George Kennan’s valuable work, _Siberia and the Exile System_, the fruit of investigations carried on under circumstances of much difficulty and even danger, has made its many English and American readers acquainted with the true conditions of life among Russian political prisoners and exiles. The story given in the present volume of the painful and tragic events that took place in the political prisons at Kara after Mr. Kennan had left the Russian Empire was written to him by, among others, a friend resident in Kara at the time, whose letter he published in his book. In it are also to be found additional particulars concerning the earlier or later history of many persons whose names occur in the following pages; and it thus throws an interesting light on Mr. Deutsch’s story, which is told so quietly, with such an absence of sensationalism, that it is sometimes necessary to read between the lines in order to grasp fully the terrible realities of the situation. It may, perhaps, be useful to readers unfamiliar with the history of the Russian revolutionary movement if I give here a rough sketch of its development, and of its position at the present time. From the first consolidation of the Empire under the Tsars in the latter half of the sixteenth century, Russian despotism has consistently regarded with apprehension and disfavour all manifestation of independent thought among its subjects. There has never been a time when those bold enough to indulge in it, even in what English people would consider a very mild form, were not liable to persecution, and this traditional attitude of repression and coercion had the inevitable result. Even early in the eighteenth century secret societies had come into being, but these were mostly of the various religious sects or of the Freemasons. When they began to assume a political character they were at first confined entirely to the upper classes, and took the form of revolts organised among the military, the last and most important being that of the Decabrists (or Decembrists), who attempted to overthrow the monarchy on the occasion of Nicholas I.’s accession in 1825. Liberal views were to a certain extent fostered by Alexander I. (1801-1825), who at one time openly talked of granting a Constitution. Russians who visited Western Europe, officers in the Napoleonic campaigns, and others, had “brought France into Russia,” had made the French language fashionable, and thus had opened a way for the importation of new philosophical, scientific, and political literature, eagerly appreciated by the developing acuteness of the Russian mind. Literary influence, even the purely romantic, has throughout ranged itself on the side of liberty, Pushkin heading the poets and Gogol the novelists. Indeed, one may safely say that up to the present day nearly every Russian author of any note has been implicated—some to a greater, some to a less degree--in the revolutionary movement, and has suffered for the cause.