russian penal code; but the fact that the penalty of death is imposed only for the gravest and rarest of all crimes does not suggest too great severity. But it is undoubtedly a hardship that exiles sentenced for political causes should be treated on the way to Siberia, and often when there, exactly like common criminals.

Condemned exiles are first transferred from the prison in the district town to that in the capital of the government, and thence transported by rail or by the ordinary peasant-wagon to Nijni-Novgorod, Kasan, or Perm. Whether criminals are still forced to march in chains, two abreast, and thus to carry their fetters for the whole journey, I do not know; I have never seen this, and I am firmly convinced that the well-known mildness of the late Czar would never have suffered this barbarous proceeding. In the towns already mentioned, as well as in Tjumen and Tomsk, there are spacious prisons, and, at intervals along such routes as have not been deserted because of the railway, there are less roomy buildings for the safe housing of the exiles during night. Whenever it can be avoided, the exiles are not compelled to travel on foot, but are conveyed to their destination by rail, by the wagons already referred to, or by regularly plying steamers: thus from Nijni-Novgorod or Kasan to Perm, from Tjumen via Thura, Tobolsk, Irtish, Ob, and Tom, to Tomsk. The prisons are simple buildings, but thoroughly clean; the hospitals connected with, but sufficiently far apart from them, are model institutions; the river-boats are unusually long, two-decked vessels, which may best be described as gigantic floating cages, for the whole upper portion above the deck is latticed after the fashion of a bird-cage. Each of these boats, which is towed by a steamer, affords the necessary accommodation for six hundred persons, and contains also a large kitchen, a sick-room, a small dispensary, quarters for the accompanying soldiers and for the crew. Between Perm and Tjumen run wagons, which also resemble bird-cages, and which serve for the transport of dangerous criminals.

Every exile receives from government a cloak of heavy gray woollen material, in the middle of the back of which is fastened a diamond-shaped piece of cloth of colours varying with the length of the sentence, so that the soldiers in charge may be acquainted with it as far as is necessary. For procuring food on the journey, ten, or in the case of “unfortunates” of higher social standing, fifteen kopeks a day are allowed to each; but during a prolonged stay in prison the rate is seven and fifteen respectively. This sum is so liberal that, if spent with care, it suffices to procure all the necessaries of life, although every day, except during Lent, three-quarters of a pound of meat are served out to each. If wife and children accompany a condemned criminal, each of these receives a similar sum. Additional earning is permitted, and money gained by work or begging flows, though perhaps not quite untaxed, into the pockets of the condemned himself, or down his throat in the form of vodki.

I said that everyone was at liberty to take his wife and children with him into exile, and I may add that he usually does so. A long sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime is a ground of divorce even in Russia; every married woman is, therefore, free to choose whether she will accompany her husband into exile, or remain in her native land. Even children who have attained their fourteenth year have the right to decide for themselves whether they will leave Russia for Siberia with their parents or not. But the government prefer that wife and children should accompany the criminal, and they encourage it in every possible way, therefore they give much consideration to the question of how far it is practicable to lessen the difficulties and disagreeablenesses of the journey.

That it is oppressive under all circumstances cannot be denied; but the journey of the exiles is by no means so indescribably dreadful as it has been depicted. Only those convicted of the gravest crimes are conducted to their destination in chains; the rest enjoy more freedom than our convicts. The portion of the journey which has to be performed in the steamers or the boats they tow is the worst. Here all the exiles and their families are cooped up together, and excesses of all descriptions are committed by the most degraded criminals, who are only, or can only, be kept under sufficient restraint in rare cases. The expert thief steals from the bungler in the same disreputable calling, the more violent overpowers the weaker, or takes the soles off the boots of a sleeper to possess himself of the bank-notes supposed to be hidden there; the incorrigible shakes the resolution of the penitent, or destroys utterly those who had previously given ground for hopes of improvement. Male and female criminals are now separated from each other, but the members of a family remain with their head, and the wife and daughters of an exile are always in danger during the journey, no matter what attempts are made to avoid this. On the other hand, the steamer shortens the journey tenfold, and thus removes those who are not irretrievably ruined, and those who are not criminals, so much the sooner from evil influences. More difficult, certainly, yet less dangerous to the more hopeful criminals, is the journey by land. Driving along Russian roads in a Russian peasant-wagon drawn by galloping Russian horses is certainly a species of torture according to our ideas; but it is not so to those who have, from their youth upwards, been accustomed to no better conveyances or smoother roads. To be sure, the exiles are more closely packed in a wagon holding six or eight people than the peasant packs his when he drives with his family; the driver or the accompanying soldier is in no way more comfortable than the convicts, with the exception of the worst criminals, whose chains jar more uncomfortably than usual on such a journey. An exile belonging to a cultured family, and convicted, for instance, on political grounds, cries out under the torture of such a journey, and is fully justified in depicting it in the blackest possible colours from his own point of view; but if we take into account the local conditions, and the customs of the country, we must at least acquit the directors of these forced journeyings from the charge of cruelty under which they lie. And as for the journeys on foot, these never take place in winter, it is only strong and able men who are forced to make them, not more than forty versts a day are traversed, and every third day is spent in resting at one of the prisons on the way. The soldiers in charge walk too, they must keep constant watch over the prisoners for whom they are responsible, and must therefore exert themselves much more; for if the murderer has to drag his chains, the soldier has to carry his weapon, baggage, and ammunition. He, however, is the irreproachable servant of the state, the other an outcast from society!

But it is certainly unjust that an exile of higher social position who has been convicted of a common crime should, if he has still means at his disposal, or can obtain them, be treated otherwise than one of lower degree, who is sentenced for the same crime. The former is permitted to travel to his place of banishment at his own time, and with every comfort, guarded only by two Cossacks, whom he must pay for the double journey.

While every unbiassed Russian or Siberian admits this injustice frankly, officials and exiles alike deny that there is cruelty on the part of the escorting soldiers, or of any other persons, whether of high or inferior rank, who are intrusted with the guardianship and government of the convicts. It does happen that mutinous exiles are shot or killed in some way on the journey; but such events occur very rarely, and only when all other means of quelling insubordination have failed. The Russian is not cruel like the Spaniard, the Turk, the Greek, or the Southern Slav; on the contrary, a mistaken compassionateness and sluggishness makes him mild and considerate rather than severe and harsh; he may force men and animals to exert themselves to the utmost, but he does not torture them in order to gloat over their torments. Even the name “unfortunate”, by which it is customary to describe all exiles, originates in a feeling deeply rooted among the people, and this feeling of compassion is shared by everyone, including soldiers and police-officers, and the inspectors and warders of the prisons. That even the most long-suffering and lamblike patience may now and again be excited to angry rage by one or more miscreants is intelligible enough; that miserable wretches at the convict stations levy tax even on misfortune in order to gain more money than the state promises them in salary, I was informed by some of the exiles; that the rebels who were sentenced to exile after the last Polish rebellion were treated by the accompanying soldiers more harshly than other exiles, indeed with pitiless severity, was the complaint of a former gendarme who told me the story of his life through a German-Russian interpreter. But to make the present government responsible for such excesses, to reproach them with constant barbarity, to persist in talking about the knout, which was abolished years ago, and in general to represent our Eastern neighbours as incorrigible barbarians, is simply senseless, because in every respect untrue.

All the laws, regulations, and arrangements in force at present prove that the government takes all possible thought for the exiles, and strives to render their lot less hard, and moreover gives to each an opportunity of sooner or later improving his lot. To treat exiles with unjust severity is strictly forbidden and heavily punished; to take anything unjustly away from them is looked upon as a grave offence. Everywhere there reigns the desire to lessen the severity of the punishment if it can be done, to give the convict back to human society, if that be possible. But it is only those who really deserve help that receive it, not those who pretend improvement. For they do not make hypocrites in Siberia as we do in our prisons. The mania for making prisoners canting hypocrites, which is too often seen among us, is unknown among the Russians, for they take it for granted that everyone honours and reveres the Church and the “dear saints”, fasts at the proper season, and generally performs what little is demanded by a church which is based wholly upon external forms. On the other hand, they deal with evil in the right way, and they achieve results which we might, nay, must envy.

Of the fifteen thousand banished, scarcely one thousand are sent to work in the mines each year; the rest are distributed among the different governments, being, as it is called, exiled to become colonists. In the larger prisons not only are men and women separately confined, but Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews are kept apart, and religion is taken into consideration in distributing the colonists. Whenever the convict sentenced to one of the lighter penalties has reached the place of his destination, he is presented, on behalf of the government, with a certificate of permission to reside there, and is thenceforward free to pursue any lawful calling; but he may not leave his district, or even his village, without the permission of the authorities, and he is under the constant surveillance of the police. About the reason for his banishment, or about his earlier life, he is never questioned, at least never with malevolent intentions, for “in the house of the hanged one does not speak of the hangman”. The people among whom he lives are, or have been, themselves unfortunates, or are descended from exiles; the few free settlers adopt the manners and customs of the other Siberians. The “unfortunates” are helped in every justifiable way. Even in the prisons on the way there are workshops where industrious prisoners may earn a little; schools also are established to prevent the ruin of the rising generation, and the orphans of criminals are brought up at such an expenditure of time and money that only the wilfully blind can fail to see this gleam of light, only the maliciously dumb refrain from speaking of it. In the prison at Tjumen we visited the prison school, in which a young priest imparted instruction to Christian, Jewish, and Tartar children alike, and it was a good face, a veritable head of Christ, that this long-haired and bearded, though still youthful ecclesiastic showed us. To be sure, the Jewish and Tartar boys had to read and repeat the catechism of the Orthodox Church as well as the Christian children, and a quiet hope of winning one or another of the former to Christianity may perhaps have lived in the breast of the priest; but what harm could priest or catechism do compared with the advantage gained? The boys learned to read Russian by means of the catechism, and they learned writing and arithmetic as well; that was the main thing. In the same place we visited an orphan asylum founded, built, and for the most part maintained and conducted, by a wealthy lady, and destined for the children of exiles who died on the journey or in the town prisons. It was a model institution in the best sense of the term, with happy child-faces, beautiful school-rooms and dormitories, workshops and play-rooms, a little theatre with all the necessary appurtenances, the whole a work of mercy whose value cannot be gainsaid. But we were to learn more than this.

In Tjumen, Omsk, Tobolsk, and not only in the towns, but throughout the various governments, we lived among and had constant intercourse with exiles who had for the most part been convicted of lighter offences, thieves, cheats, sharpers, tramps, and vagabonds, as well as with seditious Poles and other rebels. The bank director who received us hospitably was a Polish rebel sentenced to twelve years’ banishment, and the joiner who made us some boxes had robbed the post; the coachman who drove us had been guilty of a serious theft; the waiter who served us had picked the pocket of a guest in an inn; the friendly man from Riga who helped us to cross the Irtish had forged a document; Goldmacher, our Jewish valet, had sold little Russian girls to Turkish harems; the maid who cleaned our room had killed her child; the chemist in Omsk was said to have dealt in poisons with no good intentions. After a time we looked at every one in the light of the crime or misdemeanour which he might have committed, and we had only to inquire of the superintendent of police about some worthy men, among whom were merchants, notaries, photographers, actors, to hear of false coining, embezzlement, fraud, and so on. Yet all these people earned their daily bread, and something over, and many a one who wished to remain unknown would not have suffered inquiries as to his past to go unpunished, because he had completely broken with it.

That an exile who has been a criminal can thus break with his past is due entirely to his fellow-citizens and the government, who strive, by every means in their power, to further all honest endeavours to begin a new life. Those who desire work get it without mistrust; they are taken into service without anxiety; the former thief is employed as groom, coachman, or cook; the child-murderess is hired to wait upon children; the convict artisan plies his own trade when his services are required. And we are assured that those who employ them have seldom reason to regret it. Thus many a criminal is gradually restored to society as a respectable citizen, and his sins are not visited upon his children to the fourth, indeed scarcely to the second generation. What is practically impossible with us is quite possible in Siberia--to transform a criminal into an honest man. That this does not always succeed, that there are incorrigibles in Russia as well as among us, is freely admitted by the Siberians themselves; but it is a noteworthy fact that the idler who is cast off by his community in Siberia falls into crime much more readily than the criminal who has suffered punishment relapses into his former habits.

While the class of exiles whom we have hitherto considered are allowed to follow any occupation they may choose, those who have committed graver crimes are compelled to labour in the mines. With regard to Nertschinsk, in which on an average four thousand of these unfortunate exiles work, I have obtained through General von Eichwald, the present superintendent of the mines on the crown-lands, the most precise information, and what I learned about the convicts themselves may be shortly related as follows:--