CHAPTER XXVII

THE “COLONISTS”—FURTHER EVENTS IN THE WOMEN’S PRISON—THE HUNGER-STRIKES—THE YAKUTSK MASSACRE

The summer of 1888 brought troubles also to us in the men’s prison, though they had nothing to do with the grievances of the women.

Among the inmates of the “hospital” room was Vlastòpoulo, formerly an officer in the army, condemned in 1879 to fifteen years’ “katorga,” this sentence having been subsequently increased to the life-term, in punishment for an attempt at escape. He was a man of many gifts and well equipped with varied information, firm in character, very proud and ambitious; and he was held by us to be unalterably fixed in his terrorist principles. His comrades placed great confidence in him, and esteemed him highly, as they testified by twice electing him stàrosta.

In the spring of this year (1888) Vlastòpoulo’s roommates, of whom I was one, noticed that he was becoming short-tempered, peevish, and restless. About this time we were visited by an official of the Imperial Police Department—one Russìnov by name, a privy councillor. Tours of inspection were often made by high officials from Petersburg, and had for their real object the inciting of political prisoners to “repentance,” and the urging them to sue for pardon. These efforts were sometimes successful. Weak-minded people were occasionally found who would sing, “Pater, peccavi”; but it is worthy of note 276that such instances never occurred among the women “politicals.”

On this occasion we were unaware that Councillor Russìnov had made proposals of recantation to any repentant souls among us; but one morning, shortly after his departure, Vlastòpoulo left the prison in the company of gendarmes, handing to one of the comrades as he passed through the door a note, which when read aloud, left us all perfectly thunderstruck. Vlastòpoulo informed us that he had lost all faith in the justice of the revolutionary struggle, and had therefore resolved to “cast himself at the foot of the throne,” as he expressed it, i.e. to petition the Tsar for pardon.

No previous occurrence of the kind had been at all like this, and the impression on us was overwhelming. Vlastòpoulo was, as I have said, a most prominent person in our ranks, and his example might well be followed by others, especially considering the frame of mind in which many of the prisoners were known to be.

This was, as I have explained, a time of thorough-going reaction in Russia. Sufficient news penetrated the walls of our prison to convince us that there was at the moment no hope whatever of any definite immediate success in the revolutionary movement; and the fact of this being so necessarily caused much brooding over gloomy and even desperate thoughts, to which in prison one is but too prone. If some among us were already troubled by feelings of disillusion and doubts of the validity of our ideal, a further piece of news which arrived at this juncture—totally unexpected and at first incredible—would naturally only serve to heighten dismay. The rumour reached us that Leo Tihomìrov, one of the best-known leaders of the Naròdnaia Vòlya, had become a renegade. This man, whom chance alone had saved from death on the scaffold, had fled from Russia in 1882; and it proved to be true that in 1887 he had written the pamphlet, Why I Ceased to be a Revolutionist, in which he forswore 277his former convictions, and by which he gained the Tsar’s pardon. He received permission to return to Russia, and henceforth devoted his pen to the service of the existing Government, of which he is to this day a supporter.

This instance of apostasy—unique in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement—made the deepest impression throughout all Russia. “If such a man as Tihomìrov has become a monarchist, and acknowledges the absolute power of the Tsar, why then I, poor sinner, can be a revolutionist only through a misunderstanding,” I heard one of the foremost among us say; and, in fact, he himself soon afterwards sent in a petition for pardon. Our worst fears were realised. Nine men in all followed the example of Vlastòpoulo; among the number Yemelyànov, who had held a bomb in readiness to throw at Alexander II., and Posen, whose monarchist infatuation I have already mentioned. Of course, all this had a most overwhelming and depressing effect upon us.

The authorities always took care that anyone who had petitioned for pardon should at once be removed from our midst and interned outside the prison until orders arrived from Petersburg. Naturally we ourselves instantly broke off all relations with such a person, which often occasioned very affecting scenes. The action of sending in a petition of the kind we termed “asking to be sent to the colony”; and to this day the word “colonist” has a sinister sound in Siberia, bearing the implication of “renegade.”

Meanwhile the fight in the women’s prison was not at an end, but raged more fiercely than ever. Four other women who had been brought to Ust-Kara joined in the protest of Elizabeth Kovàlskaya’s three friends. The authorities did not seem inclined to move Masyukov; and the truce having expired, the women resolved to carry out their threat, and again began a hunger-strike. When we learned this, we decided that we too must associate ourselves with them in their protest, and we refused to take food, declaring that we did so to show our solidarity with 278our women comrades, though in our own opinion the commandant’s apology had been a sufficient atonement for his offence.

Our prison now presented an unwonted appearance; all work was suspended, the chest that served as our larder remained closed, the kitchen stood empty, and about the yard wandered the prisoners, who for days ate nothing, but in whom no signs of yielding could be discerned; it was easier for us to starve than to eat, while we knew that our women comrades were suffering the pangs of hunger.

We made no announcement of our proceedings to the commandant, and he also preserved silence until the third day, when he sent for our stárosta to know why we were on strike. When our reasons were given him he asked the stárosta to inform us, as well as the women, that he really was soon to leave the place; he had just sent in an application to be relieved of his post, and had received a favourable answer. In proof of this he showed a telegram relating to the matter.

We succeeded in persuading the women to give in for the time and to take nourishment, they having now fasted for eight days; but they would not entirely forego their protest against Masyukov, only modifying it so far as simply to “boycott” him. Ever since the abduction of Elizabeth Kovàlskaya the commandant had been afraid of appearing in their sight; but now they determined to break off even indirect communication with him. This decision cost them perhaps the heaviest sacrifice they could have made: it meant that they refused to accept their mails, which had always to pass through the hands of the commandant, so that they received neither money nor letters. Consequently they were forced to subsist on the prison rations alone, all communication with their friends was stopped, and all tidings of the outer world that they could have obtained from newspapers were lost to them. The natural result was that in a very short time the poor women began to suffer greatly, both physically 279and mentally, and that some of them were well-nigh driven to despair. The commandant was obliged to send back whence they came all letters addressed to the women prisoners. The alarm of their relations and friends at getting no news and receiving back their own letters unopened may well be imagined; and the knowledge of the suffering thus caused to their dear ones was an added misery for the captives.

She who suffered most in this terrible ordeal was Nadyèshda Sigida, one of the latest arrivals in Ust-Kara. I never knew her personally, but from all I heard of her from her friends she must have been a very sensitive young creature, gentle, affectionate, and attracted by all that is good and beautiful. She was deeply attached to her family, who lived in Taganrock, a small town in South Russia. Before her marriage she had been a teacher in a school, and her whole heart had been in her profession; she had taken but little direct part in the revolutionary movement, and had been condemned to eight years’ penal servitude because a secret printing-press and some bombs had been found in the house inhabited by herself and her husband. The latter had been condemned to death, the sentence being afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life, and he had died on his way to the island of Saghalien. Fate had dealt hardly with the poor woman: she herself had been unjustly sentenced, she had lost a beloved husband, and she had arrived at the Siberian prison at a juncture when she was obliged to take part—almost involuntarily—in the drama I am now describing. The stoppage of all communication with home must have been especially cruel to her; her longing for her mother, brothers, and sisters made her nearly desperate, as she pictured their feelings on receiving back their unopened letters to her.

There seemed no way out of this terrible impasse. A year had gone by since Kovàlskaya’s departure, and Masyukov was still commandant. The women, in a state 280of desperation, declared at last that they could bear the position of affairs no longer, and would put an end to it, cost what it might. They consulted together, and again resolved to fast, so they set up a hunger-strike for the third time.

“Will it be any good?” Sigida asked herself. The authorities seemed determined not to yield; the hunger-strike had led to nothing hitherto, and would probably once again prove a fruitless undertaking; would it not be better that one victim should pay for all? Better that one alone should suffer, than that all should sacrifice themselves. Sigida resolved to save her companions.

One day she told the gendarme on duty that she wished for an interview with the commandant, and asked to be taken to him. Masyukov saw nothing out of the way in this request, and ordered Sigida to be brought to his office.

Some of us were witnesses that day of a strange scene, which could be followed by looking through the crevices in the stockade surrounding our yard. A carriage brought a young lady, attended by two gendarmes, to the commandant’s house; she entered, and shortly after the commandant, in a state of great excitement, jumped out of the window into the yard bareheaded, and ran away. The young lady soon appeared in front of the house, and spoke with evident earnestness and decision to the gendarmes; after which she began talking quietly with a warder’s children, and caressing them. All this seemed most enigmatical; we gathered little save that the young lady had insisted on having a telegram despatched. But the solution soon followed. We learned that when Sigida came face to face with the commandant she struck him a blow, saying, “That is for you as commandant!” and our hero, despite the presence of the gendarmes, took to his heels and fled, leaping out of the window as we had seen. Sigida, afraid that Masyukov would try to hush up the affair, had thereupon demanded that the occurrence should be telegraphed at once to the proper authorities. She was 281counting on the usual procedure in such a case; an officer receiving a personal injury from one of his charges being generally removed from the place where such a thing had happened, and the offender sentenced to death. Her calculations as to these probable results of her action proved false, however; the poor lady had offered her sacrifice in vain.

I must here pause to speak of other events, which, though not directly bearing on these struggles at Kara, yet greatly influenced the minds of those concerned in them. The year of which I speak, 1889, will never be forgotten by those who were then in Siberia. The news of the sanguinary scenes that took place in Yakutsk was told to the whole civilised world, and everywhere aroused horror at the cruelty of the Tsar’s Government; yet probably but few of my readers will recollect the particulars.

There were at that time interned in Yakutsk some young men and girls who were to be deported still further northward, “by administrative methods,” to those wretched forlorn hamlets that figure on the map of Siberia as Verkhny-Kolymsk, Nijni-Kolymsk, Verchoyansk, and so on. Among these young people, who of course belonged to the student class, there were boys and girls under age, to whose charge even Russian law could lay no crime.

The Vice-Governor, Ostàshkin, who was then in command of the province of Yakutsk, had given orders that these exiles should be conveyed to their appointed destinations in a manner that would have rendered the hardships of the journey quite unnecessarily severe; and when the young people learned this they made representations to the authorities, pointing out the danger that threatened them of perishing by cold and hunger on the way. They were told to come together to talk matters over, and they accordingly assembled in a dwelling-house to await the arrival of the chief of police; instead of whom, however, came an order to betake themselves at once to the police office. They now felt convinced that they were to be 282deported at once, without time for protest, and they refused to obey; whereupon there arrived immediately a troop of soldiers commanded by an officer, and a frightful scene began that beggars all description. The soldiers clubbed the exiles with the butts of their rifles, stabbed at them with bayonets, and fired on the defenceless assembly. Six corpses were left on the spot, among them that of a pregnant woman, and many were severely wounded. The wounded and injured—numbering twenty-seven—were then thrust into prison; and a court-martial was opened, wherein three persons were condemned to death and executed in Yakutsk, and nineteen were sentenced to penal servitude for life. That is briefly the history of the “Massacre of Yakutsk.”[104]

We in Kara received the news of these horrors just when our own situation was becoming critical. Sympathy with the innocent victims and anger against their oppressors were mingled with apprehensions for ourselves; for we naturally thought, “If the Government can treat so barbarously harmless people who are not convicts, what may be done to us, ‘deprived’ as we are ‘of all rights,’ convicts in a prison whence tidings need never penetrate to the outer world?”

After events justified these fears.