THE CHIEF OF POLICE AT IRKUTSK—MEETING WITH EXILED COMRADES—FROM IRKUTSK TO KARA—STOLEN FETTERS—A DUBIOUS KIND OF DECABRIST—ANOTHER CONTEST—ARRIVAL AT OUR JOURNEY’S END

The detailed narrative of all that these women had gone through impressed us greatly; for their sufferings had been severe, and often caused by the most paltry tyranny. The wonder was that they had ever been able to hold out. Our indignation against the chief of police, under whose auspices this sort of thing had gone on, was naturally roused to such a pitch that we longed for an opportunity to testify our abhorrence of his conduct. This opportunity was soon forthcoming. A higher official from Petersburg, who was inspecting Siberian prisons, came one day with his suite into our cells, and the chief of police was in attendance. The moment he entered, Làzarev, our head-man, went up to him, (in accordance with a predetermined agreement of our party,) and said in loud and distinct tones—

“We are astonished at your impudence in daring to appear before our eyes, after having by your treatment forced our women comrades into a terrible hunger-strike.”

The whole company of our visitors hastily took their departure, to the tune of our comments and ejaculations, which contained nothing flattering to the evildoer! No 195untoward results followed our action, and the ladies heartily rejoiced at this humiliation of their torturer.

From these four we heard much about the conditions of life in Kara, our appointed destination; as also from another comrade now in Irkutsk, who could give us his personal experience of the prison there. This was Ferdinand Lustig—formerly an artillery officer, and afterwards a student at the Petersburg Technological Institute—who had been sentenced in 1882, in the case of Suhanov and Miha?lov, to four years’ penal servitude. He had now ended his term in Kara, and was going to be interned elsewhere, under police supervision. What he told us was not comforting: the régime was severe, and the governor of the political prison—a captain of gendarmerie, named Nikolin—of the worst repute.

Four of us only were to travel eastward together: Maria Kalyùshnaya, Tchuikòv, Làzarev, and myself. The other seven were to be sent to various places in the government of Irkutsk; and the nineteen-year-old Rubinok, whose sad case I have already described, was to go northward to the deserts of Yakutsk.

At the end of September we started, in company with a party of ordinary prisoners. We had now before us a journey of some twelve hundred versts (eight hundred miles), which would take at least two months. Winter in Siberia begins much earlier than in other places of the same latitude, even in European Russia, and therefore we had to expect many hardships. In two days the last steamboat was to start for Listvinitchnaya, across Lake Baikal, and if we missed that we should have to winter in Irkutsk.

The tempestuous Baikal treated us kindly on the whole, though usually the autumnal storms are a real danger to voyagers on its waters. It is often asserted that the scenery of its shores rivals that of the Swiss mountain lakes; and without myself instituting any comparison, 196I can vouch for it that the impression those magnificent hills made on me was unforgettable.

We had to pass a night at the landing-station on the opposite shore—Mysovaya; and we had been already shut into our prison, when the grating of the lock again sounded, and the warder brought in a young lady, who came straight towards me.

“Sonia!” I cried, in joyful surprise, as I recognised in her Sophia Ivànova, a dear friend whom I had not seen for six years. Like Sophia Perovskaya, Vera Figner, and other prominent women of the terrorist organisation, she had joined the new party of the Naròdnaia Vòlya in the autumn of 1879, when the society of Zemlyà i Vòlya (Land and Liberty) was dissolved. It was just during that transition period that I became acquainted with her and with other Terrorists; and shortly after, in January, 1880, she was arrested in Petersburg, where she had been assisting at the secret printing-press whence issued the organ of the party, named like it, Naròdnaia Vòlya (The People’s Will). At the time of the arrest an armed resistance was made, in which Sophia Ivànova took an active part, for which she was condemned to four years’ “katorga.”[71] This sentence having been fulfilled, she was now being sent for internment into the government of Irkutsk.

We were both heartily rejoiced at seeing one another again, but our meeting could be only a brief one; the steamboat was to start almost directly on its return journey, and Sonia could not miss it. We hurriedly exchanged news of ourselves and of our common friends; then came our parting, and I have never seen her since. To the best of my knowledge she is still living in Siberia.

Soon after this we arrived at Verkhny-Udinsk, where—as in most Siberian towns—the prison was filled to overflowing, and no room could be found for us “politicals.” 197The sergeant (in Transbaikalia the convoys of prisoners are always commanded by a sergeant, instead of by a commissioned officer, as on the previous part of the journey) took us on to the police-station. As, however, it was late the place was all deserted, and no official could be found, which disturbed the sergeant no whit; he simply left us there by ourselves in the office, with unbolted windows and doors, and went his way. We also were free to go or stay as we pleased, and were rather surprised at his calm way of solving the difficulty. But the man knew what he was about. It was true enough that we could walk off without anyone being the wiser; but what then? It was, indeed, always easy to escape from prison here; but it was well-nigh impossible to get any further. Elizabeth Kovàlskaya had twice escaped from prison in Irkutsk (once disguised as a warder), but on both occasions she was caught before she had left the town; and if she had found concealment impossible in a relatively big place like Irkutsk, with all the allies and money she had at command, the case must certainly have been hopeless for us, strangers, in a little hole like Verkhny-Udinsk. Still, it was a curious feeling at the time, as I well remember, to know oneself free and under no kind of observation, and yet to be so helpless. We finished by waxing restive and miserable over the trap we were in.

In this place we met another comrade on his way from Kara, going off to be interned elsewhere. This was Steblin-Kamensky,[72] whom his wife voluntarily accompanied. They had been too late for the steamer, and were now obliged to wait in Verkhny-Udinsk till the way again became open—three or four months probably. During that time he was at liberty to go about in the place as he pleased, and naturally we spent together the two days of 198our sojourn here, Kamensky telling us all he could of life in Kara. He was a brilliant talker, and described with an inexhaustible flow of humour the doings of our comrades in every particular. True, our laughter over his stories was mingled with much sorrow and indignation, for what he related was often sad enough. He told us of the bitter hardships inflicted on our comrades by an inhuman gaoler, and he described Captain Nikolin, in command over the penal settlement for “politicals” at Kara, as a malicious, ill-natured man, continually devising petty humiliations for the prisoners.

These various comrades, from whose personal knowledges we had information about Kara, all made the same impression upon us. They bore the stamp of their long imprisonment; their voices were muffled in tone; anxiety, deep and constant, was painted on their faces; the hair of nearly all, despite their youth—hardly any had reached thirty—was prematurely grey. But discouraged and broken-spirited they were not; or at least with one or two exceptions only. Very few of them could regard the future with any hopeful feelings for themselves personally. Long years of exile lay before them, doomed as they were to vegetate in some forsaken corner of Siberia, victims to all sorts of hardships, far from friends and civilisation. To many it seemed questionable whether their future lot might not be more dreary than prison life itself. Yet even the semblance of freedom attracted them—a doubtful freedom certainly, for the exiles, or “colonists” as they are called, are subject to a thousand and one restrictions at every turn.

I met one only who looked forward with a steadfast confidence in the bright side of things, and this notwithstanding the fact that he was bound for the worst part of Siberia—the government of Yakutsk. Ivan Kashintsev[73] 199was then only twenty-five, and full of youth and high spirits; he declared to me, on the occasion of our meeting at one of the halting-stations (we already knew each other), that he meant to escape at all hazards. This, in fact, he accomplished later, and he is now living abroad.

Before those who were released from prison, to live in exile under police supervision, reached their appointed destinations, they had at that time many difficulties and delays to encounter. We ourselves went at a snail’s pace on our way to Kara, but prisoners coming thence progressed far more slowly. They had to wait at nearly every halting-station until some convoy on the homeward journey could pick them up and take them on for a certain part of the way, and sometimes they were kept in this manner nearly a week at a station. On an average they barely made five versts a day, and when the distance they had to travel was some hundreds or even thousands of versts, the journey might take months to perform.

At each meeting with comrades on the return journey from Kara, I could not help thinking of my own future, and saying to myself, “What will you feel like when after long years you tread this path again? Or, indeed, will you ever tread it?”

One day I found I had sustained an odd loss: someone had made off with a bag in which I kept some of my belongings, the chief item among them being my fetters! I had to make the somewhat curious confession to the commanding officer that, instead of wearing my chains, I had allowed them to be stolen; and I was rather surprised that, while commiserating me on account of my personal losses, he did not seem at all agitated about the loss of the Government’s property.

“What am I to do without my fetters?” I asked him, when I saw that the absence of this important detail in the attire of a convict left him unmoved.

200“Well, of course we must get some for you somehow,” opined the officer. “Just wait a moment; there ought to be things of the kind lying about somewhere.” And he gave the sergeant orders to look in the lumber-room, where a new pair of fetters was discovered.

“Take care you don’t lose these!” said the officer, as I packed them among my luggage.

This is a specimen of the indulgent, almost fatherly demeanour which our guardians more and more assumed towards us as we got further east.

We were by this time in the thick of the Siberian winter and its severities. We had passed the Yablonovoi mountain ridges, and were nearing Tchita, the capital of Transbaikalia. At the last station before our arrival there we observed a great bustle going on among the ordinary prisoners; the sergeant and the soldiers were occupied with them all night, continually going in and out in a quite unusual manner. We racked our brains to imagine what could be on foot; but the riddle was only solved next day, as will be seen further.

Although the distance from Tchita was considerable for one day’s march,—about forty versts (twenty-six miles), I think,—we started very late on the following morning; but after about twenty versts’ march we came to a lonely farmhouse, standing all by itself on the high-road. We had heard from our comrades who had been in Kara that an old man lived here who gave himself out as a Decabrist.[74]

Our party halted in the courtyard, we “politicals” were shown into a room, and the master of the house presently paid us a visit. He introduced himself by the name of Karovàiev; and was a vivacious old gentleman, of eminently respectable appearance. According to his account of himself he had been an ensign in the Guards, had taken part in the revolt of the Decabrists, and had been exiled to Siberia; he claimed to be eighty years of age, but did not 201look more than sixty-five. He made himself very agreeable, and was most anxious to show us hospitality, declining to take any money from us. Meanwhile in the next room and the corridor things were very lively; there seemed to be a sort of combined market and feast going on, soldiers and convicts eating, drinking, and hobnobbing together like boon companions.

It was already dark when we arrived at the gates of the prison in Tchita, where we had at once to engage in a struggle with the governor: first, because he received the ordinary prisoners first, leaving us to wait; and next, because he gave us a room which was absolutely unfit for us to spend the night in. Only after we had made a great fuss, and threatened him with complaints, did he give us proper accommodation.

Next day, when the party was mustered for departure, it became ............