THE WOMEN’S PRISON

I come now to the most tragic time of my imprisonment and the saddest of my recollections, a series of events in connection with our unhappy fellow-sufferers in the women’s prison. We were always well instructed as to how our ladies were faring, for in spite of all the measures taken to prevent it, letters continually passed between us. Concerning the subject of the following narrative I also learned many additional details later from some of our women comrades.

When I first came to Kara ten women “politicals” were imprisoned there, one of whom—Lèbedieva—died soon after my arrival. The most remarkable among those remaining was Sophia L?schern von Herzfeld. She was the daughter of a general, and her relations belonged to the Court circles in Petersburg. She joined the Propagandist movement in the early sixties, and lived among the peasants, dressed like one of themselves, trying to diffuse the ideas of “peaceful” Socialism, if I may so call it. She was arrested, endured four years’ imprisonment while still under examination, and was at last banished to Siberia in the “Case of the 193.” The efforts of one of her relatives, a lady in the Tsaritsa’s household, procured her pardon, and in 1878 she was released from prison, at which time I made her acquaintance in Petersburg. But she was not allowed to enjoy her liberty for long; a year later she was arrested in Ki?v, and resisted capture 267“with weapons in her hand.” She was brought before a court-martial, together with Ossìnsky and Voloshenko; she and Ossìnsky were condemned to death, and he paid the full penalty of the law, but in her case “by favour” the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and she was deported to Kara in 1879. Sophia L?schern von Herzfeld was modest and even shy in manner, giving the impression of an extremely reserved character. She suffered a longer term of imprisonment than any other participant in the revolutionary movement of the early seventies.

ANNA KORBA

ELIZABETH KOVALSKAYA

NADYESHDA SIGIDA

MARIA KOVALEVSKAYA

NADYESHDA SMIRNITSKAYA

SOPHIA BOGOMOLETZ

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Her friend Anna Korba[101] I had also known in Petersburg in 1879; she had then just returned from the seat of war in Turkey, where she had been nursing the wounded. She belonged to a German family named Meinhardt, naturalised in Russia, numerous members of which had filled high official positions, and she herself married a foreigner. She had been extremely active in philanthropic work, and was adored by the people of the provincial town where she lived; but she learned by bitter experience how futile, under the existing political conditions, were all attempts to effect even the smallest reforms by merely quiet educative means, and she joined the terrorist society Naròdnaia Vòlya in the beginning of the eighties. It was just then that the desperate struggle of that party against the Tsar’s despotic government had reached its height. Anna Korba saw her friends and comrades arrested by the dozen, sent to the scaffold, or buried alive in prison. The “white terror” raged. In 1882 the chief of the secret police, Soudyèhkin, had succeeded in capturing most of the Terrorists who still remained at large after the assault on Alexander II., and Anna Korba took up the task of continuing the struggle in company with the last remnants of the fighters. A secret laboratory for the manufacture of dynamite bombs was set up in Petersburg; this was discovered by Soudyèhkin, and in June, 1882, Anna Korba 268was arrested, together with Gratchènsky, the officer Butzèvitch, and the married couple Prybylyev. Next spring she was tried with sixteen others, and sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude.

Anna Korba was a highly educated woman, in character courageous, even-tempered, and persevering. She holds the same views to-day as when she first threw herself into the fight, and this unswerving faith in her cause impresses with respect even people who cannot share her opinions.

Before I proceed to describe the other inmates of the women’s prison, I must digress for a moment to relate an incident which in its time caused great excitement among the newspaper-reading public. Towards the end of February, 1881, the police of Petersburg had their suspicions directed to a certain cheesemonger’s shop in that city, where something illegal was supposed to be going forward. A search-party, one member of which was an engineer of the pioneer corps, was sent to investigate, but discovered nothing of any consequence. The next day came the assassination of the Tsar, and three days after that the cheese-shop was suddenly deserted by its occupants, among whom had been a married couple calling themselves Kòbozev—peasants from the interior of Russia, according to their perfectly regular papers. The police now made a more effectual search, and found that a subterranean passage had been made from the cheese-shop to the Màlaya Sadòvaya, a street through which the Tsar often passed. This tunnel had been meant to serve as a mine for blowing up the Tsar’s carriage in case the bombs had failed to do their work. It is easy to imagine what must have been the feelings of the two revolutionists who passed under the name of Kòbozev when the police made their first visit to the shop; the underground passage had then just been completed, and the cases and barrels, supposed to contain cheese, were filled with the earth that had been dug out. Had the police but lifted the straw 269matting that covered them, the whole plot, like many others before, might have been doomed to failure.

The humble peasant-woman who had served in that shop was Anna Yakìmova. She was the daughter of a priest, and had been a village schoolmistress. Like so many others, she had gone “among the people,” and had been one of the accused in the “Case of the 193”; she was acquitted, but was nevertheless sent by administrative order to a forlorn spot in the north of Russia, whence in 1879 she escaped and came to Petersburg, where I made her acquaintance. Subsequently she joined the Naròdnaia Vòlya, and took an active part in a series of attempts against the life of the Tsar. She had helped Zhelyàbov and others in 1879 to undermine the station at Alexandròvskaya, through which the Tsar was expected to pass. After many escapes she was eventually arrested, and condemned to death in the “Trial of the Twenty”; but her sentence was commuted, she was imprisoned in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and sent to Kara in 1884. I need hardly say that Anna Yakìmova was a person of strong-willed and determined character; all the women who took part in our movement of the seventies were of one type in that respect, and eminently so Praskòvya Ivanòvskaya and Nadyèshda Smirnitskaya, (both sentenced in 1883,) who, with Yakìmova, formed a little group by themselves in the Kara prison. They had been friends of old, shared the same opinions, and were similar in tastes and temperament.

Besides these, Elizabeth Kovàlskaya,[102] Sophia Bogomòletz,[102] and Elena Rossikòva,[103] all of whom were brought to Kara in 1885, and Maria Kalyùshnaya—who, it will be remembered, had travelled thither with Tchuikòv and myself—completed the number of our women “politicals.”

These inmates of the women’s prison constituted in a certain sense the élite of our band; for while in the men’s prison a great number were mere boys whose opinions 270were scarcely formed, and who only languished in Siberia because of senseless persecutions under martial law, the women were without exception tried and convinced adherents of the revolutionary movement, whose sentiments and ideas were fixed once and for all. In Russia alone has the historical development of events induced so great a number of women belonging to the upper classes of society to leave the circles in which they were born, in order to aid in freeing a nation from political slavery.

Conditions of life in the women’s prison were on the whole a little better than in ours. Above all, each had a cell to herself—small, dark, and damp, it is true, but this spared them the most irksome of our trials, that absence of quiet which made our existence so hard to bear. They could enjoy companionship if they so desired, as a large common room was also provided for them, and the doors of the cells were left open by day; but whenever they pleased they could isolate themselves. They were better provided with material comforts than we were, for they received more money from their relations; and they could even occasionally contribute to our exchequer. Then, of course, they had not to ............