CHAPTER XXVI

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 submit to the barbarous process of head-shaving; they might wear their ordinary clothes, and the staff generally abstained from teasing them with petty restrictions. But the peculiar characteristics of these women, their whole mode of thought, their inflexibility of purpose,—which under such conditions inevitably develops into contrariety of temper,—led to a series of conflicts between themselves as well as with the authorities. There was no unity of principle among them in their attitude towards the prison rules. Whilst Sophia Bogomòletz, Maria Kovalèvskaya, and Elena Rossikova regarded it as a part of their political programme, to which they conscientiously adhered, that they should maintain a continual feud with the staff about any and every possible circumstance, the others held that conflicts should not be needlessly provoked. These differences of opinion caused 271frequent friction, and personal relations between the prisoners were occasionally somewhat strained.

In the spring of 1887 Maria Kovalèvskaya was brought from Irkutsk to Kara. She arrived just at a time when the disputes in the women’s prison had become unbearable; and shortly afterwards Sophia L?schern von Herzfeld, Anna Korba, Anna Yakimova, and Paraskova Ivanòvskaya petitioned the commandant to separate them from the others, their request being granted. At the same time, in consequence of some squabble with the staff, Sophia Bogomoletz and Elena Rossikòva were removed to another prison; there were, therefore, for some time only four women in the prison at Ust-Kara—Kovàlskaya, Kovalèvskaya, Kalyùshnaya, and Smirnitskaya.

Early in 1888 the Governor-General, Baron Korf, came to visit the prisons of Kara. When he arrived with his suite at the women’s prison Elizabeth Kovàlskaya was sitting on a bench out in the open air, and as the Governor-General came up to her she remained quietly seated, vouchsafing him not a glance. He addressed her harshly, saying that in his presence she ought to stand up, that he was the highest official in the district.

“I did not elect you to that position,” replied Kovàlskaya calmly, and remained as before.

The functionary was beside himself with rage, and informed the commandant that he would send written instructions how to deal with this refractory prisoner; so shortly afterwards there came an order to send Kovàlskaya to the central prison in Verkhny-Udinsk, “because by her unruly behaviour she had a demoralising influence on the other prisoners in Ust-Kara.”

Kovàlskaya’s friends asserted that she had purposely provoked the conflict in order to effect her removal to another prison, so hateful had the sojourn in Kara become to her. The Governor-General’s order would therefore have been most welcome to her; but the stupid, 272cowardly commandant Masyukov supposed otherwise, and took it into his head that she and her companions would offer resistance. He thereupon came to the idiotic and inhuman decision that the delinquent should be conveyed away secretly. Early one morning, while the prisoners still slept, gendarmes accompanied by ordinary convicts burst into her cell, seized on the sleeping Kovàlskaya, and dragged her, clad only in her nightdress, to the office, where she was ordered to dress and make ready to start for her new place of confinement. Naturally the unfortunate lady screamed when aroused so rudely from her sleep, and the other prisoners waking up sprang from their beds and were witnesses of the inexplicable and insulting treatment to which their comrade was subjected. They could imagine nothing else but that a common assault on her honour was meditated, and their fury against the commandant knew no bounds.

For a long time only uncertain rumours about these events reached our ears, for our secret post was not working regularly at the time. We were first supplied with exact tidings through Golubtsòv, the sergeant of the guard, in a very unusual way. This honest fellow, Golubtsòv, who could hardly read and write, was a very important personage in our prison. He was a remarkably sensible, clever, and tactful man; his relations with the “politicals” during a long course of years and under different commandants had taught him a great deal, and he thoroughly understood our way of looking at things. He was thus enabled to avoid rubs and disputes, and we were always on the best of terms with him; this strengthened his position, and with his good sense and tact gave him the upper hand over the stupid and inexperienced Masyukov. The wise sergeant, in fact, was the presiding genius of the place, and ruled the commandant completely.

When the Governor-General’s order arrived, and Masyukov in his foolish shortsightedness evolved his plan of 273carrying off Elizabeth Kovàlskaya, Golubtsòv warned him what would be the consequences; but for once no heed was paid to his advice, and it was only when the women prisoners started a hunger-strike as a protest against their comrade’s treatment that the commandant sought counsel from his subordinate. Golubtsòv advised him to lay the matter before the “politicals” in the men’s prison, and ask us to intervene. This was the more natural and reasonable, because one of our number, Kalyùshny, had a wife and a sister among the strikers. He had been a student in the University of Khàrkov, was an intelligent, high-spirited young man, a charming companion, and a great favourite among us. He was a Terrorist, had been sentenced in 1888 to fifteen years’ “katorga,” and with him his wife, Nadyèshda Smirnitskaya. Maria Kalyùshnaya, my companion on the journey to Kara, was his sister, and both these ladies had witnessed the alarming scene which had led to the desperate protest they were now making. These facts suggested to the wise sergeant his plan, and he advised Masyukov to appoint Kalyùshny as intermediary in the affair. Masyukov was sensible enough to agree; he had Kalyùshny brought to his house, and told him straightforwardly all that had taken place, ending with the information that Kalyùshny’s wife, his sister, and Maria Kovalèvskaya, had been refusing food for several days. He then begged Kalyùshny to go to Ust-Kara, pacify the women, and induce them to give up their hunger-strike, promising beforehand that he would do anything in reason to give them satisfaction. Kalyùshny said to us afterwards that he was sure the unlucky commandant really regretted his conduct in the affair.

Kalyùshny told Masyukov he must consult his comrades before undertaking the mission, and asked that we might be allowed to take counsel together. This was agreed to, and we all met to consider and discuss the circumstances—a thing that had not been heard of in Kara since the prison had been put under the gendarmerie. The tidings 274given us by the unhappy husband and brother regarding the hunger-strike of the women moved us deeply. When he ceased speaking a stillness as of death reigned over our gathering, and then the usually silent Yatzèvitch began the debate. Without much discussion we decided that another delegate must accompany Kalyùshny, and that they should try to prevail on the women to desist from their protest, assuring them that we should ourselves now take over the arrangement of the business with Masyukov. To the commandant we declared that he must apologise to the three ladies.

It was arranged that our two delegates should be taken to the women’s prison, fifteen versts (about ten miles) distant, accompanied by gendarmes, though all this was entirely against the regulations.

When they returned from their mission, and we had assembled to hear the result, they told us that the famishing women absolutely refused to be contented with an apology from the commandant. They all three declared that they would only desist from their protest if Masyukov were withdrawn from Kara.

The majority of us—myself among the number—saw at once that this was an impossible demand. The reactionary Government, with Count Dmitri Tolstoi at its head, would never recall the commandant, even if all the “politicals” in Siberia starved themselves to death; but we thought we might perhaps find a way out of the difficulty if we could induce the commandant to ask of his own accord to be transferred elsewhere on some pretext or other. To this the commandant on his side, and the ladies on theirs, consented; but the latter insisted positively that if Masyukov had not taken his departure within a certain fixed period of some months, they would again refuse food and persist in their protest to the bitter end.

This, as might readily be foreseen, meant merely a postponement of the question. But I must return for the present to our own affairs in the men’s prison.