N considering the life of political prisoners in the fortress of Petropavlovsk, the reader must bear stead ily in mind the fact that the men and women who thus languish for months or years in the silent bombof casemates of the Trubetskoi bastion are persons who have not had a trial. Their e is by no means that of condemned crimiundergoing just punishment for offenses which they have been duly convicted in a Furt of justice. It is rather that of presumy innocent persons, deprived for an unreaable length of time of the right to be heard self-defense, and treated meanwhile as if ir guilt were unquestionable. That a very ge proportion of the men and women thrown prison in Russia upon political charges in fact innocent is not a matter of opin, it is a matter of official record. I have wn in a previous paper that out of more n a thousand persons arrested for alleged ticipation in the so-called "revolutionary paganda" of 1872-75 only 193 were ever ught to trial, and even of this relatively all number 90 were acquitted by a court judges of the Government's own selection. ne-tenths, therefore, of these prisoners were tirely innocent, not only of real crime but en of the vague and shadowy offenses set th in Section 250 of the Russian Penal de; and yet all of them were subjected fore their release to from six months to tee years of rigorous solitary confinement in House of Preliminary Detention, or in the mp prison sepulchers of the Trubetskoi basn. That a system which brings about such sults is in the highest degree arbitrary and just, and that the subjection of presumably nocent persons to two or three years of such atment pending trial is cruel in the extreme, e propositions that hardly admit of argument. hether such wrongs and cruelties are ade1. late to excuse the violent measures of retaliaon adopted by the terrorists is a question to hich different answers may be given by difrent people; but it will, I think, be genally admitted that the confinement of an *Official Stenographic Report of the Trial of the egicides, p. 217. St. Petersburg, 1881.

Sentence of the Court in the case of the 193, p. 8.

innocent man for three years in a casemate of the Trubetskoi bastion under the conditions that I have described, and the final release of such a man without reparation or apology, and perhaps without even the formality of a judicial hearing, constitute extreme provocation. Such was the view taken by the eminent Russian advocate Gerard when, in the trial of the regicides at St. Petersburg in 1881, he endeavored to show that his client Kibalchich had been changed from a law-abiding citizen to a revolutionist by unjust treatment of precisely this character; and such was evidently the view also of the Court, which refused to allow Mr. Gerard to finish his statement, and which, when he persisted, informed him sharply that the Government's treatment of its subjects was "not a matter for his judgment."

That undeserved imprisonment and cruel treatment before trial were important factors in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement clearly appears from the later history of the 90 prisoners who were acquitted at the end of the trial of the 193 in January, 1878. According to the judgment of a court not at all likely to err on the side of clemency, these 90 young people were wholly guiltless of any offense against the laws. They had not even rendered themselves amenable to the 250th section of the Russian Penal Code by manifesting "an intention to bring about a change of government. at a more or less remote time in the future," and yet they all had been punished with three years of the strictest solitary confinement in the House of Detention or the Petropavlovsk fortress, and had finally been denied even the poor boon of a public trial in an open court, where they might at least have made apparent to the world the injustice from which they had suffered. The result was that which might have been anticipated. Almost every one of the persons thus punished and then found not guilty ultimately became a revolutionist, and before 1885 more than a third of them were in Siberia, and two of them - Andre Zheliaboff and Sophia Perofskaya-had perished on the scaffold with the blood of Alexander II. upon their hands. †

I do not know a more significant illustration Manuscript list of names of political exiles in Siberia, now in my possession. Official Stenographic Report of the Trial of the Regicides, p. 260. St. Petersburg, 1881.

than this of one way in which revolutionary impulses in Russia are excited and kept alive. The agencies which transformed these innocent young people into revolutionists were unwarranted arrest, denial for an unreasonable length of time of the right to be heard in their own defense, and prolonged imprisonment under conditions that threatened to deprive them of health, sanity, or life. Three yearstwo years or even one year of solitary confinement in a casemate of the Trubetskoi bastion is quite enough to embitter and exasperate to the last degree a consciously innocent man; and if to such unjust imprisonment be added the loss of a brother, sister, wife, or friend in prison before trial, the transformation of the surviving sufferer into a revolutionist becomes at least an understandable phenomenon.

THIS, however, is by no means a complete presentation of that part of the revolutionist's case which relates to the fortress of Petropavlovsk. Political suspects awaiting trial are not the only persons therein confined, nor are the casemates of the Trubetskoi bastion the only cells in that vast state prison. The fortress is a place of punishment as well as a place of preliminary detention, and its gloomy walls hold the "condemned as well as the "accused." When a burglar, murderer, or other common Russian felon has been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to penal servitude, he is, as a rule, released from the solitary confinement in which he has been held pending trial, is allowed to mingle with other prisoners of the same penal grade, and is forwarded without unnecessary delay to Siberia. When, however, a political offender has been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to penal servitude under the same code of laws, he is not released from solitary confinement, nor sent with reasonable promptness to Siberia, as he would be if he had merely killed his mother with an ax, but is thrown into a bomb-proof casemate in what is known as the "penal servitude section" of the Petropavlovsk fortress, or into one of the smaller cells of a "Central Convict Prison," and there lies in solitude and wretchedness for one, two, three, or even five years before he finally goes insane or is sent to the convict mines of Kara.* In what part of the fortress the "penal servitude section" is situated, the exiles whom I met in Siberia did not know. It is probable, however, that "condemned" politicals are distributed among various bastions and ravelins in that extensive fortification, and that the words "penal servitude section" * There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, and Russian officials assert that political offenders are now

designate the criminal class or grade to which such prisoners belong, rather than the particular part of the fortress in which they are confined. The material environment of the "condemned" differs little from that of the "accused." They are shut up in the same spacious but damp and gloomy casemates, with the same high grated windows looking out upon a blank wall, with the same "Judas" pierced doors through which they are constantly watched, and in the same tremorless atmosphere of eternal silence. The difference be tween their life and the life of the "accused" is mainly a difference of treatment.

DEPRIVATION OF ALL CIVIL RIGHTS.

di

む

WHEN a criminal in Russia is judicially condemned to a term of penal servitude, or "katorga," the sentence of the court carries with it deprivation of all civil rights. The a political offender who incurs this penalty ceases to be a citizen, and loses at once not only all the privileges and immunities that appertain to his rank or social station, but also all control over his property, his family, and his own person, and all right to claim the protection of the laws, even when his life is imperiled by the treatment to which he is subjected. He is virtually outside the pale of the law, and may be dealt with by the officers of the state as if he were a slave. The fact that the term of penal servitude to which he has been condemned is a short one does not lessen the force of this secular excommunica tion. A hard-labor sentence of four years vests the criminal of all his civil and political rights as completely as a sentence to penal servitude for life. The property which was his before his condemnation descends to his legal heirs as if he were dead, or is sequestered by the state. The family of which he was the head ceases to belong to him, and the state may assume the custody of his children. The exemption from liability to corporal punishment which he has previously enjoyed is taken away from him, and he may be flogged with the" rods" or the cat. Finally, during what is officially known as the "period of probation," which lasts from a year and a half to eight years, he is not allowed to have either bed, pillow, blanket, money, books, writing mate rials, or communication with relatives; his head is kept half shaved longitudinally from the forehead to the nape of the neck; he must wear the coarse gray convict dress, must live on the convict rations, and must wear a chain and leg-fetters weighing five pounds For violent insubordination, even when it is held in solitary confinement after sentence only in the castle of Schlüsselburg.

2

e result of delirium or partial insanity, he ay be handcuffed, flogged, confined in a rait-jacket, fettered to the wall of his cell, or ained to a wheel-barrow.*

FE IN THE PENAL SERVITUDE SECTION." It is hardly necessary to point out the differce which this treatment makes between the e of the "condemned" and the life of the accused," even although both may be imisoned in the same fortress. For the "acsed" there is always the hope of ultimate al and release; for the "condemned" there only the prospect of slow mental and physi1 decay in the solitude and gloom of a bomboof casemate, and finally death, insanity, or e mines of the Trans-Baikal.

You cannot imagine, Mr. Kennan [said a condemned volutionist to me in Siberia], the misery of prolonged afinement in a casemate of the fortress under what known as dungeon conditions [kartsernoi poloznie]. My casemate was sometimes cold, generally mp, and always gloomy. Day after day, week after ek, and month after month, I lay there in solitude, aring no sound save that of the high-pitched, melanply bells of the fortress cathedral, which slowly imed the quarter hours, and which always seemed to to half articulate the words, "Tee zdais seedeeshseedee tee" [Here thou liest - lie here still]. I had solutely nothing to do except to pace my cell from ner to corner and think. For a long time I used to k to myself in a whisper; to repeat softly everything the shape of literature that I could remember, and compose speeches, which, under certain imagined aditions, I would deliver; but I finally ceased to have ergy enough to do even this, and used to sit for hours a sort of stupor, in which, so far as I can now reember, I was not conscious of thinking at all. Before e end of the first year I grew so weak mentally and ysically that I began to forget words. I knew what as I desired to express, but some of the words that needed had gone from me and it was with the greatt difficulty that I could recover them. It seemed metimes as if my own language were a strange one me, or one which, from long disuse, I had forgotten. greatly feared insanity, and my apprehension was ineased by the fact that two or three of my comrades cells on the same corridor were either insane or subct to hallucinations; and I was often roused at night d thrown into a violent chill of nervous excitement their hysterical weeping, their cries to the guard to me and take away somebody, or something which they agined they saw, or their groans and entreaties when, cases of violent delirium, they were strapped to their ds by the gendarmes. My inability to see what was ppening in the cells from which these groans, cries, id sounds of violence came gave full play, of course, my imagination, and thus increased my nervous extement, until I was on the verge of hysterics myself. everal times, when I feared that I was losing all self*Russian Penal Code [Ulozhenie o Nakazaniakh], fficial Edition, sections 22 to 25, inclusive, and secons 27 and 28: Government Printing Office, St. etersburg, 1885. See also the rules for the treatment fconvicts which are contained in the XIVth volume f the Russian Collection of Laws [Svod Zakonof], and articularly the Statutes Relating to Exiles [Ustav o ylnikh], Part II. An exception is made in the fortress the rule that convicts shall wear leg-fetters, for the eason that the clanking of chains would facilitate ommunication between cells, and would break the

control, I summoned the fortress surgeon, or the "feldsher," who merely gave me a dose of bromide of potassium and told me that I must not excite myself so; that nothing serious had happened; that two or three of the prisoners were sick and delirious; but that there was nothing to be alarmed about. As the fortress contained no hospital, insane and delirious patients were treated in their cells, and were rarely removed to an asylum unless they were manifestly incurable, or the care of them became burdensome. The effect of the eternal stillness, solitude, and lack of occupation on the mind was greatly heightened by the want of proper exercise and nourishment for the body. "Accused" prisoners awaiting trial in the Trubetskoi bastion were allowed to have money in the hands of the "smatritel," or warden, and could direct its expenditure for white bread, vegetables, tea, sugar, etc., to make up the dedemned," had to live upon black rye-bread, soup which ficiencies of the prison ration; but we, the " conit was often impossible to eat on account of the spoiled condition of the meat from which it had been made, and a small quantity of "kasha," or barley, boiled with a little fat and served without seasoning, and sometimes only half cooked. Such food, in connection with the damp, heavy air of the casemate and the lack of proper exercise, caused derangement of the digestive organs, and this was soon followed by more or less pronounced symptoms of scurvy. Madame Lebedeva, who was in the penal servitude section with me, suffered from scurvy to such an extent that her teeth became loose and her gums greatly swollen, and she could not masticate the prison bread without first soaking it in warm water. Scurvy, even in an incipient form, intensified, of course, the mental depression due primarily to other causes and made it almost insupportable. I never seriously meditated suicide,—it always seemed to me a cowardly thing to escape from suffering by taking one's own life, but I did speculate_upon the possibility of suicide, and wondered how I could kill myself in a casemate where there was absolutely nothing that could be used as an implement of self-destruction. Once I went so far as to see if I could hang myself from the small cylindrical hot-air pipe which projected two or three inches into my cell from the face of the brick oven. I did not really intend to take my life, but I felt a morbid curiosity to know whether or not I could do it in that way. As soon as I threw my weight on the pipe, it pulled out of the masonry, making, as it fell to the floor, a noise which attracted the attention of the guard in the corridor. I was forthwith removed to another cell, and I never again tried a similar experiment. They say that poor Goldenberg succeeded in committing suicide in the fortress, but I cannot imagine how he accomplished it. I became satisfied that I could not kill myself in my casemate in any other way than by biting into an artery or dashing my head against the wall, and I ultimately became so weak that I doubt very much whether I could have fractured my skull by the latter method.

ARE FORTRESS PRISONERS FLOGGED AND TORTURED?

Ir is not my intention to create prejudice against the Russian government, nor to perfect stillness which is regarded as an essential part of prison discipline. The rule that there shall be no communication between the "condemned" and their relatives is sometimes so strictly enforced that a mother cannot even learn whether her son is living or dead. I met in Russia relatives and near friends of Muishkin, Nechaief, Gellis, and Madame Vera Phillipova, who told me that they had been unable to ascertain whether those unfortunate prisoners were in the castle of Schlüsselburg or in their graves.

excite sympathy for the Russian revolutionists, by exaggerating the sufferings of condemned politicals in the penal servitude section of the Petropavlovsk fortress. I desire to state only those things which I have the very strongest reason to believe are true. Stepniak and Prince Krapotkin have painted the life of condemned politicals in somewhat darker colors than my information would justify me in using. Of the fifty or more fortress prisoners whose acquaintance I made in Siberia, not one had ever heard of cells situated below the level of the Neva River; nor of the famous letter written by Nechaief in his own blood; nor of dungeons infested by rats; nor of the flogging of political prisoners with whips; nor of a single case of torture. I am not prepared to assert that the statements of Stepniak and Prince Krapotkin upon these points are inaccurate, or without foundation; but I must, in fairness, say that they are not sustained by the results of my investigations. There are cells in the fortress whose atmosphere is so damp that salt and sugar melt or liquefy in it after a few hours' exposure, and such cells are sometimes occupied by political offenders; but they are not situated below the level of the Neva. Nechaief was chained to the wall of his cell as a disciplinary punishment for striking the gendarme officer Potapoff; but previous to that time he had been treated fairly well, and if he was ever flogged, or ever wrote a letter in his own blood to Alexander III., or to any other person, the exiles in Siberia are ignorant of the fact. Condemned political prisoners in the fortress have frequently been beaten with the butts of guns and with the fists of the guard, but I have not been able to authenticate a single report of actual flogging with a whip, although the latter punishment is authorized by law. As for torture,—that is, the infliction of pain by means of artificial appliances, I do not believe that it has recently been practiced, either in the fortress or in any other prison of European Russia. A distinguished revolutionist, who is well known to Stepniak and whose biography the latter has written, said to me in Siberia:

I assure you, Mr. Kennan, that torture in the fortress, in our time, has not so much as been heard of. The nearest approach to torture of which I had knowledge during my three-years' confinement there was

the forcible administration of chloroform to Oboleshef

and Madame Vitanieva, for the purpose of rendering them unconscious while their photographs were being

* Oboleshef and Madame Vitanieva were thrown into the fortress upon a charge of participation in the plot to assassinate General Mezzentsef. They refused to allow their photographs to be taken, and were thereupon chloroformed by force. Madame Vitanieva became unconscious and quiet; but the chloroform ex

taken.* Several of the prison guard revolted even at that, and one of them refused to assist in holding the struggling prisoners, declaring that he was not a palach "[hangman], and that it was not a part of his duty to poison people.

EFFECTS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN

FORTRESS CASEMATES.

IN the main, however, the descriptions of fortress life given by Stepniak and Prince Krapotkin are much more nearly in accord with the results of my investigations than are those published by the Rev. Henry Lansdell and one or two other English travelers who visited and superficially inspected the Trubetskoi bastion some years ago. There can, I think, be no doubt - and in my own mind there is not even the shadow of a doubtthat prolonged solitary confinement in one of the casemates of a Russian fortress, without books, writing materials, bedding, proper food, or communication of any kind with the outside world, is a much more terrible punishment than death. Madame Vera Phillipova, a well-known revolutionist and a beautiful and accomplished woman, who was tried and condemned at St. Petersburg in 1884, asked as a last favor that she might be hanged instead of being sent to the castle of Schlüsselburg, but her request was denied. Suicides and attempts at suicide in fortress casements are comparatively common, and condemned political prisoners frequently strike some offcer of their guard with the hope of being tried by court-martial and shot. The presiding judge of a Russian circuit court, whose acquaint ance I made in Moscow on my way home from Siberia, told me, in reply to an inquiry, that the revolutionist Muishkin was shot in the castle of Schlüsselburg in the summer of 1885 for striking the fortress surgeon. The desperate prisoner had resolved to escape from a life of hopeless misery by starving himself to death, and the prison surgeon had been sent to his cell to feed him by force. The high judicial officer who gave me this information was not a revolutionist, nor a sympathizer with revo lution; he made the statement dryly, without comment and without manifestation of feeling, and there is, so far as I am aware, no reason for doubting its truth.

condemned political prisoners are The inhumanity of the treatment to which subjected in the penal servitude section of the Petropavlovsk fortress is clearly shown by the phys

cited Oboleshef, and made him so delirious and violent that the attempt to photograph him was finally aban doned. There were present on this occasion Major Nikolski, an officer of gendarmes, Doctor Vilms, the fortress surgeon, and a number of "nadziratels,” or

Fl condition of such prisoners when finally eased. In April, 1883, the Department of perial Police sent an order to the comndant of the fortress to make up a large rty of condemned politicals for deportation the East Siberian mines. The commannt, after consultation with the fortress suron and with the officer appointed to take Farge of the convoy, reported that most of he political prisoners named in the order re so weak that they probably could not dure three days' travel, that more than half them were unable to stand on their feet thout support, and that the convoy officer clined to take charge of prisoners who were such physical condition unless he could be ed from all responsibility for deaths that ght occur on the road. In view of this state affairs the commandant recommended that e condemned politicals who had been seted for deportation be removed to the ouse of Preliminary Detention, and be held ere under more favorable conditions until ey should recover strength enough to renr their transportation to Siberia practicable. cting upon this suggestion, the Director of e Imperial Police ordered the removal of enty-two prisoners, including six women, om the casemates of the fortress to comparively light and airy cells in one of the upper pries of the House of Detention.* Of the isoners so removed six were already in an Ivanced stage of consumption, and twelve ere so feeble that they could not walk nor and, and were carried from their casemates carriages, either in the arms of the prison

guard or upon stretchers. In the House of Preliminary Detention these wrecks of human beings received medical care and were fed with nourishing food and stimulants for about three months, at the expiration of which time all except Fridenson and Emelianoff were reported convalescent. Orloff and Madame Lebedeva were still suffering from scurvy, and the others were mere shadows of their former selves; but they were officially regarded as strong enough to begin their toilsome journey of nearly five thousand miles to the mines of the Trans-Baikal.

THE DEPARTURE FOR SIBERIA.

I SHALL never forget, while I live [said to me an exile who went with these condemned prisoners to Detention before our departure. It was the night of Siberia], the last night in the House of Preliminary July 24-25, 1883. A rumor was current among the political prisoners that a large party would start for Siberia on the following morning, but no one knew did not notice any unusual sounds until shortly after who was to go, and all were awake and watchful. I midnight, when a cell near mine was thrown open, and I heard, passing my door, the once familiar footsteps of a dear friend and comrade, who had been long in prison, and whom I had not seen since the years of our early manhood, when we breathed together the air of freedom and worked hand in hand for the realization of our ideals. The convict party was evidently being of the Trans-Baikal. In ten or fifteen minutes I heard made up, and my friend was to go with it to the mines his footsteps returning, but they were not so rapid and assured as before and were accompanied by the sharp metallic clink and rattle of chains. He had been put table, and yet the first sound of the chains chilled me into leg-fetters. I knew, of course, that this was ineviwith a vague sense of horror. It seemed unnatural and incredible that he- the man whom I loved like a

4. Fomin; age 25; army officer; penal servitude for life. 5. Yevseief; age 26; peasant; penal servitude for life.

6. Zlatapolski; age 35; technologist; 20 years' penal servitude.

7. Pribuiloff; age 25; physician; 15 years' penal servitude.

8. Kaluzhni; age 26; student; 15 years' penal servitude.

9. Orloff; age 27; student; 13 years' penal servitude.

10. Novitski; age 29; student; 12 years' penal servitude.

11. Hekker; age 19; 10 years' penal servitude. 12. Stephanovich; age 30; student; 8 years' penal servitude.

13. Liustig; age 27; army officer; 4 years' penal servitude. [I saw Liustig in the Irkutsk prison in September, 1885, but had no opportunity to talk with him alone.-G. K.]

14. Kuziumkin; age 21; peasant; 4 years' penal servitude.

15. Emelianoff. 16. Fridenson.

The twelve prisoners carried out of the fortress were Mesdames Yakimova, Smirnitskaya, and Korba; and Messrs. Zlatapolski, Liustig, Voloshenko, Nagorni, Kaluzhni, Mirski, Hekker, Fridenson, and Emelianoff.