Sixteen years in Siberia: Some experiences of a Russian revolutionistDeich, L. G. (Lev Grigor'evich)
History
Sixteen years in Siberia: Some experiences of a Russian revolutionist
Deich, L. G. (Lev Grigor'evich)
Deich, L. G. (Lev Grigor'evich), 1855-1941; Exiles -- Russia (Federation) -- Siberia -- Biography
The distance from Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk is about five hundred versts, and
took us a full month to accomplish—twenty days on the march and ten days
of rest between the stages. In Krasnoyarsk we were to wait a week, the
ordinary prisoners being taken to the deportation prison and we
ourselves lodged in the town gaol. On arriving there we were struck by
the orderliness of the arrangements. The spacious new building was
freshly whitewashed, and the whole place spotlessly clean; there was
light and air in abundance, and there were no bars to the windows. We
might have imagined that we had been brought to a decent hotel; I have
certainly never seen another prison like it in either Siberia or Russia.
When we entered the corridor, however, the air of comfort was somewhat
lessened by inscriptions on the cell doors—“For murder”; “For robbery”;
“For theft,” etc. The governor, a pleasant-looking man, came up and
ordered briefly and decisively that we should be placed in separate
cells, and each according to his special class—convicts, exiles, and
“administratives”—as that was the rule of the place. This did not suit
us at all, and we explained to him the upset it would mean to our
feeding arrangements; besides which, as during our two months’ journey
we had clubbed all our luggage together, it would be very awkward to
change all that at a moment’s notice. Moreover, we told him, we did not
wish to be treated in any different way from that prescribed by the
regulations; that we were on transport, and therefore not supposed to
conform to the rules of the place, which only applied to prisoners on
remand or under sentence there. It had nothing to do with us, we said,
that we had not been taken to the deportation prison where we belonged;
and—to sum the matter up—we intended to do here as everywhere else,
_i.e._ we should divide into groups convenient to ourselves in the
different rooms, and might be locked up by night, but not by day, as set
forth in our instructions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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