THE TOUR OF THE HEIR-APPARENT THROUGH SIBERIA—OUR LIFE IN THE PENAL SETTLEMENT—AN INCENSED OFFICIAL

Time passed by much faster in the settlement than in the prison. Busy with the necessary work for establishing our little community, we scarcely noticed the passing of autumn and winter. I can never forget the spring of 1891—the first I enjoyed after the long years of imprisonment; moreover, that spring brought quite unexpected hopes of favours soon to be granted us. A report reached us that the Tsar Alexander III. had decided to issue a manifesto to celebrate the treading of Siberian soil by the Heir-Apparent. This manifesto, it was said, would bring pardon to all convicts, and not even the “politicals” were to be excluded. The official telegram about this—obscurely worded though it was—could not fail to awaken in us hopes of at any rate increased liberty. If the news were correct, it was to be concluded that many of us would shortly be treated as “exiles,” and no longer as convicts. This would improve our situation in a greater or lesser degree according to the locality whither we should be banished. “Politicals” are generally sent to the province of Yakutsk, where conditions of life are in many respects no better than in the settlement at Kara. It must be remembered that Yakutsk is a very sparsely populated province, and lies further from the civilised world than the Transbaikalian province in which 308Kara is situated. The climate is worse than that of Kara, the winter longer; and in other ways, too, our comrades there were worse off than we. Their post arrived less often than ours, and in many parts of the Yakutsk government “luxuries,” such as tea, sugar, and petroleum, are often not to be procured at all. Even stale black bread is sometimes a rarity, costing twelve to fifteen roubles the pood,[107] and is regarded as a delicacy only to be set before an honoured guest. The chief, if not the exclusive, food of the natives consists of fish and meat. The dwellings, too, are worse than the wooden huts of Kara, being simply “yurtas,” i.e. tent-shaped hovels such as the natives live in, built of rough logs, the interstices between which are filled up with earth and turf. Yet most of us were ready to go to these inhospitable regions, for there was always the chance, when once one was numbered in the category of “exiles,” that in time one might be sent to a more advantageous district. Above all, there was greater freedom; for though a place of residence is appointed for each exile, yet they may travel about in the surrounding country for considerable distances. There are more opportunities, too, of seeing people; new additions are always being made to the numbers of the “administrative” exiles in every province, and from them one learns what is going on at home; while, on the other hand, nobody fresh was sent to the penal settlement at Kara during the whole time that I was there. Finally, the exiles in Yakutsk had the prospect of yet another step in advance—they might gain permission to enrol themselves in the peasant class, and in that way win even greater facility of movement within the borders of Siberia. Things do not move very fast, and even if all goes well this favour may only be obtained after ten years’ exile; but one learns patience in Siberia, and many a one will let his thoughts dwell on that distant future: “Ten years! then perhaps there will 309be a manifesto; and in fifteen or twenty years may come the great event—return to one’s home!”

KARA PRISONERS AT WORK

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I confess that I myself indulged in such hopes, though I knew but too well how deceptive these “favours” of the Tsar might be. To the Coronation manifesto there had been attached numberless limitations and exceptions, and it was not to be expected that this time the pardon of which we had been hearing rumours would be extended to everyone. “But who knows? They have let me out of prison at last; perhaps now I shall be made an exile, unlikely though it seems!” Hope and fear alternated, and optimism gained the upper hand.

While in the Petersburg government-offices the question had to be settled as to carrying out the proclamation—who was to benefit by it, and who must be excluded from its operation—the authorities in Siberia had another care upon them: how to avert all danger from the path of the Heir-Apparent, as he journeyed through a land where dwelt so many embittered victims of Tsarism. The gentlemen of the official world solved this problem eventually in a simple fashion: all along the Prince’s route we (busy with our hopes of freedom!) were to be locked up for the time being; and though Kara was a good fifty versts distant from the high-road by which the journey of state was made, we were shut up in prison the day before the Cesarèvitch[108] passed, and only set free again a day after he had got safely through our neighbourhood.

For long afterwards we awaited with the greatest excitement the advent of the post every week or ten days, always hoping that some decision as to the scope of the manifesto would arrive. But government departments take their time; those who amused themselves with thoughts of the Tsar’s grace had still to endure uncertainty as best they could. A whole year elapsed before we received the long-expected news, and then it was disappointing 310enough; nearly half the inhabitants of the Kara penal settlement were excepted from the operation of the manifesto, the rest had but a very short curtailment of their sentences. I was among those who got nothing at all, and was obliged to reconcile myself to the thought of another four years in Kara. It was bitter to have one’s hopes thus destroyed.

It was the more bitter that our first joy over release from prison had soon worn off, and life in the settlement had now become almost as irksome as the life in prison had been. Our days seemed as monotonous and empty as ever; and while in prison one had been constrained to accept the unalleviated barrenness of life, here in the settlement one felt the tug of the chain at every turn, and chafed at it. There we had known from the first that all reasonable and profitable activity was denied us, that we were condemned to an uninteresting and aimless existence; and under such conditions one’s mental alertness becomes dulled—almost atrophied. In the settlement, on the contrary, it was quite otherwise; here we were in the midst of life again, the state of lethargy that had reigned in the prison passed away; and although the pulse of life could hardly be said to beat high, yet we could see people exerting themselves, undertaking enterprises, pursuing their various interests, fighting with difficulties and dangers. We ourselves the while were restricted to the work of our narrow household economy; work which naturally could not satisfy our aspirations. Most of us yearned to set our powers to work—to do something that should call forth all our energies and capabilities, not merely to chop wood and make hay. But in this forsaken spot, and hemmed in as we were by all manner of restrictions, we could find no congenial outlet for our activities. To all appearance we were now at liberty to undertake many things that had been forbidden in prison; but this appearance was mainly illusory. It was just this contradiction between our apparent rights and our actual possibilities that galled us 311and weighed heavy on our spirits, making us sometimes inclined to think we would almost rather return to prison, if thereby we might escape from this torment of inactivity. We found it irksome in the extreme to have to take enormous pains and waste much time over mere trifles—the details of our primitive household management—which, under the difficult conditions of our life, made exorbitant demands upon us. Especially at first, when we were new to it all, it often happened that for weeks at a time one could never take up a book or a newspaper, and for educated, intellectual men that was naturally very wearisome. The only interesting mental occup............