Eight Years on Sakhalin: A Political Prisoner’s Memoir 1785278223, 9781785278228

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Eight Years on Sakhalin

Eight Years on Sakhalin A Political Prisoner’s Memoir By Ivan P. Iuvachëv Translated with commentary by Andrew A. Gentes

Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com This edition first published in UK and USA 2022 by ANTHEM PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA Copyright © Andrew A. Gentes 2022 Original Author: Ivan P. Iuvachëv The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the translator of this work. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021952772 ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-822-8 (Hbk) ISBN-10: 1-78527-822-3 (Hbk) Cover Images: Pavlovskii, Innokentii Ignat’Evich, Born Approximately 1855, photographer. Poselenie Derbinskoe vnutri ostrova v Tymovskoĭ doline. Russian Federation Tymovskoye Sakhalin Oblast, 1880. [Dui: Publisher Not Identified, to 1899] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2018691395/. Unknown - Five Lives of Ivan Pavlovich Magazine “Around the World”, November 2010. This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments

xv

Foreword, by Andrew A. Gentes A Note on Transliteration and Dates

xvii xxxv

Glossary of Measurements

xxxvii

Preface

xxxix

PART I Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

First impressions of the Sakhalin coast • Time aboard the steamer on the run to Aleksandrovsk Post • Transfer of penal laborers to the wharf • Prisoners’ baggage • A view of Sakhalin’s shorelines • First encounter with Warden L—— • Anticipating dinner • Along the road to Aleksandrovsk Post • In the prison yard • Distribution to the barracks

3

Searching for food • Invitation from the warden • His favorite trick • Supper • Morning impressions • Punishment with birch rods • The method of registering penal laborers • The warden’s irritation • Deprivation of all personal rights

9

Dinner • An alarming noise in the canteen • The failed attempt on Warden L——’s life • Prisoners’ malevolence • A penal laborer’s death by gunfire • A walk outside the prison • Assignment to Tymovsk District • Administrators’ opinions regarding the wounding of Warden L—— • A meeting with him

15

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CONTENTS

Chapter 4 Meeting the educated exiles • Their solicitousness and attention • Examples of conflict over the cap issue • Priest Georgii Salˊnikov • Penal laborers’ petitions • Prisoners’ dinner • Bakers’ difficult situation

19

Chapter 5 The penal laborers’ march to Tymovsk District • Bivouac in Novo-Mikhailovsk settlement • An unwelcome task • We approach the Pilinga Mountains • Sakhalin flora • Across the ridgeline • The convoy guards’ revelation • District commander Butakov • Weariness • The Tym Valley

23

Chapter 6 Rykovsk settlement • The Sakhalin prisons’ natural barrier • Artist K.’s hospitality • Installation in a workshop • The bathhouse • First katorga jobs

27

Chapter 7 Assignment as a carpenter • My sickly constitution • Sakhalin’s keta salmon • Poisonous fish • Night blindness • Carpentry work • Auditorium in the church square • Relations with workers • Incident with Masiukevich • Exiles’ conscience

31

Chapter 8 My comrades • Difficulty living together • The latrine watchman • His good soul • Old type of prison garb • Penal laborers’ vulgarity • Rykov, founder of the Tym Valley settlement

35

Chapter 9 The situation in the Tym Valley • Farming conditions • Rykovsk settlement • Exile-settlers’ dinners • The new warden F.’s relaxations • A bed along the way and on Sakhalin • The ward’s unhygienic conditions • Doctor Sasaparel • His patience

39

Chapter 10 The warden’s efforts to build a church • My assignment as a chorister • A temporary church in the barracks • The hatchet-wound • My importance to the church choir • Hieromonk Iraklii • His self-exhaustion as a youth • The cleric’s special importance to Sakhalin • New jobs

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Chapter 11 Katorga assignments • Wood-cutting • The expedition • Six nighttime workers • The taiga in winter • Felling trees • Penal laborers’ log-hauling • End of the workday

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CONTENTS

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Chapter 12 The difficulty of katorga • Blizzards • Logging during the mud season • The workers’ barracks at night • Vacations • Sawyers • Guards • Their lives on the island and on the mainland • Golubev

51

Chapter 13 Headmen-executioners • Punishment with birch rods • Headmen-maidanshchiki • Ivan Lebedev • The sanctioned whip • The schismatic Katin • Punishment with lashes

55

PART II Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

A new assignment • M. A. Krzhizhevskaia • Her work • The meteorological station • Secret philanthropy

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A change of situation • An official’s sympathy • My attitude toward him • First winter mail • Anticipating correspondence • Inspecting letters • Making Butakov’s acquaintance • The importance of letters in exile

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Preparing the new church for Easter • A passion for work • My importance as a church headman • Building a garden • Botanical excursions • Leaving the prison • Departing comrades’ situations • Butakov’s dangerousness • His renown on the island

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The temptation of an artless existence • America’s woodland residents • Sakhalin Giliaks • Chubuk and Matrënka • Kindhearted Kanka • Mutual gifts • Giliaks’ unclean crowding • Their welcome and entertainment

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Recording Giliak fables • A comparison of Giliaks with Vancouver Island’s inhabitants • Their degeneration • The lack of brides • Giliak religions • Orthodox missionaries’ lack of success • Giliak guards • False shame

77

Solitary and general prison confinement • The boy Semën Alaev • Sakhalin children • An apartment in a schoolhouse • Children’s adventurous games • The teacher Iurkevich • His success working with children • A new school

81

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CONTENTS

Chapter 7 The murder of choirmaster Gennisaretskii • A quiet time in the life of the prison • My old acquaintance L—— is named warden • My meeting with him • Petitioning for comrades • The tightening measures over penal laborers • The prison’s model orderliness and external cleanliness

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Chapter 8 Morning impressions • Victims of discipline • The warden’s cruelty • My altercation with him • L——’s kindness • The nature of his conversations with laborers • Concessions towards the end of his service

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Chapter 9 Summer jobs • Surveying Tym Valley • A disputed issue • Mikhail Semënovich Mitsul • Sakhalin contrasts • The Tym Valley’s climate • Humidity • Clear air • Rarely observed planets and the zodiacal world • Climatic variations on Sakhalin

93

Chapter 10 The situation of designated homeowners • M. S. Mitsul’s government assistance • An insufficiency of good land • Decline of the agricultural economy • Mistakes regarding the climate • The Tym Valley in spring • Sakhalin exile-settlers’ opinions • Rains and overflowing rivers • The difficulty of improving local farming

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Chapter 11 Meeting penal laborers from the barracks • The return from work • Nighttime in the barracks • Morning in the valley • Road work; a comparison with mining • The division of laborers by class

103

Chapter 12 Catching fish with a hook • State fishing • The keta catch and its uncleanliness • The cleaners’ guard • Salting fish • Drying keta • Eating fish eggs • The diminution of fish and Giliaks’ starvation • Sakhalin’s natural wealth

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Chapter 13 My sailing assignment • Traveling through Aleksandrovsk District • Derbinsk settlement • Lower and Upper Armudan • A mountain road • Transporting a government load • Arkovo Valley • The sea’s proximity • A Giliak settlement • On the beach at high tide • Entering Aleksandrovsk Post

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CONTENTS

Chapter 14 The educated exile Pl——’s farm • Among Aleksandrovsk officials • A new job offer • The surveyor Karaulovskii • P. S. Karaulovskii’s mountain • Triangulating and surveying Aleksandrovsk Post

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PART III Chapter 1 Invitation to a seaside stroll • The steamer Prince Shakhovskoi • In the Tatar Strait • Stormy weather • The messengers’ concern • The mainland’s coast • De-Kastri Bay • A chance to escape • Inspecting a settlement • Military vessels’ anchors and hulls

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Chapter 2 Guests of the military commander • Visiting a lighthouse • The Sakhalin penal laborers’ crossing • Leaving De-Kastri • On the sea at night • Fog • The Sakhalin coast • Returning to Aleksandrovsk Post

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Chapter 3 Preparations for a new journey • A conversation on the wharf • Going to sea • Night in Khoé • A risky approach to Viakhtu • A rest on the coast • Surveying and measuring a lake • The Giliak village of Tyk • Old Man Orkun • A baby Giliak’s cradle

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Chapter 4 Cape Nevelˊskoi • The pilot’s note • The narrowest part of the strait • Penal laborers’ escape aboard a steam cutter • The absence of a coastal fleet for sakhalintsy • Return to Tyk • Guests of the Tungus • After the ebb tide

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Chapter 5 Giliaks’ provisions caches • A Giliak’s request • Tangi settlement • Russians’ disputes with Giliaks • Giliak dogs • Rich man Gilelˊka • Mgachi settlement • An abandoned woman • Coastal settlements • Measuring the Aleksandrovsk fairway • Hosting Englishmen on Sakhalin

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Chapter 6 Aboard the steamer Shooter • Sakhalin’s west coast • Mauka Bay • Cape Crillon and danger rock • Wreck of the steamer Kostroma • Prisoners in a locked hold • Saving the carriage • A human victim

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CONTENTS

Chapter 7 Korsakovsk Post • A Japanese junk • Going to the Okhotsk Sea • The mining engineer • Whales and seal furs • Seal island • Predatory Japanese • Tikhmenev Post • Negotiations with the Japanese • Unloading provisions • Nighttime wanderings

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Chapter 8 Manué Post • The Ainu of Sakhalin and Matsumae • In the La Pérouse Strait • Seabirds • Sea lions on Danger Rock • Totomosiri Island • Return to Aleksandrovsk Post • In Rykovsk again

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Chapter 9 The 1891 Manifesto • Anticipating an imperial pardon • Congratulations on the ending of katorga • Disappointment • New griefs • M. A. Krzhizhevskaia’s illness • Her death and funeral • Tears for the “penal laborers’ mother” • My loneliness in exile

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Chapter 10 Katorga’s tragic days • Deprivation of bread as punishment • The road to the Okhotsk Sea • The guard Khanov • His command in Onor • The leadership’s attitude toward the road gang • The sick and the beaten • Khanov’s murdered laborers • Onor fugitives

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Chapter 11 My new manservant • His past • Escape from Onor • Andrei’s story • The situation for Khanov’s laborers • Self-maiming • Onor cannibals • D. S. Klimov’s investigation

167

Chapter 12 L——’s retirement and departure • Warden N. N. Ia——v • Flowers, poetry, and a reprisal from prisoners • Tymovsk District’s expansion • A complicated business • Assigning exiles to Sakhalin • At the clapboard hut, turn right • What Butakov knew • No return from a graveyard

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Chapter 13 Leaving Sakhalin • Penal laborers building the Ussuri Railroad • Laborers’ complaints • Difficulty on the Amur • The development of a steamship line • The pay office • Drunken sailors • Sakhalintsy’s thinnest praise • Depending on the katorga island • Definitively breaking from Sakhalin

175

CONTENTS

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Chapter 14 A visit to Rykovsk settlement • An itinerary to entertain guests • The church • The prison • The school • The stable • The potato palace • The mill • The gardens • The fields • The Tymovsk military command • A clash between soldiers and the exile population • Between two fires

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Chapter 15 First news in the press about the Onor atrocities • A Sakhalin correspondent’s investigations • The commandant’s menacing threats • N. P——’s arrest • Two fates • Administrators’ attitude towards exiles • The suicides of K—— and D——i

183

Chapter 16 The situation for educated people on the island • A Sakhalin family • Deceptive expectations • Drunkenness • The disbursement of vodka • Spirits • A guard’s revelry • Sakhalin’s sobriety measures 187 PART IV Chapter 1 The new status of exile-settler • Decline in air quality • News of the governor-general’s arrival • Meeting Baron Korf in Rykovsk • The arrival of N. I. Grodekov • Sakhalin flags • The general’s simple arrangements • His tour of district settlements • Submitting petitions • A lack of administrators

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Chapter 2 My meeting with General Grodekov • A false rumor about our relationship • Golden Hand • A tearful, sobbing confession • The energetic general • Rykovsk under the Russian flag • Resurrection of the dead • N. I. Grodekov’s parting speech • Old Lady Marˊia’s request

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Chapter 3 The exile-settler Elizaveta K. • Her daughter’s arrival from Russia • Masha’s story about her journey • Matchmaking • Cohabitation with a laborer • A victim of jealousy • Masha’s illness • Abandoning cohabitation

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Chapter 4 Women on Sakhalin • Exiled penal laborers • Abolition of corporal punishment • The female penal laborer’s unbridledness and showiness •

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CONTENTS

The female penal laborer’s preference for freedom • Legal wives • Shamelessness • The card game • The chorister O——

207

Chapter 5 Personal morality’s importance in lifting a man • Comparison of a Russian to foreigners • Our peasant’s humiliating position • The exiled penal laborer Shalaev • Refusal to work • A voluntary loss of sight • What attention does for an exile • Good people on Sakhalin • Reasons for being sentenced to katorga

211

Chapter 6 Losing the most favorable period of life • The difficult situation in exile • One night among the people • Farewell to friends • Butakov’s death • His honesty and kindness toward people • The Onor Affair • A new collection of administrators • Patience’s end

215

Chapter 7 A trip to Aleksandrovsk Post in winter • Meeting with the governor • Visiting comrades • Exiles’ situations • A noble tiller of the soil • An impromptu marriage • A village feast • A cheerful tour of huts

219

Chapter 8 Exiles’ hidden sorrows • The issue of Sakhalin’s sick • The female penal laborer’s life of fear • The fate of two Marˊias • A cousin’s spouse • A romance interrupted for ten years • The chancery’s mistake • The brides are delivered by steamer • Undeserved insults • The two Marˊias’ arrival in Vladivostok

223

Chapter 9 Vladivostok under military alert • Rumors of war • Sergeant-Major Kobchik • His punishment • Penal laborer military detachments • Exiles in the Crimean campaign • Arsenii Kobchik’s death • Stories about military campaigns • The tsar’s inspection • A Sakhalin passport • A new obstacle to leaving

227

Chapter 10 In a grave • A request from old men • Farewells and bidding goodbye to comrades • Through the snowy Kamyshev Pass • The island’s emptiness •

CONTENTS

Burning taiga • An encounter with Giliaks • Visiting the military governor • Arrival of the steamer Baikal • With comrades yet again

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Chapter 11 Held back! • The governor’s explanation • Comrades’ efforts to distract me • Barge building • Japanese traders • Hasegawa’s opinion regarding an impending war •Japanese crafts • My understandings of an expected departure • Journey to Dué • A pitiful man

237

Chapter 12 The governor’s new request • Difficult connections • Invaluable victims • Aboard the steamer Velox • My travel companions • Loading of coal by penal laborers • Double supervision • The war against the secret gift of liquor • Communication by water • A lack of restraint • Setting sail • “Forward yo!”

241

Chapter 13 Sakhalintsy in Vladivostok • The difficulty of dissociating oneself from the island of penal laborers • The region’s gray fogs • S. G. Iurkevich’s letter • Ocean industry • No harvest due to drought • First bees on Sakhalin • Robbery and murder • The agricultural colony’s difficult circumstances • The antagonism between penal laborers and exile-settlers

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Chapter 14 Distance and time make an impression • The Sakhalin kaleidoscope • Can good come from bad? • The school of humiliation • The pathetic incident with Riukhin • Pathways for saving the soul • To suffer is the exiles’ common lot • Farewell, Sakhalin

249

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The text upon which this translation is based was accessed online (Восемь лет на Сахалине - Ювачев Иван Павлович - Cистема онлайн-просмотра (rusneb.ru)). All photos in this book and on its cover fall under Fair Use rules and were acquired via the Library of Congress’s online photo, print, and drawing collections (specifically: Виды и типы острова Сахалин (Vidy i tipy ostrova Sakhalin. | Library of Congress (loc.gov)). Therefore, I first of all want to acknowledge and thank the archivists and librarians in Russia and the United States who have made these and other documents and publications available to scholars and readers the world over. The map of Sakhalin was designed by me. I wish also to thank Jan Adamczyk, of the Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois library, for providing biographical source material on the elusive I. P. Iuvachëv. Thanks as well to Tej P. S. Sood, Megan Greiving, and everyone else at Anthem Press for recognizing the value in this project and for making this publication possible. Finally, thanks to my wife Dinah Loculan, whose patience and support I could not do without, and to whom this translation is dedicated.

FOREWORD Andrew A. Gentes

I. P. Iuvachëv (1883)

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FOREWORD

Ivan P. Iuvachëv was born on 23 February 1860 (Old Style), in St. Petersburg, to a family of floor polishers employed by the Anichkov Palace. In 1874, following grammar school (gimnaziia), Iuvachëv enrolled in the Department of the Navy’s Technical Institute, located in the Kronshtadt Fortress, where he learned navigation. Four years later, he joined the navy as a navigator and began his service in the Black Sea Fleet. It is unclear if any particular event or just the tenor of the times inspired him, but by 1880, Iuvachëv was openly espousing radical political views. This led to his being assigned to shore duty in Nikolaev, in southern Ukraine, where he served as assistant director for the meteorological station there. In March 1881, the regime’s worst fears were realized when the revolutionary terrorist organization The People’s Will (Narodnaia volia) assassinated Alexander II. One year later, Iuvachëv met Mikhail Iu. Ashenbrenner, a military officer and member of the People’s Will. He also met, apparently around this same time, Sergei P. Degaev, another narodovolets, whom several years earlier the military had cashiered for political unreliability. Under the influence of one or both of these men, Iuvachëv organized a political circle within the navy, as was confirmed years later by the famous political terrorist Vera Figner, who stated that he was central to propagandizing Nikolaev’s military officers. Iuvachëv may also have participated in the plan to assassinate the late tsar’s son and successor, Alexander III. Iuvachëv’s career as a propagandist and conspirator was, however, brief. Due to his connection to Degaev (who managed to escape to America), he was soon arrested, during a visit to the city of Verkholensk, in Transbaikalia, on 2 March 1883. Eighteen months later, Iuvachëv found himself in the dock alongside other defendants in the celebrated “Trial of the 14.” On 6 October 1884, the court sentenced Iuvachëv to death. According to well-established practice, his punishment was immediately commuted to 15 years penal labor (katorga). Those sentenced to katorga usually served their time in Siberia. However, shortly before Iuvachëv’s arrest, six political prisoners had escaped from a prison in Transbaikalia, and so the regime was reluctant to send additional state criminals there or anywhere else east of the Urals. Nonetheless, during the two years it continued to hold Iuvachëv in solitary confinement in the capital, the government did begin deporting such prisoners to the Sakhalin penal colony. While inside the cold, dark, casemate cells of the Petropavlovsk and Shlissel´burg fortresses, Iuvachëv renounced political radicalism and experienced a religious conversion. His embrace of a spiritual life is key to understanding Iuvachëv’s views and activities while on Sakhalin. Whereas he undoubtedly acted as well out of notions of social justice, his apparent belief in the healing power of religious works and activities seems to have been a

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primary motivation for keeping ceaselessly busy while in exile. Moreover, this association with Russian Orthodoxy would seem to account for much of Iuvachëv’s present-day renown in Russia.

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⸙⸙⸙ One of the largest islands in the world, Sakhalin occupies a north/south axis traversing a variety of climatological and vegetal variations, from bamboo forests in the south to lichen-covered tundra in the north. Marking the point where the frigid waters of the Sea of Okhotsk meet the warmer waters of the Sea of Japan, Sakhalin is assaulted by arctic winds that sweep south from inner Siberia and by typhoons churned north by the Kuroshio, or Black Current, of the Pacific. This combination results in bitterly cold winters with heavy snowfall and summers that are cool, rainy, and brief. Fog prevails along the coast, and sunny days are few. Drawing upon his meteorological experience, Iuvachëv discusses in his memoir the island’s unique weather and the challenges it posed for agriculture. Iuvachëv also describes the island’s native Giliaks. Sakhalin had three main indigenous groups: the Ainu, Oroki (or Orochon; known today as the Uilta), and the Giliaks (known today as the Nivkh or Nivkhi). The first two hardly figure in Iuvachëv’s account. By contrast, and because he had numerous interactions with them, he discourses at length on the Giliaks. To this extent, his memoir represents a valuable primary source addition to Sakhalin anthropology. The centuries and decades that preceded Iuvachëv’s arrival had seen outsiders disrupt each of these native peoples’ traditional lifestyles. During the thirteenth century, the Mongols forced each of these groups to supply furs and other goods; and the Manchu and Han perpetuated this tributary vassalage. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the Japanese established seasonal fishing villages in southern Sakhalin, transforming in the process the local Ainu into a veritable slave labor force. Iuvachëv adds to this dolorous history by describing the harm that his own countrymen inflicted on the Giliaks. Prior to the mid-1800s, Sakhalin was largely unknown to the Russians. Like other Europeans, they did not even realize it was an island until 1849, when Admiral Gennadii I. Nevel´skoi dispelled all notions that an isthmus connected it to the mainland. (The Japanese had learned this several decades earlier, but kept their discovery a secret.) Nevel´skoi’s expedition came amid a general effort by the Russian Empire to reassert itself in the Far East and North Pacific. Having been forced, in 1689, to cede the Amur region to China through the humiliating Treaty of Nerchinsk, Russia now embarked upon a concerted effort to reacquire that territory and much more besides from the ailing Qing dynasty. Its annexations of the Amur and Ussuri regions were also intended to offset the imperial designs of Japan, only recently dragged into the international arena by Commodore Matthew Perry’s gunboat diplomacy. But whereas the Japanese were only using Sakhalin as a resource for sea-kelp and fish (much of which they turned into fertilizer for farms on

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Honshu), for the Russians, the discovery of coal on the island’s west coast inspired a belief that Sakhalin could serve as the main coal depot for their nascent Pacific Fleet. In 1856, the Russians founded Dué Post (Duiskii post), their first permanent settlement on Sakhalin. Two years later, the government sent the first convicts to Sakhalin, to work the coal mines outside the post. The Russian military spent much of the following decade maneuvering to seize control of the Japanese-dominated south through force majeure. Japan was not in a position to offer much resistance: Sakhalin’s Japanese population consisted nearly entirely of seasonal fishermen; and during 1868−69, Japan was embroiled in a civil war that eventually led to the Tokugawa shogunate’s replacement by Emperor Meiji. Russia took advantage of this domestic turmoil to establish Korsakovsk Post and other settlements in the south, and to populate them using a combination of soldiers and their families, free colonists, and exiled convicts. So ruthless were the Russians in doing so, that the chess match for control over Sakhalin was actually decided several years before Japan agreed to the Treaty of St. Petersburg (1875). This gave to it the Kurile Islands in exchange for ceding all of Sakhalin to Russia; it moreover allowed the Japanese to maintain on Sakhalin their island fisheries and to establish a consulate there, in Korsakovsk Post. All the same, prior to 1905, when Japan invaded during the final days of the Russo-Japanese War, Sakhalin now became the Russians’ to do with as they would. As early as the mid-1860s, moves had begun to transform Sakhalin into a penal colony, and these soon coalesced into a plan that superseded the one to turn it into a coal depot. This was in part because several factors conspired to limit the island’s coal industry and prevent it from competing on the world market, salient of which were Sakhalin’s lack of natural harbors and the fact that it was ice-bound for nearly half the year. With coal mining failing to meet expectations, there arose a notion that Sakhalin could nevertheless be made to solve two, entirely different, problems that were bedeviling the government. Among government decision-makers, particularly those in the Imperial Cabinet and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this notion quickly became an idée fixe. The first of these problems was an exponential increase in Russia’s violent crime rate, which in turn was creating an increase in the number sentenced each year to katorga. Instituted by Peter the Great (r. 1696−1725), katorga represented more than just penal labor, for this penultimate punishment (the death penalty did exist, but was rarely used) formed the centerpiece of an empire-wide penologico-administrative apparatus, whose primary function was to exploit convict labor to the benefit of the imperial treasury. Mining, though emblematic of katorga, actually accounted for just one of several uses

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that were made of penal laborers (katorzhane). The regime also used this bonded labor force to build the docks and (probably) to man the galleys Peter needed during his 1696 siege of Azov. Penal laborers constructed Rogervik and other Baltic ports and fortresses, as well as Peter’s new capital of St. Petersburg. In addition to mining silver, gold, and iron ore in Transbaikalia—which, during the late eighteenth century, became the principal location of katorga—they labored in both this region’s smelteries as well as the many other government works (zavody) scattered throughout Siberia and which produced textiles, salt, or vodka. (On Sakhalin, besides mining coal, penal laborers would similarly build all necessary settlements, military outposts, and prisons and be assigned to road and logging crews. Numerous others would work as craftsmen or serve as domestics and lackeys for administrators and their families.) By the late 1860s, however, as Russian forces maneuvered to seize all of Sakhalin and domestic crime and conviction rates soared, Transbaikalia’s mines were fast approaching exhaustion. Explicitly acknowledging that katorga as a financial enterprise was losing money, the Imperial Cabinet failed to maintain both the Nerchinsk Mining District’s physical plant and its convict population. As a result, prison barracks were literally rotting off their foundations, and desperate prisoners were escaping with such frequency they formed an estimated 50,000 fugitives who were roaming throughout Siberia at any one time. Individuals and entire squadrons from this vagabond army were begging, robbing, and murdering the civilian population to such an extent that even Alexander II took notice. Nevertheless, despite exhortations from numerous penal reformers, the regime steadfastly refused to replace katorga and exile with a penal system modeled on Western European and American penitentiaries, and so instead began casting about for some way to salvage and breathe new life into these centuries-old punishments. Sakhalin, despite its lackluster coal production and inclement weather, seemed both to offer an opportunity to render katorga serviceable and profitable again, and to be usable as an offshore asylum, to become a place where many (if not all) of the empire’s undesirables might be consigned. St. Petersburg accordingly sent the first large groups of convicts there in 1869, several years before it had even formally acquired the island. Indeed, Sakhalin’s transformation into a penal colony became the autocracy’s primary method for wresting the entire island away from Japan. Nevertheless, during the 1870s, and even for several years after the 1875 treaty, the colony remained underdeveloped. The reasons why are not entirely clear, but in part probably reflect the logistical challenges posed by the Russian Far East. A supply chain that began thousands of miles away, in central Siberia, and wended along the Amur River, proved inadequate to deliver everything Sakhalin needed. Also, the ice that covered the Tatar Strait from

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November through April, though it allowed for dogsleds to deliver mail, essentially cut the island off from the mainland. Moreover, Sakhalin’s severe climate so limited agriculture that practically the only foods exiles could grow there were root vegetables. Conditions in the south were better for growing grains, but administrators’ malfeasance and lack of planning led to most exiles being assigned to the less hospitable north. Finally, regardless of where they were assigned, most exiled criminals either little understood agriculture or simply refused to become farmers. Light years away from forming the self-sustaining community envisaged by planners, they were instead both malnourished and incapable of developing the infrastructure needed for a functioning colony. Despite its early, frantic efforts to russify Sakhalin, St. Petersburg seems to have recognized this, and therefore sent relatively few convicts there before 1879. The leadership would also have been distracted by events closer to home, for in contrast to Sakhalin, European Russia was a hive of activity during the 1870s. In addition to rising crime, the regime faced a burgeoning revolutionary movement. This helps explain why, in 1879, after years of dithering and internal debate, the government finally established the Main Prison Administration (Glavnoe tiuremnoe upravlenie—GTU). For the first time in Russia’s history, its jails, prisons, and exile system came under the control of a single agency. From its inception until 1895, the GTU functioned as part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which spearheaded government efforts to suppress both a peasant majority that was seeking greater rights and an intelligentsia that was demanding representative government. Despite progressive measures early in his reign, Alexander II, particularly after the 1863 Polish Uprising and the 1866 attempt on his life, increasingly sided with those reactionaries who called for a return to the repressive policies of the past. His successor Alexander III furthered the backlash, and this, in turn, intensified the opposition to the autocracy. These developments relate to the second problem that the government was hoping Sakhalin would solve, for as more revolutionaries were arrested and filled the empire’s dwindling prison space, officials came to regard them as an even greater danger than when they were free—a view that seemed justified when six state criminals broke out of Nizhni-Kara Prison in 1882. Indeed, the interior ministry considered political dissidents—whether as fugitives from justice or just unreliable subjects—to pose an existential threat that was far greater than those criminal inmates escaping Siberia’s dilapidated prisons. This would prove to be a cardinal mistake, for the greatest threat to tsarism was, in reality, its centuries-long alienation of law-abiding subjects through policies that denigrated their humanity. Elitism and a failure to learn from past uprisings thus led the autocracy to fixate on that handful of privileged and educated subjects who dared oppose its policies; and by failing to meaningfully

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address the social problems that generated everyday criminality, the autocracy came to be resented and hated by the population at large. Admittedly, Russia’s political dissidents did, in fact, show a penchant for stirring up the peasantry and the soldiery; moreover, the empire’s great expanses made it easy for them to elude capture. But now, with its acquisition of Sakhalin, St. Petersburg possessed an offshore carceral in which these most dangerous opponents could be sequestered, using both judicial and extrajudicial measures. In 1882, one year after the People’s Will assassinated Alexander II, GTU director Mikhail N. Galkin-Vraskoi agreed with the interior ministry that Sakhalin should, in addition to criminal exiles, be used to confine political prisoners. But at that time, the island administration was not prepared to accommodate them, largely because it could barely control the numbers of convicts already arriving. Indeed, from the moment of its establishment, the GTU began shipping convicts to Sakhalin from Odessa. Completion of the Suez Canal, in 1869, and the repurposing of the Volunteer Fleet (Dobrovol´nyi flot) (a collection of steamers originally intended to transfer troops to the Far East in case of war), had made circumvention of the traditional Siberian march-route possible; and over the next quarter century, the Volunteer Fleet would deliver thousands of convicts and their family members to the penal colony each year. But overland marches did not disappear entirely, and between 1879 and 1905, the GTU convoyed probably several thousand more convicts to Sakhalin. Altogether, these deportations amounted to one of the largest forced migrations prior to World War I. When the exiles arrived on Sakhalin, they came under the control of officials who, even by the standards of the tsarist bureaucracy, epitomized cruelty, malfeasance, and corruption. Early on, the most important of these was Mikhail N. Mitsul, Sakhalin’s first agronomist and one of its early katorga directors. In his memoir, Iuvachëv praises Mitsul; but it must be noted that his opinion is idiosyncratic, for practically all other sources agree that Mitsul was a fanatic who misrepresented the island’s suitability for agriculture, assigned exilesettlers to bogs and other inappropriate sites, and embezzled state monies. His premature death in 1883 offered the exiles no respite, however, for he was followed by a string of appointees who were variously insane, corrupt, or incompetent. The same qualities characterized most of the island’s prison wardens. During the 1880s, the GTU ordered three major prisons built on Sakhalin: in Aleksandrovsk Post, Korsakovsk Post, and Rykovsk—the capitals, respectively, of the districts of Aleksandrovsk, Korsakovsk, and Tymovsk. These prisons joined the preexisting smaller ones in Dué Post and Malo-Tymovsk, and were later followed by others built in Derbinsk and Onor. Still, Sakhalin never had sufficient prison capacity, and so administrators allowed many penal laborers

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to live in apartments or huts outside the prisons. Such accommodations were especially afforded to those convicts followed into exile by their families. None of these locales—neither the prisons nor the settlements—were suitable for the political prisoners the government now wanted to send to Sakhalin. This would seem to explain why, even after Galkin-Vraskoi agreed Sakhalin should accept them, the regime waited several years before sending any there. Moreover, in 1884, immediately after the establishment of the Amur Territory Governor-Generalship (Priamurskoe GeneralGubernatorstvo), its governor-general, Andrei N. Korf, sought to dissuade St. Petersburg from proceeding with a planned delivery of convicted narodovol´tsy and members of the Polish revolutionary party known as “Proletariat.” Korf informed senior officials that Sakhalin’s prisons were unsuitable for politicals and that, anyway, their regimes had been designed to deal with criminal offenders (ugolovnye prestupniki), not political prisoners. However, with pressure as well as support from both the interior ministry and Imperial Cabinet, Galkin-Vraskoi forged ahead. Accordingly, Sakhalin received its first political exile that same year of 1884 (though it should be noted that Nikanor F. Kryzhanovskii was something of an exception to the general poilitical exile population, because for the entire time he was on the island, local officials assumed he was a criminal, rather than a political, convict, and so treated him accordingly). As it turned out, St. Petersburg waited another two years, until 1886, before it consigned additional politicals to Sakhalin.

⸙⸙⸙ In 1887, Iuvachëv, along with fellow politicals Bronislaw Pilsudski, Mikhail N. Kancher, Stepan A. Volokhov, and Pëtr S. Gorkun, was deported to Sakhalin. All were former narodovol´tsy, and they figured among the 17 political prisoners sent to the island that year. Upon arrival, they joined the small community already there and to which more “comrades” (tovarishchi) were soon added. All told, some fifty political prisoners seem to have been exiled to Sakhalin between 1884 and 1905. It is important to add that they accounted for a mere fraction of what would eventually be an exile population totaling 40,000 at the time of the Japanese invasion, but through their activities and service they had a disproportionate impact on Sakhalin. Iuvachëv spent eight years on the island, during which time some of the most pivotal events in the penal colony’s history took place. This same period saw its exile population grow from approximately 6,000 to 16,000. Soon after Iuvachëv arrived, Vladimir O. Kononovich replaced Andrei I. Gintse to become the island’s second official governor. Unlike his predecessor, Kononovich had previous experience with political prisoners, having served as Transbaikalia’s

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katorga director, and so his installation coincident with Sakhalin receiving its first groups of political prisoners suggests a deliberate choice by St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, Kononovich proved unequal to the task of managing Sakhalin more generally, and in 1892, he suffered a nervous breakdown and abandoned his post. During what Iuvachëv terms the “Sakhalin interregnum,” at least two district commanders took turns as acting governor. Each allowed underlings to embezzle, bootleg, and flog even more than usual. Combined with what Iuvachëv describes as Tymovsk District commander Arsenii M. Butakov’s blinkered attitude toward government service, this malfeasance allowed for the most horrific chapter in the penal colony’s history to occur. The resultant Onor Affair made news both domestically and internationally, demonstrating to anyone with eyes to see that Russia’s “model penal colony” was a human rights violation of epic proportions. Various accounts of this affair exist, yet Iuvachëv’s is one of the most informative. Nonetheless, like with Mitsul, he offers a discomfortingly charitable defense of Butakov and his role in it. In 1894, Vladimir D. Merkazin became Sakhalin’s next governor, assuming office just as the Onor Affair was coming to light. Iuvachëv does not mention him by name, but it is Merkazin he is referring to, when he describes a commander (nachal´nik) threatening him and other politicals to prevent them informing regional newspapers about the Onor atrocities. But as it turned out, this and other attempts at censorship failed, and so that same year the Amur Territory’s new governor-general, Sergei M. Dukhovskoi, sent his assistant to investigate. Iuvachëv’s account of Nikolai I. Grodekov’s visit offers details not found in other sources, and further reveals how corrupt and malign Sakhalin’s administrators were. Soon after Grodekov, GTU director Galkin-Vraskoi made his second and final visit to Sakhalin. For some reason, Iuvachëv does not mention this visit, even though he was there at the time. Also during this busy year of 1894, Nicholas II succeeded the throne and converted Sakhalin’s into a military governorship, with Merkazin still at the helm. The new emperor nonetheless began his reign by promoting several progressive measures, one of which was the transfer, in December 1895, of control over the GTU from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice. The latter was staffed for the most part by legalists, and they soon forced out Galkin-Vraskoi for being a relic of a now discounted penology. These latter administrative changes took place after Iuvachëv left Sakhalin, but he would undoubtedly have known of them. To conclude this brief survey of the Sakhalin penal colony’s history: in 1898, Mikhail N. Liapunov replaced Merkazin as military governor. Liapunov is significant for having had a law degree and being Sakhalin’s first governor

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appointed after the justice ministry took over. However, the benefits promised by these precedents were annulled by legislation passed in St. Petersburg. In 1900, the Murav´ëv Commission, despite acting on Nicholas II’s instructions by abolishing much of Siberian exile, nevertheless chose to leave political exile and certain other punitive categories untouched, and these categories pertained especially to Sakhalin. Along with subsequent legislation, central government policymaking reinforced the island’s role as primary dumping ground for Russia’s most serious offenders and recalcitrant recidivists. Whereas the nearly completed Trans-Siberian Railroad was now bringing the Russian Far East ever closer to European Russia, Sakhalin Island increasingly came to be regarded as a farflung oubliette in which to warehouse the autocracy’s most threatening subjects. All pretenses at creating a self-sustaining agricultural colony gave way to turning the island into a landfill for social detritus. Much of this goes to explain why, when the Russo-Japanese War began, neither St. Petersburg nor the Sakhalin administration could summon up the wherewithal to design a serious defense against possible invasion. On 24 June (7 July, New Style) 1905, the invasion came like a hurricane in the shape of 14,000 Japanese soldiers landing near Korsakovsk Post. Sakhalin’s defenses quickly collapsed, and with them went the penal colony. Though some aspects of it lingered several more years, for all intents and purposes the penal colony described by Iuvachëv’s memoir ended with the invasion. Japan proceded to annex southern Sakhalin (Karafuto) and rule there until the end of World War II, when the USSR reclaimed it.

⸙⸙⸙ After he arrived on Sakhalin in 1887, Iuvachëv spent several days in the capital city of Aleksandrovsk Post before being convoyed with other exiles across the mountains to Tymovsk District and the Rykovsk settlement. He spent just five months in the prison there (and much less time doing any manual labor) before being released to share a private hut with Pilsudski and possibly another prisoner. The island administration sorely needed educated and professional persons, and therefore typically assigned politicals like Iuvachëv and Pilsudski to what amounted to white-collar jobs. Many clerked in the various administrative chanceries, or served as librarians, schoolteachers, technical overseers, or inspectors. Perhaps due to censorship, Iuvachëv uses the circumlocution “educated exiles” (intelligentnye ssyl´nye) to refer to Sakhalin’s political prisoners, though official discourse usually called them “state criminals” (gosudarstvennye prestupniki). Despite this, it is important to note that not all politicals were

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professionals or possessed a higher education, and that some worked—both before and after deportation—in the trades or even as common laborers. Despite politicals’ internal social stratification, Iuvachëv draws a clear distinction between them as a whole and the rest of katorga. He tends to use the shorthand “laborers” to refer to those penal laborers who had been convicted of such crimes as murder, robbery, or rape. It is worthwhile to mention that penal laborers occupied one of two categories. “Probationers” (ispytuemye) usually lived in the “chains prison” (kandal´naia tiur´ma), and were convoyed in leg fetters to labor sites. Following a couple years of acceptable behavior, probationers would graduate to the “correctionals” (ispravliaiushchikhsia) category. Correctionals resided in the less restrictive part of the prison or even outside it, in private apartments or huts, especially if they had families. Ironically, due to security concerns over probationers, the administration usually assigned correctionals to the more difficult jobs of road-building or logging, though it employed many others in the trades or other jobs. Upon completing his correctional term, a convict was done with katorga and became an “exile-settler” (ssyl´no-poselenets). On Sakhalin, if not already occupying a hut, he was expected to build one and to start a farm. Only a small minority of exile-settlers were successful in this. The large majority, due to countervailing natural conditions or their simple inability to become farmers, failed to satisfy these basic desiderata for creating what government planners hoped would become an autarkic agricultural colony. In any case, following several more years, an exile-settler would become a “former convict” (poselenets iz katorzhnykh). This allowed him to enter the peasantry (krest´iane) and transfer to the Siberian mainland. As such, former convicts often abandoned Sakhalin. But even so, they had to wait another 12 years before they could petition to return home to European Russia or elsewhere. Regardless of these legal provisions, administrators employed various means to prevent exiles from ever leaving Sakhalin, as Iuvachëv explains. In contrast to the men, women sentenced to katorga were almost never assigned to labor. Some did work as cooks or seamstresses, but most were forced to become “cohabitants” (sozhitel´nitsy) for male exiles, regardless of either person’s marriage status back home. Officials also nominally employed many female convicts as domestics, though such assignment commonly amounted to concubinage. Like most of his contemporaries, Iuvachëv disparages female convicts and pointedly contrasts them with the freewomen, or “voluntaries” (dobrovol´nye), who followed husbands into exile. This dichotomy of the virtuous free wife and the slovenly convict whore bears little relation to reality, however, for within Russia’s misogynistic and patriarchal society, every female on Sakhalin was oppressed, and both dobrovol´nye and female convicts frequently had to resort to prostitution to survive (something Iuvachëv only

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hints at). As for Sakhalin’s children—briefly glimpsed here via Iuvachëv’s description of his roles as schoolteacher and one boy’s temporary guardian— they were mostly uneducated, malnourished, sickly creatures, preyed upon by an adult population that included innumerable rapists and pedophiles. Parents routinely pimped their daughters for spare change, and urchins of both sexes smoked and drank on the way to following in their parents’ criminal footsteps. It is therefore essential to bear in mind that, in contrast to the living hell most exiles experienced, Iuvachëv led something of a charmed life on Sakhalin. And his sojourn in exile was not just atypical but truly unique. Administrators soon took note of this polymath’s knowledge and abilities and quickly removed him from all manual labor jobs. Iuvachëv accordingly held a variety of positions, ranging from schoolteacher to choir leader to meteorological director to ocean navigator. His status allowed him to enjoy relations with officials at every level of the island administration. Despite disdaining other politicals for wheedling their way into what passed for high society on the island, Iuvachëv’s own words prove that he, too, strove to benefit both himself and others through his access to the leadership. That said, simply because it was more psychological than physical, Iuvachëv’s suffering should in no way be discounted. He writes eloquently about the psychic toll that exile exacted from him, and furthermore implies that but a thin line separated him from those politicals who became wretched alcoholics or suicides. Because Sakhalin officials initially regarded him as especially dangerous, and wanted to make any escape attempt nearly impossible, they sent Iuvachëv inland, beyond the Pilinga Range, to the settlement of Rykovsk. This distanced him from what was the majority of politicals that lived in or near Aleksandrovsk Post. Rykovsk was less developed than the other district capitals of Aleksandrovsk Post and Korsakovsk Post, but this fact allowed Iuvachëv to become a big fish in a little pond. Commander Butakov came to regard him as indispensable; and being in Rykovsk made it possible for Iuvachëv to befriend and possibly become romantic with Marˊia A. Krzhizhevskaia, the director of the local meteorological station and a polymath in her own right. Iuvachëv eventually replaced Krzhizhevskaia as station director, in a series of developments he describes with vivid intensity. In 1890, Anton Chekhov completed his now famous tour of Sakhalin. Iuvachëv was living in Rykovsk at the time, so some scholars have speculated that the two met and, furthermore, he inspired Chekhov’s “Story of an Unknown Man” (“Rasskaz neizvestnogo cheloveka”) (1893). However, there is no solid evidence in either man’s oeuvre or anywhere else to support these hypotheses.

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In 1895, following revelations of the Onor atrocities as well as the deaths of Butakov and several friends, Iuvachëv obtained permission to leave Sakhalin. Like for those former convicts whom administrators prevented from leaving, Iuvachëv had no easy time departing the island. But he cleared the last-minute hurdles, and went on to live and work as a journalist in Vladivostok, until 1897, when he took a trip around the world that returned him to European Russia. Two years later, he was living in his hometown of St. Petersburg, when he launched his career as a writer. Eight Years on Sakhalin (Vosem´ let na Sakhaline) was first serialized in 1900, by the journal History News (Istoricheskii vestnik), then published the following year in book form, by the journalist, publicist, and Chekhov confidant Aleksei S. Suvorin (my translation is based on this publication). Eight Years on Sakhalin was but the first of several books Iuvachëv wrote during his lifetime, yet remains his best known by far. He used the pseudonymn I. P. Miroliubov (translatable as both “lover of peace” and “lover of the world”) for this initial publication. In 1902, Iuvachëv married the noblewoman Nadezhda I. Koliubakina. He later became acquainted with Chekhov and Lev Tolstoi, and made trips to Central Asia and Palestine. Following the 1917 revolution, he worked for the Soviet government. In 1931, Iuvachëv’s son Daniil was arrested. Iuvachëv spent the next three years getting the charges against him reduced. He succeeded; but a decade later, Daniil was arrested again. This was a blow from which Iuvachëv evidently could not recover, and on 17 March 1940, he died of blood poisoning.

⸙⸙⸙ Within the pantheon of Sakhalin penal colony literature, Eight Years on Sakhalin is overshadowed by Anton Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island (Ostrov Sakhalin) (1895) and Vlas Doroshevich’s Sakhalin (Katorga) (1903). At the time of Iuvachëv’s book’s publication, Chekhov and Doroshevich were well known to Russians, whereas Iuvachëv was practically unknown; and even today, probably few Russians have heard of Iuvachëv. As for Anglophone readers, until now, as far as I know, nothing of Iuvachëv’s has ever been translated and published, whereas, by comparison, two translations of Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island and my recent translation of Doroshevich’s book are currently available. Aside from the question of fame, it must also be acknowledged that Iuvachëv’s confreres were better writers—indeed, Chekhov and Doroshevich are quintessential representatives of Russia’s literary Silver Age. But if they exceeded him as wordsmiths, Iuvachëv surpasses both by offering what neither Chekhov nor Doroshevich could: an inside view of the Sakhalin penal colony by an exile who lived there for eight long years.

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In terms of perspective and factual accuracy, Eight Years on Sakhalin is an exceptionally valuable source on late Imperial Russia and its exile system. With regard to first-person accounts concerning exile, scholars must rely on those by political prisoners because regular, criminal exiles left practically nothing in writing. This circumstance has inevitably endowed political exiles with a significance far greater than their numbers. Yet, by not fixating on politicals to the exclusion of criminal exiles, Iuvachëv’s memoir helps to correct this distortion. Perhaps because he originated from a family of floor polishers, Iuvachëv seems to have suffered less than other politicals from the pretensions that prevented them hobnobbing with the hoi polloi. Indeed, in addition to befriending several regular exiles, he purposefully undertook to observe and record for posterity the jobs penal laborers did. His descriptions of road and logging crews’ working and living conditions offer graphic evidence for why so many were injured or fell sick, and why many risked their lives in what were almost always failed escape attempts. As with the political exile Pëtr F. Iakubovich’s descriptions of mining in Transbaikalia, Iuvachëv’s memoir viscerally communicates what it meant for the average person to experience a sentence of katorga. Equally valuable are his memoir’s numerous character studies. It is no surprise that Iuvachëv, after moving to Vladivostok, became a journalist, because his memoir makes clear that, on Sakhalin, his innate curiosity intersected with an ability to talk to almost anyone. As a result, the conversations detailed in Eight Years on Sakhalin approximate what could otherwise be firsthand accounts by regular exiles who, to repeat, left practically no written records. This is especially the case with Iuvachëv’s descriptions of the exile Masiukevich and of his manservant Andrei. Moreover, Iuvachëv’s ability to navigate the social hierarchy allowed him to construct sensitive portraits of Giliaks, prison wardens, and other officials. Though he sometimes adopts a censorious tone, especially when writing about female convicts or Giliaks (and in so doing, betrays an unfortunate degree of misogyny and racial prejudice), Iuvachëv tends to describe his subjects neutrally and to allow their words and actions to speak for themselves. As such, his portraits of prison warden Fëdor N. Livin (the infamous “L——”) and district commander Butakov show particular nuance and insight. We readers may not like these people, but we come away understanding them and their motivations better than had Iuvachëv simply cast them as villains in a morality play. Finally, Iuvachëv writes about himself with candor. If ever there was a success story on Sakhalin, it was that of Iuvachëv’s redemption from wouldbe terrorist to community benefactor and churchman. More than once, he expresses regret at having been swept up by the radicalism that led to his arrest, conviction, imprisonment, and exile; yet at no point does he complain

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that his punishment was undeserved. Harsh and difficult to endure, yes—but he seems to have regarded his time in prison and on Sakhalin as a penance sorely earned. Insofar as his punishment could be said to have rehabilitated this state criminal, he may therefore appear to some readers a disappointment, that is, as someone who, instead of maintaining opposition to what was indeed a tyrannical and oppressive regime, knuckled under and allowed it to coopt him (as might be inferred by his services on behalf of the island administration). But his memoir might contrarily suggest that Iuvachëv saw himself as being engaged in a long-term rather than a short-term struggle, and therefore as doing what he needed to do in order to buy time and fight another day (using non-violent methods). That he later worked for the Soviet government offers some evidence he did not disengage from radical politics altogether. Admittedly, more research is needed to better understand Iuvachëv’s motives. Yet his memoir alone suffices to show he was embroiled in a fight to preserve his soul, sanity, and conscience during a time and in a place where so many others—both those for or against tsarism—were losing theirs. The very act of writing his memoir and getting it published indicates a courageous effort to promote human rights and social justice in Russia during a period of political repression, class exploitation, and antisemitic pogroms. Key to Iuvachëv’s self-preservation on Sakhalin was his love of the natural world. He reportedly wanted to study forestry prior to joining the navy, and his detailed descriptions of manicured gardens and island forests accord with this. Along with its magnificent descriptions of sea lions and other fauna, as well as Kamyshev Pass, Danger Rock, and other geological formations, Iuvachëv’s memoir embraces much more than just the penal colony, and as such, demonstrates what a unique and beautiful island Sakhalin is. Nevertheless, the penal colony sits at the center of Eight Years on Sakhalin like a monstrous vortex. Iuvachëv’s was the agony of an especially sensitive and sophisticated man condemned (during what he regarded as the prime of life) to a world of murderers, thieves, prostitutes, and tyrannical officials—a world where dire exigency revealed the worst of humanity in all its ugliness and horror. For this historian and translator, reading Iuvachëv’s memoir causes the Sakhalin penal colony to resonate as if it were an iron bell, knelling to forewarn the Russian Empire of the doom then looming on the horizon. When he wrote it, did Iuvachëv sense the turmoil that lay ahead? Not consciously, at least. Writing shortly before Japan would humiliate Russia and, in such way, contribute to tsarism’s eventual destruction, Iuvachëv discounts the words of a Japanese merchant he had met on Sakhalin and who warned him what

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would happen if their countries went to war. But if Iuvachëv failed to discern his own memoir’s auguries of the future, he nevertheless subconsciously managed, through honesty and artistry, to infuse it with the stench of tsarism’s decay, for the “indescribable slime” of the “Sakhalin quagmire” proved not to be confined to the island but was oozing throughout the empire, “suck[ing]” into its depths practically everyone, from the lowliest exile-settler on up to the imperial family itself. And so, as February 1917 approached and World War I entered its fourth year, the Romanovs—who for centuries, let alone decades, had been waging war against society—discovered they could no longer count on their subjects to preserve them from enemies both foreign and domestic. In other words, the bill had come due for the Sakhalin penal colony and all the other ills they visited upon Russia. Therefore, and in light of what we know today, the dark realm that Eight Years on Sakhalin describes should serve to challenge readers to consider more broadly the ramifications of decisions that were made during the Russian Empire’s twilight years. More broadly still, Iuvachëv’s life in exile testifies to why we must devote ourselves to a power much higher than the State if we hope to retain our humanity amid the storms that lie ahead.

Sources [Anon.]. “Piat´ zhiznei Ivana Iuvacheva.” http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/vs/article/7247/ (accessed September 27, 2020). Borisova, V. G. “Obrazy podizhnikov v knige Ostrov Sakhalin.” https://pandia.ru/text/78/ 322/27235.php (accessed June 19, 2019). Chekhov, Anton. The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin. Trans. by Luba and Michael Terpak. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. Chekhov, Anton. Ostrov Sakhalin (iz putevykh zapisok). Vladivostok: Al´manakh “Rubëzh,” 2010. Chekhov, Anton. Sakhalin Island. Trans. by Brian Reeve. London: Alma Classics, 2019. Doroshevich, Vlas. Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East: A Translation of Vlas Doroshevich’s “Sakhalin”. Trans. with an intro. by Andrew A. Gentes. New York: Anthem Press, 2009. Gentes, Andrew A. Russia’s Sakhalin Penal Colony, 1849–1917: Imperialism and Exile. New York: Routledge Press, 2021. Gorbunov-Posadov, I. I. “Neskol´ko slov ot izdatelia (Predislovnie k knige I. P. Iuvacheva “Shlissel´burgskaia krepost´”).” In “Shlissel´burgskaia krepost´. S predisloviem I. I. Gorbunova-Posadava,” by I. P. Miroliubov (I. P. Iuvachëv). Posrednik 639 (1907) [Section VIII−IX]. G-P_juvachev.doc (live.com) (accessed September 27, 2020). Iakubovich, P. F. In the World of the Outcasts: Notes of a Former Penal Laborer. Trans. with an intro. by Andrew A. Gentes. New York: Anthem Press, 2014. “Iuvachëv, Ivan Pavlovich.” Ювачёв, Иван Павлович—Википедия (с комментариями) (wiki-org.ru) (accessed May 4, 2020). (Pashchenko), Monakhinia Evifimiia. “Pravoslavnyi pisatel´ Ivan Iuvachëv.” https://v-str ane-i-mire.livejournal.com/117242.html (accessed September 13, 2020).

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Pipes, Richard. The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Stroganova, E. N., et al., eds. “ ‘Mne kazhetsia, Ia liubliu eë i liubil iskrenno…’: Epitstoliarnyi dnevnik Ivana Iuvachëva.” Novyi Mir 6 (2001). Tsupenkova, I. A. “’Vo imia otsa i syna i sviatago dukkha…’: (Pisˊma I. P. Iuvachëva rodnym iz sakhalinskoi ssylki).” http://www.icrap.org/ru/tsup5-1.html (accessed June 19, 2019).

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND DATES This translation reproduces dates as they appear in the original text and which are in the Julian, or Old Style, calendar. During the nineteenth century, this calendar was 12 days behind that of the Gregorian, or New Style, calendar. The transliteration used here is a modified version of the Library of Congress system. So as to facilitate readability and use of the possessive “s,” the soft sign has been removed from the end of words when they appear in the narrative text. However, the system has been fully retained in the footnotes and sources for scholarly purposes.

GLOSSARY OF MEASUREMENTS Arshin (arshiny, pl.)—a unit of length equal to 71 cm, or 28 in. Desiatina (desiatiny, pl.)—a measure of area equal to 1.09 hectares, or 2.7 acres Pood—an anglicization of pud, a weight equal to 16.38 kg, or 36 lb. Sazhenˊ (sazheni, pl.)—a unit of length equal to 2.13 m, or 6.99 ft. Vershok (vershki, pl.)—a unit of length equal to 4.45 cm, or 1.75 in. Verst—an anglicization of versta, a distance equal to 1.06 km, or 0.66 mi.

newgenprepdf

PREFACE The essays presented here came to the author from having lived on Sakhalin for eight years. Having personally experienced various situations in an exile life, he has decided to write down the most outstanding events of his Sakhalin “purgatory.” In 1898, Mr. A. P. Salomon, director of the Main Prison Administration, visited the island of outcasts, and here is the bitter conclusion he drew from his detailed examination of all conditions of the exiles’ penal labor existence: Sakhalin’s penal institutions, with regard to internal order and discipline, with regard to all branches of economy and well-being, with regard, lastly, to labor arrangements, do not maintain even a remote comparison to the least favorablyequipped places of confinement in European Russia (vide Prison Bulletin, 1899, no. 6).1

As such, the various reforms of recent times have barely grazed this place of banishment, and exiles’ lives have up to now remained in nearly the same conditions as when the author resided on Sakhalin. The essays presented here were first published in the first seven issues of History News,2 in 1900. Certain revisions and additions have been made to the current text. The illustrations are derived from real-life photographs courteously shared by History News editors misters B. O. Pilsudski, A. A. Suvorov, V. L. Komarov, and V. V. Sakharov, as well as from Mr. Budagianets’s photographs of Vladivostok.3 22 August 1900 St. Petersburg 1

2 3

Aleksandr P. Salomon was director of the Main Prison Administration (Glavnoe tiuremnoe upravlenie) from 1896 to 1900. This excerpt comes from his report on Sakhalin that appeared in the GTU’s official journal, Tiuremnyi vestnik. [Trans.] Istoricheskii vestnik. [Trans.] These photographs are not reproduced in this translation. The illustrations here come instead from other sources. [Trans.]

PART I

CHAPTER 1 First impressions of the Sakhalin coast • Time aboard the steamer on the run to Aleksandrovsk Post • Transfer of penal laborers to the wharf • Prisoners’ baggage • A view of Sakhalin’s shorelines • First encounter with Warden L—— • Anticipating dinner • Along the road to Aleksandrovsk Post • In the prison yard • Distribution to the barracks In early August 188*, aboard a Volunteer Fleet steamer full of exiled penal laborers, I arrived off the coast of Sakhalin.1 This island had always seemed to me nothing other than a morose wasteland of exile. In my youthful imaginings were drawn rocky cliffs with layers of coal, a barren coastline, and a cold, boundless sea. How pleasantly surprising when, through a porthole in the prisoners’ section, I espied the outlines of the island’s coastal mountains, densely overgrown with green forests! This initial impression of Sakhalin greenery inspired me with the optimistic hope that, after many

1

Iuvachëv arrived on Sakhalin during what appears to have been the autumn of 1887, along with the other political exiles Bronislaw Pilsudski, Mikhail N. Kancher, Stepan A. Volokhov, and Pëtr S. Gorkun. The Volunteer Fleet was originally established through private subscription during the late 1870s, to assist the navy by serving as a flotilla capable of rapidly transferring troops from Odessa to the Pacific region, in case hostilities should break out there. After its establishment in 1879, the Main Prison Administration expropriated the fleet to deliver deportees and supplies to Vladivostok and Sakhalin. Certain of the Volunteer Fleet’s steamers were specifically designed to transport prisoners. [Trans.]

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years’ incarceration in prison, I would at last find here a world sunny and warm and an instant communing with nature. What is more, this view of Sakhalin’s shores generated a happiness in not just me alone: many of the exiles, utterly fatigued by the hard journey in the steamer, anticipated its conclusion with eagerness. “Penal labor’s not as tough as here aboard the steamer,” said old vagabonds who had already lived under katorga. The steamer was approaching Aleksandrovsk Post, Sakhalin’s major city, early in the morning. Since the sleepy prisoners had been given just a light breakfast, they couldn’t rouse themselves into order when the transports began conveying them to the wharf. I and the other prisoners were called to the steamer’s deck. The sky was blue, and the August sun was pouring a clear light down upon the steamer’s multi-headed crowd, the expansive sea, and the island’s beautiful mountains. However, there was no time to contemplate. During involuntary transfers, you’re usually occupied as follows: step there, stand there, put your things there, and so on. In this penal commotion, you’re afraid of receiving an undeserved kick or a rude word from some soldier, so you focus all your attention on avoiding a quite possible conflict. The wooden barges were already alongside the steamer, and we were immediately ordered to climb into them. Each of us carried with him a gray sack with his government things. It was difficult for me, weakened by my casemate existence, to descend the ladder with my unwieldy sack. The prison administration had advised my relatives to give me for the journey only the most necessary and lighter items, so as not to constrain me during transfers, yet itself had issued an entire pile of useless stuff. Per dated procedures when penal laborers passed through “Vladimirka,” they were issued several pairs of chirki (leather shoes), protective garments to wear under their shackles, and other items for the long road.2 Probably because of this, several samples of all these things had been foisted upon us, when all that was ever needed aboard the steamer was a single pair of chirki. Serious punishment had forced us to keep these things throughout the entire journey and to account for them to Sakhalin’s administration. Penal laborers in their characteristic gray uniforms were manning the barges. These were the first sakhalintsy we spoke to. From them came mostly

2

Iuvachëv is referring to the city of Vladimir, in easternmost European Russia, where prisoners would formally begin marching along the Great Siberian Road into exile. [Trans.]

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5

the questions: “What province are you from?” “How many years?” And from us: “What’s the warden like?” “Can you get vodka?” “And can you play cards?” Etc. The sea was calm. After a half hour, we reached the long wooden wharf. A gray ribbon of hundreds of prisoners stretched an enormous distance. I joined them and sat on my sack, beside a young student with whom I’d struck a friendship along the way. We marveled at the coastal landscape. Not far from the wharf, three high cliffs, very close to one another and, as I later learned, called “The Three Brothers,” rose beautifully from the water. Further to be seen was a series of grandiose dark promontories obscuring the old post of Dué.3 On the other side of the wharf was again a series of sloping capes with softly defined contrasts, stretching distantly to the north and limning the white-quilted horizon of the sea. Somewhat further from shore, as the city approximated the hills, a huge ring of mountains arose, encircling it. A flowing, bright ribbon of a river skirted the settlement and, before rushing into the waves of the Tatar Strait, twisted and turned along the length of a seacoast forming a sandy spit. For me, having stared at the naked wall of my prison cell for four years, it was an indescribable pleasure to admire these scenes of nature. Every little thing grabbed and held my attention. I could not tear my eyes away from a bird flitting about the wharf ’s railing nor from the twig it happened to be carrying. In prison, I could see only yellow or gray hues of weak light through my little window of frosted glass; but now, beneath the sun’s dazzling clarity, there was an entire ocean of all possible colors—blues, greens, yellows—with their countless, barely perceptible, hues. It was already midday. The unloading continued still. When they were being led to their new quarters, many expressed an impatience for dinner. Some pulled out hidden pieces of dried biscuits and ate them. A small, stooping figure in a police uniform was slowly pacing the wharf, sharply observing the prisoners. This official suddenly fixed on me. “Surname?” I stood up and told him. He asked for the student’s surname then calmly walked away. We wondered at his sagaciousness. Though my comrades’ and my clothes did not distinguish us from the gray mass of prisoners, he approached only those of us from the privileged estate.

3

Dué Post (Duiskii post) was the first permanent Russian settlement on Sakhalin. [Trans.]

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Someone from the heap of prisoners told us this visibly non-descript man was L——, the warden of the local prison, the terror and horror of all Sakhalin.4 En route, I was troubled by the question of what sort of warden fate would deliver me. Having heard talk of this terrible warden, I now grew extremely pensive. Groups of prisoners were colorfully bandying over things. Apparently, the bright sea air was making the throng lose itself to strong emotions. But no one dared ask for food. Life in transfer prisons and along the way had taught everyone to sit tight and not question. “The leadership knows best what has to be done, and will sort everything out in its own time,” penal laborers always said with irony. Finally, toward evening, we were ordered to form ranks and to pass one at a time by a table, behind which sat the warden and someone else from the prison administration. Following the others, I dragged myself past them, my cap off and my sack over my shoulder. The defilade took considerable time; and the sun was setting when the last prisoner joined the crowd. A railway ran alongside the large highway from the wharf to the city itself. Laborers were dragging loaded cars along it. Weak prisoners were allowed to put their things in them, and very sick prisoners were offered a ride in them. Several men immediately stepped forward, including many who were healthy, and grabbed all the spots in the cars. Knowing full well that certain of our things would be lost on the way to the city, I didn’t bother putting my sack in a car. It was dark by the time our crowd of five hundred men got itself underway. Near me walked the tall, sturdy carpenter Egor Pavlov. I liked him for his gentle demeanor and the many good turns he’d done me aboard the steamer. He realized my sack was hobbling me, and with his strong hand picked it up and carried it. The road went uphill. After two versts, we stopped before the gates of a two-story building with a tower. This was Aleksandrovsk Prison. We were led into a large yard, bordered on all four sides by single-story wooden structures. There we again formed long lines. The prisoners were rather afraid they would begin registering us, and that this would last all night beneath the open sky without sleep; but, to universal relief, this didn’t happen. The warden gave an impassioned speech; among other things, he suggested that during the next

4

Fëdor N. Livin, who at the time was acting warden of Aleksandrovsk Prison. Iuvachëv inconsistently also abbreviates his name as L——n. So as to avoid confusion, this initial form of abbreviation has been retained throughout. [Trans.]

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three days, we not communicate with the penal laborers already there and not listen to their falsehoods. “You’ll get along, you’ll see!” he shouted at us in a cutting voice: then the guards showed us all to our temporarily assigned wards. The registration would begin tomorrow morning. There was not a word about either dinner or supper. Everyone ran toward the designated buildings. With my circle of educated exiles, I entered the first ward I saw and we occupied a row of available spots on the sleeping platform. The ward had been swept clean and the framing cut from spruce, which gave off a pleasant resinous scent. A large icon with a lamp beautified a corner. At first glance, the recently disinfected barracks made a favorable impression; but I had no inkling at that time of what it would become in winter, filled with people who had returned from working in the woods!

CHAPTER 2 Searching for food • Invitation from the warden • His favorite trick • Supper • Morning impressions • Punishment with birch rods • The method of registering penal laborers • The warden’s irritation • Deprivation of all personal rights Among everyone who’d arrived there was the salient question: How can I get something to eat? This would have been simple to accomplish had we our own money, because in each penal laborers’ barracks there’s a maidan-shop, where bread, rolls, milk, fish, sugar, and tobacco can be gotten.1 But prisoners’ monies had been sequestered along the way, so my circle of comrades didn’t have a kopek. I went out to the yard. Rather oddly, I felt relatively free. I was used to seeing behind or in front of me a soldier or gendarme dictating my direction; but now I could go where I wanted! Right, left, or call at another barracks. I went to pay a call. Inside, there was growling and uproar, laughter and cursing, and tobacco smoke hanging over everything like a fog. People were seeking out their fellow countrymen. Many had already formed themselves into little cliques. Having confirmed we weren’t going to be given a crust of bread until morning, I returned to my place and began readying myself to sleep, when suddenly I clearly heard my surname called above the din. My neighbors pointed me out. A young man in a pea-jacket, with a bit of pretense toward dandyism, asked me to go with him to the warden’s. He was a prisoner-clerk. 1

The maidan was an institution central to tsarist prison society. In addition to foodstuffs and tobacco, the maidanshchik (“proprietor”) often dealt in contraband vodka, playing cards, and usury. [Trans.]

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Besides me, he also invited an officer, a Transcaucasian hero of the Turkish war who’d been exiled here for insulting his commander. In our long gray cassocks with yellow aces on the backs, our peak-less gray caps, our yellow chirki worn unpleasantly over our gray puttees, in short jackets and coarse trousers with slits for shackles, we dragged ourselves to the warden’s room, stopping in the entranceway in anticipation of what would come. “Gentlemen, please, come in!” the warden called to us from his dining room. “Please, dine with me; only, forgive me that I cannot serve you meat. You’ve probably been eating salted beef at sea, but we get meat only if a worthless steer or an old cow gets killed. Please, forgive me!” I glanced at the long table. It was laden with a variety of dishes. A fish was visible, and I remember some red salmon meat or smoked salmon. “Well, why’s he apologizing?” I thought. “We’re starving like dogs and would be glad for a crust of bread, but here’s a table full of exotic dishes! I haven’t eaten anything like this for four years.” “You’ll excuse me, gentlemen!” continued the warden. “I’m going to nap a little. It’s already late, and tomorrow we have to rise at three o’clock to assign work.” Gazing at his frail physique, I pitied him deeply. “Indeed”—I then thought—“the whole day he’s been after his laborers to clean and prepare. They say he’s the terror of exiles. On the contrary!” I was astonished by his courteousness, politeness, solicitousness, friendliness… “Believe me,” the warden was saying, as if divining my thoughts, “sometimes I’m so tired that I come home, stand beside this table, and fall asleep standing up… Please, gentlemen, sit down and refresh yourselves.” He excused himself and left. We were very pleased, not only to be able to satisfy our hunger, but by the warden’s attentiveness. The agonizing question of our relations with the Sakhalin administration would resolve itself at a certain stage. Our future did not appear so dire. At table, I remembered our hungry comrades and suggested to the Transcaucasian hero we take something for them, even if it was just a bit of bread. “No, we can’t do that! If a servant sees, we’ll get reported as thieves and our reputations will be instantly ruined.” I tried to persuade him the warden himself would be glad to send them bread and fish if he knew our comrades’ condition—but the Transcaucasian hero would not consent. I suggested there’d been a misunderstanding: we probably weren’t fed aboard ship on the notion we’d be given supper onshore. Whereas here, they were probably convinced we’d been fed on the steamer for

SEARCHING FOR FOOD

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the whole day and moreover even given a ration of biscuits. The philosophical aphorism that, without the rule of law you cannot show love, did not disturb my feast. Back in the barracks, because our comrades would have been very interested why the warden summoned us, we didn’t wake them. Also, they’d nibbled a bit: a laborer gave them a few biscuits in the hope of later receiving some basic gratitude from “the gentlemen.” All night, I couldn’t sleep. At dawn, I was already up gazing through the window, looking around. Penal laborers were walking quickly to and fro through the yard. They’d already been assigned their jobs at three o’clock. New arrivals aren’t forced to get up. They usually get three days to rest after arriving on Sakhalin. I heard some weak cries, followed by brief pauses: “Ay! … ay! … ay! …” “What are those strange sounds?” I thought to myself. They seemed to be coming from the other end of the yard. “What’s that?” I asked a laborer entering our barracks. “That’s L——, drinking our blood! He starts each day with blood. Today, he’s decided to clamp down on our brother all the way.” “What’s this mean?” “Well, you’ll see today.” Listening attentively now, I realized a man was expelling these protracted cries with each blow of the birch rods. I was seized by an unbearable feeling. I wanted to run. But where to? I imagined I was in a nightmare: I couldn’t free myself, as if something heavy was weighing on me… Right then, before my eyes, the utter horror of katorga presented itself. “My God, where we’ve ended up!” I prayed to myself. By this time, everyone in the barracks had gotten up from the sleeping platforms and begun quickly dressing. For an hour, we stood in the yard holding our sacks. The warden was hurriedly pacing up and down our ranks. He was unrecognizable. His face twitched spasmodically. Shifting among the penal laborers’ faces, the warden’s gaze was implacable. Despite there being hundreds of people, the silence was total, like at sea before a storm. In a terrible depression, I stood without my cap among the rows of penal laborers, instinctively awaiting something horrible from the infuriated warden. He wanted to launch himself at someone like a beast of prey; but as he approached them, everyone stood still. Finally, he sat down behind his table. Two other officials sat down beside him. A clerk began calling out everyone’s names in turn. “Pëtr Smorchuk!” “Here!” Smorchuk shouted in return, and approached the table. There, he pulled his government items from his sack and passed them to a guard for

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EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

vouchsafing. One of the officials checked the exiled penal laborer off on his list and dismissed him. “So, we’re gonna stand all day in the sun again. When’re they gonna feed us?” the penal laborers dejectedly asked one another. The clerk continued calling from his list. “Semën Khomenko! … Semën Khomenko!” “Here! Here!” came several shouts at once, and a fat chap with a sack stepped from the rear ranks. “Ah, you vermin!” the warden suddenly shouted from his spot. “You didn’t hear yourself being called? I’ll tear off your ears! Take him to the chains prison! … I’ll tear all your ears off!” he turned to the entire body of penal laborers. Guards took Khomenko to the chains prison, where sat penal laborers deemed guilty. This meant that next morning, he would come to know the mare and the rods.2 With an aggrieved face, the warden walked nervously past the rows of penal laborers and angrily shouted: “I’m going to tear off your ears…” After he sat himself down, the clerk began once more calling from the list. Everyone stood straining to hear their names. With evident trepidation, certain ones went to the table and hurried, in the manner of others, to quickly extract the chirki, anklechain protectors, and so forth from their sacks. Then a certain meek village chap was called. I had taught him grammar aboard the steamer and managed to get to know him well. Prior to his arrest, he’d never left his canton, and because he so feared gentlemen and officials was unable to talk to them. He, too, hurried to the table and opened his sack with trembling hands. The warden asked him something. Without answering, the poor man clumsily went on, laying out his stuff. Perhaps in his haste, he hadn’t heard the warden’s question. “So, you aren’t going to answer me, vermin?! I’ll teach you to talk. Take him to the chains! …” He was led past the rows of penal laborers to the other end of the yard. He had no face, as they say. Probably more than anyone, he’d tried to appease the leadership. More and more were soon being taken to the chains… They would all get birched the next day. “Well, these chirki were hard to carry,” muttered someone in the crowd, “but now they’re even harder to put down!”

2

“Mare” (kobyla) was a colloquial term for the whipping bench. The rods consisted of several birch switches bound together and soaked in water. [Trans.]

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“Yes, this is even worse than the Transcaucasian sheepskin jackets,” a former soldier from the Turkish war responded.3 “When it was winter and we was dying of typhus, we weren’t issued jackets, but come summer, they suddenly gave us a whole raft of ’em. They gave us the jackets during the campaign and made us lug ’em back home. There you were, not knowin’ where to go ’cause o’ the heat…” “But, brothers, they gonna give us somethin’ to eat today?” a young man from Iaroslavl piped up. “Go on, go ‘n’ ask ’im. He’ll give ya somethin’ to eat! You’ll be full!” Certain ones hadn’t eaten a thing since leaving the steamer, and the end of roll call was still far off. After the scenes I’d witnessed, I wasn’t looking forward to dinner. Only now was I fully comprehending, in all its horrible significance, the phrase “deprivation of all rights.”4 Before me loomed a future of continual spectacles of power, of terrible punishments and men’s daily humiliation … Here, I understood, I would have to forget who I was, conceal my self-respect, and, like a chattel, meekly fulfil my master’s will. I stood without my cap in a kind of daze, not hearing my comrades’ words.

3 4

A reference to the 1877−78 Russo-Turkish War. [Trans.] A phrase included in judicially imposed sentences to katorga. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 3 Dinner • An alarming noise in the canteen • The failed attempt on Warden L——’s life • Prisoners’ malevolence • A penal laborer’s death by gunfire • A walk outside the prison • Assignment to Tymovsk District • Administrators’ opinions regarding the wounding of Warden L—— • A meeting with him “You’re invited to dine upstairs!” one of the warden’s servants addressed me, pulling me from my weighty rumination. “To dine? I don’t want to eat.” “How ‘not eat’? Im-possible! You’ve been invited!” So as not to anger the warden, I followed his servant. He led me to the same room where I’d dined the day before. No one was there. The table was laden. Unattracted to the meal on display, I went to the window, through which I could see the entire yard with its crowd of penal laborers, the warden, and surrounding structures. They had been summoned to dinner. Lines of laborers issued from all the barracks toward the canteen located at the opposite end of the yard, directly facing my window. After a while, the warden got up from behind his table and headed to the canteen as well. Upon his approach, the gray mass of penal laborers became rather enervated. I realized those being allowed to eat were being called into the canteen. My comrades were all still standing with the rest of the crowd. Suddenly I heard a loud bang and noises from the canteen. “Here comes another scandal!” I thought. “The starving throng’s probably lost its patience with the warden’s harassment and begun rioting.” I had heard what seemed to be crockery breaking. But soon everything became clear. The warden appeared on the canteen’s porch with his revolver in his hands, without

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his hat, eyes wandering. Guards and soldiers with rifles rushed toward him. The warden took a few unsteady steps forward and, grabbing his head, fell to the ground. “He’s obviously been wounded,” I immediately realized. “His bleeding needs to be stanched.” In an instant, I was in the yard moving toward the warden; but, remembering I was in a prisoner’s uniform, I stopped, electing not to force my way through the clutch of guards to the wounded man, though he lay on the ground unattended until a paramedic and a doctor came running. They carried him to his quarters and bandaged him there. Like lightening, news flew round the city that a veteran penal laborer had attacked and wounded the warden with a knife. When he’d tried to stab him a second time, the warden managed to pull his revolver from his pocket and shoot him point-blank. Soldiers then jumped in and freed the wounded man. Meanwhile, the penal laborers had formed themselves in the yard and were keeping quiet, awaiting the conclusion to all these intense scenes. The general soon arrived, the island’s commandant.1 He briskly entered the canteen where the bloody drama had played out, glanced at the dying penal laborer, said something like: “Death to the sonofabitch,” and went again into the yard, where prisoners had formed rows for evening roll call. With a wrathful look, he took everyone in and, raising his arm, shouted in a stern voice: “For such acts, there is hanging! I will hang you! I will hang you! …” And he left. In their souls, many were rejoicing at having been delivered from the warden. “He’ll recover, fellas, and be still crueler,” some prophet said. “But what about Gurchev? There’s still our Gurchev!” he was answered, with cynical laughter. I’d noticed Gurchev aboard the steamer, and observed more than once the passions raging inside him. All of us had formed the opinion that, to him, a man was just a cur. Gurchev would boastfully shake his head with contempt. Normally, familiar characters such as he had been transferred to Voevodsk Gap,2 where they were more isolated and the supervision was stricter than 1

2

At the time, the island’s commandant (nachal´nik) and governor was Major General Andrei I. Gintse. He would be replaced in October 1888 by Major General Vladimir O. Kononovich. [Trans.] This refers to circumstances when there was still a prison in Voevodsk Gap. [Iu.]

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over us in Aleksandrovsk Prison. There, it had been possible to encounter especially hardened prisoners chained to wheelbarrows.3 I walked over to the dying penal laborer. He was lying on the ground at the end of the yard, still breathing. In addition to the warden, the soldiers had shot him, and his torso had also been stabbed in several vulnerable spots by bayonets. Neither a paramedic nor a doctor was at his side. Abandoned by everyone, he died that evening. “My God, what a Hell we’ve landed in!” I thought. “So much mental and physical suffering here! And this is only one day’s impression. What else will happen?! …” In place of the wounded L——, a kind old man was made temporary warden. He assigned my comrades and me to a separate room designated for the guards in the barracks. We were allowed to leave the yard to go to the city, the woods, the river. There was no supervision now. The day after the events described, I availed myself of the opportunity to escape the overwhelming scenes of prison life and go through the rear fence gate to the shore of the little river. What good fortune to be free, if only for a minute! Like a child, I rolled in the grass, ran along the precipice of the winding shore, bathed in the water, and greedily, greedily sucked in the forest’s fragrant air. I instantly forgot all adversities, Warden L——, the cries of people being punished, our daylong humiliations. Mother Nature, she is all-healing! How long I was tormented over you! I really only lived in a dream. The prison’s gray walls rebuked my gaze, but my imagination flew far to the Caucasus’s fragrant forests or to Little Russia’s free steppes, and paused lovingly over every blade of grass, every insect… But here, now, this was not a dream but reality. Later on, Sakhalin’s nature would produce an entirely different impression, but then, it seemed surprisingly seductive! … The other educated exiles and I were summoned to the general. He suggested we behave ourselves well and assigned us a place of residence in Tymovsk District, in the middle of the island. “This means we have to look forward to another journey?” “Yes, sixty versts. You’ll have to cross the Pilinga Mountains.” I absolutely didn’t care where I lived, and just wanted to be left in peace. One thing I did regret was being separated from the sea—this brought grief for my former life of freedom.

3

Voevodsk Prison was some eight versts south of Aleksandrovsk Post and served the Dué coal mines. Site of most of the island’s capital punishments, it gained notoriety as the worst place on the island before it closed prior to Iuvachëv’s arrival. [Trans.]

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I encountered the exiled Transcaucasian hero. “Have you been to Warden L——’s?” he asked me. “No.” “Go! Patients need support. He’ll be very glad to see you. Don’t wait, go now!” Having witnessed the vulgar scenes of violence, and moreover hearing from all sides, from both penal laborers and officials, bad opinions of L——, I wished in my soul he was no longer there. I confessed to having been plunged into confusion by his apparently selfless attention toward my comrade and me. “That’s his cunning politics, to show exiles from the privileged classes attention and support,” one official explained to me, “because those people are very needed here, though there are other reasons as well.” I tried to learn the reasons for L——’s irascibility. Sleepless nights, overwork, endless assignments—all demanded attention from the weak organism of the prematurely graying warden. In the end, perhaps he only wanted to appear strict, in order to enforce discipline among this mass of desperate people. I heard vociferous objections that he was not only cruel, calculating, and hypocritical, but had so many other defects, that I thought: “You’re a bit pickled, not only as a penal laborer but even as an official!” I got the idea of recommending he take advantage of the foregoing tragedy that had befallen him, and retire as a man injured in the line of duty with a right to his pension. He seemed gladdened by my arrival, but hardly had I begun speaking of retirement than he grew irritated. “Retirement?! No way! I’ll show them I’m not afraid of them… I’ll show them! …” the warden was shouting himself hoarse, looking angrily toward the barracks. After he calmed down, I told him about our meeting with the general and our assignment to Tymovsk District. “It’s sad to part, but I’m glad for you. It’ll be quieter for you there, and there’s more order than in Aleksandrovsk. A pity you’re leaving, because you could’ve been useful to me here!” We said goodbye to one another. I imagined I’d never see him again, but things turned out otherwise: not only did we meet each other, but for a long time, we lived beside each other in the same settlement.

CHAPTER 4 Meeting the educated exiles • Their solicitousness and attention • Examples of conflict over the cap issue • Priest Georgii Salˊnikov • Penal laborers’ petitions • Prisoners’ dinner • Bakers’ difficult situation We had to wait six days in Aleksandrovsk before leaving for Tymovsk District. During that time, we managed to get to know the educated exiles who had arrived on Sakhalin a year or two before us. Each hastened to help and attend to us as he could: one found us shirt linen, another a handkerchief, a third milk or bread, etc. Especially memorable is a stout Pole with an angular manner, P. D——i.1 His unattractive wide forehead, awkwardly protruding whiskers, and red-gray eyes did not keep him from being for me the most sympathetic man in our group of exiles. He’d show up in our room early in the morning, carrying a variety of produce in both arms, and would not leave until late in the evening. His kindness seemed limitless. He seemed to be searching for an opportunity to devote himself to a comrade. Indeed, this would later play itself out. Exiles’ visitations kept us in the ward for entire days, and we rarely exited the prison gates, though were rather scared to do so, having heard of so many unpleasant clashes playing out recently over the “cap issue.” An educated exile fulfils with difficulty all the demands Sakhalin officials impose on penal laborers concerning gestures of respect. Usually upon encountering an official, an exiled penal laborer would step off the pavement and, not at twelve paces, like a soldier, but at twenty paces or more, doff his cap and, with head bared, walk in terror and trepidation past his highness. Not everyone,

1

This was the Polish revolutionary Piotr Dobrowski. He would later commit suicide on Sakhalin. [Trans.]

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however, risked going along the street past Warden L—— in this way. Many preferred to turn off and follow a detour of long alleyways. It got to the point that you had to pass with a bared head not just officials but even their houses. “Not only ’cause someone’s lookin’ out the window. No, ’tis best to take your cap off: every time!” penal laborers observed. On this basis, they would remove their caps before every stranger dressed in decent European clothing, be he a merchant, curious passenger, or foreign sailor from a steamer. Exiles from the privileged estates sometimes tried to bow to officials. Some of them condescendingly tolerated such greetings, but others were indignant. “Why’s he bowing to me like an equal, like I’m an acquaintance on Nevskii Prospect?!” such gentlemen shouted. For educated penal laborers, still more difficult than standing on the street without their caps was speaking to the leadership. How simply entire dramas grew out of trifles! For example, a bunch of laborers (on Sakhalin, exiled penal laborers are usually just called laborers) are next to a warehouse issuing rations. Everyone’s either holding an empty sack or the provisions they’ve received (whoever doesn’t get fed inside the prison receives each month just a pood-and-a-half of meal, several fish, sometimes some salted beef, and a little bit of groats for boiling). With his pencil, the official in charge of the warehouse is checking them off in a notebook. He occasionally turns to a laborer with laughter or questions, during which, of course, he is not shamed by his choice of words. Then, amidst this commotion, the official suddenly gets mad at the nearest convict preoccupied by the procedure of acquiring a meal, and screams: “Cap off, you so-and-so!” And woe should the offended laborer say anything back to him: he won’t be spared the rods. I later happened to see and hear of more disgraceful episodes related to the cap issue, but during my first days on Sakhalin, I made the following decision—it was best to avoid encountering officials. Thereafter, I felt to a certain extent freer in prisoner clothes. True, this gray cassock annihilated personality, rank, and name, but for this very reason the circular, gray, peak-less cap was more easily removed before officials. This was why, though I had my freeman’s clothes with me and would probably have been allowed to wear them, I for a long time did not take off the regulation cassock with its ace on the back. There, a man was shamed. Administrators and soldiers were accustomed to the sight of the prisoner uniform, and at some point, all arrivals to Sakhalin wore the same cassock.

MEETING THE EDUCATED EXILES

21

Beginning with the first holidays, certain newcomers hurried to a small wooden church2 to pray. The priest, Fr. Georgii Salˊnikov, administered to everyone gratis. I alone was barely able to persuade him to accept a little money from me. He was in this sense an atypical Sakhalin priest in my day. Father Georgii was content with his government salary (1,000 rubles a year). Unfortunately, being widowed early, he could not reconcile himself to the miserable life there, and left for the Amur. We had little interaction with the other prisoners during our stay in Aleksandrovsk Prison. Nonetheless, they besieged me with requests to write petitions for them to the tsar or a minister. I willingly penned the prisoners’ requests, yet didn’t prevent the illiterates from signing their own names. In a short while, my petitions were flooding the chancery. Having learned of this, the senior warden summoned me and quite frankly explained I was laboring in vain, because these petitions were not being forwarded. Only those exiles who appealed to their district commander could send petitions to Petersburg.

Penal laborers

2

It burned on 28 November 1890. Fire destroyed it within an hour. Only a singed Gospels was found among the ashes, though the antimins was under it. [Iu.]

22

EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

Sometimes, I went to the regular canteen (that is, the kitchen) to eat some soup, but mostly out of curiosity. Each man was served one ladle (a mug on a long stick) of soup, straight from a huge cauldron. This boil, or skilly, as they call it there, was mostly a thick, gray mass of pieces of cooked fish, bone, potatoes, and bay leaves. If you could reconcile yourself to the level of cleanliness the cooks were prepared to meet, you might, out of hunger, eat the skilly if the fish was either fresh or salted and not too spoiled. The dirty potatoes were usually washed by hand in a tub then minced into small pieces, as was the cabbage. They later dreamed up a machine (a cylinder of wooden sticks revolving in water) to clean the potatoes, but it merely mixed the dirt with the potatoes and failed to strip off the skins. Really, the main staple for a laborer was his ration, i.e., his three pounds of rye bread. It was usually sour, hard, and extremely tough on the stomach. The flour, which was delivered by steamers from Odessa, was not to blame for this, nor even was any embezzlement of dough by the bakers linked to this work, but rather, the prison wardens trying to economize on excessive baking. I very much pitied the poor bakers. Apart from the difficult work they had to perform, mixing yeast into ten poods of dough, they still had to produce two contradictory results: that the bread be good and that the baking conform to the prescribed measurements. There are several examples in Sakhalin’s history of a baker receiving the rods either for bad bread or for under-baking, till at last he couldn’t take it and murdered the warden.

CHAPTER 5 The penal laborers’ march to Tymovsk District • Bivouac in Novo-Mikhailovsk settlement • An unwelcome task • We approach the Pilinga Mountains • Sakhalin flora • Across the ridgeline • The convoy guards’ revelation • District commander Butakov • Weariness • The Tym Valley A convoy of exiled penal laborers bound for Tymovsk District was to be formed on Sunday morning, 9 August. Short-termers, convicts soon to complete their terms, were normally assigned there, so the Tym River valley could be more readily settled. Because I’d sailed on the Volunteer Fleet steamer’s first run,1 which carried long-termers, I knew absolutely no one in the party to which I was being assigned. Everyone hastened to load themselves with provisions for four days and to purchase locally made tin teapots or kettles. For our things, my comrades and I were assigned a cart harnessed to oxen, Little-Russian-style. We got underway at midday. My comrades and I walked in the rear of a gray crowd of 200 men. A platoon of soldiers from the local command was assigned to the convoy. The road was a flat highway. The day warm and sunny. The mood was generally good: for one thing, we were leaving the terrible warden L——, for another, the comparatively peaceful life of the Tymovsk District agricultural colony promised relaxation after all the ordeals we’d suffered. The road went in a straight line south, to the settlement of Novo-Mikhailovsk, better known as Plowland to longtime residents. Walking unencumbered by

1

Having written in Chapter 1 that he arrived at Sakhalin in early August, Iuvachëv seems confused here, since each year’s first deliveries of prisoners left Odessa in March or April and took no longer than six weeks to arrive. [Trans.]

24

EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

our baggage, my comrades and I had an enormous advantage over the other exiles. An official soon climbed off his horse and began talking to us. He was a very garrulous man, but I limited myself to just a few questions about life on Sakhalin, leaving the conversation to my comrades. Toward evening, we reached Plowland. A river flowed along the edge of the settlement. It had a character typical of Sakhalin rivers: here it contracted between narrow, thickly overgrown banks to form a fast current, there it seethed in noisily foaming rapids, and then, in the lower spots, it widened to cover its enormous banks of clean pebbles. We spent the night in a large field by this same river. Campfires were lit. To economize on fuel, we put ten or more kettles and teapots to boil on each, propping them up with constructions of bricks and stones. I liked such community hearths. Penal laborers with pipes between their teeth squatted in circles. Some added sticks and brush to the fire. I, too, undertook to assist my comrades, fetching water from the river, building a fire for the teapot, and collecting a heap of sticks to add to the fire. But one of my neighbors lightly knocked the heap out of my hands. I realized this was his sinecure, that he would gather the pile and distribute it. Sitting around us were all unfamiliar faces, and I silently acknowledged the lesson. This incident, moreover, convinced me to deal as a rule more carefully with penal laborers. For the first time in my life, I spent a night beneath open sky on an unrolled sheepskin. We somehow got ourselves into a pile and covered up with our cassocks. Fortunately, the weather was fine, and I fell peacefully asleep amid two hundred penal laborers. Next day, we were sent east of Novo-Mikhailovsk to the Pilinga Range.2 The road went higher and higher into the mountain. The going was very difficult, and I grew quite tired. My comrades took turns sitting in the baggage cart. The constant change of the entrancing mountain scenery buoyed my courage somewhat. I especially liked following the road along the river, as it hid amid the greenery of bushes and trees or behind turns in the mountain. Sometimes, it came straight toward us with the broad-leafed shrubbery, then suddenly disappeared, and after five minutes, it was already far below, glistening among willows in the valley. We were frequently allowed to rest. Tired journeymen would drop their sacks from their shoulders and smoke tobacco. Here, on the Pilinga, the convoy soldiers weren’t as strict as in the valley, and they allowed penal laborers to gather berries along the mountain’s inclines. During our approach to the Pilinga Pass, I became familiar with the interesting varieties of Sakhalin flora. 2

The present-day road to Tymovsk District through Arkovo did not exist then. [Iu.] Iuvachëv is referring here to an exile settlement he details later. [Trans.]

THE PENAL LABORERS’ MARCH TO TYMOVSK DISTRICT

25

The forest had still not been destroyed by fire at that time, and it stretched beautifully along the long range, at an altitude of 2,000 feet. In the valley, we encountered gigantic poplars and elms of huge girth. At times, as if they’d been chosen, surprisingly tall and strong willows extended lengthwise over the beautiful river, just like an artistic pathway. Further up, elms, aspens, larches, and birches replaced them. Still higher were firs, silver firs, and sometimes even the so-called black birch (Betula Ermani). Finally, we reached the road’s apex. Here was the border between the two districts.3 I gazed at the horizon: terribly high! Then I saw an eagle hovering in the blue sky like a small dot, and I thought: we, who grovel on the earth, are seeing the unattainable heights above us in such magnificent grandeur! Could we see the waters of the Tatar Strait, we could probably see the Okhotsk Sea! Having passed the night in Vedernikovsk Station, we began descending into the Tym Valley. Our guard was now even more lackadaisical. Indeed, who would run off here, in the mountains?! The soldiers were not walking strictly single-file. Wanting to converse, they had paired off together. Near me walked two glib privates, unrestrainedly conducting a loud conversation about capturing fugitive penal laborers, the monetary reward for such, and the job of prison guards. They very much envied those who captured vagabonds, and spoke with considerable cynicism about murdering them in the woods. These candid words jarred me. By evening, we’d reached Maloe Tymovo, a small, albeit the district’s oldest, settlement. Here, we met the district’s senior commander, A. M. Butakov. An admixture of Asiatic blood was noticeable in his rather severe face, as with many of Transbaikalia’s countrymen. Hailing from the Cossacks, Butakov had first been a clerk. He later rose to become an officer, and then, at the rank of centurion, transferred to service in the prison department. Having done himself well as warden of Aleksandrovsk Prison, he received, in 1885, the position of commander of the newly established Tymovsk District. On Sakhalin, Butakov regarded himself as a model proprietor and vigilant administrator. In fact, he knew each of his exile-settlers by name, knew how many children he had, about his household economy, how many cows he had, his diligence toward work, his behavior. Being a wonderful family man, Arsenii Mikhailovich resembled a good landowner during serfdom. From 7 o’clock in the morning he usually sat in his chancery and daily saw a crowd of visitors. He was able to give not only advice but assistance to each. Thanks to such responses from our commander, we viewed our future rather calmly.

3

I.e., between Aleksandrovsk and Tymovsk districts. [Trans.]

26

EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

Butakov checked us against a list, walked past each of us during the evening roll call, and left. We heard not a single word from him. The rest of the way was on a good dirt road continually descending the Tym River valley. Our weather was surprisingly delightful. There’d been years when 20 days of rain were recorded for August, but so far, there’d only been four, and so we were walking beneath a clear sky. I was growing quite fatigued. Only now did I understand how weak I’d become in prison. And far from walking one day, I’d been walking for four days and was exhausted. I just hoped I’d somehow find the strength to drag myself alongside the others, and that the journey would soon end. The rather stark scenery of mountains with coniferous trees gradually began to soften. The high range detached itself from the horizon. A wide, long valley of leafy trees opened up. The utterly meandering ribbon of the wide river circumscribed Rykovsk settlement, glimpsed fleetingly, with its huts amid thickets of elms, poplars, birches, and aspens. The grasses still nearer the river were tall and thick. Fat fifes (the umbrella plant Angelopyllum ursinum Rup.) stood with their remarkable umbrellas six or more feet from the ground. Like dyed garden roses, bushes of beautiful peonies put on a gorgeous display. Shrubs of black, blue, and currant berries appeared. Copses of giant trees were visible near the river. All this bright green growth, sparkling in the sun, reconciled me to the sad thought of living many years there… Crossing the river on a large wooden bridge, we met several exile-settlers, women, and children who were fishing. This was a pleasant encounter. Their beautiful cotton prints reminded me of a Russian village, not of convict garb. Moreover, this was a unique sight after many years of casemate walls. With the natural background, everything appeared in soft focus to me. I exchanged a few words with the children and managed to learn there’d been a harvest of berries that year. “And such bird cherries! A little bit o’ cherry…,” they laughed enthusiastically.

CHAPTER 6 Rykovsk settlement • The Sakhalin prisons’ natural barrier • Artist K.’s hospitality • Installation in a workshop • The bathhouse • First katorga jobs I hadn’t noticed we’d quickly entered Rykovsk settlement. In the distance was the framing of a new church under construction. Around it were the government buildings. The Tymovsk Road, along which we were walking, led us to the prison, i.e., to a collection of wooden barracks for penal laborers. Unlike in Aleksandrovsk, Rykovsk Prison had no walls. Here, they trusted in more natural barriers: the hard-to-climb mountains, the forests, swamps, rivers, and, surrounding everything, the angry sea. Really, where could you run?! Convict newcomers just beginning their sojourns on Sakhalin and tempted by the sight of freedom would escape into the taiga, knowing well neither the road nor local conditions. However, one rarely managed to reach the motherland; usually, they expired either from starvation or soldiers’ and Giliaks’ bullets or, more than anything, they returned to the prison. Were a penal laborer not absent long, an escape attempt wouldn’t be recorded in his file, and his punishment would usually be limited to 25 birch strokes.

28

EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

Rykovsk settlement As soon as we entered the prison yard, we were shown the barracks where we’d live. Everyone ran into the wards to occupy a spot on the sleeping platforms. My comrades and I were latecomers and couldn’t find any available platforms. We put our things directly on the floor in a corner of the ward and began awaiting the arrival of Warden K——ii. When entering the ward, I’d noticed on the porch a young man in a blue blouse. Intrigued by his not quite Russian face, I introduced myself. This was the exiled artist K., a Swede by birth. Here in the ward, he’d been given a separate room (the so-called guardroom), where he did his drawings and carved wooden icons for the local church. Having recognized our situation, he courteously invited my comrades and me to become his roommates. Of course, we gratefully took advantage of his solicitude and immediately transferred our sacks to his room, where there was a large table with artworks and chunks of elm wood destined for carving. We were soon visited by the prison warden, a former paramedic who’d transferred to become a prison department official. “So, you’re all fixed up? Well, splendid!” He left. He was satisfied that the question of our lodging was so quickly decided without his participation. Artist K., quite familiar with the local conditions of life, gladly helped us make ourselves more comfortable. We each devised a bed on the platform. One of K.’s comrades undertook to cook food for the entire company of six

RYKOVSK SETTLEMENT

29

men. We agreed to take turns getting wood for the fireplace and water from the well. The more important tasks, for example, getting provisions from the storehouse, were accomplished by joint effort. Though we hastened to anticipate each other through mutual good turns, life in such difficult circumstances was nonetheless quite uncomfortable: there were six men constantly within sight of one another, in a crush among the shavings and dust from wood carvings. There was one pleasantry: we were separated from the remaining mass of laborers. As usual, no demands were made of the penal laborers for the first three days, so we were able to make use of our freedom by strolling through the settlement. The prison bathhouse was open to us all. Together with the rest, we hurried to wash ourselves of the road. In the closeness of the changing room and the barely endurable heat of the washroom, our neighbors’ filthiness tormented us. The bathhouse simultaneously served as the laborers’ laundry. Having washed themselves and laundered their underwear, certain men now put them on wet. But others limited themselves to scalding the insects out of their underwear by holding it in front of the steamer stove. My comrades’ humble fortitude pleased me. It’s said that nothing is as difficult for us, raised in the great hall, as all these filthy circumstances. But I rarely heard them complain. On the contrary, they tried to cover up all the unpleasantness with jokes. How to explain this? Was it either by their youth or their imitating me that I became their senior? Anyway, at that moment, I established a principle: as much as possible, don’t complain, be patient, sit tight, and don’t question. Finally, the time came for us to begin katorga. This unexpectedly proved to be very simple, without any special arrangement, i.e., we were not roused at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, nor lined up at dawn “to be seconded” to the front, nor sorted into parties under a guard’s special instructions, nor assigned a certain “quota.” Things were much simpler. We were sitting in our ward, talking peaceably, when a guard came and said: “The warden’s assigned you to pull a tree out of the street.” We went. Not far from the prison, a huge tree was being uprooted. Some were levering up the roots, others were pulling on a rope attached to the top of the tree. We went to pull on the rope. A guard and the warden himself were giving instructions. “Pull!” they shouted, and we pulled along with the other laborers. After we pulled down this tree, we went over to another. Of course, this work did not tire us. We were more the spectators than the executors of it. Our weak physical strength—among a body of solid peasants—had declined at sea. I personally felt enormously awkward and out-of-place. Having been accustomed to ordering others to do manual labor, I now had to show obedient physical exertion. My comrades were similarly

30

EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

at a loss as to why they’d been hustled out for common labor. Immediately after arriving on Sakhalin, educated exiles are normally assigned to be clerks, teachers, draftsmen, etc. Sensing this was a provisional measure to humiliate us, we quietly and submissively endured this initial katorga. After dinner and a brief rest, we were again summoned to the street for a different kind of job. We had to drag a heaping pile of the leftover branches and pieces to the rear of the prison yard. Only one guard was with us. We took to the job cheerfully. Even though our weakness barely allowed it, each tried to drag a heavier piece. Our youthfulness managed to smooth things over with jokes and cheerful laughter at this compulsory labor.

CHAPTER 7 Assignment as a carpenter • My sickly constitution • Sakhalin’s keta salmon • Poisonous fish • Night blindness • Carpentry work • Auditorium in the church square • Relations with workers • Incident with Masiukevich • Exiles’ conscience The next day, we were again on the way to another labor assignment, but the warden came and explained that the district commander suggested we might select a certain occupation in the workshops. My comrades separated: two signed on to be joiners; another two, metalworkers. I didn’t want to be in a stuffy room. Worn down by casemate walls, I asked to be assigned to the carpenters building the church in the settlement’s square. The district commander’s order chagrined my comrades. They interpreted it to mean they’d remain among the dark masses, assigned as was typical of the other penal laborers. For how long? Nevertheless, we would not allow the new district,1 completely impoverished of intellectuals, to refuse our services so easily. I consoled my comrades with hope for a speedy deliverance and served as the primary example of submission to the established order. I was even glad I would be working somewhat voluntarily in the fresh air. Without such an assigned job, I would probably have sat in my room behind a book or a notebook for twelve hours a day, to wither away as I’d withered away in prison. I had no sharp pains, but my entire organism was sickened and emaciated. I was afraid to look at my pale, terribly thinned face in the mirror. My head was often spinning from low blood pressure. Even my jaw muscles,

1

Sakhalin was territorially reorganized into three districts in 1884; Tymovsk District was the least settled of the three when Iuvachëv arrived. [Trans.]

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EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

weakened from not using them for so long, hurt after my first conversations outside the casemate. Topping everything, during autumn, I wasn’t spared the Sakhalin illnesses typical of all exiles just arrived there: upset digestion and night blindness. It was understood the change in water and diet caused this. We arrived in Tymovsk District at that time when the uncultivated earth still provided a surprising harvest of large potatoes. This produce and the keta, a local variety of salmon, were exiles’ main fare. During the entire month of August, all Tym River valley residents fished for keta and stocked up for the entire year. But this fish has terrible characteristics. In late summer, it rushes from the sea to the river in improbable numbers for spawning, and stubbornly hurls itself again and again against the current until it knocks the last strength from itself and dies somewhere upriver. This journey utterly transforms it: its small red head becomes large and elongated, with exposed teeth, and its roseate flesh turns pale and gray spots appear on its skin. Consumption of fresh keta sometimes causes intense digestive ailments. There’s sudden vomiting, diarrhea, and general weakness. Certain people suggest these symptoms result from poisoning by phosphorus, which abounds in this fish. Keta’s flesh and especially its eggs are darkened by this glittering phosphorus. It’s quite likely that sakhalintsy are being poisoned in other instances by large phosphorus deposits. All autumn, I could not reconcile myself to this fish and suffered like everyone else. We had no means to replace the keta meat or the milk. The money that had been taken from us along the way was eventually returned, but we had to wait several months before receiving from home additional money by post. Another strange illness there is night blindness. In the evening, the pupil dilates to such an extent you almost can’t see. Surprisingly, I was unable to get an explanation from local physicians as to why this illness predominates among new arrivals. Instructions had secretly been given to the senior carpenter Sharikov, also an exiled penal laborer, to pair me with another carpenter of good behavior; and that I should do what was shown, but not be ordered to perform quota labor. When I subsequently learned of these instructions I was working diligently like all the rest and so, from the very beginning, I wasn’t at all distinct from the other carpenters. I saw in my work a healthiness and distraction from the year-by-year destructiveness of oppressive conditions that led other comrades to premature death and some to suicide. Early in the morning, hatchet in hand, I left with the other carpenters to be seconded. Following roll call, I went to the church and began sawing and planing. I didn’t know how to work a hatchet, but there wasn’t much to do with it: the church’s walls and cupola were finished; what were needed were boards for the floor, ceiling, and wall-trim. I was ordered to pair with a

ASSIGNMENT AS A CARPENTER

33

friendly, middle-aged Gypsy. Short, a bit lazy, he did not possess great physical strength, and was suitable for me to work with. We grabbed boards off a stack, sat on them facing one another, and began shaving one after the other. Since I neither tired nor my hands ached, I was never the one to suggest a rest, always leaving the initiative to the Gypsy. In addition, a desire to smoke gave him many occasions for brief rests. Noticing him, the other carpenters would start smoking. During these moments, some approached to ask me things out of curiosity. Each day, our little square in front of the church was turned into a small lyceum. At first, they came to talk about other countries and peoples or episodes from Russian history in general, but then philosophical and religious themes began predominating. They very much liked hearing my disquisitions on the creation of the universe, the sun, planets, and stars. They themselves told about Sakhalin life, their former wardens and punishments, but never in public did they recount the crimes that brought them to Sakhalin. I came to hear penal laborers’ frank confessions many times, but these were always one-on-one. Regardless of the prison uniform, living conditions, and humiliations all us exiled penal laborers shared, every carpenter treated me with great respect, politely addressing me with the formal “You.” None permitted indecent cursing or anything scabrous to be said in my presence. By the same token, I did not encircle myself with unscalable walls; on the contrary, I was prepared to advise or help as I could each laborer, by composing petitions, writing letters, and sometimes with material handouts. There was, for example, one such insignificant matter that made a powerful impression on the entire life of a certain laborer, Fedot Masiukevich. Soon after our arrival to Rykovsk, Masiukevich, a tall, strapping man, came to our ward and addressed me: “I noticed you got footwear besides your chirki. Could you lend me your chirki for a bit? Mine got stolen, ‘n’ here I is, goin’ barefoot.” I gave him them. My comrades reproached me for so easily trusting a prisoner. “He’s probably going to wager them at cards. Just you wait, they’re going to burn you: you’ll be fleeced of everything!” they laughed. I forgot about this incident. Masiukevich later became what on Sakhalin is a rich man: he acquired a large house, giving part of it over to a village school, acquired much cattle and arable land, and had his own employees. He was a model master, and carried out the duties of church psalmist. He grew deeply attached to me, and the incident with my chirki did not escape his mind. “Mercy,” he often told comrades, “none of my acquaintances had any money, ‘n’ I was barefoot. Trampin’ through cold puddles! What’s more,

34

EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

seemed to the warden I’m squand’rin’ my stuff… I asked one, another—no one’s givin’! So, I’ll try goin’ to this gentleman. Without sayin’ a word, he gifted me. So now, when someone comes to me outta neediness, I remember the chirki—‘n’ I don’t refuse him! Here, take whatcha need.” The point to be made is that on Sakhalin, convicts happened to appeal to me, but this was so rare and their appeals so insignificant that I never repented of my trust in them. The longer I lived on Sakhalin, the more convinced I became that the consciences of most people there were not somnolent. If one only treats them compassionately, warmly, and as human beings, they will respond to your attention with all their hearts. The misery of exile life, the compulsory labor from early morning till late evening, and the constant threat of punishment, make existence there unsupportable, but do not entirely eradicate the last sparks of golden particles in human hearts.

CHAPTER 8 My comrades • Difficulty living together • The latrine watchman • His good soul • Old type of prison garb • Penal laborers’ vulgarity • Rykov, founder of the Tym Valley settlement Among my roommates, the most likeable was the young Lithuanian P——i, a university student.1 He was more soft-hearted, sentimental, and better educated than our Little Russian comrades, also university students. We’d all joined together as roommates, and were simply waiting to be allowed to divide up among separate apartments. It had been difficult in solitary confinement but was probably no less difficult in such crowded cohabitation as we experienced in our small room, where our beds touched one another and there was no table for letter writing. I came to hear many times stories of prisoners in the general ward who asked the warden to put them in the hole for a night. Some sought within it a single night of solitude for prayer, others for relaxing their nerves from the terribly wearisome noise, cursing, and the incessant passing of bodies before one’s eyes. Some wardens understood such a desire by the incarcerated and granted their requests, but more often, they greeted it with a harshly expressed refusal. “Impossible! The hole is for punishing infractions,” these strict legalists said. Simple folk can get along together somewhat easier: they have habits, understandings, and tastes in common. But fractious arguments soon disrupt relations among educated people because of their various views on things. I always tried to balance off my young students’ contrasting opinions. Alongside national differentiation (the Little Russians suffered from yokel-mania, whereas

1

Bronislaw Pilsudski, who went on to gain fame as an ethnographer of Sakhalin indigenes. [Trans.]

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EIGHT YEARS ON SAKHALIN

P——i was a passionate polonophile2), we were distinguished by religious persuasion. At first, this led to long arguments and mutual displeasure, but later, having become convinced each would cleave stubbornly to his opinion, we tried in conversation to avoid dangerous areas that led to storms. However, in fairness, it has to be said we were all so tactful and well intentioned that our disputes never led to a complete break in relations. Aside from my roommates and my comrades during the journey from Petersburg to Sakhalin, I also made friends among penal laborers from the simple folk. One of the earliest was the latrine watchman Grandpa Pëtr Antonych, as everyone honored him. Every time I happened to be in the privacy of his little domicile, I noticed the gray-haired old man on a bench near the stove. He was always busy with something: either sewing a piece of sheepskin, having a snack, or reading his prayer book aloud, paying no attention either to the conversation, curse words, or general uproar of this unique club of laborers. The strong odor and tobacco smoke there did not prevent us from having several extra minutes of pleasant conversation. Certain people would come to Pëtr Antonych and extract a word of prayer from him. The old man had never before studied grammar, but now, upon entering his seventh decade, he’d taken to learning to read by looking at wellknown prayers. Someone would show him in his book a universally familiar prayer, for example, “Little Virgin Mary,” and he would enunciate the syllables of each known word. Were it that he’d been intentionally shown wrong, the kindhearted old man would not take offense and would, with surprising fortitude, continue reading aloud from his prayer book. Pëtr Antonych was eccentric, not just in his ability to study grammar but in everything: his dress, lifestyle, and views. He earned a few kopeks as an amateur craftsman converting worn sheepskin coats into winter hats and mittens. He himself went about in a large, white-quilted top hat of his own making, holding a thick birch staff, with a leather bag containing all his property slung over his shoulder. When he passed through the kitchen entranceway for dinner or for bread, you might encounter him in such a getup. He was allowed to be absent only in case of extreme necessity. Had he lived in the common barracks, he might have left his belongings in the care of a comrade or hidden in a trunk, but in the latrine, no one treated him well; and a padlock couldn’t be used there. After one or two robberies he began carrying his bag, putting in it his underwear, scraps of sheepskin, bread, tea, and sugar, and parting from

2

Iuvachëv is referring here to the emergence of nationalist sentiments among Ukrainians and Poles during this period. He uses a disparaging term, khokhlomaniei, to refer to the former group’s aspirations. [Trans.]

MY COMRADES

37

it neither day nor night. Like the Classical philosopher, he could have said of himself: ominia mea mecum porto (I carry all that is mine).3 Having chosen a time when there’d be the fewest people in the latrine, I sat next to the old man on his bench and began showing him how to read the prayer he’d chosen. We slid from reading into conversation. My expectations were justified. Here was our folk philosopher, reconciled to all the world and even to all the circumstances of katorga existence. Toward no one did he take offense, complain, or curse. His credo amounted to avoiding evil as much as possible; but if impossible, to suffer without a word. I soon came to love the old man and, in the evening, would steer myself toward his unappealing abode to converse with him. Laborers got so accustomed to seeing us together they began calling me old man.4 One day, we were sitting on a pile of beams near the latrine, talking quietly. A laborer approached and asked: “Hey, old men, ain’t ya gonna do one hour of shoe repairin’?” “No,” I answered him. “Seems that’d be the most suitable business for you old men…” At that time, I was not even 28 years old. And for a long time still, while I wore the clumsy prisoner’s cassock and flat, peak-less, gray cap, I was regarded as an elderly man having surpassed my fortieth year. In autumn, other laborers and I moved Pëtr Antonych to Aleksandrovsk District. I wrote a letter to Warden L——, requesting he give the old man a quiet spot, and he assigned him to be a school watchman. On Sakhalin, I preferred the society of either old people or youngsters. Both more peacefully assuaged my soul than the nearly always dissatisfied exiles aged in-between them. You somehow got used to them cursing the guard, prison warden, or district commander for the usual things. But I took umbrage at hearing the ignorant abuse they directed at Sakhalin Island itself and its discoverers. Seasoned convicts infected the new with their scurrilous brand of foppishness. Not spared was Tym Valley, in which Rykovsk settlement itself lay. “Whoe’er dreamt up Sakhalin?! He was such a… ‘N’ who found this-a here Tym Valley?! …” Filthy language usually accompanied such exclamations. In 1877, junior officer Iakov Aleksandrovich Rykov, together with the exile and hunter M. Iv. Khoroshilov, discovered this valley to be a suitable place for settlement. Sakhalin old-timers remember Rykov, a native of Viatka Province, as an honest and capable official. He was the first to discover a way through 3 4

Words attributed to Bias of Priene, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece. [Trans.] In Russian, “old man” (starik) is a term of respect and affection as well as a designator of age. [Trans.]

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the Pilinga Range, and from there led into the Tym Valley a party of convicts who founded the settlements of Malo-Tymovsk and Rykovsk. Leading a simple way of life and exercising his knowledge of agricultural economy, Rykov earned the exiles’ respect. When giving orders, he was able to single them out by name, and he did not resort to corporal punishment. His choice of the Tym Valley for agriculture commemorates Rykov’s wisdom.

CHAPTER 9 The situation in the Tym Valley • Farming conditions • Rykovsk settlement • Exile-settlers’ dinners • The new warden F.’s relaxations • A bed along the way and on Sakhalin • The ward’s unhygienic conditions • Doctor Sasaparel • His patience Defended by rows of tall mountains to east and west, the plain of the river Tym stretches for a hundred versts, nearly following the meridian. Its northern end enters the Okhotsk Sea, but its southern connects to the high range that draws the Tym away from the Poronai River, similarly flowing virtually along the meridian, albeit toward the south. These two rivers divide Sakhalin’s central region into two parts: to the west, it is more or less settled, but to the east, it is nearly uninhabited, if one does not consider the few Giliak and Orochon yurts on the Okhotsk seacoast. This is the center of the entire island and the watershed affiliated with the settlements of Rykovsk, Palevo, etc. This mountainous defense isolates the valley’s climate. The sea’s moderating influence is barely noticeable there, and the winter’s terrible forty-degree frosts (this temperature once lasted three weeks in a row) are exchanged for the summer’s thirty-degree heat.1 Also, the ocean fogs—that scourge of the Sakhalin coastline—are striking there. A corresponding distribution of sediments would seem to render Rykovsk’s valley an outstanding place for agriculture. But farmers there are cornered by the mountains . When spring rains are needed, there are none, yet during hay-mowing and wheat-harvesting, you can’t stop the rain. Nonetheless, grain (rye, barley, oats, and even wheat) is sown annually in all the valley clearings. I remember how strong an impression a field on the road to Palevo made on me when seeing it the first time! A sea of yellow ears stretching several hundred desiatiny was waving from the river to the piedmont.

1

Temperatures are in Celsius. [Trans.]

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Rykovsk settlement itself is so broadly laid out that strips of plowland half-averst wide lie between its streets as well. Viewed from a mountain, Rykovsk appears as four parallel hamlets separated into half-verst widths. These hamlets, or four streets, contain within the single diameter of the settlement nearly all its state-built constructions. I was strolling for the first time a little beyond the settlement. For one thing, I didn’t have time for a long walk (settlement streets extend three versts), and for another, we still weren’t familiar with conditions in the local taiga. We newcomers feared bears and Giliaks but mainly vagabonds, i.e., convicts on the run. Nonetheless, the Lithuanian P——i and I had begun walking daily without fail to dine or sup with the senior carpenter Sharikov. Because I wasn’t always able to attend from the church’s building site my comrades’ dinner table, and because they only had soup, neither they nor I felt constrained, so I availed myself of Sharikov’s offer to go to his house and, for a small price, satiate myself with fish and potatoes. The student P——i would accompany me. Though not boring, it was one and the same meal day after day and often upset our digestion, as we sat at the table of a certain exiled Georgian woman who’d formerly been a soldier’s wife. She owned a cow and set the table with a variety of dairy foods. The Little Russian students also got sick of the dinners they made for themselves and likewise wanted to attend exile-settlers’ tables. We finally found a certain prosperous joiner whose wife, a fastidious Ukrainian peasant, hosted all five of us to more variegated fare and often to meat. Our health began to improve. The students were not being forced to work. Initially, they visited the workshops in good order and one of them, K.,2 even got a taste for joinery and made a stool; but, little-by-little, they stayed away from this unfamiliar trade and preferred to sit in the barracks with their books. The new warden F—— had arrived at Rykovsk nearly simultaneously with us, and this enthusiastic young man made no comment whatsoever concerning this situation. So, without a word, we decided to stop going to work. Warden F—— treated us more favorably than the others in the administration, and we were sometimes honored with a conversation on an informal basis. In our ward, or, more precisely, our closet, he especially loved to josh us about our spartan way of life and was always astonished by my berth. After my comrades and I had traveled from Petersburg to Moscow, we were incarcerated for a week in a large prison ward with bare sleeping platforms. We were horrified: How to fall asleep on naked planks?! We hadn’t been given our sacks of things. I remember at the time convincing P——i to lie next to

2

This would have been Mikhail N. Kancher. [Trans.]

THE SITUATION IN THE TYM VALLEY

41

me on his cassock with mine covering us. Nonetheless, we were cold and terribly, extremely, uncomfortable. Aboard the Volunteer Fleet steamer, sleeping conditions were even more restricted. Unbearable heat and an agonizing tropical rash prevented us from lying down on anything soft. You rather unwillingly lay down in just your underwear. In such way, during the two weeks’ passage through the hot ocean, I somehow got accustomed to sleeping on hard planks without a sheet. I considered this habituation a great victory, and on Sakhalin at first did not want to break from it. “God knows what conditions I might be living in here,” I thought. “Why renounce what took so much effort to get used to?” Similarly making do without a mattress, I laid my sheepskin on my berth and used a log instead of a pillow. Until I left the ward, the sunrise never caught me. Cramming featherbeds and pillows into our crowded closet would have been utterly unhygienic. We didn’t know how to keep the various insects out. Entire armies of cockroaches and bedbugs came at us through the cracks in the walls of our neighboring penal laborers’ wards. Fleas were especially numerous. Even rats gave us no peace. The artist K. pottered about most of all of us. He seemed to employ all possible means to secure his provisions, but the cunning rats almost always managed to find his stash. Despite my scrupulousness keeping body and underwear relatively clean, I did not avoid getting some sort of rash that produced an unpleasant itch. However, upon the laborers’ advice, I quickly got rid of this nastiness. Characteristically Russian means were required for this: I slathered tar on it at night, and next morning took a scorching bath. For advice and medicine, we turned to the prison doctor V. A. Sasaparel.3 He was a kind-hearted old man who’d not been in the Far East long. (Prior to Sakhalin, he lived many years in Gizhiginsk District.4) He strictly apportioned his life by the hour. At the appointed times, he woke up, attended patients, took a walk, ate, went to bed, etc. His organism was a well-tuned machine. A person quite familiar with his daily routine could almost without error have said in his absence what Vladimir Alekseevich was doing that hour, that very minute.5 As a physician, he maintained traditional medical treatments, and not without success. More than once, I experienced the wondrous effects of his medicine after being poisoned by fish. At the same time, he opposed operating 3

4 5

Vladimir A. Sasaparelˊ (aka Solomon L. Sassaparelˊ) (b. 1831) completed his degree at the Medico-Surgery Academy in 1859, was director of Sakhalin’s Medical Division from 1885 to 1892, and Tymovsk District’s senior physician. Incidentally, his son Iosif (b. 1863) shared a year of university with Pilsudski. [Trans.] Located in Siberia’s far northeast, Gizhiginsk may still be considered part of the “Far East.” [Trans.] An elderly man elsewhere demonstrably maintained such a rigid form of life. During the 12 years I knew him, his face did not noticeably change at all. [Iu.]

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on patients with frostbitten limbs. Sakhalin’s severe winters sent batches of such patients to the infirmary, but they were always cured without resorting to the blade. Yet, aside from this, it was his astonishing patience when caring for prisoners that was his specialty. Exiled penal laborers, of course, are glad to bring up any sort of minor ill to be allowed a few days’ rest in hospital away from katorga. If someone happened to have a wound, it could be said that patient didn’t hurry to protect said wound. Vladimir Alekseevich would patiently bandage such a patient each day in the infirmary. Finally, the wound would heal and the doctor would say: “Don’t touch, don’t scratch it, and you’ll soon be on your feet.” The next day, the wound’s lacerated in blood. “Why did you tear it open? You know I told you yesterday…” “Forgive me, your excellency, I tore the skin accidentally…” Again, the daily bandaging commences, and again, the doctor patiently waits for the wound to heal. But after several days pass, the wound is bloody again. “You opened it again!” “’Twas so itchy, your excellency!” “Well, I have to tell the warden. He’ll be scratching you,” says the doctor. But V. A. never complained to the warden about sick penal laborers. He granted their requests for a few days’ rest to completely recoup their health.

CHAPTER 10 The warden’s efforts to build a church • My assignment as a chorister • A temporary church in the barracks • The hatchet-wound • My importance to the church choir • Hieromonk Iraklii • His self-exhaustion as a youth • The cleric’s special importance to Sakhalin • New jobs A great fan of glittery pomp and festivity in general, Warden F—— gave word that the church should absolutely be completed by Easter. Construction on the main structure was halted in favor of carving the iconostasis. The warden ran to our ward daily and urged on poor K. The young artist got angry but, aware of his dependent position, had to simplify his sketches and hurry his work. One day, the warden expressed a desire that one of us form a choir. The students proved to be unfamiliar with church singing. I’d always loved music, and as a boy had happened to sing in a choir; but now, save for a theoretical understanding of notes, I could not offer a choir anything. My voice was hoarse, my hearing significantly dulled. However, I didn’t want to accept a complete loss of singing ability, and began strenuously to exercise using those scraps of notation the choirmaster F. Iv. Gennisaretskii gave me. Services were being held in one of the barracks. Half of it was occupied by penal laborers, the rest had for the moment been turned into a pathetic church. The iconostasis consisted of tightly framed canvasses; there were vestments on a throne and on an altar of calico; and wooden candlesticks and handmade objects. As such, everything was there. The priest himself seemed to complete this picture of an impoverished church. He was a semiliterate Buriat in monastic wear, with terrible intonation and a broad Asiatic face. Yet, for all this, one felt surprisingly cozy inside this little church. Later, when services transferred to the richly appointed cathedral, many recalled with fondness the first, impoverished, church, where “the praying was warmer.”

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With copying out notations for the church choir and frequent singing, I gradually began leaving the carpentry job behind. As a rule, I only did it before noon. Learning to use a hatchet had somehow popped into my head. “What sort of carpenter would I be if I can’t use a hatchet!” I told myself, and decided to hook logs using the axe-notch. On the first log, I sliced through my shoe and stuck the blade into the sole of my foot. They bandaged me up and I didn’t work for a while. I reasoned, “You can’t learn to mount a horse if you don’t fall off,” and once more took up the hatchet. Straightaway, I injured my hand, and the imprimatur of the building trade was forever removed from me. I then took to sketching the details of the cathedral’s interior arch and its walls’ oval windows. But this did not last long. Church singing consumed all my attention. I was indispensable to the choir. The choirmaster sang a beautiful bass and knew certain techniques to lead a choir, but he was unfamiliar with music theory. To learn a new cherubikon, he needed my help. I usually had the trebles, altos, and tenors sing in turn. At our disposal were scraps of music that had originated among prisoners and were gathered from time to time by singers in the transfer prisons. First correcting the numerous mistakes, I compiled from these notations the first notebooks that served as the basis for our singing. During this time, I began developing a closer relationship with the priest, the hieromonk Iraklii. Having received no educational training, he was endowed by nature with quick understanding and rare enterprise. It was said of him that during a powerful flood that deluged his entire Buriat village, the just-married young Iraklii vowed to convert to Christianity if his life was spared. The entire population perished. Only Iraklii was left, and he did not delay going to a monastery. As a fervent convert, he immediately astonished the old monks with his exhaustive feats. “I would fight against sleep and ceaselessly pray all night on a stone (I had a flat rock in my cell),” he told his closest friends. “You’re tired. Want to sleep. I could’ve fallen asleep on my stone like it was a soft feather bed. But no! I’d already named the time to end my praying. How sweetly I would have slept on hard stone to reach that moment! …” Fr. Iraklii’s ascetic feats weren’t hidden from the monastery hegumen, and he quickly promoted him to the rank of hieromonk. He was later assigned as a missionary to the Amur, and transferred to Sakhalin during the ‘eighties. Local officials loved Fr. Iraklii for his cheerful demeanor, and exiles liked him as an accessible padre. In my day, few clergy on Sakhalin followed after the priest Georgii Salˊnikov and the hieromonk Iraklii, and nearly all maintained, through an impenetrable wall, a highly authoritarian tone, grand verandas, lackeys, and so on an aloofness from the simple folk.

THE WARDEN’S EFFORTS TO BUILD A CHURCH

45

If an Orthodox priest is, in general, a pastor, father, and servant (Matt. 20:26–28) of his calling, then on Sakhalin, especially, he should be close to his flock. People deprived of all rights of mundane citizenship still retain the inalienable right to heavenly citizenship, and in this given instance, a priest becomes practically the only person who can acknowledge such condemned criminals as being equal to himself. When, each day, he delivers the thief ’s classic prayer to God,1 should he regard them as “those deprived of rights”? On the contrary, he should, in Christian love, enter into a close compact with these unfortunates, these outcasts banished from earthly society, these people terribly needing his moral support. Unfortunately, I saw in Sakhalin’s clergymen civil officeholders in cassocks, well provisioned each month with hundred-ruble salaries and food parcels, with homes outfitted with all the comforts and servants, extracting fees for their services. Father Iraklii was fortunately present at the building of several churches on the island, including those in Rykovsk. He asked me to help put together a church library. On his own coin, he built a large bookcase and enjoined me to compile, under his supervision, a list of books. Little-by-little, I was becoming familiar with all aspects of life in the settlement. With every week, my range of activities grew. When a rumor spread that the district commander had two spots open for clerical work in his chancery and they would be filled by us, I hurriedly refused in favor of the students. “Gentlemen,” I told them, “I’m familiar, thank God, with many varieties of intellectual work and will probably always find a suitable position; but it’s something for you to miss a good chance to get a privileged job on Sakhalin and secure a small salary.” The rumor proved true, and soon the student G. was assigned to the district commander’s chancery, and another, the lively, cunning K., was assigned to the sickly warden Samarskii, in the neighboring settlement of Malo-Tymovsk.2 These assignments cheered those of us who remained: we smiled in the hope we’d soon be freed from forced labor and barracks life.

1

2

This refers to the prayer of the Penitent Thief (who in the Russian Orthodox tradition is named Rakh), derived from the Book of Luke’s account of the Crucifixion (23:39−43). [Trans.] These were Pëtr S. Gorkun and Mikhail N. Kancher. Why Iuvachëv calls Kancher “cunning” will become apparent later in his memoir. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 11 Katorga assignments • Wood-cutting • The expedition • Six nighttime workers • The taiga in winter • Felling trees • Penal laborers’ log-hauling • End of the workday In Tymovsk District, all branches of the prison economy constituted bases for katorga. The prison had its own large meadows, fields, and gardens, in which worked a considerable portion of the penal laborers from spring to autumn. All other laborers (excepting craftsmen) were assigned to build roads, i.e., to make cuttings through the taiga, dig ditches, bridge wet areas with logs, and replenish road tarmacs with turf, straw, or stone. With the onset of winter, all unemployed people were driven into the taiga for logging. The district’s nascent colonization required considerable construction, and each winter, the administration’s primary concern was to prepare enough building materials. Only two types of wood were used to frame residential homes: hard larch for the lower section and soft spruce for the upper. Silver fir was scorned as a weak wood, and Sakhalin had no pine or cedar at all.1 Nearly every day throughout the entire winter the whole population, both penal laborers and exile-settlers, undertook excursions to the taiga for timber and firewood. To better familiarize myself with this important industry, I followed some penal laborers to where they were felling trees. Before sunrise, at three or four o’clock in the morning, the katorga command formed ranks in the prison yard “for secondment.” There was thirty degrees of frost. White steam, as if from a steamship’s smokestack, issued from each man’s mouth and nostrils. In their short-waisted sheepskin coats, the freezing prisoners shifted from foot to foot. Some were in felt boots and tall hats converted from old sheepskins; most were in government striders (spacious

1

There is only a shrub form of cedar, the so-called “little cedar”—Pinus (cembra) pumila. [Iu.]

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yellow leather boots) filled with straw, and gray cloth hats with earflaps. In their hands or over their shoulders, they carried straps for hauling logs. Some had an axe in their belts, others a teapot or a kettle. Together with a clerk, the senior guard, viewing with lantern in hand the designated quota of logs, quickly organized all the folks into parties of three, four, five, or more people. As soon as the secondment finished, everyone who’d been hunching over in the prison yard immediately headed for Tymovsk Road with commotion and shouts, albeit not at a run. Passing government buildings and the church, the entire throng turned left along Derbinsk Road. The air was still. Stars burned brightly in the western portion of the sky. Thick white smoke rose, though not in columns, from certain huts and settled silently on the ground like fog. This is a Siberian indication of how freezing it was in the yard. The felling of trees moves further and further away from Rykovsk settlement with every year. Recent fires have suddenly distanced it by several versts. We now had to go six versts by road and four through the taiga. For an hour, the entire katorga command was twisting and turning in a long ribbon through the woods toward the mountains. This swift pace fascinated me. I felt neither tired nor cold. The pre-sunrise twilight had conjured a sort of calm in my soul, and the freezing air was invigorating all my unburdened limbs. We soon reached the closest hills. Burned and blackened tree stumps against the white-quilted backdrop of snow produced a sad impression and reminded one of beard stubble. But this was followed by mountain ridges greened with spruce and silver fir. It was precisely here the penal laborers had been striving toward, and they separated into their designated spots. The blows of an axe somewhere could already be heard. The “tree-fellers” had arrived a little earlier and were at work. Campfires crackled gaily around thick spruces whose lowest branches poked into the snow. Spreading out in small groups, the laborers circled to warm themselves and to smoke. Others, having filled their kettles with snow, were boiling water for tea. I walked, or, better, clambered over to the tree choppers. During summer, you had to clamber over the assorted tree stumps there, one after another, but during winter, this was complicated by the deep snow. And yet, how lifeless the taiga seemed in the frost! Lying thickly on the fir and spruce trees’ dark branches, the white snow seemed even stiller, and the forest appeared even thicker and denser. Contiguous rows of coniferous trees formed gigantic mushrooms with thick, white caps. The stumps of felled trees were covered in snow. But there was neither sight nor sound of bird or beast. Only the blows of an axe and the talking of close groups of people disturbed this deathly silence.

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I went over to the choppers. They were already cutting into a tall fir tree they wanted to fell. “Careful!” a laborer shouted at me. I moved away, pushing through the snow with my chest and arms. As the tree groaned, cracked, and began falling, its higher branches broke off, knocking down other trees. The cracking grew louder and louder and, suddenly, the gigantic fir slammed to the ground with a thunderous din that pealed through the taiga. At that moment, this majestic spectacle caused me to stand still, realizing the danger had passed. Not a winter goes by without a woodsman being crushed or injured there. That’s not surprising: in such snow, one can’t easily run away among the scattered old tree stumps or always guess where a tree will land. Instead of using a measuring stick, the laborers used an axe to measure out twelve arshiny on the trunk. I walked closer to the tree. It had broken in three places. There was something helpless and pitiful in this beaten giant. Before the tree was cut, before it fell, I’d been preoccupied with myself and wasn’t thinking about it, but the sight of this fallen tree now elicited an inexpressible pity from me, as if for a living animal. The trunk was to be turned into a log, six vershki long; but having measured out twelve arshiny, the laborers found they couldn’t get a length of more than half a vershok of the required thickness. They began cursing. “I said it was thin, y’know!” erupted the liveliest of them, a steely, redhaired chap who, however, had taken the lead in choosing this tree to fell. “Woulda been better if we hadn’t stopped it growin’. We passed it o’er yesserday. No, it hadda whisper: ‘I’m comin’ down, I’m comin’ down…’ So, now it’s down!” “Maybe it’ll measure out?” a healthy looking but humble peasant in warm chuny (dry boots) timidly asked. “If you’re fine with strollin’ through the taiga twice,” the first ironically replied, “then, please, do drag it… Well, whaddya all lookin’ at? You wanna freeze? Off to the woods?” There came the rumbling of more and more trees falling everywhere. Four prisoners already stripping the bark from a tree not far from us were shouting in an unfamiliar language. “O, lucky Tatar! Look, they’re gonna be able to get back for dinner,” observed one of the laborers I was slowly walking behind in the deep snow. Finally, we stopped in front of a sturdy fir. No one had any doubts: it would deliver over six vershki in a cutting. Silently, the peasant in the chuny began chopping into it. “Hit it higher,” red shouted at him. “So’s it’ll be thick. Now, strike more here, so’s it lies in between them little spruces.”

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I’d already walked behind a neighboring tree and was again witnessing the fall of a giant. This time, the fir landed on a small spruce, knocked it over, and crashed onto a rise beneath the mountain. Having freed the toppled trunk of its branches and bark and made a strapnotch at its end, the laborers began slowly hauling it to the road. I helped them to the degree possible. Dragging the log among the trees and over the heaps of fallen trunks, we all got extremely tired and forgot the bitter frost. You can hardly go through such snow, and then you were having to drag a heavy, unmanageable tree behind you. But all things come to an end—we reached the road and placed our stripped, whitened log in a depression made by the dragging of previous logs. “Stop, fellas!” red commanded. “We gotta moisten the tree.” Each tried as best he could, and one side of the log became covered with a thin sheen of ice. This was done so the tree could slide more easily through the snow. A compact rut, smooth as polished metal, had been formed in the main road where, one by one, some hundreds of logs passed over the same spot daily. All you had to do was keep up with the logs! Usually, a pair pulls the straps attached to the tree’s notched end while another pair, having hooked a rope to an axe sunk into the log, pulls from the rear. Hot and sweating, they can’t stop for a rest, otherwise the powerful frost will freeze their shabby coats in a second. Because they don’t stop, they soon pull the log without respite into the prison yard, where they present it to a guard with a measuring stick in his hands. If he rejects the tree, the laborers have to go back to the taiga again; and if they can’t do so that same day, they go the following Sunday. Having laid their log on a pile with others, the exhausted, famished laborers hurry to eat, and then run off to drink tea; if it’s late, they’re soon asleep: they have to get up next morning at three o’clock again!

CHAPTER 12 The difficulty of katorga • Blizzards • Logging during the mud season • The workers’ barracks at night • Vacations • Sawyers • Guards • Their lives on the island and on the mainland • Golubev A logging excursion would seem to be the best type of katorga. Physical work in clean air generates merely a good appetite, deep sleep, and healthiness. Some penal laborers take this point of view on the matter. But most go into the taiga extremely unwillingly. “You’re living like a chattel,” they say. “Enterin’ the taiga, you’re freezing, but on the road with the log, you’re tortured by sweat—‘n’ look—it’s already late! No cleanin’ your underwear, no doin’ nothin’, ‘n’ don’t e’en think about earnin’ a kopek! You can’t ever e’en play a little cards… Unwind your soaked puttees, ‘n’ straight to bed! ‘N’ runnin’ into the taiga with tea so early ain’t human. You guess you’ll boil it there. But when you gotta fell a tree quick, there’s no drinkin’ ’gainst the frost. Good if the frost is mild, but there’s been whole weeks you gotta form ranks when it’s forty below. E’en worse, there’s blizzards. And God don’t help! …” In point of fact, during blizzards, which are especially frequent here, it’s difficult to go lightly dressed along the road, and not just with a log. The snow whirls through the thin air: you can’t see ten paces in front of you in daylight. Snowdrifts pile up to a sazhen or more in spots on the road. Meanwhile, the terrible, piercing power of the wind not only prevents you opening your eyes but presses on them. “Where’s the log heading?!” Truth be said, a logging crew shouldn’t be dispatched into powerful blizzards. Yet this job is transformed into true katorga during the spring mud season. It always happens that the quantity of logs ordered in autumn isn’t met during the succeeding winter, so the command is driven into the taiga for logging during the whole of the mud season. Hauling a log, while circling round

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thawed spots in the road that consist of ice beaten into deep puddles, is practically impossible. Heartrending cries resound through the settlement’s streets until late at night. The cheerful “Blockheads!” is not heard. Even rarely heard is the definitive: “One, two, three!” Their urgent cry is a meaningless noise, albeit clearly articulating all a hungry man’s suffering, exertion, and exhausted frustration. “Ah−ah−ah! … Ah−ah−ah! …,” they shout, but the log won’t budge. One time, counting on a morning freeze, they left it a hundred sazheni from the prison. But how pitiful, filthy, and wet they were after such work! You’d visit them in the evening and pause in horror at the threshold. There was something chaotic in all that humanity crowded onto the sleeping platforms, with its trousers, suspenders, clothes, boots, chuny, and striders hanging overhead to dry. In the dim light, you at first can make out only the vague outlines of an entire heap of filthy rags and clothes, but then you peer through a lamp’s dull, weak light and distinguish the physiques of exhausted penal laborers. Their sleep is clearly troubled. Some thrash from side to side, others rave wildly. Suffocating from the wet clothes’ stifling expirations and the unbearable stench, I approached with difficulty the platform on which sat the figure of a laborer beneath an overhead lamp. He was reading out loud from a greasy Gospels. “You’re not sleeping?” I asked. “You’re going to be driven out early for logging tomorrow, you know.” “I’m on vacation, thank God! … I’m the ward attendant here,” he slowly answered, and stood to place a log in an iron fireplace, on which stood a teapot blackened with soot. “On vacation”—this means going, not into common labor in the woods or on the roads, but into individual service as a watchman, sawyer, official’s servant, etc. A vacation is something terribly desired by all laborers. Separated from the general command, one feels himself to be his own man and not a laboring chattel. Take, for example, this fortunate ward attendant. In addition to pampering himself with tea, he still had the opportunity to attend to his spiritual needs. Moreover, at night, he had the leisure to read a book. Even the responsibility of a sawyer, who also has to go into the taiga each day for multiple logs or chunks of wood, is considered better than common labor. The sawyer drags his log out by himself and can spend his time on it. Whether he does well or poorly, no one curses him; but to be in a group of four or five men means unwillingly subordinating oneself to the whole, and continually feeling put upon by the most boisterous loudmouths. Getting a vacation depends mainly on the senior guard. In this, of course, money plays no small role.

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53

The guards are usually made up of soldiers from the local command who’ve completed their service, though the senior guard spots get filled by exile-settlers who, even as penal laborers, proved themselves capable. Finally, the best craftsmen in the workshops all earn wages of 40 to 50 rubles or more a month. Yet, as happens, good craftsmen are good drunks; this is why, along the way, they all lose their savings there to vodka. Having become accustomed to living large on the island, they go to the mainland in the full conviction they’ll live better still. But their ruination soon manifests itself. On the one hand, they refuse the daily exertion of labor, on the other, the private taverns greatly attract them. On the mainland, they often turn into pathetic wretches. I often recall the appearance in Rykovsk Prison of the new senior guard Golubev. He ebulliently entered the prison yard, in his new dress uniform with sabre, and greeted penal laborers with a certain officer-like dignity. Prisoners sitting on the porch stood respectfully and bowed deeply. Once, during that time, I was crossing the yard in my prisoner’s cassock and suffered quite an embarrassment: he awkwardly accosted me, but I didn’t show him the same respect as the other exiles. I veered to the side, further from the sin. But what a difference ten years makes! I was commanding a separate detachment in Ussuri Territory, and at my disposal were more than 60 freed men. There appeared a short man who bowed deeply, requesting I choose him to serve me in the capacity of a servant, yard keeper, or watchman. In this bearded, very modestly dressed man I hardly recognized the once dazzling senior guard Golubev. Contrarily, he left good memories of himself on Sakhalin. Possessing a soft heart, Golubev avoided complaining about prisoners. His commander, Warden F., who seems to have brought him with him to Rykovsk, was completely answerable for this. During their management tenure, relatively very few penal laborers were punished with birch rods.1

1

Iuvachëv’s descriptive heading for this chapter’s final section is “Golubev,” which can also be translated into English as the genitive plural “of the doves.” This double entendre suggests the senior guard’s name might be a pseudonym (though “Golubev” is a perfectly unremarkable and common surname in Russian). [Trans.]

CHAPTER 13 Headmen-executioners • Punishment with birch rods • Headmen-maidanshchiki • Ivan Lebedev • The sanctioned whip • The schismatic Katin • Punishment with lashes While I was going to work early in the morning with the carpenters, I did not see the laborers being birched. Normally, the punishments were carried out after secondment, after we’d been sent off to our assignments. It was rare that during the day the warden, enraged by some penal laborer’s infraction, would suddenly shout: “The rods!” In Tymovsk District, there wasn’t a standing executioner,1 as in Aleksandrovsk Prison. In Rykovsk, his responsibilities were fulfilled by the so-called prison barracks headmen. Each ward had a headman. He supervised the order and cleanliness of the domicile, was paid for this by prisoners with portions of bread, and was, in general, a representative for their side. Given this, the people chosen to be headmen were invariably literate, healthy, and strong, and quite capable, if need be, of dealing with brother penal laborers consigned to punishment. I sufficiently guarded myself from the terrible spectacle of execution but, living in the prison, it was impossible not to hear the groans emitted by unseen prisoners being shamelessly tortured. A large, wide, flat bench with thick legs stood on the porch of the first barracks. This was the penal laborers’ mare. When someone had to be punished, the headmen would position it a little way from the porch and bring over an armful of one-and-a-half-arshin-long rods.2 They always had in supply a whole tub of fresh birch twigs thick as a finger. Faced with four meaty goons, the prisoner usually submitted to lowering his trousers and laying himself on the mare. One pair then leaned heavily on his 1 2

In Russian, the word for the person who executes both corporal and capital punishment is the same—palach. About 40 inches. [Trans.]

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body, one man on his shoulders and the other on his feet, while the other pair stood on either side of the subdued victim and, with brief interruptions, separately thrashed the naked body with the rods. A guard counted off the blows before calling to the warden: “That’s it!” The punishment could be halted for many reasons. In addition to the consistency of his breathing, to which the warden attended, the behavior of the prisoner played a large role. One might, in a tearful voice, begin begging for mercy even while undoing his trousers. And all the while, slowly laying himself on the mare, not stop repeating: “Your excellency, please!” And, with the first blows of the rods, he’d emit a strange, soaring cry. Such a subject is sooner released from punishment. But there happen to be those Spartans who lie down on the mare without saying a word, fold their arms beneath their chin, and patiently accept the blows. Rare is the person who endures punishment completely silently. It’s said that such ones lay with teeth gritting from the unbearable pain and biting into their arms. But more often, a terrible groan suddenly erupts after the sixth or seventh blow and then doesn’t cease until the punishment is over. For this unattractive duty, headmen-executioners enjoy the privilege of not having to go to work. Thanks to this freedom, they all, each in his ward, ran a maidan shop where, in addition to the permitted food supplies, vodka and cards might sometimes be had. Headmen played the role of barracks master and were almost always ready for a clandestine card game, receiving the lion’s share of the winnings. As those chosen by the wardens to be executioners and, to a certain extent, the administration’s representatives, they took advantage of penal laborers’ unctuous circumstances. Guards stood on ceremony with them. In essence, they formed a contrasting version of the penal laborer caste. In chintz blouses and waistcoats, with greased hair and fat, red faces, they stood out sharply from the herd of prisoners and reminded me of village kulaks… Among the penal laborers on the steamer, I devoted special attention to a certain healthy young chap from Samara Province, Ivan Lebedev. He became attached to me as well, and showed me small favors. Red-faced and tall, he was a generous chap. No matter what, he was always there for friends. I always loved my Ivan. Suddenly, I realized he’d become the ward headman and was running the maidan. This pained me greatly. During our first encounter, I couldn’t refrain from saying how unattractive his new position was. “What can be done? I didn’t ask: the warden chose me. I was afraid if I refused, he’d punish me,” he evasively responded. “So, you’re prepared to punish others…” “I just bring the rods, hold the shoulders or feet.”

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57

Of course, it was not fear of punishment that attracted him, but the very temptation of a headman’s rich and idle life! Rods, chains, the isolator, food deprivation, extra work—these were the forms of punishment in Tymovsk District. The lash was almost never used there. Were a recidivist sentenced by court to a lashing, this horrific punishment was carried out in Aleksandrovsk District, where they had a special executioner and all the accouterments for this murderous action. Nonetheless, Tymovsk District did have sanctioned whips. At some point, I happened to enter the police administration after they’d just received, apparently from Petersburg, a package with a regulation whip in cotton batting. My God, what a terrifying instrument of torture! Suspended from a short handle were long, finger-width, rawhide straps. These three straps’ sharp edges were coarse as wood, and the tail-end of each concluded in a thick, angular knot of the same coarseness and hardness. Understandably, this is why two or three blows of the lash could cause a swoon, and why some died from this barbaric knout.3 In Rykovsk settlement, there lived the schismatic Aleksandr Katin. He refused military service as a youth and was sentenced to katorga labor for a proclamation openly identifying the authorities as antichrists.4 Wishing to be consistent, he refused to show obedience to all the antichrist authorities in katorga. For this, he was subjected to a lashing. “When they tied me up,” he said, “I kept silent, and called upon Almighty Jesus. Suddenly, the executioner’s sharp voice shouted: ‘Stand back! I’m going to flay him!’ And how it crackled! … I soon forgot everything, myself, and what was happening to me. It seemed like the heavens broke open and crashed to earth on me… When I came to, I hear the warden cursing the executioner: ‘What’re you doing, you wanna kill him?!’ What happened afterward, I can’t say. They carried me to the infirmary barely alive, yes, and I disappeared for a whole month, almost didn’t come back to myself. Such torture gives to a man the power of God.”

3 4

The instrument Iuvachëv describes was called the plet´. This was similar to but less lethal than the knut (knout), which was abolished in 1845. [Trans.] Most schismatics were Old Believers. However, even then, several different branches existed, and some, like the Dukhobors, were pacificists. It is impossible to know from Iuvachëv’s description which branch Katin belonged to. [Trans.]

PART II

CHAPTER 1 A new assignment • M. A. Krzhizhevskaia • Her work • The meteorological station • Secret philanthropy After five months on Sakhalin, I was finally able to change my living situation. Early in the morning, as I was sitting writing musical notation in our ward, Warden F—— suddenly burst in and urged me to see the director of the meteorological station, Mariia Antonovna Krzhizhevskaia, who was also a midwife/paramedic in the Tymovsk infirmary. “Just now,” the warden said, “the district commander received a telegram from Aleksandrovsk requesting you be assigned as an observer at the meteorological station.” My comrades advised me to remove my gray uniform so as not to frighten the lady with my prisoner’s appearance. I dressed myself as I could under those conditions, and put on a not very presentable black shirt with a belt. M. A. Krzhizhevskaia, to whom I’d been assigned, was well known on Sakhalin as a remarkably kind woman who gave all her earnings to poor exiles. She sacrificed her entire life for her neighbor. Following an unsuccessful marriage, she began searching for a place or circumstances for selfsacrifice. Sakhalin called to her. Having renounced her share of her estate’s inheritance and cutting all links with European Russia, Mariia Antonovna came to Rykovsk settlement, “to die with the penal laborers.” Her activity there was amazing. Aside from her daily work in the pharmacy and in the infirmary as a paramedic, she tirelessly went as a midwife from one corner of the settlement to the other to assist with births. She fulfilled her duties punctiliously, like a soldier at war. If she knew people needed her help, nothing could stop her. Where the river overflowed during autumn or spring, preventing the passage of a telega, she would ford the water. When terrible blizzards literally blinded one with snow, she would plow through the drifts with great strength; utterly freezing and exhausted, she didn’t retreat from her self-appointed destination. Of course, this sacrifice could

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not last, and a year after she arrived on Sakhalin, she became quite ill with consumption.1 Save for a small group (around 10 persons) of administrators and officers, there were at first no educated people in Rykovsk settlement, and so when an educated person was needed for anything, they turned to Mariia Antonovna. A meteorological station needed to be established—she was invited to lead it and to make the observations; administrators needed a teacher for their children—she was similarly appealed to; the formation of a zoological collection and an herbarium, or the composing of a native dictionary—again, to her. Given her frequent absences, Mariia Antonovna was not always able to complete the meteorological observations. She had been given the exilepsalmist as an assistant, but he proved to be not quite right. So, I was now being assigned in his stead. Upon meeting me, Mariia Antonovna was overjoyed to learn I had once also run a meteorological station, in one of southern Russia’s coastal cities. The meteorological station proved to be as close to her heart as the infirmary. She spoke with great enthusiasm about the results of her observations and her reports on these to the Main Physical Observatory in Petersburg. Such instruments as a barometer, aneroid, spare rain gauge, etc. were in her apartment, and I was to go there three times a day—morning, noon, and night—for the observation hours. We met so frequently I rather involuntarily witnessed the smallest details of her life. Our acquaintanceship began after she’d already demonstrated indisputable signs of consumption. Pale, with sunken cheeks and feverishly warm eyes, she was always coughing. The Tymovsk command’s military physician had long ago given her just moments, but she always rallied and, having overcome her indisposition, resumed working with her former energy. One had to see her in the pharmacy, where she attended to a crowd of incoming patients, women and men. She knew each of the former by name, knew their family’s situation, illnesses, and needs. Mariia Antonovna could appear thoroughly preoccupied with preparing and dispensing the medicines. She would quickly go from one cupboard to the next, measuring, mixing, packaging, and hurriedly scribbling the instructions in beautiful and forceful handwriting, but her ears would be pricked up toward the women. And then what sorrows did she not hear! Yet she was attending to their talk not out of idle curiosity. That day or the next, “Sakhalin’s petitioner,” as she was called, 1

Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium, not overwork, as Iuvachëv, an educated man, should have known by 1901. His supposition that strenuosity somehow brought on Krzhizhevskaia’s affliction nonetheless reflects an assumption still commonly held at that time. [Trans.]

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63

would ask the district commander if the treasury might purchase Katerina’s injured cow for meat, or give Mariia’s husband an assistant laborer, etc. This all happened in secret, so that poor Katerina and Mariia didn’t know why such benefactions suddenly came to them from the commander. She gave them her money, albeit secretly, through some intermediary, and only in exceptional cases allowed herself to philanthropize openly, but still resorted to a little trick to avoid the fuss of tearful gratitude. “Fedosˊia!” she would shout in a stern voice, dispensing a wrapped bubble of medicinal drops. “Here’s your medicine. Take ten drops with water, morning and evening. And, look, don’t lose this: this is a new kind of medicine.” “Oh, you! Oh, you dear mother! Christ be with you! To receive drops from your golden hands and to lose them! I’d sooner lose myself…” the patient begins lamenting, but Mariia Antonovna isn’t hearing her and is already dispensing medicine to another patient. Fedosˊia hurries her package home, unwraps it, and, to her surprise, finds beneath the paper a credit voucher. Mariia Antonovna devoted special attention to exiles’ children. If she summoned over a girl in the street, this meant that that evening or the next morning, new clothes would be available to her. Giving so much of her attention, time, and earnings to others, this remarkable laboress gave little concern to herself. Torn holes revealed the dilapidation of her modest clothing. Plain, ugly furniture stood in her apartment. According to her friends, her meals were worse than those of penal laborers. Only for guests did she allow a certain luxury. Her exile servant Maksim Bogdanov, a kindhearted young Belorussian, combined in one person a cook, gardener, and meteorological hut watchman; he prepared meals for his lady like God attending to a soul, and Mariia Antonovna never gave him the smallest reprimand. Generally, there reigned in her home a remarkably quiet and peaceful atmosphere that imparted itself on me whenever I went there for observations.

CHAPTER 2 A change of situation • An official’s sympathy • My attitude toward him • First winter mail • Anticipating correspondence • Inspecting letters • Making Butakov’s acquaintance • The importance of letters in exile My carpentry work ended upon my assignment to the meteorological station, but katorga had still not ended: for the time being, I was deprived of all the rights of my social estate, living in the prison, unable to absent myself to another settlement, liable to be ordered about with a single word as the leadership imagined, and, I was still on Sakhalin. Only my exterior changed. Now that my place of service did not conveniently situate me as one among the gray masses, I began to wear the prisoner cassock and yellow cats (cats, or chirki, as they were called there), with the former tucked into short gray trousers. The local administration’s attitude toward me changed. I often happened to meet administrators, officers, and their wives in Mariia Antonovna’s apartment, and rather unwillingly got to know them. Nearly everyone treated me extremely warmly. Some, wishing by one or another means to help, frequently invited me to dine at their places (for example, the leader of the military command, Colonel Durov), others gave me small gifts with the same intent. Although I was pleased to see such sympathy from local society, I did not try to take advantage of it. I wasn’t suffering from extreme need: the prison leadership paid me fifteen rubles a month for my meteorological observation reports, furthermore, relations sent me funds from time to time, so that I saved my own money through frugal living. I didn’t like to dress foppishly and, through spartan habits, insured myself against life’s varied vicissitudes. I safeguarded my comparative independence. Like some Roman philosopher delivered into slavery, I strove dearly to liberate my spirit and protect it and not sell out for promised luxuries. I recognized that my masters and I stood at opposite poles, and that any sort of close relations with them were as unstable as a balanced

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yoke. Preserving one’s equilibrium there imposed considerable mental torment! You could hardly allow yourself to speak freely, because with one foolish word or sharply expressed heartfelt gesture—the equilibrium would be broken. The end of the yoke on which the administrator sat was your ruler, and if he was rising, you were descending on the other end… I detested such mental gymnastics, and preferred “to know my own hearth.” At that time, I experienced a new joy: I received my first letter from Russia (on Sakhalin, as throughout the Amur Territory, when using the term “Russia” we were referring exclusively to the European part of the empire). During summer, the post usually took two-and-a-half months to reach Sakhalin, and would arrive aboard a Volunteer Fleet steamer. During winter, it took no more than three months by sleigh through Siberia. But during the transitional times of year, spring and autumn, when communication with the mainland was severed, the post sat for months along the shores of the Amur. The first sleds, or sleighs, pulled by dogs, would cross the Tatar Strait only in late December, and the reception of news from Russia always accompanied the high holidays; but we residents of Tymovsk District received the post much later. There was no postal station in Rykovsk settlement, and all correspondence addressed there was received by the district commander. And then only when he went to Sakhalin’s capital for his salary, i.e., once a month. One understandably anticipated with impatience the first winter post there! At first word that the district commander had returned from Aleksandrovsk Post, my comrade, the Lithuanian P——i, and I flew to the chancery, where we sorted through all the administrative secretary’s correspondence to be distributed to exiles. All prisoners’ letters were to be first read by an official and only then delivered to their addressees. However, there was apparently no official with the patience to read through all the letters filled with good words, salutations, wishes, sympathies, prayers, tears. Only those letters addressed to educated exiles were occasionally subjected to officials’ purview, but then, this led more often to curiosity than investigation of the criminal. Letters from Sakhalin to Russia were another matter. They might contain correspondence for the journals, complaints about the local administration, revelations of its secret crimes. O, such letters were unpleasant for the leadership! In light of this, a regulation was issued that exiles submit all unprinted correspondence to the chancery, and for its inspection to be denoted by an official hand marking each envelope “inspected.” I, too, had to submit to this universal regime and give my unprinted letters directly to the district commander. I had no desire to write in roundabout ways about Sakhalin. Even in my diary, I touched on Sakhalin events only insofar as they impinged on my personal life. The district commander understood this immediately and, without reading them, hurriedly gave me my letters, sealed.

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For my part, I valued this kindness toward me, and did not allow myself to write anything that was, from their point-of-view, undesirable. My acquaintanceship with Butakov was definitively established during those meetings. We exiles were supposed to go to him through the backdoor. There was a narrow hallway, separated from the large kitchen by a tall partition. The commander personally met with penal laborers there. Toward me, he was always courteous and polite. To characterize our formal relations, I introduce an accidentally overheard kitchen conversation. “Mistress,” the cook addressed Butakov’s wife, “why is it that when some laborer comes to the master, he speaks rudely and sometimes shouts at the top of his voice at them, but when he comes [referencing me] the master is friendly, addresses him with the formal ‘You,’ calls him by his surname and patronymic, and invites him into his study?” “Very simple,” answered the mistress, who was of the Siberian Cossacks. “Beforehand, I suppose, he wouldn’t have allowed us across his threshold.” But we return to letters from Russia—this most joyful occurrence on Sakhalin. Penal laborers, utterly divorced from home, from everything dear that makes up the content of their lives, cannot forget their former wonderful world where remain all friends and family. As between Hell and Eden, there is between the island and the motherland an impassable frontier, of not just the Tatar Strait’s watery expanse but the longitudes of penal laborers’ and exile-settlers’ years. Just like the Gospels’ rich man languishing in Hell and Abraham praying to delight his tongue with water in the chapel, so penal laborers thirst for the merest word from the other world, from Russia. Know that this is the educated penal laborer’s love letter. They send many fervent requests and tearful prayers to their relatives and friends so they’ll write them more often from the desired shore! Really, they’re always dreaming of and imagining living among their former friends in the land they’ve involuntarily abandoned. And how bitter the disappointment when, after long anticipation, practically nothing comes to you! These mental torments grow only more intense when, at the same time, you see others opening some letters they’ve received. So it was that you’d get to the chancery with a sinking heart and anxiously guess whether or not there was a letter for you. “No, Bronislaw,” you finally tell your comrade, “I’m not going. You can collect my letters: you seem luckier than I, and always get two or three letters before I do.”1

1

Here, Iuvachëv outwits the censor by managing to cite Pilsudski’s first name. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 3 Preparing the new church for Easter • A passion for work • My importance as a church headman • Building a garden • Botanical excursions • Leaving the prison • Departing comrades’ situations • Butakov’s dangerousness • His renown on the island My first Easter on Sakhalin was fast approaching. I’ve already mentioned it was decided this holiday was to be accompanied by the opening of the new church. Rykovsk’s inhabitants were notably kindly disposed towards decorating their spacious, bright cathedral. Whoever could not contribute his own labor to this affair contributed to the collecting of church accouterments. Led by Krzhizhevskaia, administrators’ wives stitched together the priestly robes and vestments for the throne and altar. The district commander himself took up a subscription for ornate regal doors made of various types of woods. In a word, each wanted to leave some sort of legacy. In addition to sketching out the interior decorations and the iconostasis’s components, I also tried to draw a huge transparent image of the Resurrection of Christ on the bell-tower window.

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Rykovsk church I was happy to get carried away doing anything, if only to forget for a time my state of exclusion from a humane life. This was the essential good fortune of being around during those days. Those people were always cheerful, content, and kind towards each other. I shall not qualify this: in my deepest memories, I do not recall feeling grief for my previous life, and clearly see I was not focusing on the pathetic circumstances of reality. This relief from my emotional state only strengthened my work, and I dove into it. When it was proposed I be the church headman during the new cathedral’s inaugural service, I initially balked; but then, having imagined what an honor these newly presented duties were, I consented, and buried myself completely in church finances, the forming of a fine church choir, making wax tapers, etc. Of course, I didn’t abandon my meteorological observations. On the contrary, imperceptibly to Krzhizhevskaia, little-by-little, I took over from her all those meteorological activities she had proved to be important during her time as director. If these occupations are conjoined to the English language lessons I was giving to two or three officials and, later, to the hieromonk Iraklii, and to my mathematics lessons to Jewish children and the church singing and musical notation, then it may be understood I could not get bored, just as I was also not especially sorting through my emotions. Springtime’s inauguration inspired me with new energy.

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Mariia Antonovna was busy till late summer with constructing a garden around the meteorological hut. She wanted to collect as possible all the varieties of local flora and, with this goal, personally undertook excursions into the meadows and woods. Upon my arrival to Sakhalin, her garden was already beautified by rows of leafy trees. Extending lengthwise from the town were various types of spirea bushes interspersed with slender hawthorns grayed from the woodland roaddust. Cheerful birches, green maples, and trembling aspens stood near sprawling elms and fragrant poplars. Flowering apple trees, odiferous garlic, and rowan hugged the beautiful pathways. Various lilies, red peonies, blue gentians, yellow anemones,1 buttercups, and many other lily, rose, and white flowers blossomed in flowerbeds. Special attention was given to berry shrubs. Lush raspberry, red currant, and a gooseberry-like moss occupied a large square neighboring the garden. Most of these were planted by Mariia Antonovna’s own hands. I liked the idea of building a Sakhalin botanical garden, and enthusiastically sought to continue her labors. Each free day, I would grab a spade, basket, and knife and go either to the banks of the beautiful Tym River or to the nearby densely forested mountains. Though my service obligations prevented me strolling for long, I always managed to find something new, and would return with a basketful of small, uprooted plants thoroughly entangled by the greenery of local vines. The Tym Valley has richly climbing vines, localized there as “maksimovicha” (Maximowiczia—so named in honor of our traveler), and Actinidia berries. The latter, known to exiles under the name “Sakhalin vine,”2 climbs tall birches and firs to their very tops. Besides pleasurable strolls amid virgin nature, I counted on getting from these botanical excursions a fortification of my severely compromised health. But a setback occurred. I caught a serious cold in the taiga, and from it suffered the entire summer a fever, runny nose, or agonizing cough (the grippe). Cold sweats exhausted me by night. I became noticeably thin and utterly weak. The doctor found conditions in the cramped ward to be the reason, among other things, for my indisposition, and began urgently insisting I be transferred from the prison to an exile-settler’s apartment. The district commander was informed. He chose to keep me in the ward under the pretext of illness, but later granted me and my other comrades funds for a private apartment. Only two of them still had no definite employment corresponding to their abilities. Listed as workmen in the joinery, they were transferred there. Although the 1 2

Iuvachëv terms these “zhëltye adonisy.” [Trans.] The actual vine—vitis Thunbergii S.—grows in the southern half of the island. [Iu.] Iuvachëv’s first reference is apparently to the vine Schisandra chinensis. The well-traveled Russian botanist, Karl I. Maksimovich (Carl Johann Maximovich), had this and numerous other plants named after him. [Trans.]

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leadership looked at this askance, it was nevertheless sufficiently inclined to retain a disinterested position: the prison warden could at any moment call them into the workshop and publicly excoriate them. All the same, one of them, the Lithuanian P——i, was to a certain extent insured by his services to officials’ families: he gave their children lessons for little pay. They protected him as being an exceptional person and, it may be said, smoothed over his years of exile. V——3 struggled over his circumstances the longest of everyone, but was ultimately installed in the prison chancery and carried out various duties: clerk, bakery watchman, and others. As such, by the end of the first year of our time on the island, we had all settled in, one way or another, and each secured himself a small income. True, this was rather late. We should have gotten settled much earlier, and the district commander was to blame for this. He should have been glad to see to decent arrangements for us, but he feared being reproached in Aleksandrovsk for being dissolute and issuing orders unilaterally. For our every emolument, he sought approval from the high command in Sakhalin’s capital, and if it was looked down on there, he would retreat until the next issue our existence always raised. Within his district, A. M. Butakov possessed the valuable ability to resolve all possible conflicts. Exiles from the privileged estates who were there valued his efforts toward peace. At that time, whereas the leadership’s relations toward educated exiles in Aleksandrovsk had reached such an extreme that some were birched (an extremely agonizing occurrence apparently unique to Sakhalin’s capital), over Rykovsk, peace ruled undisturbed. This contrast reflected extremely favorably on Butakov. They stood him up as an example of the tactful administrator and recommended his instructions as a program for the other districts. Famous old Butakov’s renown as a good master of his district only grew after the arrival of Sakhalin’s new commandant4 and, to the secret displeasure and envy of other Sakhalin officials, he began more and more to issue orders unilaterally. But, as we shall see, Butakov was in fact only good at being a functionary. Scrupulously following all seniors’ orders and interpreting instructions literally, he committed huge blunders. Distancing himself from the general and deciding for himself, he failed to adapt to his complex duties, and permitted within his district the commission of such a scandal that it completely destroyed his fame and possibly hastened his demise.

3 4

Stepan A. Volokhov. [Trans.] This appears to refer to Major General Vladimir O. Kononovich, who arrived in October 1888 as governor. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 4 The temptation of an artless existence • America’s woodland residents • Sakhalin Giliaks • Chubuk and Matrënka • Kindhearted Kanka • Mutual gifts • Giliaks’ unclean crowding • Their welcome and entertainment In youth, under the influence of Gustave Aimard and Mayne Reid,1 my inflamed fancy often wended through the virgin forests of America. Alarming adventures, courageous fights with savage beasts, the manly repulse of cunning robbers, magnanimity toward prisoners, noble and honorable behavior, the keeping of one’s word—all represented a tempting picture and made quite attractive the Redskins of the Far West. “Here it is, real life!” I thought to myself when I was fourteen. “All the civilized world’s false conventionality is unncessary in the plains or woods. Seeing this reflection of the simple truth, you’re infected by it, and you can’t lie or be greedy. Here’s why savage peoples are really more civilized than Europeans. No, I have to leave here…” Such were my thoughts during my first journey at sea and traveling to America. But when I later happened to be speeding with furious haste in a luxurious Pullman car through the Rocky Mountains, and my eyes grew familiar with the last Mohicans’ pitiful lives, bitter disappointment set in. Here were not those brave Commanches or Coras2 of Aimard, noble and silent. Most of the Indians I encountered were wretched paupers with emaciated faces, stunted and poorly clothed. Even those living in the lightly populated areas

1

2

Aimard (1818−83) was a French author of numerous adventure novels set in the Mexican-American West; Thomas Mayne Reid (1818−83) was a Scottish-American who also wrote about American life. [Trans.] The Cora are an ethnic group indigenous to central Mexico. [Trans.]

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had also lost their independent, warlike character and were passively occupied with hunting and fishing. Also making a sad impression were the aboriginals of central Sakhalin— the Giliaks. When I first saw a group of Giliaks walking one after another, with hair black as pitch, rifles on their shoulders, and sticks in their hands for fending off Russian dogs, I immediately recalled the residual woodland residents of modern America’s northwest, who also silently walked single-file, with the same hatless black hair. I very much wanted to know the Giliaks better, and this proved not so difficult. One merely had to offer an invitation, host them properly with cordials and hot tea and bread, show them fondness and a little attention, and they were ready to sit with you the entire day. “Well,” I told myself, “your youthful wishes have come true. Now, you’re not dreaming, but are actually living amid the very savage conditions that would honor your favorite Aimard novel. Here, in the true sense, are the woodland forests, brigands, frontier vagabonds, brown-bear hunters, and uniquely artless children of the forests…” Yes, all that was there, though, in deciphering those elements of Sakhalin life, there was no sort of poetry. Everything had been crushed and knocked about by the terrible yoke of katorga, chained fast beneath the horrifying Damoclean sword of local commands. That essential for an adventurer’s poetic existence—freedom!—did not exist there. Even those Giliaks who, at some point, proliferated as aboriginal residents along coastal fishing rivers, had been forced, following establishment of katorga and the exile colonies, to shrink in number, to relinquish their settled areas to Russians, and to eke out a grim existence, barely protected against the long winter by a small supply of iukoly (dried fish). Now, with every year, there are more and more competitors catching fish and hunting sable. Tymovsk’s local Giliaks began favoring our apartment and visiting us, not just in pairs, but as entire families. As was usual there, we called all of them “friends,” though not everyone won our favor. As if on purpose, the first Giliaks we got to know were not especially pleasant. For example, one of our first guests was Chubuk. This fifty-year-old Giliak was stern, quiet, and never seemed to smile, and no one liked him. Perhaps this was due to his bad renown as an uncompassionate pursuer of fugitive penal laborers. “He’s murdered Russians, little-by-little!” longtime exiles said of him. His Russian wife was named Matrënka, a terrible cadger and enthusiast of rubbing against kitchen administrators and also rather disposed toward herself. There exists among Giliaks a type of professional beggar. Gray, wrinkled, hairy old Iuskun was known well to everyone on Sakhalin. He, too, did not

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hesitate to appear before us for alms. Traveling through the Russian settlements of both districts,3 Iuskun always found shelter, either with exile-settlers or in administration kitchens. His clothes sewn from gray prison cloth reflected his contact with Russians. He often figures in Sakhalin photographs, was widely liked, and apparently took advantage of no one.

Elderly Giliak (Nivkh) Clearly, here was a people ruined by neighboring katorga. Yet, true children of nature, untouched by our civilization, visited us. With especial pleasure, I recall the Kanka family. This poor Giliak, mostly covered with wrinkles, likely continually preoccupied by concern over his family’s provisions, similarly appeared to be a sullen, even severe man; but after we’d exchanged a few

3

I.e., Aleksandrovsk and Tymovsk districts. [Trans.]

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words, you were easily convinced what a good nature hid beneath his rather gloomy exterior. He always generated great happiness. “Ah, Kanka’s arrived! … Good health, friend! … How are you, friend? Well, how, friend? …” These exclamations were usually accompanied by mirthful faces and joyful laughter. In answer to this loud greeting he, too, laughed happily, revealing his healthy yellow teeth. Having shaken everyone’s hands, Kanka would produce a present and solemnly hand it over as something of considerable value. Depending on the time of year, this obligatory gift usually consisted of a live or a dead fish or sometimes berries. But all in very small quantity. For example, a teacup of cranberries or ten small trout. For this, one had to give in return bread, a brick of tea, sugar, or an old item of clothing. All the alms quickly disappeared inside a hidden pocket of their short khalat. Everything in the same place: tea, sugar, pieces of cooked fish, tobacco, bread. As a people, they were extremely unpretentious. Accustomed to living on half-rotten fish and unbearably smelly seal fat, they deemed the cleaning of cookware superfluous. I don’t know if anywhere in the world there is a filthier people than the Giliaks. Not only don’t they scrape leftover rotten food from their kettles or wash their underwear, they don’t bathe themselves. In addition to the stench of rotten fish and blubber, they reek of fire smoke. All this serves to give off an unbearable stench prohibiting close contact with them. You’d normally admit Giliaks into the foyer or kitchen, because inside the home, they’d settle in without restraint. Unaccustomed to submitting to anyone, these children of the forests would freely plant themselves on benches and first off begin smoking from long-stemmed pipes. And they are desperate smokers. Everyone smokes: men, women, even the children. When expecting refreshments, they can sit for several hours without uttering a word, just like Aimard’s Indians behind their peace-pipe. Upon his arrival as a guest one must first immediately give a Giliak tea with bread. Quite tired from the road, he does not hesitate, but gulps down the teapot as if he were a group of ten. During this, he eats little of the bread. This staple is very conveniently brought home to the children, and therefore quickly disappears into his bosom. Indeed, Giliaks prefer to bring to their yurt everything that can be easily carried inside a khalat tightened with a belt. But such foods as kasha or cabbage soup they devour to satiety. Giliaks distinctly know that Russians disdain them as a thoroughly filthy people, and that anything their dirty hands touch will be thrown away; this likely explains their practice of taking away leftovers.

CHAPTER 5 Recording Giliak fables • A comparison of Giliaks with Vancouver Island’s inhabitants • Their degeneration • The lack of brides • Giliak religions • Orthodox missionaries’ lack of success • Giliak guards • False shame Certain of my comrades devoted themselves entirely to studying the Giliak language and recording their legends and fables. From the start, the Giliaks who enthusiastically came to our apartment for the best refreshments and gifts shared their entire lexicon of words with us, then began relating their fantastic stories, or “fables,” in the form of oral poetry passed down from generation to generation. The Lithuanian P——i was especially assiduous in writing down Giliak fables. I tried to record them, but failed: my hearing had still not sufficiently recovered. I had to ask after each word several times and, as such, exhausted myself and the Giliak by constantly interrupting the thread of his story. The whole of their fables was first written down in the Giliak language, and then a literal translation was made. Everything was then read to a different Giliak to verify it. In such way, a universal Giliak literature was compiled. Among my comrades, L. Ia. Shternberg later conducted heartfelt ethnographic work on the Giliak lifestyle and language.1 On Sakhalin, a tragic incident forced him to live in the coastal settlement of Viakhtu, near which a small group of Giliaks resides to this day. Mr. Shternberg soon became interested in his neighbors, studied their language and customs, and got so used to Giliak society that he not only did not disdain to spend the night in their yurts but shared their table. The more familiar I became with Giliak life, the more pertinent it became to suggest a comparison to the natives of the northwest American coast. Certain similar conditions of existence between the one and the other shore 1

Along with Pilsudski, political exile Lev Ia. Shternberg established the anthropology of Sakhalin indigenes. [Trans.]

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of the Great Ocean2 probably explain this. There are the same forests and mountains, the same hunting of fur-bearing beasts, the same Salmo fish eaten simultaneously by the Giliaks and the natives of Vancouver. Still further bases exist for a comparison between them: they both belong to one and the same yellow race. When I happened to read the legends missionaries gathered on Vancouver Island and compared them to the fables Giliaks dictated to us, I was struck by the many practices, feelings, and views of nature they had in common. Recording Giliak fables became a major activity in my apartment. Somewhat unwillingly, we had to permit them into our rooms and smell their awful stench. You’d be sitting and writing at the table, and one of the arrived guests, Pletun, Chasy, or Churka, would, without asking permission, enter my room and stay there, probing my soft sealskin shoes with his feet, laying his hands on his bosom, scouring my work with his eyes, and thus being frozen in this pose for an hour or more. Or he’d sit opposite me and look at my table similarly silently and motionlessly. “What do you want, my mysterious, silent Sphinx?” you’d think to yourself. “Your passive gaze tells me nothing. Don’t you want to penetrate the secret of my writings? Or are you asleep with eyes open and resting body and soul?” But no, the Giliak is not resting, but slowly dying, as certain northeast Siberian peoples have already died. The signs of degeneration are now apparent.3 There are around 2,000 Sakhalin Giliaks total, and the females on the island’s east coast, for example, account for 40 percent. A Giliak bachelor often complains about a lack of brides. Maybe this is because Giliak marriages are usually prohibited within a clan. One time, a twenty-five-year-old Giliak came to us carrying a small child. “This is my little mother (i.e., wife),” he proudly explained. “But how old is she?” “Three years die,” the Giliak portentously replied. This meant the little girl was three years old. This attests to how they hurry to buy themselves a woman as a small child, because the adults have all been bought up. Girls are practically auctioned off. Dogs, kettles, spears, and other items of Giliak wealth usually constitute the value of a little mother. She remains with 2 3

Russian name for the Pacific. [Trans.] Degeneration theory was au courant during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Closely related to eugenics, it stipulated that entire races or ethnic groups could decline as a whole due to unspecified internal factors. [Trans.]

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her parents until such time as the groom who purchased her does not find it possible to enter her home. Giliaks do not keep track of their age, their historical information is weak, and their religion underdeveloped. They worship the power of nature, make sacrifices at the start of a fish catch or woodland hunt, but in their wood carvings or stone idols, have still not achieved an image of God. The most powerful creature on the island—the bear—is understood by them to be a deity. However, this does not prevent their hunting this tsar of the northern forests and making use of his meat and hide. They have a custom of fattening a small captured bear and, when it reaches solid proportions, an old Giliak will kill it with a gunshot during a solemn gathering of guests per a famous ritual.4 A feast ensues. Russians, either in the capacity of invited guests or simply curious onlookers, nearly always participate in this so-called bear holiday. I once got into a conversation with the Giliak Pletun regarding their religion. “Friend, so you’re saying the bear is your God. How is it you eat your own God? If he’s God, then he should be revered, not killed and eaten.” At first, Pletun said nothing, remaining as unperturbed as the Sphinx, but after a minute, his womanly face with fleshy cheeks wrinkled, and he answered: “But don’t you also eat your own God? I thought every people eats its God…” I recalled the Christian mystery of communion and, for my part, fell silent, astonished by his answer, because he harbored no understanding at all of Christianity. In general, Sakhalin Giliaks stubbornly resist Christianity. A certain backwardness explains this. In this sense, they pose a sharp contrast to all the other peoples of the northern half of the Great Ocean. Our Russian and other Slavic missionaries have been quite overjoyed at Christianity’s rapid proliferation through the Japanese, Kurile, and Aleutian Islands, but only among the Giliaks on Sakhalin have they had no success whatsoever.5 To a certain extent, this is understandable. On the one hand, only a people who has become self-aware, that has suffered and experienced profound grief, like the Jews in Babylonian Captivity or Russians under the Mongol Yoke, that has endured and experienced the various joys of life and survived disappointments like the Romans in the days of empire, a people who, in a word, has a history, has taken to religion, and, in this sense, the Giliaks are complete infants. On the other hand, the Russians in katorga cannot represent anything attractive to them. Since the appearance of the island’s new masters, the Giliaks have lost their 4 5

By 1901, this ritual bear sacrifice had been documented in several publications. [Trans.] Iuvachëv overstates the case. There were some Giliaks who converted. [Trans.]

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former freedom to choose spots for their yurts that abound in fish and beasts and that are remembered still by their old people, and instead, there have emerged the evil temptations of vodka, a prison guard’s salary, and other things. It was offensive to see how these kindhearted children of nature, of the type like the fat Pletun, got carried away by a guard’s shirt, revolver, and monthly salary and went hunting after people. Per force of the administration, the catchers of fish have turned into “catchers of men,” and not at all in the biblical sense.6 Capturing vagabonds has become something of an act of courage and manliness. While walking through the woods, Giliaks will typically stumble upon fresh signs of fugitive penal laborers and will seize the moment to descend upon them unawares. But they don’t move in close, and only from afar do they, threatening to shoot, demand they lay down their knives and axes. The vagabonds being enslaved very often resist, but the cowards humbly submit their hands to the lassos. In general, it may be said Russian katorga introduces no small poison into these peaceful people’s primitive way of life. Strictly speaking, there was only one native guard lucky at capturing people. This was Vasˊka the Giliak, known well on the island. The rest led a carefree way of life stemming from their natural endeavor—fishing. To the Giliaks’ discredit, there exists a rather false shame in hired work. To me, the aspirations of a free spirit are not being obliged to others, not selling oneself into servitude. But when there’s nothing to eat, I’d prefer to temporarily hire myself out to a rich man than to beg a crust of bread from him. One time, a couple of young, strapping Giliaks visited us. They drank, ate, and slept in our kitchen for several days in a row, and during that time, complained about our dwindling supply of iukoly. My comrade offered them an easy job for money, clearing snow from the small garden. For a long time, the Giliaks would not consent. Finally, after our repeated requests, they began raking away the snow, but suddenly, both decisively threw aside their shovels and left the garden. “Why aren’t you working?” we asked. “It’s shameful! A Giliak doesn’t like to work when Russians come over: they’ll laugh.”

6

This is a reference to what is Matt. 4:19 in the King James Bible. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 6 Solitary and general prison confinement • The boy Semën Alaev • Sakhalin children • An apartment in a schoolhouse • Children’s adventurous games • The teacher Iurkevich • His success working with children • A new school Since settling into our private apartment, my outside earnings had to a certain extent come to an end. After prison, a peasant hut seemed a comfortable and spacious dwelling. Everything in the world is relative. Only after a forced stay in a ward can it be appreciated how nice it is to have your own niche and to keep it clean and tidy; only then do you understand how enjoyable it is to avoid the din of the crowd and the pointless conversations. While I was still in the prison and didn’t understand katorga, I happened to speak with an imprisoned comrade who had just returned from Siberia. “Tell me,” I asked him, “where is better, or perhaps more correctly, where is worse: among the incessant throng of folks in katorga or, as you now find yourself, in solitary confinement?” “Difficult choice,” he answered. “Now, if you’re not allowed to separate yourself, then one or the other is alternately better. Life in solitary confinement is difficult, but it’s no great joy in a prison dormitory. That rumbling herd is so utterly annoying, and per force one and the same person is associated with you and so quickly scrutinized and irritating, that you gladly go either into the hole or the hospital, if only to be alone to concentrate for a bit, to gaze into your soul… However, I didn’t find myself in actual seclusion for long, and have never experienced, like you, years of agonizing isolation. But now, having tried one and the other type of incarceration, I nevertheless personally would prefer a general prison ward over solitary. It’s not for nothing that, since ancient times, the proverb in Rus1 goes: “Death is beautiful in public.” 1

Medieval name for Russia, used frequently during the modern era to refer archly or poetically to contemporary Russia. [Trans.]

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The doctor’s diagnosis had proven to be correct. Living apart from the prison, I began improving my health. My activity also noticeably improved. Among other things, exiles’ children began coming to my apartment to learn singing. One of them, Semën Alaev, an anemic, pale boy of twelve, looked rather sullen and morose and answered questions curtly and timidly. Knowing of his family’s poverty, I pitied the sick boy and sheltered him in my room. At first, I gave him a lot of my time, busying him with, in addition to singing, the Russian language, mathematics, and other subjects, but his repeated faints made me moderate my activity. To my chagrin, inside him were the same germs of a prisoner’s upbringing that infect most Sakhalin children. The presence of katorga makes a terrible impression on them. These pallid, earthy little persons are quite familiar with many vices: deception, lying, thievery, wounding, and various types of cruelty are nothing new for them. In imitation of the adults, they similarly don’t refrain from flaunting bad behavior. One could encounter in Rykovsk youths with pipes in their teeth gambling for money and drinking vodka. And in this, they were sometimes encouraged by their parents. At my landlord’s house, they started complaining to me about Semën. I didn’t pay their claims any mind. It was impossible to imagine a boy his age wouldn’t misbehave a little. But the complaints grew, and not only from my landlords but from the laborers seconded to me to copy out notation. I was finally convinced that a boy accustomed to obeying only under fear of a birching was impossible to reprimand using verbal suasion. After six months, I returned Semën to his parents. But in the place of one, fate gave me an entire slew of Sakhalin children. The psalmist Fedot Masiukevich, whom I’ve already mentioned, suggested I relocate to his house, which included a village school. Enticed by such an honorable neighborhood, I moved there. During summer vacation, the large classroom was at my disposal, but during winter, I got squeezed into a little side-kennel. Rather involuntarily, I became a keen witness to the life of schoolchildren. Early in the morning, even before their teacher’s arrival, they would fill my room with their cheerful joking, laughter, and singing. They asked curiously about anything on my worktable that caught their eye, and demanded that I lecture to them. The youngest children won my sympathy. Those older than ten or twelve repulsed me with their rudeness and unbridledness. Here they were during classes, in twos and threes, asking permission to go into the yard, to sit and gamble on the porch. Moreover, they endeavored to gamble during class activities, albeit certainly “by interest.” This love for gambling descended from their prisoner-fathers, generally terrific aficionados of games of chance.

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This school had included since its very founding the enterprising and energetic Little Russian St. Gr. Iurkevich. As a sixteen-year-old boy, he’d walked into a post office in a city in southern Russia. The postmaster quickly got angry with him for some reason, and publicly insulted him. The hot-tempered fiery youth was terribly wounded and, in a passion, grabbed a revolver from another postal worker and, without aiming, fired at his supervisor. The bullet went straight into his heart. The boy had been naughty. The knowledge that he was a murderer frightened and tormented him more than the investigatory trial, prison, and katorga. Iurkevich received a very brief exile sentence and managed to arrive on Sakhalin after his katorga term was already over. “You ain’t murd’rous, Stepan Grigorˊevich,” the exiles told him. “Clearly, God’s pleased to send an unfortunate teacher to us.” From the beginning, Iurkevich proved to be a superlative teacher of exiles’ children. Without any outside coercion or inspection, alone and without an assistant,2 and without the help of practically any textbooks, he was able, for an insignificant fee, to cope with a huge bunch of illiterate children. Under his direction, they surprisingly quickly mastered grammar using the aural method. I later saw his students (for example, Morozov, Frolov, Loviagin, Iudov, and others) serving as telegraph officials and remembering their teacher with gratitude. Iurkevich trained girls alongside boys. He married one of his students and took on a house and a completely peasant existence. During summer, he plowed, harrowed, mowed, and reaped, performed all peasant jobs generally by himself, and emerged as an exemplary homeowner. Thus he worked for more than ten years. Over time, Rykovsk’s population grew, and with this growth came an influx of children to the school. The two rooms in Masiukevich’s house couldn’t fit them all, and with pained heart, Iurkevich had to refuse most youths (they were even bringing him six-year-old children). Finally, the prison administration decided to build a large structure specifically as a school, sent to Russia for a certified teacher, purchased textbooks, and generally improved as much as possible on the children’s education. In addition to steady government funding and private donations to the school from Russia and Rykovsk (books, writing supplies, clothes, shoes, and so on), the district commander, for his part, found it possible to extract every day from the prison economy tea, bread, and salted fish for the student-children’s breakfast. And so Stepan Grigorˊevich had to yield his beloved teaching job to another. Even though Butakov made him a prison guard with a high salary, he was not

2

The Buriat hieromonk Iraklii allowed him to teach children the Laws of God. [Iu.]

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happy with this new responsibility: for one thing, he had to give up his favorite activity—rural farming; for another, he often had to submit to the warden’s unfair demands and to involve himself with prisoners. However, his family was happy, so he weathered four years in the prison then left for the mainland, where he worked as a guard during construction of the Ussuri Railroad.

CHAPTER 7 The murder of choirmaster Gennisaretskii • A quiet time in the life of the prison • My old acquaintance L—— is named warden • My meeting with him • Petitioning for comrades • The tightening measures over penal laborers • The prison’s model orderliness and external cleanliness Comparative calm reigned during my first years at Rykovsk Prison.1 There were such incidents as the murder of an exile-settler, but they didn’t provoke a sensation among the local populace, half of which consisted of murderers.2 Still, the murder of the clerk Gennisaretskii intrigued our settlement to a certain degree, if only because everyone regretted that, as the talented choirmaster, he’d been mad about church singing. His fellow countryman, the young joiner Ivan, had been living as a worker in his home. Neighbors observed that this young chap got on with his master’s elderly wife. When, after a dark autumn night, Gennisaretskii was found lying face-down with a crushed skull (the blow having been delivered using a thick pole or stake) near the settlement’s state garden, suspicion fell on Ivan. Investigation established that he had changed clothes that night; his shirt was found with traces of blood; and certain other incriminating clues were found. Also, all of Gennisaretskii’s belongings and even money was still in his place, so it couldn’t be suspected the murder resulted from a robbery. Ivan was arrested, but he stubbornly protested. The Khabarovsk Court oversaw the case via correspondence, and acquitted him given an absence of unspecified clues. As soon as Ivan walked out of prison, he went to Aleksandrovsk District and there lived openly with the murdered Gennisaretskii’s wife. 1 2

Note, however, that Iuvachëv actually lived inside the prison for only his first five months in Rykovsk. [Trans.] Over 60 percent of Sakhalin’s criminal exiles were murder convicts. [Trans.]

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I purposely expressed out loud that this murder was an example of unpunished criminality. In my day, so many murders were committed on Sakhalin but so few of the guilty were exposed! Prison administrators’ ineptitude and inattentiveness at producing evidence explain this.3 Similar murders, typically committed outside the prison, little influenced laborers’ everyday lives. Also, punishment with birch rods was not a great occurrence there, and did not even merit talk. Lashings were quite rare, as I recall. In a word, the prison found itself in a period of calm. But this was the calm before the storm. A month after Gennisaretskii’s murder, suddenly, like a terrifying peal of thunder, the horrible news spread: the mortifying L——, the very one my comrades and I met in Aleksandrovsk, had been named Rykovsk Prison’s warden. Having quickly recovered from his wounds, he again began waging war against the penal laborers in prison and had, through his regime (especially during work on the Arkovo Road), generated from among them a slew of escapees, though at the same time, provoked displeasure on the part of administrators. They managed to send him packing from his district. Butakov agreed to accept him in Rykovsk, hoping to restrain his cruelty there. Our prison became agitated. Many hung their heads in expectation of punishments and restrictions. My comrades grew very unsettled. They knew how much harm L—— had caused Aleksandrovsk District’s educated exiles and how many scandals he was responsible for. On Sunday morning, they began gathering penal laborers in the prison yard for presentation before the new warden’s terrifying gaze. I was singing with the church choir when my comrades brought me the news. They asked me to petition L—— to permit them not to have to appear in the prison yard with the other penal laborers. The singers, too, asked me to get them exempted from meeting the terrible warden. That day (10 November) was the first hard frost. I wrapped myself in my sheepskin jacket, put on my felt boots, and tied a fur hood on. I was hard to recognize: only my nose and freezing beard stuck out. The command had already formed ranks in the yard. Both wardens were in uniform fur coats and large papakhas, drawn down to their eyes and ears, talking with each other and walking in front of the assembly. I didn’t know how to approach L—— or whether he’d remember me. So I went straight over to Warden F——v and demonstratively shook hands with him, then turned to L—— and addressed him by name. He was completely 3

Sakhalin never had a civilian police force during the penal colony’s existence. Prison and settlement wardens assisted by prison guards and Giliaks performed policing duties, quite negligibly, as Iuvachëv and other sources make clear. [Trans.]

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astonished that someone besides known officials would greet him as vociferously as I just did. “Who’s this?” he couldn’t help saying. Warden F. identified me. “Ah, it’s you! You’re so wrapped up, I didn’t recognize you.” I cut straight to the matter and petitioned on behalf of the singers, saying that if they had to come here, the church service would lack a choir. “Very well—let them pray! …” Then I asked about my comrades. “Let them pray!” L—— smilingly answered. He probably would not have allowed this under other circumstances, but in public, he rather unwillingly had to stand on ceremony. Knowing of his disgraceful behavior toward the Polish exiles in Aleksandrovsk, Butakov feared a repetition in his district and had, to a certain extent, removed us from his authority.4 “What? How?” my comrades and singers showered me with questions upon my return. “All I can tell is—pray!” And, indeed, all Rykovsk Prison’s penal laborers began praying! Until that severe disciplinarian appeared the yard had, for a long time, not resounded with such horrible screams and moans, and, for a long time, so much tears and blood and not been shed onto the mare. “The penal laborers need tightening up: this scum is very slovenly!” he justified himself. True, he could boast you could hear a gnat flying when the labor command was standing at attention for assignments. A new order was established in the barracks, workshops, kitchen, stables. Contrarily, the entire economic machine began making an extremely favorable impression: model uniformity, thrift, dazzling cleanliness, strict discipline, and quiet. “So, you see,” certain admirers of L——’s administrative and economic abilities told me, “how the prison is suddenly transformed! Such obedience among the laborers! Such structure, finally!” I liked all this. But it demanded such terrible sacrifices! “Despite appearances,” I objected, “the penal laborers have really not become better, more ethical, more honest, more honorable, more kind. On the contrary, secrecy, cunning, hidden cruelty, and hatred are intensifying like steam under increasing pressure. No, gentlemen, clean stables and walkways are not worth the spilling of tears and blood.” 4

Livin subjected some of those exiled members of the Polish political party “Proletariat” to corporal punishment, and generally mistreated them all. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 8 Morning impressions • Victims of discipline • The warden’s cruelty • My altercation with him • L——’s kindness • The nature of his conversations with laborers • Concessions towards the end of his service During wintertime, six o’clock in the morning was L——’s time of reprisal against penal laborers. I went every day at that hour to the meteorological hut, to prepare the instruments for morning observations. Regardless of my home’s fair distance from the prison, there came to me in the bright morning air not only the desperate cries of those being punished, but also the blows of the birch rods. I was always accompanied during my procession in the name of exploring nature’s secrets by Krzhizhevskaia’s lantern-carrying servant, Maksim Bogdanov, or simply, Maksim, so-called because of his small build.1 This bearded dwarf, who looked like a fairytale gnome, had long before introduced me to katorga’s dark side; and though usually quiet and always submissive, he could not keep from adding to his stream of invective against the warden’s cruelty. Though I remained silent, not knowing how to avoid these early morning impressions, my soul was terribly sickened over those wretches. Without fail, several men in the chains prison would prove designated for punishment. Some had been caught smoking tobacco in restricted areas, or in the evening, after work, had allowed themselves to warm a kettle of water in the ward (this was before L—— permitted all the stoves in the wards to be used), or had completed their assignment incorrectly, or else there was some watchman caught sleeping, or a worker who was a bit delayed in showing up for secondment. All these quotidian victims were supposed to give their blood for the maintenance of discipline. One day, I spoke to L——: 1

“Maksim” is derived from maksimum (maximum), so Iuvachëv is making an ironical joke. [Trans.]

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“What a number of people you harass each morning!” “So?!” L—— grew irritated. “Indeed, you know, when I’m going to the meteorological hut, I can’t get as far as the church without hearing a terrible concert of tears and screams from those being punished.” “So, you’ve noticed,” L—— answered with a long laugh. “Not only people screaming, but I clearly hear the rods’ blows through the freezing air…” “Maybe! But you’re talking slander if you say you heard weeping and rods amid the prison yard’s usual racket.” I was astounded by the shamelessness with which he always responded. However, by punishing them either before six o’clock or in a specially assigned ward where the mare and tub of birch rods always stood ready, he spared me the further emotional ordeal of hearing the wretches moan. Nevertheless, from time to time, I argued with him regarding punishment. “Is it true,” I asked him face-to-face in his apartment, “that you not only urge the headmen to punish harder, but that after the thrashing, you yourself stomp on the exhausted man lying there and beat his feet?” “Ha-ha-ha!… What you believe! What these vermin [L——’s favorite word to refer to prisoners] won’t tell you, but you’re ready to believe them.” Just then, the district commander entered. “Arsenii Mikhailovich,” L—— greeted him, “what I just heard now! Were it not enough that a man be birched, I certainly wouldn’t stamp on him in my shoes… What you believe!” he again turned to me. “What you believe!” Butakov did not utter a word in response, well knowing I’d not spoken in vain. On Sakhalin, a saying arose that L—— couldn’t drink his morning tea without first having fifteen to twenty penal laborers thrashed. In fact, his bloody conflict with the penal laborers did not redound favorably to him. More than once, he ran with widened eyes and nervous shaking straight from the prison to pharmacy director Mariia Antonovna and, in a worried voice, asked for something calming. She’d give him large doses of chloral hydrate. As much as possible, I never stopped trying to dissuade him from his system of holding the labor command in fear and trembling, or hedgehog traps, as he put it. “You yourself often compare Rykovsk Prison’s penal laborers to stupid, submissive sheep,” I’d tell him. “So why try such extreme measures appropriate only to wolves? I actually know of such sheep in the prison who, at a single word, submitted to your will, but were still put on the mare. Don’t you know what it means to commit someone to the rods?! These are a people extremely sensitive to the smallest insult. Some are ready to sacrifice their lives to avoid such a disgrace, others turn bitter and go from being sheep to wolves…”

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“Oh, you so little understand the rabble! Go around, and I’ll show you someone who’s ready to lie on the mare for a bread ration!” “I’ve heard. It’s quite likely there are those about who’ll suffer physical pain for money. Really, there are Volga barge-pullers who beat themselves on the stomach with a pole for a single kopek. I don’t have them in mind. Most in our prison have still not lost pride and are sensitive to emotional hurt, they need to be turned into kind, honorable colonists of Sakhalin, not be embittered by birch rods.” “I will simply repeat—you are unfamiliar with katorga. All these people present themselves as angels to you. Trust my experience, I’m already gray and have dealt with prisoners a long time. If they’re not restrained by harsh measures, tomorrow there’ll be murders and robberies beyond count.” “It’s no different now.” “Yes, but not in such dimensions as if you loosen up the prison.” We would separate having always each staked our opinions. Nonetheless, this didn’t prevent his being as attentive toward me as before, nor satisfying my petitions regarding certain laborers, i.e., freeing them from punishment or assigning them to better spots. L—— loved when I would accompany him on a walk around the prison, workshops, kitchen, stable, and other places. He spoke knowledgeably and thoroughly to the laborers. I was at first surprised that laborers answered him with such trepidation. But then I understood the silence was always due to keeping an eye out for the terrible birch rod. For example, an item was being made at the joinery. The warden pointed out that something still had to be done and then, in a stern voice, suddenly remarked: “You’ve left the corners sharp again?! I told you once and for all not to leave the corners sharp! …” In response, a joiner said something about the item. “Well, it’s best I speak with you on the mare.” However, he had favorites among the laborers he never punished, especially those who made him carriages or looked after his beloved horses (L——’s weakness). Shortly before the end of his career on Sakhalin, L—— stopped engaging so zealously in thrashing people: either old age overtook him or, in any case, he found dealing with prisoners bothersome. More likely, he sensed that the directives of the new general K., who, it’s relevant to say, could not stand L——, bore a different spirit.2

2

“The new general K.” being military governor Vladimir O. Kononovich. However, Livin did not retire until 1893, a year after Kononovich abandoned his post. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 9 Summer jobs • Surveying Tym Valley • A disputed issue • Mikhail Semënovich Mitsul • Sakhalin contrasts • The Tym Valley’s climate • Humidity • Clear air • Rarely observed planets and the zodiacal world • Climatic variations on Sakhalin Every winter throughout my time on Sakhalin, I found myself preoccupied by the church and meteorological station in Rykovsk settlement, but in summertime, the prison administration interrupted my serenity with various assignments, and even moreso by summoning me to Aleksandrovsk Post. There was needed a survey of populated areas to be completed or an ocean bay to be measured, a government steamer to be renovated and taken around Sakhalin, there was needed the depths of the Tatar Strait to be plumbed or scholarly magnetic and astronomical observations to be assisted, the seeds of some Sakhalin fir tree to be gathered for Petersburg—for these and other similar occasions they turned to me. Upon fulfilling such assignments, I merely received an approving “thanks”: these jobs were imposed on me as “katorga.” Nonetheless, I thoroughly took to them because they familiarized me with the island and varied my existence in a foreign land. One of my first assignments was to complete a survey of the Tym Valley to an extent of fifty versts, i.e., that region which at that time accounted for all the land worked by Rykovsk, Derbinsk, Voskresensk, Palevo, and other settlements. I was asked to hurry and complete the job before August so plans for building a prison could be prepared, but I had no instruments except for a pendant-compass. I requested from Aleksandrovsk a plane table, staffs, a chain, and other things pertinent to surveying, not knowing if they even had those, and, not shoving the matter under the rug, went walking into the fields and meadows. Wielding just my one small compass, I measured the boundaries of the cultivated land with footsteps and wrote them down on a schema.

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After half the work was completed in such way, my instruments arrived. But in such terrible shape! Were this not so, I’d have completed the survey on time. During these walks among the settlements, I saw much of interest. Among other things, with my own eyes I became familiar with the tilling of the Tym Valley and the issues debated by Sakhalin researchers. The early sowings of barley, rye, millet, and potatoes in Rykovsk settlement had yielded surprising harvests. During that period (1881–1883), Mikhail Semënovich Mitsul, the island’s director,1 who was also the agronomist, an especially kind and hardworking man devoted to colonizing the island with all his might and personal integrity, saw in the Tym Valley the granary of Northern Sakhalin.2 As the island’s enlightened master, his view (he wrote a beautiful essay on Sakhalin in 18733) gained a foothold in Petersburg, especially after the autumn 1882 visit to Rykovsk settlement by the director of the Main Prison Administration, M. N. Galkin-Vraskoi.4 However, this view subsequently lost supporters, and during the early nineties, there arose voices opposed to the northern region’s agricultural colony. At the same time, the first reports from the two meteorological stations at Rykovsk settlement and the Korsakovsk hamlet (outside Aleksandrovsk Post) were published.5 Sakhalin is a land of contrasts. These are noticeable, not just in the life of its population, but the island’s very nature. On the parallel of Rykovsk settlement (50º 47ˊ N), the Tym Valley’s climate, despite the sea’s proximity, bears 1 2 3 4

5

I.e., katorga director. [Trans.] Prior to the 1884 administrative division of Sakhalin into three districts, it was divided into Northern and Southern Sakhalin. [Trans.] M. S. Mitsul´, Ochërk ostrova Sakhalina v sel´skokhoziaistvennom otnoshenii (S.-Peterburg: Obshchedostup. tip. i lit. A. E. Landau i K., 1873). [Trans.] Mikhail S. Mitsul´ was educated at St. Petersburg’s Agronomy Institute and joined the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an agronomist in 1864. He formed part of the Vlasov Expedition, which inspected Sakhalin during 1871−72 and, to gratify an a priori government decision, deemed it suitable for an agricultural penal colony. In his above-cited book, Mitsul´ waxes rapturously and misleadingly about Sakhalin’s agricultural potential. In 1880 (a year earlier than Iuvachëv believed), he returned to the island, to serve as its first state agronomist. Two years later, Mitsul´ took on the additional role of katorga director for the Maritime Region (which included Sakhalin). Among the penal colony’s critics, Iuvachëv was practically alone in writing favorably about Mitsul´. Mikhail N. Galkin-Vraskoi was the GTU’s first director, serving from 1879 to 1895. He visited Sakhalin twice, in 1882 and 1894. During both visits, he pointedly overlooked many of the penal colony’s problems, and subsequently mischaracterized the conditions there. [Trans.] Korsakovsk hamlet is not to be confused with Korsakovsk Post, the administrative capital of the southern Korsakovsk District. Iuvachëv’s oblique reference here is to longignored meteorological data that showed Sakhalin’s climatological conditions were far less conducive to agriculture than Mitsul´ and Galkin-Vraskoi claimed. [Trans.]

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a continental character. The summer temperature is exactly that of Moscow Province (+33.2º C), but winter frosts are as in Iakutsk Region (−48.5º C; morning frosts sometimes remain below −40º C for two weeks straight). Daily temperature fluctuations are also striking. For example, in March, before sunrise, frosts are below −33º C, but there’s a melt at midday. During winter, the ground is frozen, sometimes more than a sazhen deep, but toward late June, a quite thick layer manages to thaw out, and the exposed topsoil warms to over +53º C. The sun’s altitude there is the same as over Kiev Province, but the isotherm of the average main temperature (around −1º C) corresponds to that of the White Sea coastline.6 Similarly sharp contrasts are noticeable amid nature’s other elements there. Thus, for example, during spring and early summer, the relative humidity is extremely low and, nearly every year, a local priest, accompanied by the entire settlement, leads into the fields a holy procession to pray for rain, though frequent, powerful rains during late summer and autumn barely allow peasants enough time to gather their grains. By the same token, the air is surprisingly clear during such high humidity. In October 1887, at noon on a sunny day, I pointed out to exiles from Rykovsk Prison the planet Venus! All could see it with the naked eye—one little old man by standing in a building’s shade, or, easier still, by screening the noonday sun with his hand like an umbrella. Also visible to the naked eye, in November 1888, was another planet, Mercury, which, it’s said, the celebrated Copernicus was barely able to see from the shores of the Caspian Sea. At night until sunrise during spring and autumn, a sakhalinets gets a splendid view of the zodiacal world. Just as the dawning evening forms itself in a narrow band along the horizon, a bright cone emerges above it, somewhat inclined to the south. Then the last reflections of the sunset begin fading, and against the sky’s dark background, the white cone grows brighter and brighter, its apex reaching up to the Taurus constellation (during March). This spectacle, rare for Petersburg’s residents, made such an impression on me the first time that I dashed off a telegram to call Aleksandrovsk’s residents’ attention to it. Later, we would all gaze at the zodiacal world and at the sunset and other daily portraits of heaven. The mountains that served to screen the sun’s rays and, to a certain extent, guarded the valley from the sea’s influence, as such assisted all these phenomena. For example, Sakhalin’s coast is infamous for its thick sea fogs, but there are none 6

Similar data on the Tym Valley climate may be found in Zapiski Priamurskago otdela Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva, 1896, volume 1. [Iu.] Several volumes were published in this series, launched in 1896 and published, at least in part, in Khabarovsk under the imprint: Tip. kantselriarii priamurskogo generalgubernatora. [Trans.]

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in the Tym Valley. They just scuddle high above the mountains in the form of solid gray clouds and offer a sure sign that, in a few hours, clear weather will commence. Everything I’ve said about Rykovsk settlement’s climate does not pertain to Sakhalin’s capital, lying on the same parallel at a distance of less than 60 versts. Being exposed to the influence of powerful sea winds and fogs, Aleksandrovsk Post experiences neither such heat nor such cold as the Tym Valley. The third—Korsakovsk—district, or southern Sakhalin, washed as it is by the Sea of Japan, offers an even milder climate. And so, on Sakhalin, stretching almost 900 versts along the meridian, we have enormously varied climatic conditions for vegetation; it is therefore not surprising that on one and the same island one encounters wild grapevines and impoverished tundra, bountiful moss and a kind of waterweed of pitiful berries. In general, Sakhalin’s climate does not evoke praise. It is an unfortunate island to serve as a place for dumping, not just a katorga population, this garbage not measuring up to the Russian land’s social conditions, but everything that can be worn out by the elements of sea and sky. From the north, when the spring sun warms the trapped surface of the Okhotsk Sea, cold currents of melting ice accompanied by cutting winds and damp fogs rush toward Sakhalin; but from out of the south, autumnal typhoons, having impetuously traversed the Chinese and Japanese seas as terrible storms, turn into pounding rains in the katorga island’s mountains. A province completely conforming to the climate of the Tym Valley cannot be found in European Russia. It cannot be compared to the coast of the White Sea, simply because of their average annual temperatures. One need only turn to their average monthly temperatures to make immediately clear they are quite different. When, in January, the temperature averages −9.1º C in the Solovetskye Islands, it is −23.4º C in Rykovsk. In July, it is +12.8º C there, but +17.7º C in Rykovsk. One sooner finds it approaches the temperature of several places in Siberia and Mongolia, for example, Tomsk, Kainsk, Tara, Urga, etc. But a universal phenomenon is apparent in all this: if Rykovsk settlement’s summer and winter are similar in temperature to Siberian cities, then its spring is always colder and its autumn warmer. This may be explained by the cold currents of the Okhotsk Sea, and during autumn, the high humidity and overcast sky maintain a comparative warmth.

CHAPTER 10 The situation of designated homeowners • M. S. Mitsul’s government assistance • An insufficiency of good land • Decline of the agricultural economy • Mistakes regarding the climate • The Tym Valley in spring • Sakhalin exile-settlers’ opinions • Rains and overflowing rivers • The difficulty of improving local farming Now that we know a little about Rykovsk settlement’s climatic conditions, it’s possible to talk about the local colony’s agriculture. A fair amount of statistics, reports, and various opinions, official and unofficial, have been written on this issue over the past decade. I will limit myself only to sharing the unmediated impressions and voices of the region’s true farmers. I say true, because whether those exiles forcibly settled in the taiga ever pushed a plow in Russia cannot be ascertained. From an early age, a Russian village peasant carries on an occupation established by his father and grandfather. He follows them in the running of the farm, house, cattle, plow, harrow, in preparing the fields, but most of all, in knowing how to turn the soil. But the island’s “Robinsons,” as they’ve been christened,1 are expected, with government spades and hoes in hand, to do all this from nothing. It is understandable that eventually, in places of settlement like Palevo, for example, a strange group of folks emerges: not quite vagabonds, not quite beggars, not quite robbers. And, truly, they’re not to blame for this. The late M. S. Mitsul2 distinctly knew it was impossible to send seasoned farmers into the taiga empty-handed, and so was remarkably generous toward Rykovsk’s first 1 2

Robinzony—i.e., Robinson Crusoes. [Trans.] Mitsul´ died prematurely on Sakhalin in April 1883. [Trans.]

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exile-settlers, supplying them all the items they needed for farming. From this came good peasants, who at Mitsul’s death were attending to their farms beautifully. Some had ten or twenty cattle, many had vast meadows and were working several desiatiny. Not only did they consume their grain and feed it to their cattle year-round, they even sold it to the treasury. They sowed rye, barley, and wheat. At first, the new land gave very good harvests. Even I found surprising the caches of potatoes. That was Rykovsk’s golden age of agriculture. Every year, the cornfields grew and the cattle quickly multiplied. It was comparatively easy at that time to root the soil because workhands were cheap. During the ‘eighties, Rykovsk’s penal laborers had a lot of leisure time and gladly did private jobs.3

First exile-settler hut in Tymovsk District But after these pioneers, with the growth of the prison and new influxes of folks to Tymovsk District, a different class of farmowner appeared. Mainly, these were people of means. Some brought their own money from Russia, others managed to accumulate it on Sakhalin, having had salaried occupations (clerks, servants, etc.) or by trading sanctioned and unsanctioned goods. If not 3

Iuvachëv’s halcyon picture of Tym Valley agriculture during this period is disputed by other sources. [Trans.]

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personally, then through hired people, they also engaged in farming as a profitable business venture: the treasury always needed barley. Soon, all available land in the valley was being cleared for ten versts on either side of the settlement and used as field or meadow, with the prison and military command occupying the best strips. Nowhere were there cattle grazing. Complaints arose about not enough land. Then came the order that, among new exile-settlers, only those in a position to buy a house and land from the peasants leaving for the mainland could remain in Rykovsk, everyone else would be sent further north along the Tym or southeast to the basin of the other river, the Poronai. Because of this, these poor people became wretched Robinsons. But the signs of a collapse in grain farming began appearing in Rykovsk itself. Most farmers there hailed from the provinces of southern Russia. They introduced their Little Russian practices there—using oxen to plow the land and not fertilizing it. For a decade, the land was being exhausted and the harvests grew worse and worse every year. Those local paupers, who didn’t have more than a scrap to work because of the land shortage, suffered crop failures. For example, in some places, the spring draught scorched the rye in the high spots, but in other places, the flood-rains of August washed the good grain out of the low spots. And should late frosts also happen to strike a hillock of wheat shoots, or early hoarfrosts damage grain blossoms, then there were endless complaints about the climate and soil. These were correct, to some extent. In my day, it so happened that the latest early morning frost was 10 June (in 1889) and the earliest autumn one was 21 July (in 1893), but such is the average variable in Russia. Usually, spring frosts came to an end in late May and the autumn ones began in early September, so a local farmer could similarly reckon on three months uninterrupted by frost (during summer 1890, there were 117 days in a row without frost). To clarify the conditions in Tym Valley, I offer some figures from numerous observations pertinent to the local weather. In March, the snow is still quite deep (up to 11 vershki) though is disappearing in some higher areas. Accompanying this is the bear’s first emergence from its den (on the 24th) and, by month’s end, there arrive the first emissaries of the swans’ reappearance. In early April, the geese and ducks return. On the 11th, larks and flying insects are noticeable. On the 20th, the first yellow flowers (Adonis amurensis) poke out. Five days later, the butterflies begin fluttering and the frogs begin croaking. In late April, the water-blue Corydalis ambigua, called “potato” by the Giliaks, blossoms there. In May, the trees unfurl their leaves, and by the middle of the month, the cuckoo begins cooing in the forest. In the third week grow the bird cherry, then the lilies-of-the-valley and dandelions, and, by the end of May, the buttercups. In early June, the Siberian apple tree

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(Pyrus baccata4) and the red currant flower; somewhat later, the dead-nettle and the elder; in the middle of the month, the raspberry, little princess,5 mouse pea, dogrose, etc. During the summer, everything’s in force. Warm, peaceful, clear days begin. I was surprised at how many complaints were made regarding the local conditions for agriculture, given that every exile-settler, even the poorest, always tried at some point in autumn to sow barley or wheat if he hadn’t plowed under his rye. I asked many peasants from different settlements about this. The answers were quite varied. One compared Sakhalin to his own province of Poltava, another to Voronezh, and, of course, everyone preferred his homeland. Some answered evasively, in the following manner: “Why curse the land? So long as it feeds us—well, thanks be to God!” In Lower Armudan, one of the poor settlements, lived an old man from Penza Province, Iakov Shcheglov. He shared his home with a laborer and engaged in farming. I loved the old man for his sharp mind, and was always happy to visit him. His views on life were clear, precise, and derived from many years’ experience. He didn’t mince words. “’Tis possible to get by here. Most important—don’t be lazy! There’s a buncha grass around—ya just hafta look! Ya need a plowed field? Hit the soil, ’tis good fer yer soul. Jus’ don’t get lazy ‘bout makin’ food! This ain’t like our province, where they fight o’er ev’ry scrap. Y’know, I landed here ‘cause of a fight o’er land. Speakin’ of me conscience, I’d drag my son here from Russia, if ’n I could. Think ‘bout it, there’s as much wood as ya want! Don’t cost ya, ain’t no tithe at all. ‘N’ we’s celebratin’ the grain, glory to God! All ya needs is a basket ‘n’ to sow on time, ‘n’ don’t snooze through the harvest. ‘N’ the local fish—such a help to the economy! I fill a barrel fer meself ‘n’ sell another to the treasury. ‘N’ the cattle here’s healthy ‘n’ very productive. Can’t complain ‘bout it here!” I heard such talk from other reliable peasants, among them the long-residing teacher Iurkevich, who took up rural farming. All the same, local agriculture’s principal scourge, it must be recognized, are the rains during harvesting. How sickening to see in fields the un-gathered, kerneling grain. Sometimes, it’s even sprouting roots. There are many disasters from flooding. The August and September rains, bursting into heavy downpours over the nearby mountains, instantly raise the level of the already rapid rivers. Their swift torrents damage bridges and nearby structures and fill fields with sand and soil. River-flooding was especially ruinous in 1890 and 1893. 4 5

The Siberian crab-apple tree is also known as Malus baccata. [Trans.] Rubus arcticus. [Trans.]

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I witnessed strenuous efforts on the part of the agronomist fon-Friken6 to make improvements to local agriculture, but… he was not the only warrior on the battlefield. It was such an effort for him to receive a single order of seed! And, without fail, the seed there has to be replaced more often. A package of pale, full-grain wheat is mailed from Russia, but what gets gathered is puckered, grayish, thick-hulled, and sometimes stricken by fungus. Perhaps it’s necessary to change the local grain culture and borrow from the neighboring Ussuri Territory’s Manchus, who sow wheat in beds; but our Russian peasant is slow toward any new practice, especially in a matter consecrated by hundreds of years of tradition. And their poverty prevents the implementation of not just something new but some necessity of old. For example, many paupers don’t have a covered rick, so the rain soaks their grain and the sheaves sprout. At present, Sakhalin’s rural agriculture is in the good hands of a trained agronomist, A. A. fon-Friken, an exceptional expert on all aspects of settlement life. During his eight years on Sakhalin, he’s hiked through all its mountains and valleys, and the results of these excursions appear from time to time in his literary work on Sakhalin.

6

Aleksei A. fon-Friken was educated at the Novo-Aleksandriisk Institute of Rural Economy and Forestry, in Liublin Province. This was a second-rate school that did not confer a degree. Despite this, and seemingly due to his aristocratic connections, fon-Friken was named Sakhalin’s inspector of rural economy and its chief agronomist in May 1888. As with Mitsul´, Iuvachëv’s favorable view of fon-Friken is contested by those of Anton Chekhov and others, who characterize him (usually anonymously) as an amateur agriculturalist and an incapable administrator. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 11 Meeting penal laborers from the barracks • The return from work • Nighttime in the barracks • Morning in the valley • Road work; a comparison with mining • The division of laborers by class One day, going to survey the fields and meadows near Derbinsk, I came across a large workers’ barracks that laborers had built during their construction of the highway. Among them proved to be an educated exile who’d arrived long ago, E. N. P., a visibly sickly young seminarian from a province in southern Russia.1 He ardently prevailed upon me to spend several days in the barracks, to live among nature and help them lay out an extension of the road. I was in a hurry with my survey, so I agreed to stay with them just till the following morning. The road construction had reached a spot where, in addition to a small river (the Kamenukha, it seems), there were many small rivulets and streams flowing together to form a wide bog. Regardless of the guards’ urgent demands, the road could not go forward: the water was washing mud down its embankments and filling the ditches. With no progress at all on the road’s construction, the senior guard had dashed off to Rykovsk to inform the administration “the water’s just gonna crush us.” When I reached the barracks, the laborers were on the road, and I encountered only my comrade P——i. He was there as a clerk and occupying a pole-and-bark shed together with the guards. We energetically waved away the importunate mosquitos and tiny gnats and told each other the latest news, then evening came and, with it, the end of work.

1

Irrespective of this acronym, Iuvachëv seems to be referring to Nikanor F. Kryzhanovskii, who hailed from both the clerical estate and southern Podol´sk Province. Arriving in 1884, Kryzhanovskii is the first political prisoner known to have been exiled to Sakhalin. [Trans.]

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I stepped out of the shed to see the gray throng of penal laborers returning. This throng was literally gray: their white underclothes were indistinguishable from the color of their waistcoats, trousers, and caps of gray cloth. Most were armed with iron spades. Some, before reaching the barracks, fell before a little brook and greedily drank the cold water. The barracks quickly filled with the rumble of conversation, shouting, and clanging kettles. Campfires once more burned like a huge conflagration. The air was scented by smoke. Intensified by the damp breeze from the woods, it pointedly drove the body of insects from the shed. After the laborers settled themselves on the grass in groups of ten to a cauldron and the hum of voices had somewhat quieted, my comrade and I again went to his shed where, for all this, the mosquitos had diminished. Following supper, the barracks grew quiet. The fatigued workers stretched out their tired limbs to sleep in the spots they’d claimed for themselves. That night, the senior guard returned from Rykovsk. He’d been shown how to divert the water from the Tym River by using several sluices across the road tarmac. The guards’ conversation over the relaying of these new orders could be heard outside our shed. My sleep was also considerably troubled by the mosquitos buzzing in my ears. I was very glad when, at four o’clock in the morning, having tossed and turned all night, I heard the first calls to rise. Katorga was rumbling once again. Like an anthill, the gray horde began crawling from its shelter and dragging itself toward the brook near the barracks. Lying before it, the narrow stream, pure as crystal, had formed a hollow an arshin deep, so scooping up buckets of water was easy. The laborers didn’t take long to kit themselves out. Given that they were already armed with iron spades and heading toward the worksite, I was unable to drink tea with my comrade. Under different circumstances, the clear morning scenes, the air’s brisk freshness, and the local birds’ modest but lively songs would have preoccupied me; but now, trying to keep up with the laborers, I barely noticed the dark mountains’ silhouettes, as the bright sun prepared to peek out here and there, and the beautiful, bright green mixtures of talˊnik and other willows, the bird cherry and cheerful birches, interspersed by small glades, did not concern me. I paused only when the first rays, visible from behind the mountains’ saddles, slid into the broad valley and a million dewdrops on the tall grass and bushes sparkled as if in response, and then, like a Classical Pythagorean, I doffed my cap in humility before the radiant tsar of nature. But the prisoners were gathering in the distance, at the end of the road. Guards were giving them their daily assignments, measuring out for each, with swaying strings, the lengths of the ditches. I was struck by these quotas’ great lengths, and couldn’t help but mumble my surprise to the senior guard. “That’s the regulation!” he evasively said, shrugging his shoulders.

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Without sound or objection, the prisoners stood with their bare legs in the water and got obediently to work. The heavy mud was tossed spade after spade onto the road tarmac. The water washed over it in muddy streams and flowed back into the ditches. I put my hand in the water: it was cold as ice. Clouds of mosquitoes and black midges tiny as sand grains mercilessly bit these forced laborers’ faces, arms, and legs. With every toss of the spade, they furiously pushed them away with their elbows, yet turned once again to the water for the mud. Heavy wooden barrows were at the same time bringing soil from some nearby dry meadows to the road. Their obnoxious squeaking was a music fully complementary to this hard work.

Penal laborer road gang Having tied kerchiefs around our heads and necks in defense against the insects, the guards and I chose to make our way through the tall grass encircling the rising bog. It had never been scythed. There, we drew the continuing line of the road and identified with stakes the new ditches’ paths. Our job took several hours. When we returned to the barracks, the sun was already high and scorching the laborers. They were experiencing an odd combination of hot and cold. Their legs were in cold water (absolutely freezing from the snow that had just barely melted), but their declined heads, burning in the sun, were

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warm as poured lead. The penal laborers were making a desperate effort. Hands numb from constant shoveling, their faces were all terribly contorted, and many had completed only half their quotas. The senior officer ordered the command to break for lunch. Barrows instantly halted. Filthy, muddy laborers climbed from ditches. We followed them to the barracks to eat as well. Along the way, I began saying how difficult roadwork was for Sakhalin’s exiles… “Said to be the most difficult work!” an experienced guard quite familiar with mining observed. “It’s pretty bad in the coal mines, but all the same, it’s easier for a working man there than here. There, it’s damp, dark, and the air is close, you have to use a barrow in a tight, low passage, some only an arshin high, but for all that, one can finish his quota before lunch, and the rest is free time: you can rest if you want, you can work for outside pay if you want. Here, there’s light, clean air, singing birds, and work among shrubs and flowers, but this isn’t pleasing when the mosquitos, midges, and sun are grilling you, yes, and, like a kulak, our brother guard’s no-noing and cussing, or torching some laborer taking a rest. How much can you get out of a man?! From the frail, the sick? … Only as much as the soul contains! …” “But, you know, all laborers are now divided into ranks corresponding to their strength and health,” I noted.2 “Do you really not pay attention to this?” “They’re only divided up on paper, in the chanceries. There’s lots of work, but few folks in prison, so we’re ordered to assign them all the same quota. I just assigned a weakling some easy ground and a narrower ditch, but he could hardly do it. That’s katorga labor! And hauling a log in winter is worse. Not in vain do folks flee the road. So many of our folks are now listed as on the lam!”

2

For example, I was assigned half-quotas. [Iu.]

CHAPTER 12 Catching fish with a hook • State fishing • The keta catch and its uncleanliness • The cleaners’ guard • Salting fish • Drying keta • Eating fish eggs • The diminution of fish and Giliaks’ starvation • Sakhalin’s natural wealth Another time, during the salting of fish in autumn, my comrade P——i and I encountered penal laborers doing a different job. When the Sakhalin salmon—keta—begin making their seasonal journey from the sea to fresh water, all the island’s residents—Giliaks, exile-settlers, Japanese arrivals, even bears—gather on riverbanks and catch them using various means, starting with the primitive bearish method of simply grabbing a fish with a paw and ending with a seine. The most common method there of catching keta was with a hook. For this, you make an overhang on the riverbank, i.e., you perch on top of a small wooden dais overlooking the river. The fisherman sits down and extends over the water a very long, thin pole with an iron hook on the end. As soon as he feels it touch a fish, he quickly impales and tosses it ashore. So as to more easily manage the strong and struggling fish and to maintain the sharpness of the iron hook, he attaches a thin strap to the pole, and just as the hook penetrates the fish, he releases it from the pole and snaps the strap. In such way, a fisherman can catch a hundred fish a night during a good keta run. But each fish will be covered with wounds, and until it’s put in a salt barrel, these wounded areas can somewhat rot and attract flies. Very rarely was an exile-settler’s salted fish found to be lacking a rotten odor. Wealthier people use seines to catch the keta. The prison, having chosen the best area, where there were permanent fish sheds, owned its own sheds. It occasionally managed to salt the fish, and didn’t begrudge on the salt. That autumn when I visited the government fishing operation, I did so with my aforementioned comrade P——i. He was there on account of the fish not

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being salted well, and, as an extreme measure, he was to conscientiously seize the misappropriated government salt, which sometimes was more valuable than flour there. I found the fishing at its height. A great lot of folks were there. Nearby, seines were being tossed. Some people were completing laps in a narrow boat, others were dragging nets through the water, and all of us on shore started piling up the fish that were flopping onto rocks in the water. But there was no need to worry about a large catch: even had there been no nets, there would have been a pile of well over five hundred large, writhing fish. Some specimens were half-a-pood in weight.1 The powerful fish were jumping high above the sand, hammering the shore until being beaten dead with mallets. A short distance from the shed stood a long table, next to the water. A row of laborers holding large knives was standing behind it. These were the cleaners. Duly presented with the captured keta, they would grab a slippery fish in one hand and, with the other, quickly slice it from head to tail and gut its stomach. The innards and eggs all fell into the water. Looking not at them but at his feet, a guard was lazily circling the cleaners, drawling for the umpteenth time the same stilted phrase: “Clean faster, boys!…” This was all his duties consisted of, and as the offal was quickly shoved aside, fish after fish flew just as terribly quickly into a basket. I imagined how pestered the cleaners were by the voice of this idle man, who did not know what to do with himself all day. I went over to them. The stench from the rotting remains was insupportable. Seeing me, the guard turned once more toward his requisite servants and, in a mournful voice, mewled his one-line song: “Clean faster, boys…” “Well, indeed!” one laborer was grumbling. “Keep at it, and after a century you’ll still be cleaning!” And with a quick flick of the knife, he knocked eggs and guts into the water, and irritatedly threw the blood-covered and utterly filthy fish into the container. Elsewhere, inside a large shed, the fish were being salted. P——i was personally overseeing its packing into barrels. Near him, a salter in large leather mittens would grab a gutted keta, spread it open, push it flat into a large open container of salt, and stick it into a tall, somewhat conical, barrel. Exile-settlers are of the opinion that if, during salting, even just a bit of water gets added to the fish, it will rot in the barrel. Others insist the opposite: the fish must be well cleansed of blood and innards and even washed in water,

1

Over 18 lbs. [Trans.]

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then inundated with a powerful salt. At the time I was chronicling this, the treasury was requiring the former method. Exile-settlers, begrudging the expensive salt, weren’t as liberal as the treasury and would salt fish to their own specifications. They’d keep it in a barrel several days, then stretch it on poles and let it dry in the sun. In making their iukoly, the Giliaks used sun and wind. But woe to our own should a keta catch be caught in the rain for a long time, for then the fish stretched out on poles would swell and go bad. I was always saddened to see how the large, bright-red keta caviar got tossed into the water, for when salted, it makes a very tasty food. In my day, few Russians, salting the caviar in a barrel until winter, availed themselves of this minor luxury. At that time, poor women would bake for sale a tasty bun made from the caviar mixed with potatoes and known locally as ikrianiki. Still another use for caviar is as hook-bait for catching trout. I recall the following instance. A Giliak came to me, complaining he was starving. “No iukoly, no bread, no tea…” he warbled a song long familiar to me. “Can’t you catch some trout?” “Fish-eggs sold out; nothing to catch it with…” Such carelessness by these savages would astonish me back then. A little sack of eggs from a single fish was enough to catch trout all winter, but they couldn’t save one little sack. More and more, Giliaks are starving nowadays because, the old folks assert, there are fewer fish yet more fishermen every year. But when I was still in Rykovsk, an entire fish could be bought for a kopek, and this included not just the fish but its delivery to a settlement. The Vladivostok merchant Semënov’s factory exemplifies how much fish remain to be caught on Sakhalin.2 He annually produces 200,000 poods of herring fat, which the Japanese gladly buy to fertilize their fields. Six poods of herring are needed to yield one pood of fat; accordingly, the industrialist Semënov alone catches each year no fewer than 1,200,000 poods of herring. But a staggering figure in the millions of, not poods, but individual fish better accounts for all the herring caught off Sakhalin’s shores! And that’s just the herring! What of the keta? Or the humpback and other varieties of Salmo, not to mention the smelt, flounder, or the legion of freshwater fish? … Yes, Sakhalin is rich in fish. It should distribute its barrels of salted fish not just to the local commands. How annoying: nature has created as food a group 2

Along with his Scottish business partner G. F. Denbigh, Ia. L. Semënov operated a highly successful fishing and seakale business on Sakhalin’s west coast. Semënov & Co. was the only Russian-owned concern able to compete against Sakhalin’s prolific Japanese fisheries. [Trans.]

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of edible organisms, yet, in order to mix it with soil, people ruthlessly reconfigure this into something inedible. At the same time, despite the enormous wealth that lies at hand, most folks loafing about on the island sell themselves for cheap wages. It would seem so elemental to form exile-settlers into fishing crews, to help them acquire the necessary gear, and to learn to salt fish properly… Indeed, most Japanese ships arriving at Sakhalin each year come for the fishing, and even now, when certain excise taxes are starting to be imposed on them, the Japanese are establishing profitable fisheries.3 But our Russian colonists, constrained hand and foot by various conditions and prohibitions, to this day go hungry impatiently waiting for that moment they can abandon this terrible, hated island…

3

Per the 1875 St. Petersburg Treaty that recognized Russian suzerainty over Sakhalin, the Japanese retained the right to own and operate fisheries there. For a period of ten years afterward, their operations were duty-free. Russian authorities only belatedly began to collect these duties at some point during Iuvachëv’s time on the island. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 13 My sailing assignment • Traveling through Aleksandrovsk District • Derbinsk settlement • Lower and Upper Armudan • A mountain road • Transporting a government load • Arkovo Valley • The sea’s proximity • A Giliak settlement • On the beach at high tide • Entering Aleksandrovsk Post Arriving on Sakhalin, I dreamed of secluding myself with my books in some quiet corner and patiently awaiting the end of my exile. But fate decided otherwise. In addition to sometimes involuntarily coming to learn about Sakhalin residents’ various activities, I chose to experience all possible ways of civilian life on Sakhalin, and to survey all the island’s centers of Russian population. During a visit to Rykovsk, the island’s commandant, General K.,1 told me he wanted to take a small ship on a voyage to the Sea of Japan, but have me be its captain. “I’m still officially consigned as an exiled penal laborer to Sakhalin,” I reminded the general. “That’s nothing,” he stated. “It’s up to me to assign you wherever you can be of service to the island.” I had forgotten this conversation when suddenly, I was told to go to Aleksandrovsk to be a sailor aboard the new steamer Prince Shakhovskoi. It turned out the general, upon leaving for Russia, had instructed in one of his final orders that the steamer undertake no long voyage without me. This new assignment instantly resurrected my former naval training. Once more, I would confront the eternally stormy sea and the intense struggle with wind and wave. A sailor’s emotions are always changing. His soul is as lively

1

Vladimir O. Kononovich. [Trans.]

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as the element that makes him what he is. When, having survived a cruel storm and escaped dangerous rocks and shoals, you enter a peaceful harbor, you’re pleased to feel yourself not just a worker relaxing at the end of a difficult job, but a victor following the battle. A blissful state! However, this is forgotten soon after going to sea again. There, after you’ve staggered to the edge of the iron shell and anxiously spent several sleepless nights on the bridge, sometimes beneath rain and piercing winds, only there, among the stormy ramparts, do you acknowledge all the difficulty of responding to naval service and, in secret from your comrades, dream of the charms of a peaceful city life. But if, by the same token, you spend somewhat longer onshore, you once more begin to be tormented by the usual serenity, just as the stagnant, sluggish sea longingly yearns for a good burst of wind to refresh itself and froth into an expanse of stormy waves. In such way, a sailor has constantly changing desires: onshore, he’s attracted to the sea, at sea, he’s attracted to the shore. During my long stay in prison, I mulled over many desires, and upon my arrival to Sakhalin, I was almost reconciled to the notion of leading a reclusive life deep in the forest, but the district commander had only to mention assigning me to a voyage and I suddenly awoke a sailor. In the mariner’s fashion, I cheerfully responded: “I’m there!” and began preparing to leave. The very next day, I was in an excellent troika rushing along the new road to Sakhalin’s capital. My traveling companion was Doctor Sasaparel. We were hardly able to exchange our impressions of the colorful orange sheds and picturesque grainfields and meadows, before 15 versts had flown by and we were stopping in Derbinsk settlement. There, I unwontedly remembered the old route I’d followed for four days on foot through the Pilinga Mountains, under guard in a prisoner’s cassock. Now, I was in the position of a civil servant, in a spacious carriage tearing along a smooth, level road at nearly twenty versts per hour above Sakhalin’s venality. At every station, guards would rush out to meet us, quickly changing the horses and obeying our merest instructions. One of Tymovsk District’s old settlements, Derbinsk was also on the river Tym. It was half the size of Rykovsk. A church, school, and prison were also there, but all in small dimensions. Having been greeted with bread and salt by the local prison warden, we rolled on. Crossing the river, the road gradually ascended into the Pilinga Mountains. Dark forests replaced cheery glades. Everyone made way before our little ringing bells: pedestrians bowed humbly, wagons with their treasures swerved into the ditch. The poor settlements of Lower and Upper Armudan flashed by. On the edge of the latter, at 180 meters above sea level, we changed horses and began ascending toward the pass—the border between the districts.

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The mountain road was universally beautiful. Even bare crags can be extremely evocative in morning or evening light. But the mountains there were densely covered in dark-green coniferous forests. It was a little gloomy, though this cast into relief the background of clear sky. The troika of lively horses quickly brought us to the very top of the pass. I had my aneroid with me, and determined we’d ascended approximately 200 meters above Armudan. Along the way, we encountered entire caravans of slowly moving oxen with carts of government goods. Most of the draymen were well known to us, and we affably exchanged bows with them. Winter and summer, Rykovsk Prison needs to transport food products (flour, groats, salted meat, salt, etc.) and building materials from Aleksandrovsk Post, so the local administration allows well-established exiles to, instead of katorga assignments, use their chattels to transfer these goods. This can liberate a wealthy exiled penal laborer from work completely. If he doesn’t have his own working livestock, he can hire his favorite exile-settler and send the goods with him instead. So, this is how this usually goes. I observed that some young exiles really enjoyed transporting the government goods. Besides freeing themselves from the prison warden, they were able to stroll into Sakhalin’s capital, where it was easier to find all the temptations of a freeman’s life: wine, cards, etc. However, the leadership, wanting to endow these transfers with an official quality, would assign only one drayman to an entire caravan and allow travel only during the daytime. Having crossed the mountains, we rapidly descended into the Arkovo Valley that leads to the sea. In one spot, the road hugged the base of a tall, perpendicular mountain. A rapid but not large stream flowed there. Strewn about in large wedges were bare crags clearly showing strata of antediluvian formation. The sight was very wild, reminiscent of a place where wandering knights from old fables battled. Traveling past these cliffs, I drew a mental picture of how these rocks broke away from time to time, fell into the river, and were then smoothed flat by the swift waters filling Sakhalin’s valleys. Soon there came a chill: the sea was close! Immediately, like a native-born man who’s been away a long time, I passionately wanted to see this poetry in motion. So desirous of getting sooner from the crowded mountains to the free expanse of the sea, I ceased concentrating on the valley and focused somewhat on encountering the settlements of Aleksandrovsk District, namely the three Arkovos. Composed as always, the quiet doctor found my agitation curious. “Here, look there. Do you see that gray stripe?” And he pointed out for me the Tatar Strait’s tiny horizon between the mountains. At one and the same time we both expressed the same wish—to go to the beach, if it was our fortune to be at low tide. In the first Arkovo, nearest the sea, a guard met us.

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“Nothing needed, you’re making good time: your horses are fine,” he assured us. Following our cross-examination, some Giliaks approvingly nodded their heads as well. A jumble of several Giliak yurts was there. Around them were visible all the appurtenances for catching fish and the entirety of the Giliak domestic economy, beginning with alert-eared dogs and ending with wooden skis covered by sealskins. Nets made from a special kind of nettle, a type of hemp, had been laid on the beach to dry. Women and children with fat, sagging cheeks inhabited the yurts. The Giliaks’ familiarly smiling faces had crossed over from Tymovsk District. “Hey, friend!” we saluted them, “catching much smelt?” “Very, very little.” During spring and summer, they would migrate there to catch ocean fish, but starting with the keta run, they returned once more to their winter yurts along the Tym River. The sea was quiet. The tide was just coming in, and we were traveling over a damp beach occupied in places by rocks. Mountain spurs came down to the sea as steep precipices there. Strewn permanently about, they hugged the coast in a massive line of rock. During ebb-tide one could go only a little way out from the cliffs along the beach. When the ebb tide was greater (and during a syzygy, it was observed to be as much as seven feet), the path opened wider and it was easier to travel. As we came alongside a small depression, the so-called Halfway, and circled once more onto the gray sand, our driver began looking anxiously at the sea. The tide was coming closer and pushing us toward the rocks. There’d been cases with other travelers when the waves pushed their carriage completely into the cliffs and, soaking it, held it captive during the entire tide. This our coachman feared. Yet we stopped moving only here and there before reaching the city. Buildings along the shore and steamers at anchor were already visible. Indeed, though we’d traveled through a bit of water, the tide had been rather low. In places on the sand, we encountered bivalve shells, thick, broad ribbons of dark-green sea cabbage (a type of seaweed), and jagged sea stars that stirred slowly when you held them. Having forded a small lagoon, we soon reached Aleksandrovsk Suburb, a neighborhood on the city’s north side. Our driver then whipped the horses, pulled the reins, and we spirited up a hillock where stood a church, the governor’s house, the administration, a post office, and other government buildings.

CHAPTER 14 The educated exile Pl——’s farm • Among Aleksandrovsk officials • A new job offer • The surveyor Karaulovskii • P. S. Karaulovskii’s mountain • Triangulating and surveying Aleksandrovsk Post I was welcomed in Aleksandrovsk with open arms. Hospitable homeowners (there was a trio: Pl——i, his wife Ser——ii,1 and another exile) gave me their entire mezzanine as my lodging and were exceptionally attentive and cordial toward me. Regardless of the fact that Pl——i had completed university and had a good job in the district commander’s chancery, it provided them a thoroughly modest lifestyle, and he rather shamefully existed at the level of laborers hired simply to attend livestock, rummage in the garden, and generally do the dirty work. As a trio, they maintained a rather large farm, and their dairy products were renowned not only on Sakhalin but across the Sea of Japan, in Vladivostok. Their house was, as they say, a full bowl. It was interesting to observe them, young, healthy, always busy. Next day, I hurried to present myself to the district commander, who in General K.’s absence was fulfilling the island commandant’s duties.2 I was invited onto the veranda, where I stood before a table of nearly all of Aleksandrovsk’s officials. It was customary for them to gather every morning for tea in the district commander’s apartment, and to conversationally decide matters and devise a plan of action for the coming day. As such, many issues were straightforwardly settled through personal meetings, without procrastination or chancery communiqués. 1

2

This was the Polish revolutionary Edmund Ploski, whose wife’s name, despite Iuvachëv’s abbreviation, was Maria Zofia Ploska (née Onufrowicz). Both had belonged to “Proletariat” and arrived on Sakhalin in 1886. [Trans.] In 1892, Kononovich, reportedly overwhelmed by his duties, abandoned the island and retreated to Europe. District commanders acted in his stead until July 1893, when Major General Vladimir K. Merkazin arrived to formally succeed him. [Trans.]

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The district commander, having introduced me to all the officials, shared with me General K.’s wish that, in addition to extensive voyages in the new steamer, I produce for them a map of Aleksandrovsk’s shipping lane and work out the navigation of the Tatar Strait. “We always get complaints from ship captains,” continued the district commander, “that they don’t have an accurate map of Sakhalin and, in particular, the Aleksandrovsk lane, which, among other things, makes sailing the Tatar Strait very dangerous. This is why we want our bay measured. Everything you need will be at your disposal. You can use the steam cutters; you can take as many laborers as you need; we’ll assign a government horse to get you to the wharf; you’ll find instruments at our surveyor Karaulovskii’s place. We have here a capable fellow—the draftsman Zagarin. If you need anything drawn, he can help as well…” I found it superfluous to describe to him all the difficulties in measuring an open shipping lane, and accepted his presentation in silence. An ocean survey was a quite familiar business for me, and I warmly expressed a desire to distinguish myself and show them what a man could do when given a suitable job. That very day, I went to get the instruments at the home of the surveyor Karaulovskii, who lived in Aleksandrovsk Suburb. Ivan Semënovich—so the surveyor was named—was a man of considerable height, but his full red face beneath thick black curls emanated youthfulness. Indeed, his youthful passion was stunning, proving him to be a man with an exceptionally kind heart, unable to intentionally cause anyone harm. Spending entire days at home and devoting little attention to Aleksandrovsk Post society, he was at the same time greatly interested by everything generally happening in the world. Each post brought him a stack of journals and books. And what wasn’t there! Rigorously scientific medical books, folk medicine manuals, folios of the ancient holy priests, modern reformers’ sermons, books on all aspects of the economy, various autodidactic and practical handbooks. From atop small popular booklets would suddenly topple Spencer’s sociology or Schopenhauer’s philosophy. I observed he did not ignore a single section of the catalog. His curiosity predisposed him to embrace the entire world. But whereas he was interested by the sciences, he was also unsystematic, inconsistent, and very superficial. This could be seen by looking into his office. Books, notebooks, notes, pictures, letters, instruments, even toys cluttered every table and shelf. In still greater disorder were this room’s corners. If he needed to find something among this chaos, he would dash from one table to the next, from bookshelf to bookshelf, turning everything over, tossing everything aside, until he’d stumbled upon some newly interesting thing and, carried away by it, forget what he was looking for. And sometimes he got very much carried away. He had happened to read that L. N. Tolstoi (it’s apropos to report that Ivan

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Semënovich owned his collected works, not just in Russian, but in a foreign edition) does not eat meat. This so enamored him, that he instantly decided not to eat meat or fish and not to drink milk, to his spouse’s considerable chagrin. Subsequently, it so happened I was never at his place during suppertime to dine with him on buckwheat kasha with a little oil or, rather than tea, to drink hot water with raisins. However carried away by Tolstoi’s books, he was, at the same time, a strict devotee of the Orthodox Church. Regardless of the many anecdotes told here about Ivan Semënovich, I loved him for his simplicity and openness. Here, in essence, was a superlative person toward whom similar people, hungering and thirsting for truth, were drawn. His books and notes circulated throughout Sakhalin and, given the nature of his duties, he visited the Russian population’s every spot. I was also tied to him by a general love of music. A passionate lover of choral singing, Ivan Semënovich would sit for hours behind his splendid organ and, pressing slowly on the keys, seem to be transported by the hymns to stratospheric heights beyond this world. During those moments, his favorite son, four years old, would sit on his knees, with huge, dreamy eyes. To concentrate strenuously over notebooks was not a gift given to Ivan Semënovich. His vision weakened to such a degree that he stopped working and retired. During this period, another grief dulled him: his passionately beloved children died one after the other from diphtheria. At his place, I found a plane table and all its accessories, albeit in very dilapidated condition. For that matter, rummaging through a pile of things in the corners of his room, I stumbled upon several interesting books, though almost all were torn nearly in half. Next day, I was already at work. For transporting the instruments, I was given several men as workers, one of whom was an exiled officer who did not win my affection, so I gave him leave to go home. To orient the placement of a lane for steamers coming into Aleksandrovsk, points on the map designating onshore objects, for example, the church, lighthouse, prison bathhouse, etc., needed to be precisely identified. I began with this, then, and to triangulate them, I at first gauged as the base the flat, straight road from the wharf. Owing to the poor instrument, the survey’s initial outline of the bay and the city was a bit off. I went over the entire line a second time, and ascertained the base once more before achieving the desired precision. Save for rain and strong winds, I was left undisturbed and, to my surprise, completed surveying the bay in two weeks. It remained to measure the bay, and a map of the Aleksandrovsk shipping lane would be ready.

PART III

CHAPTER 1 Invitation to a seaside stroll • The steamer Prince Shakhovskoi • In the Tatar Strait • Stormy weather • The messengers’ concern • The mainland’s coast • De-Kastri Bay • A chance to escape • Inspecting a settlement • Military vessels’ anchors and hulls During my geodesic work in Aleksandrovsk Post, the young man I., in charge of the wharf and unloading steamers, and the mechanic L., visited one evening and asked me to consent to the district commander’s order to go the next day to De-Kastri, on the other side of the Tatar Strait, aboard the new steamer Prince Shakhovskoi. “Gentlemen,” I answered them, “I have nothing against this, but I should first determine its compass’s deviation. Let’s go try it now.” We set off for the wharf. The Prince Shakhovskoi was there, under steam. This was a small steamer of roughly German design, intended primarily for tugboating in the mouths of rivers. There was talk of its probable cost and about fraud and rogues, but I was more interested in its speed. It turned out that, under every favorable condition, it could barely do 8 miles an hour and lost speed and foundered in choppiness, so that a bulwark had had to be installed on the bow. We reached the middle of the bay. I tried everything. Nothing doing! The steamer was keeling to both sides from the strong waves and the compass was spinning in circles… “Back to the wharf !” I ordered the helmsman. My companions were dejected, but I assured them I would travel, trusting the compass only somewhat. Next day, the weather was even worse. A fresh SW wind was turning into a storm. I put on my tall boots and waterproof hat and showed up at the wharf early in the morning. In such weather, I considered traveling towards a personally unfamiliar shoreline aboard an unproven steamer with an unreliable

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compass to be insane, but I kept quiet, seeing as how the officials wanted for some reason to complete the outing that day. Had I explained the risks of such a maiden voyage, I think they would have ascribed them to cowardice, so I mutely chose to embark on the journey. Having noted our course’s destination on the map, I entered the open sea to meet wind and wave. With its hatches closed, our steamer’s deck seemed to be a floating barrel, over which the waves passed freely from one end to the other. Everyone on deck tightly gripped the handrail so as not to be washed away. After it had held on for four hours at sea, I grew somewhat reconciled toward our steamer: though not very powerful, it nevertheless cut the waves. Sakhalin’s coastline was disappearing. Everyone strained to see the mainland. A few more hours passed. There was no sign of shore at all. My fellow travelers bristled, proposing various scenarios bluntly intended to make me understand I’d mistaken course. I came to play the role of a Columbus and, like he, tried to calm my companions with the hope that land would soon appear. “Gentlemen,” I told them, “we’re simply proceeding slowly. Anyway, it’s good we’re cutting through such weather. Also, bear in mind that under the circumstances, the horizon won’t be visible and we may only see the coast when we’re near.” But they continued to lose heart, and began insisting we were not crossing but going lengthwise down the Tatar Strait. They were evidently tired of sitting aboard the steamer and being tossed from side to side all day. They yearned to reach the shore sooner, to warm up, dry out, and, mainly, to dine, since it was impossible to imagine eating now, when every minute the saltwater was splashing you head to toe. Even for someone used to the rocking ocean, it would have been difficult to spend ten minutes in the stateroom. Their lack of faith distressed me. Had I been invested with some senior authority, I’d have told them not to talk to me that way. But, in my dependent position, I was forced to compromise. “So as to more readily please you,” I told them, “I’ll change course a little, i.e., go, not directly to De-Kastri, as I’d intended, but a little to the left, toward the coast, as is usual. We should then get to the Konstantin and Elena rocks shown on the map.” Several more tedious hours passed, and only toward evening did we, as if in an instant, reach the aforementioned rocks, looming decisively in the gloam. My calculations proved remarkably precise. Having therewith convinced my fellow travelers, I turned boldly toward De-Kastri. That night, passing by the light of fires, we entered the heart of the bay and dropped anchor not far from shore. We were supposed to telegram Sakhalin about our safe arrival to the mainland, but we lacked a sloop to take to the shore. Some whispering began.

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Soon, a cheerful splashing sound could be heard through the darkness. We called out and, approaching below us, were some telegraphers we knew, who’d previously served on Sakhalin. “All’s well,” we decided, and hurriedly dined, the sooner to rest after the difficult passage. In the morning, I went on deck to look at De-Kastri. The bay, jutting deep into the mainland, was sufficiently large. A smattering of several islands defended the center of the bay from ocean waves. Forested mountains surrounded it. Opposite us, a small village with a church could be seen. Not far from it, along the tall, steep shoreline, stood a natural arch—a high crag with water running through it. In honor of the French admiral, it was called “La Pérouse Gate.”1 I went ashore. Here it was, the mainland—the dream of all sakhalintsy! Other exiled penal laborers would have bid for the prize of being in my position on that desired coastline! Yet, I was there now, unaccustomed to fulfilling my personal desires, having achieved it without especial effort, standing in this land of freedom. I could have gone anywhere I dreamed. It was a golden opportunity to escape! From there, a river passed through the woods to the Amur, where no one would ask: “Who are you?” Get aboard a steamer and take off. You want to go to Russia—get yourself to Sretensk. You want to go abroad—take yourself to Nikolaevsk, where you’d transfer to a foreign vessel. Sweet dream for a penal laborer! But it was just for that moment, and I didn’t lose my head. For me to escape would’ve meant packing off to a new exile and condemning myself to complete alienation, from homeland, family, my entire past. I would’ve had to bury all my connections to Russians, bury all my other traces. O, for this, the grave would have had to be too big! No, I could not forget the thirty years I’d lived, could not break from Russia forever, so I chose, for the sake of love towards all that was mine, to endure all possible humiliations and constraints for an indeterminate number of years. My first visit on the mainland was to a comrade, the sailor B. He wasn’t home. Having gazed at his paintings (B. was an artist) and played a hymn on his harmonium, I wrote him a note and left to further explore the village. Soldiers were drilling in a small plaza. A familiar scene! I headed in a different direction. My interest drew me toward a certain ramshackle cabin on the edge of the woods. I entered. Just a large wooden cross, rising to the ceiling, stood inside. Some monk is said to have built this hut and endowed it to the locals as a place of prayer for after his death; but a certain doctor later permitted himself to use it as a dissecting room, so it was defiled and 1

Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, was an eighteenth-century naval explorer and one of the first Europeans to navigate the seas around Sakhalin. [Trans.]

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abandoned to the four winds. Strictly speaking, there was nothing to see in De-Kastri. I fished around a bit more, where some Russians had taken shelter from English warships in 1856, and then went to the steamer. During the epoch of the Sevastopol Campaign, our warships, including Goncharov’s famed frigate Pallada, wanted to hide on the Amur near Nikolaevsk.2 To pass through the river’s mouth, they rid themselves of everything heavy and piled it on one of De-Kastri’s islands.3 Our comrades aboard the frigate Pallada4 have long since completed their existences, but their abandoned property lies to this day on that small island, undisturbed by anyone. Sakhalin has taken a lot of ships’ hulls from there. Here and there we Russians have come upon, and among other things made use of, their iron. But the hulls have been completely pilfered. Gigantic anchors and iron chains of remarkable dimension remain. We tried to remove a single link as a memento, but managed only to vainly blunt a few chisels on the thick iron.

2

3 4

Writer Ivan A. Goncharov served as Admiral Evfimii V. Putiatin’s secretary aboard the Pallada during its 1852–54 circumnavigation. He later wrote a book based on the experience. Iuvachëv is referring here to the Crimean War’s Far Eastern Theater. [Trans.] The mouth of the Amur River, at least at that time, was quite shallow owing to the silt washed downriver. [Trans.] Traces of this ship have just been discovered south of De-Kastri Bay, in so-called Emperor’s Harbor. [Iu.] After the fall of the Romanovs this was renamed Soviet Harbor (Sovetskaia gavan´). [Trans.]

CHAPTER 2 Guests of the military commander • Visiting a lighthouse • The Sakhalin penal laborers’ crossing • Leaving De-Kastri • On the sea at night • Fog • The Sakhalin coast • Returning to Aleksandrovsk Post De-Kastri’s military commander, learning of our arrival, kindly invited the three of us to supper. Having not foreseen being guests there, we hadn’t brought clean clothes and had to go to the commander’s in our work jackets. True, they’d managed to dry out after the evening’s storminess, but were stiff and white from sea-salt because of this. The officer and his young spouse proved to be superlative people. They followed Russian literature attentively and subscribed to foreign journals. Even the latest news from the capital, from which they’d arrived not long beforehand, suffused their conversation. Sitting with them deep into the night, I completely lost track of time and forgot I was actually in the depths of Siberia, far from the distant cities and forests, and my imagination carried me to sophisticated Russia where, under the powerful influence of fashionable ideas, I had, for a time, been swept up by the crowd and tried with passion to join the struggle against traditional ways of life. They invited us to stay the night, but a gathering thunderstorm and powerful winds reminded me of my responsibilities, and I hastened to the steamer. Next day, we took a seaside stroll with our new acquaintances along the bay, to the local lighthouse four miles from the village. On this outing, I became quite familiar with the bay, which can be called Sakhalin’s harbor because all ocean vessels, during the Aleksandrovsk run, will, upon the approach of a storm from the southwest or north, immediately seek shelter in De-Kastri. Thus, on that same stormy day we had crossed the Tatar Strait, a steamer that had met with a small accident along the way came in just after us. Convicts fleeing Sakhalin try to sail to De-Kastri, because from there, they can easily reach Sofiisk on the Amur.

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The lighthouse’s warden, the sailor Sp., had many times witnessed the arrival of fugitive laborers, or vagabonds, as they were usually called there. “Most of all,” he told us, “ya happens to see them unfortunates in springtime. Believe you me, some’ll sail on an ice floe. Yes, an ice floe, however cold to the touch, but he’s lyin’ on it a whole week or more! Then, if ’n a wave pushes ’em here, Lord, what they’re like! Weary, soaked, starvin’… How can the soul maintain itself ? It’s like, every day, every hour, you’re on a thin hair ’tween life and death. Such a vagabond alights ashore, he don’t try runnin’. Whereto?! He can barely stand. ‘Do whate’er you want,’ they say, ‘stick ’em in the ground without a prayer.’ But at the time, it don’t come into me head to arrest ’em. First, I don’t have a cordon, no border post with special soldiers for guardin’ the coast, but, second, anyone who gets here in such way is, in my view, the resurrected dead. Imagine raisin’ a hand ’gainst a man what’s gave hisself over to the arb’trariness of wind and tide and a very ship that’s meltin’ by the minute?! As you wish, but, in my view, you’re goin’ straight to your death. So, if fate’s brought him to this shore, I look at him as havin’ returned from the graveyard. You let him eat and go away with God.” “But that white rowboat of yours, on the shore below, is it also from Sakhalin? It seems familiar,” our official I. observed. “No, my friend, we won’t give it you! That’s my trophy. Yes, some penal laborers snatched it from ya there in Aleksandrovka and brought it here. They ‘bandoned it in that spot, but as for themselves—a march in the woods and such!” The lighthouse warden told us about many characteristic occurrences with penal laborers, and complained that obtaining exiles as servants had now become rather difficult, whereas not too long ago, nearly all officials along the Amur had convict women.1 We accompanied our guests back home to the village, spent several pleasant hours with them, and that evening raised anchor. Leaving the bay, we glimpsed the firelight of a warship. Aboard it was my comrade, returning home. It was said that when B—— saw my note and realized I’d just left, he tore out his hair in sorrow that he’d lost such a good opportunity to see a comrade, who, because he gave himself the gift of time, was later made the scapegoat. But he was at that moment sitting aboard the Prince Shakhovskoi’s deck, rocking along with the light waves and reveling in Tolstoi’s Kreutzer Sonata, which had 1

The practice of assigning female exiles as domestics to officials was common on both the Maritime mainland and Sakhalin, where it continued into the early twentieth century. Such assignments were routinely acknowledged as a thin disguise for concubinage. [Trans.]

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just arrived in De-Kastri. For his part, the ocean expanse, softly illumined by moonlight, the night air, and the myriad twinkling stars summoned, amid this poetic silence, a solemn music from inside his heart. My fellow travelers were asleep. From time to time, I glanced at the polar star to correct course, then settled once more into reading. After midnight, a sudden wind struck up; behind it, a thin white stripe appeared on the horizon. As it drew closer and closer, it seemed to be a wall. A little further, and a dense shroud of fog, like flimsy puffed cotton, enveloped us from all sides. Everything suddenly disappeared: both sea and starry sky. I’d adjusted my compass in De-Kastri, but there was little hope in it. Surrounded by all that steadfast iron and appearing to be nailed fast, it showed only the same direction for every turn the steamer took. So as not to miss the Aleksandrovsk lane and crash into the rocks that so enrich Sakhalin’s western coast south of Dué, I headed directly toward the coast, proceeding touch-and-go a short way. Our only guide was the plumb-bob. From the light in the interior, we saw we were coming close to the island, and at that same moment, the band of fog instantly lifted and revealed the shoreline to us. Fleetingly noticing some settlement’s house, we began blowing the steam-whistle. Armed riflemen answered us. Half-an-hour later, a sloop with a guard approached beneath us. “Which settlement?” I. asked him. “Mgachi, your excellency,” the small settlement’s commander answered. “Another thirty versts to Aleksandrovsk, gentlemen.” Overjoyed that we’d successfully traveled straight to an inhabited spot, we rested at anchor and began feasting as we could with some canned food we’d grabbed, a bottle of red wine, and the samovar. Summer fogs are a common phenomenon in the Tatar Strait. They’re especially thick before sunrise, and waft with the rising sun above the sea to be carried like clouds on the wind. Such a scene I happened to view more than once in Aleksandrovka.2 There’d be no fog over the ocean, the horizon completely clear, but on the mountain, the Jonquière lighthouse, still encased by an impenetrable cloud, would be zealously ringing its huge bell to warn seafarers of danger. After I’d finished living in the Far East, the fogs there led many a ship to become victims of the stern sea. We traveled full steam down the Sakhalin coast and, in three hours, amid oddly sunny weather, reached the wharf, where the district commander had for a long time been impatiently awaiting us.

2

A general term for the Aleksandrovsk District. [Trans.]

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That outing held great significance for the naval command. It had been completed aboard a new steamer in the northern weather but, most importantly, it reconnoitered a path to De-Kastri. Later, when the Prince Shakhovskoi could not shelter from storms along the Sakhalin coast, it managed to shelter more than once in that bay.

CHAPTER 3 Preparations for a new journey • A conversation on the wharf • Going to sea • Night in Khoé • A risky approach to Viakhtu • A rest on the coast • Surveying and measuring a lake • The Giliak village of Tyk • Old Man Orkun • A baby Giliak’s cradle My traveling companions were very happy with the sea journey. They captivated other officials with their rapturous stories about the new route. We were soon assigned to reconnoiter the coastal settlements of northern Sakhalin. Beginning that evening, we loaded onto the Prince Shakhovskoi a large crate of various snacks and drinks, or, in the district commander’s expression, an entire grocery store. Next morning, the expeditionaries were all gathered at the guardhouse on the wharf. The weather was overcast and very windy. Waves jolted the wharf furiously and sprayed the building’s roof. A great distance from shore, the breakers seethingly frothed. Some officials suddenly declared we shouldn’t leave in such weather. Only I., empowered by some weird notion that the meat-pies would dry out or the boiled food would go bad, prevailed upon the district commander to order us to leave that day. Everyone turned to me, until then sitting silently on the divan. At I——v’s urging, I unwillingly stood up and, in a rather cutting voice, clearly proved there could be no thought of going to sea during a NW wind. “In such a powerful surf,” I said, “anyone would be driven ashore in an instant. That’d be true anywhere on Sakhalin. At sea, it’s going to keep blowing.” (“And I’ll be up to my knees in water, battling the wind alone,” I thought to myself.) “Why, when we’re peacefully inside this building on the wharf, why look anywhere else for a harbor away from the NW wind?”

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It was decided, then, to wait until the weather calmed down. After midday, the wind began subsiding, and we were able to go to sea at 4 o’clock. We encountered a swell and it rocked us forcefully. Some of the young expeditionaries got poisoned, as mariners say, and became seasick. Late in the evening, we reached Khoé settlement and dropped anchor. The administrators went to spend the night onshore, while the mechanic L. and I remained on the steamer: the wind cooled, and a large swell rocked the ship. Running on deck from time to time to see whether we’d drifted, I couldn’t sleep all night. Sunrise proved we’d drifted fairly close to shore. Upon our urgent whistles, the administrators woke up and quickly gathered aboard the steamer. At 5:30 in the morning, we began moving further north. At the next settlement, Trambaüs, a powerful surf prevented us from moving far from shore. Further we went. At a turn was the settlement of Viakhtu, on a coastal lake that’s connected to the sea by a long gauntlet. Only small craft could enter there. The official I——v tried, with sailors in the steamer’s sloop, to plumb the fairway’s depth, but having encountered a strong contrary wave at the bar, they hurried to quickly return to the steamer. Someone began whistling at the sloop from the shore. A guard who was speeding along the narrow sand-spit that separated the lake from the sea began gesturing to some Giliaks to carry him to the steamer, but they were stubbornly ignoring him. To us, this pantomime distinctly proved the Giliaks are no seamen. They’re predominantly river fishermen, their boats ill-suited for sea travel. However, the guard’s persistence and our own whistles overwhelmed the indecisive Giliaks. Nevertheless, they came across the estuary of the gauntlet, where a terrible surf was raging on the small bar, choosing to drag their boat along the spit by hand and to drop it in the stormy surf. Of this maneuver, they were fully capable. The Giliaks brought the completely soaked guard to us. “How deep is the passage? Can we get through? What’s the bay like now? My travelers peppered the local command’s retired soldier with these questions, but he could answer none of them. We decided to dispatch our helmsman in the Giliaks’ boat. The Giliaks refused point-blank to enter the mouth of the river. We replaced them with our sailors. All of us who remained aboard the steamer attended to the boat’s rather dangerous progress. Entering the surf at the bar, it quickly somersaulted in the furious waves and came back to us. “Well?” we asked the broodily frowning helmsman in chorus. “We shouldn’t go: five feet deep,” the old seaman’s stern voice remarked.

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Everyone turned to me. “Our steamer,” I told them, “is sitting a little less than five feet in the water and will immediately strike bottom in such a surf. True, given the nature of the shoreline here, we shouldn’t expect rock at the bar, but running into sand won’t be pleasant.” “I myself will answer for everything,” the official I——v suddenly shouted. “We go!” “Very well,” I humbly agreed, not knowing for sure if I should listen to him. Later, after we returned home, the district commander reprimanded me for allowing an official to interfere with my operating the ship. Having left the Giliaks with their boat onshore, we pressed full steam into the mouth of the Viakhtu. I hadn’t given I——v much opposition, and hoped we could successfully sneak through because the tide was still rising. At first, the steamer began diving like a duck, and as we got closer to the menacing bar, everything fell quiet. Suddenly: drax… drax… drax! We heard it striking bottom, but it went on towards the lake. With joyful exclamations, we pushed further and further down the narrow channel and came to a stop at the settlement of Viakhtu itself. Having extinguished the fire in the stoves and released the water from the boiler, we all descended as one onto shore, where we made a tent from a tarpaulin, laid rugs and pillows on the grass, lit a campfire to prepare supper, and proceeded to devastate our “grocery store.” The notion of “reclining” was experienced in full. I alone could not kick back for long. I snacked hurriedly and left to pace the turns of the shoreline, taking them into consideration. I wanted to thoroughly research the entrance to the lake. Only later, in the evening, did I return in my boat to our barracks, forcing my way through the shallow channel with great difficulty: it was low tide and our steamer was exposed to the keel. We spent the night all jumbled together in the cordon soldiers’ hayloft. Early in the morning, I hurried before we left to measure the estuary’s mouth. I discovered there two more exits in addition to that of the previous evening, one of which was sufficiently deep for us to go boldly out to sea without fearing for our little vessel. I denoted this route with curved markings on the beach. A low, sandy shoreline extends north from Viakhtu. In three hours, taking advantage of the rising tide, we got as far as the Giliak village on Cape Tyk, jutting far out to sea. The entire body of Giliaks, headed by their esteemed patriarch Orkun, greeted us affably. I stared at this tall, gray, yet healthy, old man with a ruddy face and extremely endearing smile. He kindly invited us to follow him to his long wooden yurt, where lived his family offspring as well. An

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old woman sat in the entryway, rooted among heaps of crockery and various domestic goods; a bit further was a young Giliak woman, sewing something while simultaneously rocking a baby in a cradle. We looked in curiosity at the yurt’s walls, festooned with various weapons, clothes, and animal hides. A large wooden box filled with sand stood in the middle of the floor. This was the fireplace, coals smoldering beneath the ashes. An opening in the roof let the smoke out. A wide plank bed extended the length of the encircling walls. Next to me sat our yurt’s master, Old Man Orkun, sharply distinguished from all the other Giliaks by his colossal dimensions. Having noticed a small carved figurine of a bear fastened to his clothing, I asked him to explain its significance. “Very much pains here,” the old man said, indicating his legs. “Our shaman gave me this bear, so he little-by-little eat away my sickness.” As sympathetic measures against various ills, similar pendants in the shape of fish or animals are widespread among the natives there. Of all the sights in Giliak yurts, the child’s cradle pleased me most. This was a small wooden trough hollowed out to fit a baby. Laid inside the trough is a dog-hide, on which lolls the completely naked baby, extending his arms and legs. A weave is stretched over the cradle. Beneath it, the baby is comfortable and warm. Nowhere does he feel any pressure, as is the case with our wickers, and the mother can peacefully carry this trough on her back without fear of bending the baby’s spine. So that the cradle stays dry, the child lies on top of a soft, groove-like strip of birch bark that connects to a small opening on the trough’s bottom end. The trough can be hung horizontally, using four long straps. But if the child is awake, the two lower straps can be undone, and the cradle will hang vertically from just the first two. We immediately stood the baby up in namely such a position. His mother freed his little hands and he, rocking inside the cradle, nearly began trampling the platform.

CHAPTER 4 Cape Nevelˊskoi • The pilot’s note • The narrowest part of the strait • Penal laborers’ escape aboard a steam cutter • The absence of a coastal fleet for sakhalintsy • Return to Tyk • Guests of the Tungus • After the ebb tide Certain of us secretly wanted to make for Nikolaevsk, on the Amur, so we left the Giliak village of Tyk. Initially, sailing straight along the Sakhalin coast was impossible: too shallow. We had to enter the shipping fairway near the mainland’s mountainous coast. Toward nightfall, we made for the precipitous, deserted cliffs of Cape Nevelˊskoi. The inaccessible, rocky shore prevented us from disembarking, and we all remained aboard the steamer. Nevelˊskoi unintentionally memorialized himself there. Neither the Frenchman La Pérouse nor the Englishman Broughton nor Kruzenshtern had been able to solve the enigma: Was Sakhalin connected to the mainland by an isthmus, or was it a separate island? Only the Russian sailor Nevelˊskoi, a ceaseless Far Eastern toiler in his day, proved able to resolve this dispute and, despite the senior leadership’s wishes, to unite to Russia a new territory.1 Lulled by the light swells of Nevelˊskoi Strait (from here north, the Tatar Strait assumes this other name, to honor our discoverer), we lapsed into sweet sleep however we could. Four settled in the stateroom, whereas I found a spot 1

Admiral Gennadii I. Nevel´skoi led the Amur Expedition of 1848−55, during which he proved to Europe that Sakhalin was an island. (The Japanese learned this several decades earlier, but chose not to share this information.) Despite Iuvachëv’s and others’ assertions that Nevel´skoi was acting against orders by laying claim to Sakhalin and the Amur, documents show that, not only was he operating at the behest of Eastern Siberia’s Governor-General Nikolai N. Murav´ëv, but that of Nicholas I himself. In addition to La Pérouse (see fn. 1, in Part III, Chapter 1), Iuvachëv refers here to the British naval commander William Robert Broughton and the Swedish-Russian admiral Ivan F. Kruzenshtern (Adam Johann von Krusenstern). [Trans.]

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on the engine hood, beneath the open sky. Wrapped in my raincoat, I slept until morning. It’s remarkable: you go about for entire days in soaked clothes, boots filled with water—and nothing! You’re fine, not even a runny nose. Sunlight was barely gilding the tall mountains and, not wasting precious time, we headed further north. We wanted to reach the Giliak village of Uangi, on the Sakhalin coast, but a sandbank and morning fog prevented our reaching this village. Continually seeking out the fairway and moving from one shore to the other gave me exceptional material for establishing a navigation of the strait, that is, for noting down the dangers of sailing there. For entire days, my notebook never left my hands, as I was either writing notes or drawing pictures of the shoreline. Looking at a map of Sakhalin, the best place for fugitive convicts to cross from the island to the mainland seems to be the northern cordon of Pogibi, opposite Cape La Pérouse. The width of the strait there is around 9 versts, that is, approximately the distance from Kronshtadt to the Oranienbaum coast. In fact, vagabonds cross there least of all. They’re likely not scared of the two-hundred-verst circuitous trail through taiga from Aleksandrovsk Post to Pogibi, nor of having to pass by Giliak villages, rather, they fear the local soldier cordon, and as for the strait itself, the current is very strong in this narrow area and instantly sweeps a person away. In addition, the shoreline is insalubrious and contrary for disembarking. It’s simply tempting that it’s not far to the mainland and the narrowest part of the strait is there. The mountains of Cape La Pérouse pose seductively, even in overcast weather, teasing a vagabond with their proximity. A novice might be seduced into trying his luck there; but the old vagabonds recommend going further north, where the dogsled post crosses over from Nikolaevsk during winter, and most of them insist that Pogobi (a Giliak word) is a deathly place.2 We reached Pogibi at 10 o’clock in the morning. Some expressed concern whether the soldiers would let us pass. “They might suspect our steamer of containing escaped penal laborers and will probably start shooting,” one official remarked. “My, what you think! Would vagabonds really have a steamship?” his comrade shot back. “But have you really forgotten how penal laborers escaped that night in a steam cutter? …” “What?” I interrupted their conversation. “Did they manage to get across?” 2

There’s a play on words here, given the term’s similarity to the Russian verb pogibnut´ (“to die”). [Trans.]

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“No. Overjoyed that they’d seized it without being noticed, they began the crossing by firing the stoves, raising steam, and going full bore, but they released the water from the boiler. So, it exploded! Only one of them was left, and after reaching shore a short while later, he told of the cutter’s fate.” To our surprise, not only did the soldiers not respond with gunfire to the steamer’s whistles, but they didn’t appear on shore or dispatch a sloop. We decided to go in our rowboat. We grabbed some provisions so as to cook dinner on shore. All the cordon soldiers greeted us. They didn’t have their own boat, it turned out. Maybe this had been ordered by the leadership, on the premise of abolishing all communication with the mainland. If penal laborers can, without a doubt, get rowboats and steam cutters out of Sakhalin’s capital, then they can snatch a little boat out from under a soldier’s nose at the cordon. Still, this measure has made responding to exile-settlers extremely difficult. Normally, islanders extract their wealth from the sea, but for the sakhalintsy, their Okhotsk Sea and Tatar Strait serve only as hated barriers to the other world. For Sakhalin’s exile-settlers or even peasants, coastal shipping and ocean industries do not exist as they do for the Japanese, Kurilians, Chinese, and other neighboring peoples. The aforementioned S. Gr. Iurkevich, while teacher of the Derbinsk rural school, forwarded via the district commander a request that he be allowed to build a small wooden schooner, to transport lumber and coopers’ and joiners’ products from the island to the mainland. Sakhalin’s leadership ordered this request “put on the back burner.” Not anticipating a response, Iurkevich left Sakhalin for the mainland. Eventually, it seems he was turned down. At that very same time, the senior leadership in Khabarovsk and Vladivostok began pondering how to develop among the Russian population coastal shipping in the Japan and Okhotsk seas. We went no further north than Pogibi. Neither Russian settlements nor cordons were there. And going to Nikolaevsk was risky: we didn’t have enough coal. That night, we returned to the Giliaks in Tyk. Some nomadic Tungus were staying not far from this village. Their conical yurts among the trees reminded me of the illustrations of Indian wigwams in Aimard’s novels. Walking past the reindeer and angry dogs that Tungus keep, we entered one of the cones at random. There sat a young woman in a pink chintz dress of urban design, and she herself was so pink and smiling sweetly, with small, white hands. “A manor-house maid,” I thought to myself. Nonetheless, our surprise was boundless when she began to speak perfect Russian. My conjecture proved correct: she lived in one of the Amur cities, in service to some gentleman. In general, the Tungus, in contradistinction to the Giliaks, quickly assimilate Russian culture and eagerly convert to Christianity.

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That evening, a thitherto unseen sight appeared before our eyes. Where, during the day, there’d been a featureless sea, the ebbtide now revealed a striking plain of pink sand, wide and long, and along the cape itself only a narrow band of water appeared, like a canal in the midst of a desert. I couldn’t help but wander onto the moist sand. Strips of sea cabbage had formed in places and the sea had left behind small cockleshells. Moreover, the low shoreline was unable to boast of a variety of plants: only moss and moist undergrowth covered the tundra soil.

CHAPTER 5 Giliaks’ provisions caches • A Giliak’s request • Tangi settlement • Russians’ disputes with Giliaks • Giliak dogs • Rich man Gilelˊka • Mgachi settlement • An abandoned woman • Coastal settlements • Measuring the Aleksandrovsk fairway • Hosting Englishmen on Sakhalin Having again spent the night aboard the steamer, we went one more time to the hamlet of Tyk, to ask the Giliaks to provision us with their fish and live swans. They caught some young broods of geese and swans and brought them to us in large wooden crates; they stuck them on tall poles so their dogs couldn’t get at them. In these same crates they construct caches for fish and any provisions in general. One Giliak approached us with a request, and in a language difficult to understand, began lodging some complaint. His face told of extreme suffering and had taken on the pinched look of a person crying, though I saw no tears. Finally, with other Giliaks’ assistance, it was explained that his little mother (wife) had been taken away from him to another village, and he was now asking the leadership to order she be returned to him. The officials vowed they would. This was not the first case wherein Giliaks appealed to Sakhalin’s administration with such a request. Such weighty matters as the kidnapping of wives were traditionally resolved among families, but the decrees of the few Giliak families currently scattered across hundreds of versts often carry no force. Little-by-little, Giliaks have lost their patriarchal self-government, and respect for family elders has been replaced by fear before the Russian noyoni, i.e., the authorities.1 1

I.e., this is the Nivkhi (Giliak) word for “authorities.” [Trans.]

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We left Tyk at high tide and headed south. This time, our weather was favorable. The warm, sunny day, calm sea, and coastal proximity turned this voyage into a pleasant sea-stroll. In order to defer conclusion of the assignment laid before us, we now decided to alter course, to go to the settlements we’d missed: Trambaüs, Tangi, and Mgachi. Of them, the most beautiful location was Tangi. In a ravine between tall, green mountains, along the shore of a river, two settlements lay beside each other: the closest to the sea was Giliak, behind it was the Russian. This proximity has sparked ongoing quarrels between them. The Giliaks complain that the Russians come to their village and push them out of their yurts onto a small corner of land, rudely abuse them, ruin their nets, pilfer, etc. The Russians, for their part, complain that the vicious Giliak dogs bite their cattle and in such way hinder their grazing. Officials have tried to pacify the two sides with promises, but their opinions over the issue are also split. Certain Giliaks, who in given instances have interfered with our colonists’ development of the rural economy, have been charged. Others have asserted their right to the land they took when there was still no memory of Russians being on Sakhalin. Not only there, but wherever Russians live in proximity to Giliak villages on Sakhalin, Giliaks raise complaints. They’ve relinquished the sites of their yurts to the Russians so many times! It so happens that one and the same Giliak might have to build three or four yurts. The dogs are actually the weak spot in Giliak villages. They’re extremely vicious, will attack any Russian in utter fury, and can sweep aside the Russian dogs that, in large packs and with loud barking, similarly accost Giliaks who enter our people’s settlement for any reason. During winter, with the sleds on the trails, Giliak dogs are especially terrible. That’s when they’re highly fevered and display their pack instinct to the full. Let just the leader attack a person, and the entire pack will follow its example. There lives in Tangi the wealthiest Giliak on Sakhalin, Gilelˊka. When he was at my home in Rykovsk, he affected overly familiar manners. Indeed, he looked completely different from the Giliaks who accompanied him. Though he was advanced in years, judging by his thoroughly grayed hair, his bright pink face and stately physique bespoke strength and vigor. The servility with which Giliaks like our kindhearted friend Kanka appealed to him had to be seen! Giliaks do not have their own aristocrats, but they highly revere wealthy people. For them, Gilelˊka seemed to exist above the Giliaks’ lot. As a joke, I called him “King of the Giliaks,” and this sobriquet evidently much pleased him. Twelve versts south of Tangi was the Russian settlement Mgachi, which had so hospitably sheltered us in the fog during our initial foray aboard the Prince Shakhovskoi.

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We went walking among its several huts. From one, a middle-aged woman greeted us, gladly waving her dress at our approach. “Well, how’s it going, auntie? Where’s your husband?” we asked her. “He left for work in Nikolaevsk, and here’s two years I been awaitin’ him…” The woman began sobbing and tugging at the edge of her dress. “If ’n my husband was here,” she continued unspooling her long-held grief, “then maybe I could get by somehow, but what can I do alone? You throw yourself here ‘n’ there, but that’s women’s work, you yourselves know! He promised to come right away. From the start, I been waitin’, but still nothin’. ‘Here,’ I’m thinkin’, ‘he’s comin’ soon, bringin’ money.’ But he…” And, again, the tears. This woman rather dimmed our festive mood, and we soon ended our walkabout. Mgachi, like the other settlements I’ve mentioned—Tangi, Khoé, Trambaüs, Viakhtu, and Vangi—were built along the shore as postal stations for the winter road to Nikolaevsk. Save for some vegetable gardening, there is a bit of grain grown there, but it’s difficult, despite local exile-settlers’ desires, to grow any sort of grain. The main obstacle is the ocean fogs. Somewhat unwontedly, coastal residents have ended up engaging in transportation, and some hunt fur-bearing creatures and mediate the exchange of Sakhalin products (primarily furs) with Russian traders. Amidst all this, contraband liquor serves as their primary item of profit. From Mgachi, we arrived that same evening in Aleksandrovsk Post, having completed a five-day journey of 250 miles. During the interval between expeditions along the Sakhalin coast, I measured Aleksandrovsk Post’s bay. First, I carried out a measurement of coequal quadrants, placing my lead targets on the shore and in the water; but further out at sea, these had difficulty staying in place owing to the fairway’s choppy waves. I had very little time to place the targets: even in calm weather, the powerful current would have carried them past Cape Jonquière by evening, but in a storm, when the bay turns into a seething cauldron, they would have been washed ashore. This trouble with the targets, which were not affixed to cast-iron ballasts but to sharp rocks, pestered me, so I altered my methodology. I managed to acquire an old sextant from one of the steamers, and thanks to it I was able, based on the angle of onshore objects, to determine each measured depth’s spot independent of the lead targets. The job was going swimmingly. I hurried, not because the summer was ending, but to please Mariia Antonovna, who remained without my help at the meteorological station in Rykovsk. She was very busy in the pharmacy and hospital, also, there were indications her feet were developing dropsy because of the consumption, and she was having difficulty getting around.

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Yet, as always when one hurries, I ended up encountering here and there a large number of obstacles. Everything promised me during the first days of my arrival in Aleksandrovsk proved to be unavailable. I’d been promised, for example, a horse to get me to the wharf. But upon first trying to avail myself of it, I encountered mostly rebuffs on the part of coachmen, guards, etc., so that I threw up my hands and began going on foot. A steam cutter had been promised for the job, but you’d go to the wharf and they’d tell you all the cutters there had been allocated to different, extraneous, jobs.2 I had to rent a simple Giliak rowboat. The promised necessary accessories, the ropes, scaffold, etc., and ultimately everything else, I purchased from the shops on my own account, and other things like, for example, the sextant, plumb-bob, etc., I obtained through acquaintances on the steamers. When a British navy vessel entered the Aleksandrovsk fairway, it was especially annoying seeing the contrast between my job and that of foreigners. I was taking measurements from my worthless rowboat, barely keeping it on its appointed course, when the Englishmen on their cutter beside me quickly measured the river’s entrance, then approached Cape Jonquière’s cliffs, the so-called Three Brothers, looking for a passage between them. Clearly, this was not being done for commercial purposes. I soon notified certain officials that the British did not have the right to measure the bay. But the Sakhalin leadership had, with Russian heartiness, opened wide all hospitality’s doors, and was at that time concerned only with how to better welcome and entertain its guests. Russian candor reached the point that the Englishmen were shown the fitting of shackles, the prison’s notorious “mare,” the birch rods, and the shameful knout, which is there called the “plet.”3 At the end, they were gifted with some Sakhalin tradesmen’s handicrafts made from burls. (A particularity of Sakhalin’s damp climate is that it produces on tree trunks large diseased growths, or burls. When these growths are cut off, they reveal beautiful patterns and are thus in demand for veneers. Sakhalin furniture made from the burls can be encountered in the capitals, among personages who’ve had some sort of contact with the island administration.) Having measured round the bay and gathered their requisite data, the British went on to De-Kastri, Vladivostok, and other bays along the Great Ocean, but

2

3

In my day, the Sakhalin administration had three or four steam cutters and several wooden barges. There were very many jobs for them. In addition to unloading arriving steamers, they delivered provisions and materials to the island’s coastal settlements. The cutters were also used to pull rafts of timber that were prepared on the seacoast somewhat north of Aleksandrovsk Post. [Iu.] There were important technical differences between the plet´ and the knut, of which Iuvachëv seems to have been surprisingly unaware. [Trans.]

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were there unable, as I later learned, to conduct their measurements so simply and easily. As it turned out, I overcame the elements from my Giliak-constructed rowboat. There now remained for me to transfer my measurements to my map, which I’d already set about doing, together with Zagarin’s drawings, when suddenly, there came a new distraction from my work.

CHAPTER 6 Aboard the steamer Shooter • Sakhalin’s west coast • Mauka Bay • Cape Crillon and danger rock • Wreck of the steamer Kostroma • Prisoners in a locked hold • Saving the carriage • A human victim The Sakhalin leadership had chartered a Shevelev1 steamer, the Shooter, to carry a load from Korsakovsk Post to Patience Bay where, at the mouth of a large river, Tikhmenev Post was located. Ivan Martynovich, captain of the Shooter at that time, suddenly fell ill and got laid up in bed. I’d already been recommended to him for the journey. To our mutual good luck, I was being transferred to Ivan Martynovich’s steamer that evening, and at midnight on 6 August, we raised anchor and headed south, to Cape Crillon. Besides me, the only other sakhalinets was the administrator I——v, my inseparable traveling companion during my expeditions through the region’s seas. By agreement with the assistant captain, mine was the first watch at sea. After passing the lights of Dué Post, we saw nothing else the entire night. South of Aleksandrovsk Post, stretching for hundreds of versts along Sakhalin’s west coast, there are very few population points. There exists, owing to coal mines, a little spot on the Sortuna River,2 and, in another place, there is Mauka Bay, the main depot for seakale.3 A rocky ridge runs along these shores. Thick ribbons of this aquatic plant get deposited on them. Opposite Mauka is a girdle of rocks, defending the ridge against the stormy sea and through which cuts a passage to the watery expanse. Yet the powerful current cutting through the rocks there poses a danger, and during an infamous wind, our Shooter somehow accidentally ended up there and barely escaped intact.

1 2 3

A transportation company operating on Sakhalin. [Trans.] Due to a misunderstanding or typographical error, the original publication gives this as “Sertupa.” [Trans.] I.e., the works of Semënov & Co. (see fn. 2, in Part II, Chapter 12). [Trans.]

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At first, the weather was overcast, though calm, but on the evening of 7 August, as we approached Crillon, our southernmost cape, we encountered an enormous wave. In clear weather, the mountains of the Japanese island of Matsumae4 are visible from this cape. Our steamer righted itself amid the swells and, successfully bypassing Danger Rock, turned into Aniva Bay. Danger Rock—a barren, rocky islet—lies amid the La Pérouse Strait, i.e., where two empires divide and where two seas—the Okhotsk and Japanese—unite. Because an underwater reef extends a long distance from it, in foggy weather it is truly quite dangerous for seafarers. However, it cannot be called barren. An inhuman majority of huge sea lions, seals, and various other pinnipeds, their cries forewarning danger, always covers it. Not far from this islet was the spot where the Volunteer Fleet’s Kostroma wrecked in 1887. It was driven there not by storm but by fog—that specter of Sakhalin’s shores. The steamer was carrying exiled penal laborers to Aleksandrovsk Post. The weather was calm and slightly foggy. Evening began to fall. Performing his services on the steamer, the priest had gone down for prayers to the convicts in the hold. Just as two hundred voices began drawling “Our Father,” the crash of the steamer on rock was heard and the engine stopped. The priest sprang on deck in an instant. The hatch closed. Vaguely sensing something was wrong, the penal laborers cocked their ears. There was fevered clattering and officers’ harsh shouts on deck. Seeing anything through the artificial light was impossible: the twilight dusk and thickened fog concealed the island’s shoreline. The prisoners began spreading a rumor that the steamer had struck bottom and was sinking into the deep. Some shouted for the hatch to be opened and for them to be let on deck. But no penal laborers were allowed up. The condition of the steamer remained unknown, and so, too, that of their lives. At that moment, the prisoners, of course, were of least concern. It was important they not get on deck and cause a ruckus. The hatches were closed and the steamer command, for its part, was content. Whereas the freemen on deck still had a hope of being saved, for the caged prisoners, this had completely disappeared. “Open up! Open up!” they shouted louder and louder. In impotent fury, some tugged on the thick iron grille that separated them from the narrow corridor leading to the exit ladder. The gathering darkness only heightened the terror of this packed crowd. Suddenly, a sharp piercing cry rang out: 4

Tsarist-era Russians’ somewhat imprecise name for the island of Hokkaido. The Matsumae were the powerful clan that controlled the island prior to the Meiji Restoration. [Trans.]

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“Water! We’re gonna drown!” There immediately erupted a terrible wailing of screaming prisoners. And, indeed, with every moment, water was gushing through the pierced hull into the prisoners’ hold, rising higher and higher. Everyone instantly realized the steamer would sink within several minutes. The horrifying darkness was charged by hellish cries, hysterical sobbing, and desperate shouts, combined with loud banging on the deck above. Amid the pack, people ran from corner to corner, crushing one another. “Open up! Open up!” continued to resound amid the chaos. Most were bidding farewell to their terrestrial existence and praying fervidly. Some made nooses so as to hang themselves and end their torment. Only a small clutch of political exiles gathered in one spot was keeping quiet. Finally, up above, they determined the steamer’s condition: it was fixed upon a rock, with considerable depths fore and aft, so that having been punctured, it would sink to the ocean floor up to its smokestack. Everyone gradually thanked fate that they were stuck on a rock, and didn’t bother hurrying to identify the culprit for their misfortune. Officers were now dispatched in the sloop in the direction of the coast. Fortunately, it proved quite near. When this became known aboard the Kostroma, everyone began breathing easily: salvation was assured. The time had come to remember about the wretched prisoners. To their joy, the hatch was opened, a fire-light appeared, and an authoritative voice made clear they had nothing more to fear: the steamer was stuck fast on a rock and the water in the hold would not rise higher. The prisoners were instructed not to yell or make a fuss, and were greatly assured that if they didn’t obey, they’d be doused with boiling steam from the pipes specially leading into the prisoners’ section for just such an occasion. Everyone confirmed their obedience and vowed to be as quiet as sheep… And, indeed, when the captain ordered everything that was necessary and intact transferred to shore, the prisoners proved surprisingly reliable, assisting the sailors until the steamer was essentially abandoned to the proverbially insatiable waves. To conclude my recitation of this tragic event, I will also recall the sad episode of the punishment of one of the educated prisoners, because he, having found himself on a seashore for the first time in his life, had dared to stray a bit far from the barracks to gather seashells.5 As if a blood sacrifice were needed to save this carriage of a steamer and 235 penal laborers… But I shall return to the previous narrative, of our journey aboard the Shooter to Sakhalin’s Patience Bay.

5

This unfortunate young man, after having been tormented for some time after such a moral humiliation, disappeared without a trace on Sakhalin. [Iu.]

CHAPTER 7 Korsakovsk Post • A Japanese junk • Going to the Okhotsk Sea • The mining engineer • Whales and seal furs • Seal island • Predatory Japanese • Tikhmenev Post • Negotiations with the Japanese • Unloading provisions • Nighttime wanderings We reached Korsakovsk Post at 10 o’clock at night and dropped anchor in the depths of Aniva Bay. Here, the Shooter was supposed to get flour, groats, and salt and carry all this to two points on Sakhalin’s south coast. But Korsakovsk District’s commander, Ch., was away, and without him, nothing could be given us. Only upon his arrival the following day, did sailors begin loading the provisions. I took advantage of this time and, having made the necessary notations for the navigation, walked around the settlement with the administrator I——v.

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Aniva Bay Korsakovsk Post is the southern district’s principal city. Spread along the rocky shoreline amid dense greenery, it looks rather beautiful. However, only a single, main street exists there, entirely exposed to the sea and twisting up to a mountain: some hillocks and greenery extending out from it are all there is. Having glanced down the road at the church, prison, and other prominent buildings, I went as a guest to the Japanese. Several junks were in the shipping lane. One was of an old type now difficult to find in Japan itself. It’s said the Japanese government prohibits its subjects from traveling in such dangerous ships. This very one had been selected for our inspection. Following the example of the Japanese who swarmed the junk, we climbed through a small porthole into this monster, built out of small planks, with a raised stern and a dragon on the bow, and found ourselves in a room strewn with mats. Upon our arrival, they became very busy and undertook to treat us to tea and rice candies. That room, or stateroom, in which we sat on our haunches Japanese-style, was filled with many yellow, red, and black lacquered side-cabinets. All were collapsible, moveable, and stuffed with various provisions. We had still to visit the Japanese consul, living amid a beautiful garden on the city’s edge. At his place we were presented a document that invited the Japanese to help us transport the provisions to Tikhmenev Post.

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We went to sea that evening. My earlier watches had been from noon to midnight, but now they were from 8 o’clock to 12 o’clock, morning and night. The sea was calm and the weather generally favorable for my navigation work. Among our stateroom company there appeared a new person calling himself a mining engineer. He’d worked in the mines near Aleksandrovsk Post and was now going to the Okhotsk seacoast, to discover new coalbeds. Blackened from coal dust, this engineer sooner reminded one of a furnace stoker. All he talked about was coal. At first, he was listened to with rapt attention, but then his commanding and arrogant tone began irritating the stateroom’s company. By the end of the second or third day, he’d quarreled with the steamer’s entire command and, at the first opportunity, hastened to leave for shore. On the way to Tikhmenev Post, we came upon a whale, with its cheerful, spouting fountain. The Okhotsk Sea is a place rich in marine life. Around the Shantar Islands teem all sorts of whales, but there, in Patience Bay, are seals. This wealth of animal fat and furs attracts many hunters from England and America. The Russian inspectorate for these seas is very weak. One military steamer cannot, of course, scare off an entire horde of foreign ships. A detachment of sailors and two officers was even sent to Tiulin Island, off Sakhalin’s east coast, to guard the seals. This small islet is a favored rookery of pinnipeds and, as on La Pérouse Strait’s Danger Rock, they teem there. Regardless of protection for the island, which in some sense has also proven to be a rock of danger for mariners,1 the quantity of seals has declined rapidly and this Tiulin breed is expected to soon be extinct. Apparently, during the seals’ periodic migrations in the open sea, foreign hunters follow their oceanic paths and indiscriminately annihilate them, both males and females. Many Japanese hunters also sail in our waters; but they have a different secret industry—fishing. In their small schooners, they steal into the mouths of Sakhalin rivers and fish without hindrance for our local salmon, the keta. Without ceremony, the Japanese will sometimes go so far that, if they are not literally blockading an entire river from shore to shore, as Tymovsk exilesettlers suspect them of doing, they are nevertheless employing such means for catching fish that they prevent their going upstream. If, in August, Tymovsk exile-settlers discern no signs of keta in their river, they know the Japanese are working the mouth of the Tym.2 Soldiers get dispatched in a rowboat; yet, 1 2

Regarding this, several were lost in a shipwreck on it, leading to a legal case in Vladivostok in 1897. [Iu.] Before 1879, the fishing industry was not assessed duties, but recently, a small amount is being recouped from the Japanese. [Iu.]

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before they can cover the 200 versts to the mouth, the Japanese manage to get a good haul of fish during the height of the seasonal migration. Completing the entire journey that night in calm weather, our steamer Shooter easily overtook the Japanese’s sail-schooner and startled it with our lights. Supposing we were a Russian warship, they turned away and took off at full sail. The undisciplined schooner’s sails billowed left and right like whitewinged gulls and soon disappeared into the nighttime murk. Early on the morning of 10 August, we reached the mouth of the huge Poronai River and dropped anchor. In 1805, Admiral Kruzenshtern found it similar to Petersburg’s river, and therefore christened it the Neva, but this name has lasted only on geographical maps. Encountering the sea’s enormous waves, this river’s powerful current generates a terrible surf at the bar. We barely managed to get through in our fine little sea-sloop, and docked at Tikhmenev Post. With construction of a road from Rykovsk and development of a trade in fish and salmon, this settlement could be important for Sakhalin and probably become the administrative center of a new district, but during the period I am describing, it amounted to a handful of domiciles and barns, probably for soldiers’ provisions. As we had foreseen, the Russian population there was quite minimal. The native tribe of Oroki, or Orochi, were not sailors. The Japanese had to be turned to for help unloading the provisions. Several Japanese schooners were sitting in the river in anticipation of the fish. The captain of one was pointed out to us as their headman. We gave him the consul’s letter and earnestly appealed to him to instruct his brethren to transfer the provisions from the steamer to shore. For this, our translator was a young Orok who’d astonishingly learned the languages of all the peoples who arrived there. In addition to his native Orok, he knew Giliak, Ainu, Japanese, and Russian. The translating, however, dragged on for three hours. During this, the remarkable linguist proved a fine diplomat. In the end, he managed to gather a bunch of Japanese and persuade them to go in Russian barks to the steamer for the provisions. It was rather chilly, but the agile Japanese were content in their tropical outfits: on their shoulders was a light blue cloak with wide sleeves, on their heads a knitted kerchief, and wrapped unchastely round their naked bodies was a “chaste girdle.” That was all they wore. Some even tossed aside their top-cloaks. Animated and cheerful, they worked the whole time as if it were a lark, shouting and singing. The weather was extremely unfavorable for unloading. Crossing the bar, the barks were tossed by the waves and the flour soaked by seawater. I don’t know if a single sack made it to shore dry. But this was the least of it: the waves began whipping one bark about and the Japanese tossed the sacks straight overboard

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to save it. To reprimands from the ship’s command, they grumbled or laughed derisively. A free folk! They finished a job when they wanted, started when they had a mind to. Neither promises nor requests nor threats to report them to the consul could knock the obstinacy from these short but utterly capable folk. Quickening the unloading was to the Sakhalin leadership’s benefit: the steamer captain was getting paid 140 rubles for each day of sailing, as well as for the coal he used during the whole trip. Our flour for Taraika3 was proving to be expensive! Had the administrator I—v not badgered the Japanese, they would have taken no fewer than three days to unload the provisions. We raised anchor that night and left in the direction of Tiulin Island. This was done so a sudden storm couldn’t catch us at night near shore during the start of our run. When you’re going full steam to a designated place, you normally stand watch secure in the knowledge of the importance of your duties. But if, at night, you’re wandering aimlessly at sea on a brief trip before dawn, then time seems especially long, as if you’re in a waiting room anticipating your reception. Mariners have reason to call this part of the ocean Patience Bay, but we, wandering all night there in the Shooter and fearing to sleep, were losing all patience.

3

The Giliaks call everything lying at the mouth of the Poronai River “Taraika.” [Iu.]

CHAPTER 8 Manué Post • The Ainu of Sakhalin and Matsumae • In the La Pérouse Strait • Seabirds • Sea lions on Danger Rock • Totomosiri Island • Return to Aleksandrovsk Post • In Rykovsk again At noon on 12 August, we sailed out of Patience Bay, south to Manué Post, at the narrowest part of Sakhalin Island. Following a series of overcast and stormy days, clear and calm weather had emerged. Not wanting to enter in the dark the personally unfamiliar Manué Bay, whose two sides hide dangerous underwater rocks, we intentionally dawdled at sea. Only the following morning did the Shooter approach shore. We found a small post of soldiers and the foreman I——v, a young, energetic man, also seconded to the Okhotsk seacoast to discover “a bit o’ coal.” There, the peaceful sea was more merciful to the local soldiers, and they were able to safely bring ashore the provisions (around 500 poods) that were brought for them. Having completed my measurements and notes on the bay, I spent the entire day among unspoilt nature, in the company of the foreman and our administrator, I——v. We visited the local aboriginals who lived near Manué—the Ainu. The first Ainu who greeted us was a pathetic old man with a heavily wrinkled face and long, thick hair. A thick beard and mustache are this Asian tribe’s incomprehensible particularity. We saw the local women; they also seemed ugly to us. All youths of the male sex were away fishing. In Korsakovsk Post, we’d happened to see, near the Japanese consul’s home, some Ainu from Matsumae Island; they, by contrast, were strikingly handsome: an aquiline visage with large black eyes and a black mustache, and a solid, statuesque physique. They stood like heroes among the short, ugly Japanese. It’s said the Ainu on Sakhalin are dwindling: their free life there has been constrained by the newcomers and they are choosing to relocate to the Japanese islands.

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Having departed Manué, we traveled south all night toward Cape Aniva, and in the morning entered the La Pérouse Strait. The sea was completely still. Not a cloud in the sky. The distant coasts were obscured from view, yet the eye was not tired by the uniform watery expanse because it was enlivened by myriad seabirds. Not a single one was airborne; rather, the entire surface of the sea, smooth as glass, was covered by flocks of ducks, gulls, terns, cormorants, geese. You’d grab the binoculars: wherever you saw around you, the ocean was covered by swimming birds. And what wasn’t there! White, multi-colored, black… They were all migrating east. In front of us there appeared a still more marvelous creature from the animal kingdom. Because the day was clear, we could see Danger Rock six miles away. Due to its proximity to the island, its dimensions were continually shrinking. I sat with booklet in hand, trying to sketch it. Then we heard, like the uninterrupted howling of the wind, the cries of sea lions from the Rock. “Look! Look!” I——v shouted when we were a mile from the island. “They’re teeming like worms! And so many are in the water! See how they’re raising their snouts! …” Occupied with sketching, I hadn’t been looking at anything. It was just strange to me how the island had uprooted and thrown its huge rocks everywhere. But more amazing, the rocks seemed at first glance to be moving. I grabbed the binoculars and, indeed, a unique picture straightaway appeared: hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of gigantic beasts significantly bigger than cows were thronging the entire island. Some were perched motionlessly on the very top of the rock, like marble statues: others could be seen dragging their enormous bulks. A bit lower, on the Rock’s cliffsides, an incalculable crowd of them swarmed like worms on a carcass. Above the underwater reefs that surround the island, they were all popping their heads out of the water in a solid mass, yet not only were there sea lions but also seals, earless seals, and other representatives of the Tiulin breeds. Recovered from his illness somewhat, the steamer’s captain also came on the bridge to marvel at these rare creatures. He told us about what seemed to have been the attempted assassination of some Englishmen by one of these thick-furred beasts. Don’t go there in a rowboat: the sea lions will crush it to smithereens in an instant. The underwater reefs protect the island from ships. Perhaps, were you to fire a cannonade, you might frighten the throng of residents off the Rock, but no one seems to have tried that yet. Having skirted Cape Crillon, we turned north. Beautiful weather, a light wind, easy waves, and especially the absence of fog altogether enabled us to quickly ascend the Sakhalin coast. This time during the daylight, we passed the mountainous island of Totomosiri (70 versts from Cape Notoro), for some reason arbitrarily abandoned by hunters. An entire

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day and night yet remained for us to sail the Tatar Strait. Along the way, it would be possible to gather however much material for the navigation, and while the proximity of the conclusive wharf directed all my thoughts homeward, I stood watch all the more to see the fire of the Jonquière lighthouse. At three o’clock in the morning on 16 August, after a ten-day sail, we dropped anchor in the Aleksandrovsk roads, and an hour later, I was already sitting in my residence reading the letters gathered in my absence. Two weeks later, having completed the necessary linear measurements of the river and the shipping lane, I finished my map of Aleksandrovsk Bay and gave it, along with the chart of Sakhalin’s waters, to the district commander. “Good,” he said, “I’ll go to Petersburg and show your work to the general there.” “May I now return to my Rykovsk?” “You may.” That was the finale of all my assignments that summer. The day after this conversation, I bid farewell to Aleksandrovsk’s residents and set off behind government horses for Rykovsk. Again, we flew past the poor shacks of the three Arkovos and the two Armudans. Again, there was a brief stay in Derbinsk at the home of the hospitable warden, a characteristic exemplar of pre-Reform landowners.1 Toward evening, the horses came to a halt at the meteorological station building where Mariia Antonovna, completely incapacitated by illness, was impatiently expecting me. Being in the final stage of consumption and with legs swollen from dropsy, she was glad to transfer the station’s directorship to me.

1

Iuvachëv refers here to the so-called Great Reforms that began in 1861 and ended serfdom. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 9 The 1891 Manifesto • Anticipating an imperial pardon • Congratulations on the ending of katorga • Disappointment • New griefs • M. A. Krzhizhevskaia’s illness • Her death and funeral • Tears for the “penal laborers’ mother” • My loneliness in exile In my day, on Sakhalin, exiled penal laborers were generally often disappointed; but in the year of my sea travels, they experienced still another disappointment. With the arrival of the Heir Tsarevich (now the ruling Sovereign) to Vladivostok, exiles were gifted with the new manifesto of 1891.1 Its highlights were immediately telegraphed to Sakhalin. This unforeseen news summoned forth a burst of delight there. Typically, exiles in katorga are always waiting for a manifesto, and all their calculations for being freed are directly associated with a monarchical reprieve. “You’ll see, this year there’s gonna be a big manifesto. I got five years’ katorga left, just a third of my sentence; knock it off, ‘n’ I’m free! You’ll see, there’ll be a manifesto soon!” So dreamt the penal laborer. Why soon, he didn’t know. To console himself, another would argue against his colleague’s dream. But if, in fact, some sort of development was being foreseen, then those who awaited and discussed the given manifesto (of a coronation, the birth of the heir to the throne, etc.) calculated over it to no end. I’d noticed all the joy they anticipated over an earlier manifesto, though when it was announced, everyone accepted the new reprieve with relative calm. Yet the 1891 manifesto was announced completely unexpectedly, and so the people’s rejoicing was unusually enthusiastic. Sakhalin’s soothsayers recalled all the things from their dreams. The penal 1

In 1891, as part of a larger journey, heir to the throne Nicholas Aleksandrovich arrived in Vladivostok to inaugurate construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Royal manifestos often commemorated such events. [Trans.]

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laborers’ joy grew when, on 12 May, recited to them was the telegraphed news that the manifesto was reducing labor terms by two-thirds. Usually, manifestos forgave one-third of the years sentenced to be served in katorga, but suddenly, it was two-thirds! “God bless our Heir,” all katorga sincerely prayed. Everyone also congratulated me on the end of my katorga. “You waited, and at last, you’re in the exile-settler estate,” my friends told me. “Now you can sooner petition His Highness to definitively return all your rights to you and leave with God for Russia! It’ll happen—you’ve been patient enough!” Next day, the doctor hurried to visit and solemnly congratulated me. But there was a misunderstanding. It soon became clear the entire quantity of years sentenced by a court was to be reduced to two-thirds; in other words, two-thirds of his years of katorga remained for an exile and so he was to be forgiven, as with other manifestos, for just a third.2 Penal laborers hung their heads from the disappointment. Those who’d been rejoicing yesterday at being freed from prison were today even sadder than before the manifesto’s announcement. I was afflicted by a mournful disappointment. Even with the one-third reduction I still had several years to go in katorga, and, regardless, I would end up being deprived of freedom for eight years. I spent so many of those years in fruitless anticipation! Leaving for Sakhalin, I’d been told: “Really, just hold on for a year, no more, and you’ll become an exile-settler. Then you’ll go to Siberia and be enrolled in the peasantry before you know it. There’s no other way: that’s the procedure! You have to go through all the stages before returning to Russia.” But up until that point, I hadn’t comprehended I was still in just the first stage. During my steamer journeys, the expanse of sea and land and my reacquaintance with a freeman’s life resurrected within my memory the forgotten past, and underlined still more the contrast to my melancholy life in Rykovsk settlement, where new griefs were awaiting me. I’ve already mentioned Mariia Antonovna Krzhizhevskaia’s illness. The poor toiler was suffering terribly. More and more blood was appearing on 2

Former political exile Pëtr F. Iakubovich devoted a chapter of his roman à clef to discussing this 1891 manifesto. He notes that the same misunderstanding arose among the prisoners he lived with in Eastern Siberia, as well as among his prison’s staff. Confusion stemmed from the manifesto’s ambiguous and imprecise wording. See Pëtr Filippovich Iakubovich, In the World of the Outcasts: Notes of a Former Penal Laborer, 2 vols., translated by Andrew A. Gentes (New York: Anthem Press, 2014) II: chap. 5.

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her handkerchief. Her cough tormented her mercilessly. Ulcers from the constant seepage of water through the skin covered her swollen legs. Mariia Antonovna’s minutes were being counted. But she didn’t complain, she tried to carry on and, as before, went punctually to work at the pharmacy and hospital. One morning, she was attending to her patients, but suddenly felt a sharp pain in her chest and sank into a chair with a groan. A doctor was called. He ordered she be sent home to bed. But Mariia Antonovna was unable to sleep or to lie down. Sitting in her armchair, she was coughing and moaning quietly from the pain. The weather had been dry. Damp sheets were spread out and sprayed with water to moisten the air in the room. No matter how much chloral hydrate she was given, she couldn’t sleep a minute. She was given three muscatels. This somewhat eased the pain in her chest, though the poor wretch was coughing even more. “Air, give me air!” she beseeched her surrounding friends. But we could think only to wave a fan near her face. Early in the morning, after three days of uninterrupted suffering, she asked for the window to be opened. Cold air together with the first rays of the rising sun flooded the room. Then she looked for the final time upon the earthly world. As if in response to her parting, a long file of probationary convicts appeared on the road at that moment. With fetters clanging, they noisily passed by on their way to work. Mariia Antonovna turned sadly from the window: for thirty-eight years all she’d seen was deprivation, suffering, needfulness… The funeral on Sakhalin of this extraordinary woman attracted the entire settlement of Rykovsk. Each considered himself lucky to be able to commemorate the deceased one way or another. From the commander down to the last penal laborer, everyone understood that Tymovsk District had lost its most valuable person, who served for neither money nor pleasure of personal gain, but simply for the joy of a pure idea—to help unfortunates. When the coffin was lowered into the ground, a crowd of women burst into tears recalling all the kindnesses she’d shown them. Only then did their tongues, held in check regarding Mariia Antonovna’s life of humility, come untied: without interruption, they poured out for everyone there the deceased’s startling acts of selflessness toward them. As if to complete the details of Mariia Antonovna’s life on Sakhalin, her few remaining belongings were distributed to the poor. Certain simplehearted people who praised the deceased as their mother practically sanctified her. I remember our church held a holy day for Kazan’s Blessed Mother icon soon after Mariia Antonovna’s funeral. On the church porch, I encountered the old watchman, and said to him:

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“Well, grandpa, are you ready? You’ve got a holy day today, you know!” “What’s the holy day now?! We’ve just buried our own ‘Mother Kazan’…” For me, Mariia Antonovna’s death was an especial blow. In her I lost not just a friend and comrade in service, but an assistant in my literary endeavors.3 By strange coincidence, my grief was simultaneously exacerbated by the loss (in the same week with Mariia Antonovna) of another two dear friends, from among the exiles: one, whom I regarded like a father, died from a cold, but the other accidentally fell into the Tym River and drowned. Having lost them, I suddenly felt orphaned and even lonelier among the many extremely sad people like me in exile.

3

Only a small part of her work has been published. The rest is still awaiting its appearance. [Iu.]

CHAPTER 10 Katorga’s tragic days • Deprivation of bread as punishment • The road to the Okhotsk Sea • The guard Khanov • His command in Onor • The leadership’s attitude toward the road gang • The sick and the beaten • Khanov’s murdered laborers • Onor fugitives Following my return from sailing, the tragic days continued for generally all of Rykovsk settlement, though for me in particular. From time to time the gray, one-dimensional life of katorga was interrupted by some major theft or barbaric murder that enervated even the prisoners’ environment, though major events of a different character and the new reforms did not enliven katorga. The general1 had gone into retirement and was living somewhere far beyond the border, and minus their master, the servants had some things up their sleeves and were engaging in more elaborate feasts, evening card games, picnics, and other amusements. However, there was one thing these officials did not overlook: to each day thrash penal laborers. “Prisoners must always feel over them the authorities’ power, vigilant eye, and punishing hand!” they self-righteously told each other. But this was not true. Penal laborers well understood they were at the whim of guards who might easily be bribed to allow many forbidden things. Even under the terrible warden L——, the poorer and richer allowed card games and vodka-dealing in the evening. To satisfy the warden’s bloodlust, the poorest, most timid prisoners were usually served up as the morning’s victims. Because they lacked money to bribe the guards, it was on their backs that the most difficult katorga jobs fell. In addition to thrashings and hard work, penal laborers meanwhile suffered still another kind of punishment: the lowering of their daily bread ration. If, by law, a prisoner was assigned three pounds a day, he could be 1

Governor Vladimir O. Kononovich. [Trans.]

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punished by being given two. Warden L—— especially loved to use this method of punishment in Rykovsk Prison. For him, it had a twofold purpose: penal laborers were punished by their own physical constitutions, and the bread was economized. When a party of penal laborers was assigned to the taiga for roadwork, guards took to heart this way of felling a poor prisoner. According to a project of the departed general, the road from Aleksandrovsk Post to Rykovsk settlement needed to be extended south, to Korsakovsk Post. Katorga in the main was sent to complete this project. A large gang of laborers with many guards set off from Tymovsk District under Alimpii Khanov, a stern executor of the leadership’s directives. This tall and very strong old man, who had risen though the ranks to senior guard, still bore stigmata of his earlier barbaric behavior—tattoos on his body.2 Khanov was a stern taskmaster, but had also tempered his own soul. Naturally intelligent and skilled in various crafts, he was strict and demanding. Prisoners greatly feared his stern gaze from beneath beetling brows. I personally heard it mentioned he never smiled; and understand with what fear the convict party must have followed him into the taiga 60 versts from Rykovsk settlement. Nonetheless, there proved to be such daredevils as would boast among the laborers: “We been talkin’ ’gainst you for awhile in the taiga, Alimpii Ivanych, and we ain’t stoppin’. You can’t scare us here, not with an urka3 or a fist.” Khanov took note of these threats, flung at him with contempt. “Hotshots still trying to deceive an old penal laborer.” Khanov, first of all, divided his party into groups of ten, and endowing the most raffish with certain privileges, assigned them as the group leaders. Along with guards from the soldiery, these “tenners” formed a sufficiently imposing force against the remaining penal laborers. Deprived in such way of its loudmouth ringleaders, the mob instantly submitted. At first, Khanov limited himself to making certain comments on the work. If it was only some meek laborer, he would deliver a merciful slap. Then he turned stricter and began shouting more sternly, or another time would slap a cane across a back, while every week assigning larger and larger quotas. Meanwhile, the groundwork itself was hard, the icy cold groundwater

2

3

Until the mid-nineteenth century, convicts exiled to Siberia were often tattooed with identifying letters. Iuvachëv is telling us that Khanov was a former convict. Note also that Iuvachëv introduces some confusion over Khanov’s first name, which in fact was “Vasilii,” not “Alimpii.” [Trans.] In the katorga argot, an “urka” is a day’s worth of quota labor assigned by guards. [Iu.]

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caused suffering, and there were also the importunate gnats and mosquitoes. Added to all this, the bread from the bakeries had to travel for five, then seven, then ten versts, as the distance from the primary barracks increased. From time to time, the district commander4 went to the road gang’s primary location in Onor.5 He’d go through the taiga with Khanov, survey the job, issue further orders, and then, home! Warden L——, citing duties at the prison, chose not to interfere in the matter and didn’t visit Khanov, though his main reason was he didn’t want to play a secondary role. The Tymovsk command’s military doctor, temporarily filling in for the departed prison physician V. A. Sasaparel, also did not show up there at first. As such, Khanov became a fully empowered commander over too many hundreds of people who were answerable to only one district authority. The muzhik grew prideful and gave full rein to his vicious arbitrariness. His oprichnina of guards and tenners had been well organized.6 It was now free to beat with a cudgel. “Don’t dare squeal, or I’ll kill you!” And the meek penal laborer falls silent. Here comes the district commander. “All good!” reports Khanov. The laborers stand, wordlessly nod their heads, and look pathetically at the stern face of their senior guard, who at the time is inflamed by a single desire: to serve the leadership, distinguish himself, and become famous for building a new road through the Sakhalin taiga, whatever the cost.

4 5

6

Arsenii M. Butakov. [Trans.] Onor was a newly established settlement south of Rykovsk. What follows is Iuvachëv’s account of the infamous Onor Affair, which began during the summer of 1892. [Trans.] The Oprichnina was the state within a state that Ivan the Terrible created to terrorize his people. [Trans.]

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Onor labor site More and more people injured by Khanov were appearing in Rykovsk. “Khanov’s beatin’ us without mercy!” they complained at the hospital. “And the oprich ain’t givin’ us full bread. Huge quotas. Yer beaten and beaten the whole day… No, ya can’t stop even at night. A guard’ll lay more on yer back, and next time there’s a problem, he cuts off a pound, then two, from yer ration. And if there ain’t bread, there ain’t nothin’ to eat in the taiga.” Khanov knew bad talk about him was spreading through Tymovsk District, so he began keeping the injured in Onor and sending them less often to hospital. Moreover, after reaching a further distance, he asked the district commander for permission not to send the dead to Rykovsk settlement, but to bury them onsite, in the taiga. One evening, I saw a wagon arriving from Onor with an injured man. He was barely alive and we couldn’t get a word out of him. A crowd of exiles stood around the wagon and asked the driver about Khanov’s regimes on the Onor Road. Suddenly, the carpentry guard Liubmirskii, who delighted in making the public laugh with his witticisms, exited the prison gate. “My, what a crowd has gathered!” he addressed the throng. “As if you’ve never seen a corpse coming from Onor! Though, it’d be a wonder if a living man ever came from there! That would be worth seeing! …”

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Whereas Khanov was sending fewer of the injured to the Tymovsk infirmary, his reports on the laborers who were being buried and even his communiqués implied that more and more were dying from illness. Soon, other communiqués reported convicts fleeing the roadwork for the taiga. Khanov’s road gang was noticeably thinning out. The district commander wrote the general that such casualties among the people horrified him.7 I was rarely able to get any sort of explanation from Butakov for what happened in Onor. I knew the deaths in Khanov’s party were his sore spot. Touching on this issue simply irritated him noticeably. He later became especially hot-tempered and, in a passion, sometimes said and did inconsistent things. One day, as if laying the fault on himself, he remarked: “Do you judge me for what happened? I wrote the general that with the means I then had, I could not get the road through the taiga, bogs, and rivers in the short time he wanted. But he insisted on one thing only: ‘Please complete the road’. I didn’t know what to do! I’d written him twice already… Were there more folks, had an official expert been appointed to lead the party, well, then it would have been a different matter!” Finally, escapees from Onor began showing up in Rykovsk settlement. A terrible sight! Worn out, starving, emaciated, they dutifully confessed to the prison warden. “Your excellency!” they desperately beseeched him on their knees, “don’t send us to Khanov, to our death! He’s already finished off many with his beatin’s. He beats ya with a pole for what can’t be done. Gives us unbearable quotas! Your excellency! Keep us here, in the hardest jobs…” But, as escapees, they were shredded with birch rods and returned to Khanov in Onor.

7

Other sources do not substantiate this claim that Butakov expressed his horror to Kononovich in writing. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 11 My new manservant • His past • Escape from Onor • Andrei’s story • The situation for Khanov’s laborers • Self-maiming • Onor cannibals • D. S. Klimov’s investigation Conducting natural observations at the Rykovsk meteorological station, I moved into the government apartment Mariia Antonovna had lived in. I was offered a laborer to serve in the capacity of watchman for the meteorological hut. There were many enthusiasts for this position, or, as exiled penal laborers say, “vacation.” I was recommended a Georgian named Andrei, who’d escaped from Onor. I appealed to the warden and he ordered him into my service. Andrei wasted no time showing up. As if he wouldn’t have! Being assigned to me freed him from the terrible Khanov. During the Turkish war, this Georgian had served heroically in the Transcaucasian militia and was wounded in the head. There was still a serious scar on his forehead. For a while he ended up in a rescue station on the Black Sea coast and, as a good swimmer, twice had the opportunity to deliver aid at sea, receiving a medal for saving people who were shipwrecked. At the start of the Armenian movement, which ultimately played out in bloody scenes, Andrei got involved in transporting contraband weapons.1 He was pursued and, regardless of a courageous defense, arrested and then exiled to katorga labor following trial. Having ended up in Khanov’s party, he could not at all endure the beastly violence, and fled. His good luck at landing a vacation spared him punishment. He instantly struck me as credible, and I asked him to candidly tell me what was happening in Onor. Extremely upset, sometimes with tears in his eyes, he related a whole series of horrible scenes of vicious arbitrariness by the guards. I will give just a portion of what he said.

1

Following the 1877−78 Russo-Turkish War, russification policies sparked a backlash among Armenians. [Trans.]

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“We went there strong. We, they said, would get four pounds bread: the labor was very hard, and there was only one cooked meal: very bad! We not only not see this four pounds, we not even get three. Hard taiga work, in a bog, mosquitoes and gnats, you go whole day starving! And guards there with canes. Give you quota—you know afore you cannot do. You tell him humbly, that such task cannot be done at all; see, now he lays cane on your back! One of best workers kneeled, cried, start pleading: ‘Alimpii Ivanych, spare my little soul: I’m all wiped out, you know! Don’t let me die without confession, don’t beat me to death!’ But, no! You won’t win him with pitiful words. Only gets madder! I escaped, but where do you go without bread? Empty taiga around Onor. There you only find some berries somewhere. And there’s little sense in them: only get the shits. There I am: staggering, staggering through taiga… all my strength completely knocked out! Don’t want to die from hunger, I, too, head for Rykovsk… I know afore the rods waiting there, but I think: maybe God will take some pity on me. But rare for anyone like me to be able stay there. They give you thirty whacks2 as required, and back to Khanov again. You’re not thinking afore how it can be done. Many unfortunates perished from hunger! Taiga full of corpses there. Here, a rotter, there, a rotter, need to plug nose to walk along Onor road…” “Did no one really complain to the commander?” “Anyone squeal a complaint, Khanov would show him! Commander probably knew Khanov is beating: he let him to do this. Khanov always counted the deaths and reported how many died, from consumption or pneumonia or some illness, he said…” “There were so many, it’s really amazing Khanov was never challenged!” “A challenge! They barely stirring like stunned flies, and all guards have revolvers and canes. One senior soldier was a no-good: he beat and beat a wretch until he collapsed; and you don’t know if he alive or dead. Once, Khanov had also beaten a laborer, and shouted at him: ‘Stand up!’ He just lying there like corpse, not twitching. ‘Ah, so that’s how you are!’ shout Khanov. ‘Wait, I’ll wake you up my way! Tie him up and take him to the stream! Toss him in…’ ” “Impossible!” I shouted in indignation. Andrei was hurt by my expression of disbelief, and humbly fell silent: he’d been telling me what he saw with his own eyes. This information was soon underscored in a terrible manner. “They’re bringing a laborer from Onor right now,” it was reported to me, “who seems to have chopped off a bunch of his fingers with his own axe.”

2

Thirty birch blows. [Iu.]

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“How is it he chopped them off? Accidentally?” “No, intentionally. He laid his hand on a stump and brought his axe down on it. ‘Better,’ he says, ‘to be without fingers than to die from the guards’ canes’…” My heart winced at such a picture. I ran to the infirmary, where the doctor had just finished his rounds and was coming down the steps. “There’s really something horrible happening there,” I told him. “Can it really be an exaggeration?” “This really is an unprecedented case for katorga!” the doctor answered me. “He obviously doesn’t want to work, and prefers the rights of a do-nothing cripple.” “No, excuse me!” I heatedly protested. “You know you yourself wouldn’t give up a single finger for a million rubles; but here, a wretch chops off his own because he simply cannot survive in Onor. That doesn’t mean it was easy! … This is terrible, terrible! Why isn’t the commander addressing this?” “Yes, he knows Khanov’s beating them. It can’t be otherwise. How do you imagine you deal with such a desperate mob of murderers, deep in the woods? You can’t call for help from the military command there, you know. You can’t make them work unless you keep a firm grip over them…” I saw and heard many things in katorga, but this event has always troubled my soul. Consciously chopping off one’s fingers and hands! … Wretched penal laborers who were behaving themselves were sacrificing everything to free themselves from the Onor Hell. It seemed things couldn’t go on like that. But the leadership remained deaf to reason, and even threatened to punish them with rods upon their recovery and to assign them again to Khanov. Fifteen versts from Rykovsk, on the Pilinga Road, lies the district’s oldest settlement, Malo-Tymovo. During the period described, a small prison still existed there, the warden of which was the young official D. S. Klimov. One day, a pair of vagabonds who had escaped Onor was brought before him. During a search, pieces of seared human flesh were found inside their bags. The vagabonds were immediately sent to the district commander, along with a report about the discovery of the human flesh. Butakov ordered D. S. Klimov, as the most available person, to conduct an investigation.3 There had recently been earlier rumors concerning the Onor atrocities; but when it got to the point of asking penal laborers about the horrible goings-on, voices fell mute! Klimov ordered several graves dug up. A terrible sight! Someone’s skull had been crushed, someone else’s ribs… All the penal laborers’ wounds were duly 3

Archival evidence instead indicates that Dmitrii S. Klimov unilaterally launched what proved to be the first investigation of the Onor Affair. As in the previous chapter, Iuvachëv here offers an explanation of Butakov’s role that seems too charitable. [Trans.]

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noted and, as such, added up to a serious matter: the guards had committed atrocious reprisals against the convicts. The fugitives who showed up in Malo-Tymovo testified that to get the leadership’s attention, they cut off feet from the corpses piled up in the taiga and turned up with the human flesh intentionally in their bags. “Let ’em take us to court,” they said, “let ’em increase our katorga term, just don’t send us back to Khanov!” These fugitives’ wish was granted: they were put on trial as cannibals, whereas the pieces of flesh were corked inside jars of alcohol and displayed in the Sakhalin Museum.4

4

The island’s first museum was established in Aleksandrovsk Post by political exiles and administration officials who donated their private collections for the exhibits. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 12 L——’s retirement and departure • Warden N. N. Ia——v • Flowers, poetry, and a reprisal from prisoners • Tymovsk District’s expansion • A complicated business • Assigning exiles to Sakhalin • At the clapboard hut, turn right • What Butakov knew • No return from a graveyard The warden of Rykovsk Prison, L——, having received a new assignment in Korsakovsk District, gladly departed from the burgeoning scandal. Alleging that Butakov had cut him out of monitoring the Khanov party, he washed his hands of the Onor matter. In actuality, the moral responsibility fell partly on him: he’d been the primary creator of Tymovsk District’s system of extreme violence, increased quotas, and the reducing of a prisoner’s bread ration as a form of punishment. It was from this fine school on how to manage penal laborers that Khanov had graduated, and in Onor, he immediately proved himself a punctilious acolyte. At first, everyone supposed that after the assignment of a new commander in Korsakovsk Post, L—— would return once more as Rykovsk Prison’s warden, but during that time his pension for twenty years’ service in the Maritime Region came due, and he hastened to abandon the island. However, it was said there were too many complaints by officials and clergymen on Sakhalin about L—— and, to a certain extent, this was why he retired. In place of L——, N. N. Ia——v, a graduate of the Grigoretsk Agricultural Institute, was named warden.1 After arriving in Rykovsk he, a dedicated 1

Before his appointment, Nikolai N. Iartsev served as one of Sakhalin’s settlement wardens, whose responsibilities included managing and policing those exiles assigned to the countryside. In this capacity, Iartsev became responsible for an atrocity similar to those perpetrated en masse by Khanov and his men, one that involved the death of a pregnant woman from corporal punishment and to which Iuvachëv alludes below. [Trans.]

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anthophile, primarily occupied himself during the day with building a greenhouse and tending to his flower beds, and in the evening by either playing cards or declaiming verses of Russian poetry with a small group of friends, so that he had little remaining time for the prison or its management. Judging by his words, he tried to have friendly relations with prisoners and wanted to win from them a nickname as their natural father, but knowing not how to manage himself, he could do nothing for them—and so he was neither a fool nor a virtuoso. Abandoned to the guards’ capriciousness, the prison got out of hand, so to speak. Nonetheless, on Sakhalin, a land of contrasts, flowers and poesy did not prevent Ia——v from thrashing prisoners or even female exiles; nonetheless, he always tried to justify himself in those instances, with either an order from the leadership or some other conceit. Butakov, under either the influence of the Onor imbroglio or the strain of familial grief (around that time, his beloved wife died and his only son was expelled from high school), threw up his hands and somehow lessened his demands on Warden Ia——v to attend to prison affairs. Even aside from the prison, he had much to concern him regarding the governing of his extensive district. When no more than three or four settlements had accounted for their own small agricultural colony in the Tym Valley, Butakov managed it exceptionally and earned acclaim as a good master. But when new settlements began sprouting like mushrooms2 and the district expanded north along the Tym River and south along the Onor Road, the business of governing grew quite complicated, and Arsenii Mikhailovich had to spend whole days in his chancery, sitting over paperwork. General K——, one of Sakhalin’s executive reformers (which intelligent administrator unfortunately abandoned the island just as he was needed more than ever), raised a whole heap of new problems with his orders. Not having been given additional assistants, Butakov was hardly able to cope with these. After General K——’s departure, and before a new commandant was appointed, the quick succession during this Sakhalin interregnum of one island manager after another sowed a certain confusion into the complex machinery of the exile administration. Minus orders from the senior leadership, it was necessary to bow to individuals’ demands. For Butakov, an uneducated man prepared only “to listen and obey” chancery directives concerning prisoners, it was difficult to grasp the latest trend that arrived with each post from Petersburg, and he wound up in a quandary more than once. 2

In 1889: Valˊze, Voskresenskoe, Uskovo; in 1890: Malyia Longari, Taulan; in 1891: Upper Poronai, Daldagan, Slavo, Khamdasa I; in 1892: Onor, Khamdasa II, etc. [Iu.]

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In such a grandiose and vital business as the founding of new colonies in Sakhalin’s virgin forests at a distance of more than two hundred versts, a person of bold initiative was needed who could act on his own without waiting for the cabinet’s instructions.3 But during his final days, Butakov was utterly buried by paperwork that overwhelmed heart and mind. He was instructed, for example, to buttress the district’s exile population. He would buttress it. But how? An exile-settler, who has already acquired a house and small farm and for ten years been building up his estate, comes to him. “Your excellency! Is it forbidden me to enter the peasantry? …” “First, cut some siding planks for your hut, then you can think about the peasantry,” Butakov says, and shoos him away. To someone else, he observes he has no livestock or is not plowing the land. Strange demands! A man is trying to break free from the Sakhalin Hell, where in all the estates—penal laborer, exile-settler, peasant—he feels oppressed by the disgraceful sobriquet exile; he wants again to be a fully empowered citizen with freedom of movement: but he’s told: live among the mountains you hate, live where you were beaten, where you wore chains and shameful clothing… No matter how well appointed his bondage, a man will always try to break out of his prison, like a bird from a cage. An exile-settler can’t wait the required six years (albeit four, thanks to a manifesto) to expire, so he can enter the peasantry and obtain the right to leave for the mainland. Of course, if he has a small income at the time, he tries to save it for establishing a new farm there, where he can be set forever. But he’s told: cover your hut in planks, husband your livestock, plow your land, etc. For ten years, he’s followed the rules in his hut, roofed it with bark or hay, and fed himself through his own handicraft, which would earn him even more in the new Ussuri Territory, where such a lot of construction is going on; but he’s told: now develop a full-scale farm and undertake a business unfamiliar to you here—plow the land, and then you can leave everything and go to the mainland. In the meantime, they came up with new hurdles for the peasant. “You can sell your hut,” they tell him, “but not the land; that’s government land.” Take this other inexplicable hurdle. Over several years, with his own hands, a fellow roots his land, builds a hut on it, and cultivates a garden; but he is told: “The land is the government’s, so you can either sell the hut or bring it wherever you want.” However, the chancery seems to have canceled this latter demand.

3

I.e., the Imperial Cabinet. [Trans.]

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More than once, I petitioned Butakov on behalf of exile-settlers. “I simply don’t understand,” he told me, “why can’t you be nicer? By no means whatsoever is an exile being withheld on Sakhalin. There were the good property owners [here he recalled several names renowned in Rykovsk] Loviagin, Skubko, etc. What fields they had, so many cattle! With their own hands, they established beautiful farms here… But they abandoned everything and left. To me, it’s shameful they were allowed to go to the mainland: they were improving our settlement. But it was impossible: they had long ago received the right to enter the peasantry. Now, I would kick Palevo’s exile-settlers out of the district with pleasure. They’ll never amount to anything. But I can’t: I’ve been ordered to keep folks from leaving—and I will. Another person I know has been an exile-settler for fourteen years! The man’s obedient, but I keep him anyway. I don’t have the right to let such a man go who’s not got a farm here.” Yet meanwhile there was the question, If the criterion was not an exile’s wealth but his moral constitution, then who got released to the mainland and who got treated more fairly? Butakov knew his exile-settlers enough to determine who was an incontestably dissolute person and danger to society and who, by contrast, would make a wonderful, honorable citizen on the mainland. Do you know who had already covered his roof with planks?—The trickster, exploiter, maidanshchik, usurer. These various gentlemen sometimes won a coveted position among the rest of the exiles and were somehow quickly released from labor. They entered the peasantry earlier and, more than anyone, eventually moved on to new crimes on the mainland. Worse, because of these “Sakhalin citizens,” as they’re ironically called in Vladivostok, a bad reputation extends to all sakhalintsy. One, for example, went to the mainland and, with a forged check, got ten thousand rubles from a government bursar, and another was hired to gild a church cupola and pasted it with gold paper that washed off in the first rain; even worse is the brazen robbery accompanied by murder. Such deeds have more than once elicited resistance on the part of the region’s leadership to sakhalintsy coming to the mainland and, of course, have provoked new repressions against the exile population. The system of forcibly retaining exile-settlers on Sakhalin beyond their designated legal sentences turned them strongly against Butakov. Some tried to get around him with petitions to His Highness. I once happened to write such a petition for a good muzhik, whose family in Russia was active on his behalf. They sent to Sakhalin a statement by the village commune requesting this exile be returned to them. He went to the district commander. Butakov barely glanced at the petition, and with sarcasm told him: “No one comes back from a graveyard!”

CHAPTER 13 Leaving Sakhalin • Penal laborers building the Ussuri Railroad • Laborers’ complaints • Difficulty on the Amur • The development of a steamship line • The pay office • Drunken sailors • Sakhalintsy’s thinnest praise • Depending on the katorga island • Definitively breaking from Sakhalin When, for certain exiles, the legal avenues for exiting Sakhalin had closed, fate seemed to take pity on the melancholic masses in bondage and deliver another avenue for leaving. To accelerate construction of the Ussuri Railroad,1 a decision was made to draft, in addition to Chinese and military detachments, exiles for the groundwork. This news flew quickly through Sakhalin and excited the whole population. “Here’s the exit to the mainland!” sakhalintsy immediately realized, and they flocked to their district commanders to request the railroad. Regardless of having been warned of the difficulty of groundwork, the insalubrious conditions, and that, upon the job’s conclusion, they would be returned to the island, the exiles were undeterred. “It’s all talk!” they consoled themselves. “My term’ll finish while there. There’ll be a diff’rent leadership—perhaps more merciful! … What can I get in a settlement? Our brother craftsman’s much valued o’er there! … You can knock up some good money…” Etc. With such cheerful illusions, a large party of laborers left for Vladivostok. Butakov, of course, personally chose these folks. During that time, many did indeed finish their labor terms and work sufficiently well in the Ussuri Territory; but some who returned to Sakhalin told about life on the rail line. Notably: the work’s difficulty always depended, not 1

This was the easternmost section of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, construction of which began in 1892. [Trans.]

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on local conditions, but who their managers were. A stern fellow, a sort of L—— whose cruelty proved to be astonishing, turned out to be there. His brutal acts were spoken of as something extraordinary, even on Sakhalin. The penal laborers complained greatly about their abusive treatment, and said it was as if an “island” of punishment had been created for them there, in the Ussuri Territory—like a small stone, deep in Amur Bay, not far from Vladivostok. The exile-settlers similarly complained about the restrictive measures for them on the railroad. In general, most who returned were dissatisfied by this latest “latrine,” and their stories doused the ardor of others who aspired to go into bonded labor in the Ussuri Territory. Far more enthusiastically, sakhalintsy traveled aboard a steamer, not to Vladivostok, but along the well-traveled route to Nikolaevsk and further up the Amur. This is understandable. Sixteen rubles was a lot of money for a poor exile-settler; and for three rubles, it was of course preferable to get to the mainland by the nearer route through Nikolaevsk. Moreover, sakhalintsy felt their druthers more in that city. There, it can assuredly be said, over half the population has originated as penal laborers, so the arrival of another exile occasions neither surprise nor charity. What principally draws a sakhalinets to the Amur is earning an honest living, which he can depend on as soon as he touches shore. If he has some savings, he can hurry to the mouth of the Amur to salt and sell the first keta catch, which, as a basic fish, is highly valued throughout the Maritime Region; if he has no money, he goes to work building steamers or as a crewman on a sailing vessel. Eastern Siberia’s rivers, especially the Amur and Ussuri, have become much busier with construction of the Siberian railroad. Several state and private steamship lines have been created to transport the millions of poods of railroad materials, and they generate a huge demand for human labor. The wage for a common sailor on a barge is as high as thirty-five rubles a month! Certain telegraph personnel have found it profitable to abandon their jobs and become sailors or court clerks. Craftsmen are also highly valued in the region. A typical carpenter, for example, gets 1 r. 80 k. a day.2 Finally, albeit not on the river, one can earn a good living in the goldmines. With a moderate lifestyle, a basic laborer along the Ussuri River can put aside 25 rubles a month in savings. Unfortunately, alongside the large earnings there has developed in the Amur terrible drunkenness. Sakhalintsy are especially fond of vodka. Happening upon a tavern such as some may not have seen for fifteen or twenty years, they quickly blow all their earnings. I’ve seen drinking destroy many an able worker. 2

One ruble 80 kopeks per diem equaled a monthly salary of around 45 rubles, which would have been quite high for the Russian Far East at that time. [Trans.]

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So as not to depend on reckless sakhalintsy, certain steamer captains have turned to retired soldiers, peasant exile-settlers, and the foreign element—the Japanese and Chinese. In the Amur, they’ve lately become afraid of sakhalintsy, so that even sober and responsible Sakhalin natives have to disguise their connection to the island of penal laborers. “…When you come here,” that shore’s lucky arrivals write to comrades remaining on Sakhalin, “mention nowhere, but especially in Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk, that you’re sakhalintsy, otherwise you’ll find getting even a corner in a landlord’s apartment in the city difficult. Our brother is shunned like the plague here.” All Sakhalin peasants and exile-settlers who wander throughout the Amur Territory and haven’t yet enrolled in some Eastern Siberia village are tied strongly to the penal laborers’ island by their internal passports.3 Sakhalin tethers them as if a bundle of three invisible ropes were extending from its three administrative centers: Aleksandrovsk Post, Korsakovsk, and Rykovsk. A “Sakhalin citizen” ’s disconcerting passport is the first thing noticed when he meets someone on the mainland. “I sent my ticket-of-leave to Aleksandrovsk this year and asked to be sent a new one, but I’ve been waiting five months. I don’t know if they’ll send it to me…” “But how did you send it? Did you include the money for the change of passport?” “I sent the legal document but didn’t include any money. I didn’t know I had to.” “That was needed. It’s being held up because of this.” Only when he severs this last thread, that is, can tear up his passport referencing the island, does a person stop being, for others, a terrible “sakhalinets.” But this isn’t so easy: it takes a lot of time, paperwork, and money! However, if he succeeds in being enrolled in a communal association of Siberian peasants or townsmen, he immediately becomes a fully empowered everyman, and no longer bears the disgraceful sobriquet “sakhalinets.”

3

An internal passport system designated which cities and districts subjects were supposed to reside in. Individuals were also tied to various social estates through communal associations, of which the village communal associations (obshchestva) were the most numerous. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 14 A visit to Rykovsk settlement • An itinerary to entertain guests • The church • The prison • The school • The stable • The potato palace • The mill • The gardens • The fields • The Tymovsk military command • A clash between soldiers and the exile population • Between two fires From time to time, important persons visited Rykovsk, and they always went into raptures over everything they saw and learned. But this was understandable. They were not long-term guests and spent a few days, no more, in our settlement; and in such a large district as Tymovsk, it was easy to amuse someone for so brief a time. A special itinerary had been devised for this purpose. Each time a new person (a general, a notable, a correspondent, and other types) arrived from the other shore, we knew beforehand where he was going and what he’d be shown. Honored guests visited the church first. Expansive and bright, with iconostases carved from local elmwood, it made a pleasing impression. Especially delightful were the inlays of various woods on the majesterial doors, made by Butakov himself. If it was a holiday, fine singing by the convict choir during services definitively won guests over into sincerely praising the local church. “And all this, you say, was done by penal laborers? Remarkable! …” guests would exclaim. The new school, with its crowd of children of both sexes, greatly astounded them. The prison was usually shown off while the penal laborers were away at their jobs. In these circumstances, the wards would have been decorated with fresh sprigs of elm and fir and the floors covered with pine needles, so that their resinous scent concealed the unbearable stench characteristic of prisoners’ quarters. Guests were then shown the workshops in the prison yard. In the joinery, they were, without fail, shown the tables, wardrobes, and boxes

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made from Sakhalin wood burls, and at that point the intrigued guests would be sold some memento. There followed the tour of the prison’s operations. The farm and its operations were in model order. The horses had a large structure, clean, dry, and not as offensively smelly as the prisoners’ barracks. The entire row of government horses was well-fed, healthy, and had smoothly shining, painstakingly cleaned coats. Various shiny carriages were in the barn. “But is this, too, the work of penal laborers?” guests asked. “Everything’s made here…” Not far from the hospital, upon which they’d also glanced in passing, was located a grand building. The house—not a house, a barn—not a barn, a… “What is this?” guests asked. “The potato palace…” “Wha-a-at?! …” Instead of an explanation, they were ushered inside. Vast heaps of potatoes would be arranged on two levels. Simple passageways had been formed around them using tubs of sauerkraut. In places, there were iron stoves for maintaining the appropriate temperature during strong frosts. For the guests, all this was so interesting, so novel, and, under the circumstances, so clean, that they got the most wonderful impression of the settlement and praised everything sincerely. Revelatory impressions surrounded them and, after the tour, a tasty supper and a soft bed awaited them in the commander’s home. The itinerary continued the following day. Along a natural alleyway of gigantic poplars and willows, boisterous horses took the guests in a beautiful pram to the Tym River. They crossed a long wooden bridge. Wide, solid, beautiful, it elicited the guests’ amazement. “Such constructions the penal laborers make here without an architect!” they rapturously exclaimed. At a second bridge there was a dam, retaining a rather wide lake. Near the dam was a watermill. Water filled the catch, the millstone turned, and one grain sack after another disappeared into the maw of a shoot… “Built by exiled penal laborers,” the guests obligingly said. “Beautiful! Beautiful! What a picture! It’s like the most expensive dachas are here—this could be Petersburg. What wonderful air! So much water and greenery! And what beautiful mountains surround the horizon! …” But the itinerary was still not finished. The guests were taken to one of the nearby settlements and along the way long shown beds of cabbage, potatoes, and other vegetables. In various spots amid the beds, uprooted tree stumps smoldered to drive off the cabbage butterflies. A rippling sea of yellow flowers encircled and guarded them. To the right or left of the road, the entire broad valley overflowed with golden waves of grain, beneath bright, warm sunlight.

A VISIT TO RYKOVSK SETTLEMENT

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“This here is raw barley,” explained the district’s helpful master. “And this is rye. This year, if God gives a hang during the reaping, there should be a good harvest. And here’s a green strip of wheat. That should start ripening soon.” “They say grain doesn’t grow on Sakhalin; but, you know, this is a real granary!” an amazed guest would proclaim. Smiling smugly, the district commander would propose going fishing or to a fish corral. “Enough, enough! Don’t have to see everything. You’ve hosted me well. I’m very, very grateful! What order and cleanliness… I’ve completely forgotten I’m in the midst of an island of penal laborers.” If it was a correspondent from a Russian or a foreign journal, he was yet shown several Sakhalin celebrities of the “Golden Hand” type, and even gifted with photographs.1 The local military command, occupying its own solid structures in a special quarter in the center of Rykovsk settlement, would also sufficiently engage important military guests, with a parade reception, departure ceremony, gymnastics, and other martial activities. The soldiers also had a large farm, their own cattle, gardens, and meadows. During their early years in Rykovsk settlement, they had performed the same jobs as exile-settlers and penal laborers: the same clearing of land for grass meadows, the same cutting of wood in winter, the constructing of new buildings, salting of fish, gardening of vegetables, and so on. Only under their second military commander, after the command’s financial operations had been more or less established, did they turn attention to frontline training. Bachelor soldiers lived in a large barracks in the quarter, but the married ones lived in individual shacks among the exile-settlers. Since officers did not try to isolate the lower ranks from the exile community, they willy-nilly clashed during strolls, inside the shops, or at labor sites. The soldiers usually kept superciliously apart from the exile-settlers, as if from an indecent people over whom constantly hung, in the form of the rods, a reprisal for attempting to defend their own human dignity. During all my eight years in Rykovsk settlement, only once did I hear of exile-settlers daring to gratify three rowdy drunks from the local command; but this roused nearly the entire company and, having rushed to the site of the fracas, they knocked down one drunken laborer and beat him so badly the poor man had to be taken to the infirmary.

1

Iuvachëv is referring to Son´ka Goldenhand, a famous thief and con artist exiled to the island. A photograph of her and other images were sold as postcards on Sakhalin. He will have more to say about her further on. [Trans.]

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More serious clashes happened in Aleksandrovsk Post, but I know of them only through hearsay. I myself happened to experience the soldiers’ unwelcome attitude towards exile-settlers. Every evening at 9 o’clock, upon conclusion of my meteorological observations, I would walk past the homes of the military commander and the district commander. The former was protected by an armed guard, but the latter by a pack of vicious dogs. They would sometimes bite one or another exile-settler. All the same, every evening, they were left unchained, and at the very time I would be going home. I always had great difficulty getting past this pack; but one winter evening, the vicious dogs, lashing out furiously, hounded me toward the military commander’s house. Beneath the bright moonlight the guard, spotting me in my helpless condition, confronted me, aimed his rifle, and rudely shouted: “Where ya goin’?!” It was a close call! But I didn’t find myself between two fires for long: the dogs’ fury slackened before that of the soldier and they retreated, clearing the way home for me.

CHAPTER 15 First news in the press about the Onor atrocities • A Sakhalin correspondent’s investigations • The commandant’s menacing threats • N. P——’s arrest • Two fates • Administrators’ attitude towards exiles • The suicides of K—— and D——i In the summer of 1892, a Professor Krasnov came to Sakhalin.1 Wishing to understand the island’s nature up close, he followed, in Rykovsk, a neglected route through the Pilinga and further along the Poronai River to Patience Bay. Exiled penal laborers accompanying him in the capacity of guides and porters unabashedly told him about the latest happenings in Tymovsk District. Upon arriving in Russia, the professor published his impressions of the island in the journal Books of the Week,2 in which he described Khanov’s beastly violence toward starving, defenseless people. As if to support his stories, correspondence from Sakhalin began appearing sporadically in the newspaper Vladivostok. The Onor business was finally being spoken of abroad. The administration grew anxious. It would seem to have been necessary to extinguish the fire quickly, that is, to investigate the matter onsite, sack Khanov, make new arrangements, and pay especial attention to those being beaten; but the opposite was immediately done: Khanov was prominently left in charge at Onor and, scandalously, D. S. Klimov was nearly removed; the nascent “Onor Affair” was “put under the rug,” even stricter censorship was imposed on exiles’ letters, and a search was launched to identify among them the Vladivostok correspondent. Truth be said, the correspondents3 sometimes overdid it. Alongside writing about the Onor developments, they touched on administrators’ intimate lives 1 2 3

Professor Andrei N. Krasnov, a botanist and geographer from Khabarovsk University, originally went to the island to conduct research in his fields of expertise. [Trans.] Knizhki nedeli. Iuvachëv resorts to the plural here, apparently to indicate a suspicion that more than one person was corresponding with the press. [Trans.]

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and didn’t begrudge scandalous petty tales concerning exile-settlers. It was immediately possible to surmise by the articles’ nature that the hand writing them was not that of an educated person but some poorly educated clerk. Nonetheless, the leadership concluded for itself that the correspondent was to be found among Rykovsk settlement’s educated exiles. One day, the commandant came to our district.4 As per the famous itinerary, he was shown all the sights in Rykovsk settlement. Of course, he was left very satisfied by everything he saw. Following his tour of the neighboring settlements, my comrades and I were summoned to the police administration’s chancery. Supposing the commandant wished to personally familiarize himself with us, we calmly entered into his presence; but, having noticed his stern face, I immediately understood that the conversation to occur would not be of a completely peaceful nature. Having asked Butakov our names and employs, the commandant strictly advised us that if we were to write from Sakhalin as correspondents, he would banish us to the north. During this, he menacingly pointed his finger at us. Keenly insulted by the commandant’s speech and that menacing finger (neither before nor after, during all my ordeals in prison and exile, did an administrator allow himself to behave similarly toward me), I was incapable of producing one word in response: my throat and chest had tightened from the insult and his apoplectic outburst. My comrades also maintained a sepulchral silence. Not only did we not know the Vladivostok correspondent, we didn’t sympathize with the manner of his writings. I left the chancery utterly depressed. My comrades probably felt no better themselves, because one of them, N. L. P——,5 could not keep from going to the commandant’s apartment to try to explain himself. There, the commandant, suspecting him of being the correspondent, bawled him out and immediately ordered him arrested and held in the guardhouse for an entire month. In the meantime, the undaunted Vladivostok correspondent continued to expose Sakhalin’s habits. The commandant’s severe attitude towards us now found reflection in our treatment as exiles by certain administrators and officers. Here is one typical instance I experienced. Two months before our commandant’s visit, I had been called to Aleksandrovsk Post to establish a meteorological station there. I traveled with one of Sakhalin’s officers on the return trip to Rykovsk settlement. The long

4 5

I.e., the island’s governor, Major General Vladimir D. Merkazin. [Trans.] Nikolai L. Perlashkevich. [Trans.]

FIRST NEWS IN THE PRESS ABOUT THE ONOR ATROCITIES

185

trek facilitated conversation. Finding we had in common several acquaintances from our pasts, we gladly opened up to each other about our previous lives. It turned out we were practically the same age. As a youth, he’d been held in poor regard by his authorities, always got a low score for his behavior, and, it seems, was expelled from military school. Nevertheless, he was somehow accepted to become an officer. Moreover, later, in the service, he rather quickly distinguished himself through comparatively good behavior. I, by contrast, had studied diligently, never got a score of less than twelve for behavior, earned high praise from superiors during my service, and… ended up in katorga. There we now were, together in the same place, sitting beside each other in a single tarantass, though, given our societal rankings, we were actually far apart from one another. Struck by fate’s capriciousness, we reached home amicably and parted quite warmly. He asked me to visit him that evening. Following the commandant’s visit to Rykovsk settlement, this officer, when encountering me, pretended not to know me. I, of course, could not dissociate him from that dear interlocutor, as he’d seemed, plowing forward with a Russian soul, who’d not long earlier traveled from Aleksandrovsk Post with me. By contrast, one of my cohabitants from the prison, the student M. N. K——, tried with all his might to enter their society.6 He soon achieved his goal. And this was not so difficult, as he only had to spend every day either hunting or simply in friendly conversation with administrators and officers from the local command. Did this satisfy him? No. He could not sustain such a life for four years, and finished it with a terrible suicide: he simultaneously took strychnine and shot himself in the chest with a rifle. Regardless of such an irreversible decision to part from the world around him, the poor wretch, fully conscious, had to wait ten hours before dying. As soon as news of K——’s suicide reached Aleksandrovsk Post, another of our comrades, the very P. D——i who had so hospitably accepted us upon arrival to Sakhalin, followed his example and quickly ended himself with a single shot.7 I recall these two suicides with intention. They were caused mainly by a captive melancholia and a cognizance that they, as people, had been irretrievably banished from society.

6 7

Mikhail N. Kancher. [Trans.] Piotr Dobrowski. Other accounts report that Dobrowski stabbed himself to death. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 16 The situation for educated people on the island • A Sakhalin family • Deceptive expectations • Drunkenness • The disbursement of vodka • Spirits • A guard’s revelry • Sakhalin’s sobriety measures The most terrible punishment is that, when hope for freedom is removed or extenuated for so many years (after completing katorga, one must live six years as an exile-settler and ten as a peasant to obtain the right to return within the boundaries of European Russia), a person finally loses patience and becomes sakhalinized. After tortured ambivalence, certain educated exiles finally decide to take a katorga gal into their homes and basically settle down on the island. Then come the children and, with them, there naturally arises a familial connection to Sakhalin. Others remain strong, lead a normal life, and dream of a family in the future, ideally in Russia. Meanwhile, the best years go by, gray hairs prematurely emerge, old age visibly approaches. The knowledge that nearly all of his life is going by in a form of deceptive anticipation utterly oppresses a man. He becomes ill, nervous, irritable. Seeing an exile suffer mentally and physically on Sakhalin is terrible! And if death doesn’t creep up in the form of consumption or some other illness, the unfortunate wretch finishes himself off with a bullet or strychnine. Some take to the consolation common to the grieving—vodka. If well-to-do freemen with families and holding a respected position on Sakhalin cannot endure life there and quench their melancholy with vodka, what can be expected of an exile?! In Tymovsk District, there was no open sale of alcohol. It was brought in from Aleksandrovsk Post for exiled settlers only on the eve of big holidays. The arrival of liquor to Rykovsk was quite an event! In a moment, a throng of muzhiks and gals with their bottles came rushing from every corner to the community hut. Each was poured an amount predetermined by the commander. I knew of only one person on Sakhalin who did not avail himself

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of his right to purchase a bottle of alcohol from the treasury, everyone else begged to receive, if possible, more of the all-comforting drink, if not for themselves then to sell. Alcohol was a most lucrative article for a teetotaler on Sakhalin. He paid government price but would charge another exile four or five times that amount, especially if he’d saved his liquor for the end of the holidays. Sometimes, in Rykovsk settlement, when the conclusion of Christmastide or Holy Week was still far off and all the allotted booze had been consumed, they’d suddenly go buy the eau-de-cologne in the Jew Manikh’s shop. On Sakhalin, they drank any vile thing, as long as it was intoxicating. Lacquer, varnish, perfume, even apothecary tinctures were all suitable to a local drunk. For some exiled muzhik, eau-de-cologne was just another few steps. A certain guard, who’d originated as an exile, ended up separating himself from his Russian soul by a huge expanse. He was drinking his liquor with water, shellac, and eau-de-cologne. Suddenly, he noticed an expensive flagon of perfume on the shelf. “Gimme the perfume! Belongs to me, y’know! …” But next day, he didn’t have a face: that’s how much these “alcoholic” drinks blew him away. If some guard in one of the administrative centers (Aleksandrovsk Post, Dué, Rykovsk, etc.) gave himself to drink and became belligerent toward exilesettlers and penal laborers, this was only half bad: there’d be someone there to deal with him. But it was calamitous when, in some remote settlement, an intoxicated guard, who alone represented the leadership there, was drinking. What could defenseless exile-settlers do with him?! During the 1893 Christmas holidays there was, for example, a disgraceful episode in the nascent settlement of Taulan, when the intoxicated guard T——ii decided to fire his revolver at passing exile-settlers. Warden L——, himself always sober, prosecuted drinking in his prison with all possible means. Once, he flogged for drunkenness a certain exile who at one time had taught in a seminary. This young, healthy man had apparently, while drunk, insulted a priest. Having learned of this, L—— now ordered the seminarian to the chains prison. Next day, he was brought for his corporal punishment. “Please!” begged the seminarian. “I was drunk when I thoughtlessly insulted him.” “I’m not punishing you for impertinence, but for drinking. For impertinence, I wouldn’t be so severe with you. Lie down!” “Please!” the seminarian continued begging. “I couldn’t control myself after the second goblet, and can’t remember what I did…”

SITUATION FOR EDUCATED PEOPLE ON THE ISLAND

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“I’m not punishing you for the second goblet, but for the first. Don’t drink the first, and you won’t drink a second. Lads,” the warden turned to the headmen, “lay him out!” For the guards, whom L—— did not have the right to punish with rods, he dreamed up another method for immediate sobering. “As soon as I see my L——ii start drinking,” he was telling some other administrators, “I order him dragged into the hot bathhouse and keep him there several hours—he soon comes to himself !”

PART IV

CHAPTER 1 The new status of exile-settler • Decline in air quality • News of the governor-general’s arrival • Meeting Baron Korf in Rykovsk • The arrival of N. I. Grodekov • Sakhalin flags • The general’s simple arrangements • His tour of district settlements • Submitting petitions • A lack of administrators Time never stops. You struggled through the days… Saw them become months and years! The end of my katorga term was slowly approaching. Either because that moment was so long anticipated or because the new status of exile-settler would hardly alter my external circumstances, I was not especially giddy. In material terms, my new status was even worse than the previous one: along with footwear and fabric for clothing, I stopped getting the food ration (1 pood 27 pounds of flour, 12½ pounds of meat, and 5 pounds of groats) that is issued to exiled penal laborers. As before, I was deprived of freedom of movement and, most importantly, did not have the right to go to the mainland: I still had to tolerate an indefinite number of years on Sakhalin. This waiting for something new as if it were brighter underscores all the adversities of exile life. My loss of many close friends during the recent years was especially difficult. Also, my comrades who remained were weakening in spirit and becoming very irritable. My interest towards all things Sakhalin notably slackened. And during those years, the general backdrop of life in Tymovsk District was darkened by frequent murders and suicides. Everything became difficult, suffocating. Following the influenza that tormented one and all in Rykovsk during summer 1893, there emerged a sort of moral depression, a spiritual influenza… So as to dispel the accumulated gases of that inescapable swamp of Sakhalin katorga life, there had to be breathed some sweet, fresh air from the outside.

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News of a visit by the Amur Territory’s assistant governor-general, Nikolai Ivanovich Grodekov, was such a breath of fresh air. The administration roused itself to get ready for this important guest’s arrival. Everyone still recalled the earlier visit to Sakhalin by the late governor-general Baron N. A. Korf. For everyone, that had been a real holiday. He’d visited us in Rykovsk settlement on a warm, bright, July day. Exile-settlers and women with children in bright cotton prints were standing in two huge crowds around a triumphal gate—a tall wooden arch covered in greenery—specially built for the guest. There, a grateful exile-settler greeted him with bread and salt and delivered, on behalf of the entire exile community, a short speech,1 in answer to which Nikolai Andreevich precipitately granted him peasant status. Then, having reviewed the local command’s honor guard, he proceeded to converse with the exile-settlers. Almost no selfish requests were lodged. They spoke of shared needs and, primarily, about local conditions for growing grain. If there were complaints, they were only about the weather. After a brief rest, the baron and his multitudinous suite were shown the prison’s financial operations, according to the established itinerary. Everything, of course, was praised, everything was saluted. The administration’s operations were most wonderful, delightful, satisfying. It was proposed that the new governor-general2 be fêted similarly. Again, they began planning to build a triumphal arch, and once more, they ordered an expensive platter be carved for carrying the bread and salt, and they found a bunch of new flags… but all of a sudden there came a notification: according to the general’s wishes, there should be no arches or platters, and the usual ceremonial reception should not be held. 1

2

Here it is, word for word: Your Most High Excellency! Joyless fate has found us fit to forget our homeland, our origins, and to settle us in a corner of the world amidst impenetrable forests. God help us. In a short while, we built homes, cleared the valley under meadow and field, husbanded livestock, raised a cathedral, and now, as you can see, there’s a whiff of Rus´ here. Yet, hidden from people behind mountains and forests, we dared not imagine, as outcasts from society, that one of the Russian government’s most high excellencies would visit us. The Lord saw our humility, and now yours are the first feet to walk here with the authority and patronage of the tsar, with the father of our country’s mercifulness and attention toward criminal outcasts. Your Most High Excellency! We welcome you with joy! We are gladdened by the hope that you will leave us with a memory of your attention to our needs and requests, and will not forego our village greeting of bread and salt. [Iu.] Iuvachëv means the assistant governor-general, Grodekov. The man who succeeded Korf as the Amur Territory’s governor-general was Sergei M. Dukhovskoi. [Trans.]

THE NEW STATUS OF EXILE-SETTLER

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In early spring, on 29 April,3 N. I. Grodekov arrived in Rykovsk. Accompanied by a small suite, he quickly rolled up to the crowd of exilesettlers, accepted their bread and salt (he didn’t keep the carved platter), and went immediately to the prison and from there to the infirmary. Noticing the hanging flags of white, red, and black stripes (the cotton material was so dark it appeared completely black4), the general asked the district commander:5 “Of what government are these flags?” The embarrassed commander was unable to provide an answer and promised to change them. These “Sakhalin” flags had incensed me as well. Well before the general’s arrival, I’d tried to inform the district commander that the blue stripe on the Russian flag is located in the middle, not on the edge, but the simpleminded commander subsequently failed to ascribe much significance to the stripes’ order. Butakov was prepared to quarter Nikolai Ivanovich in his home, but the general, a true inspector, deflected this offer and asked for a spare hut. He was shown to the large schoolhouse that had recently been built. He stayed there with his only servant, who was everything for him: a lackey and a cook. Such a simple life puzzled Rykovsk’s administrators, yet they were even more surprised the following day, when the general expressed a desire to go to Onor. “It’s impossible to get there now,” the district commander told him. “There was snow not long ago, and because the rivers have overflowed their banks, the wet areas still haven’t dried out.” “But the exile-settlers? Don’t they go anywhere?” “Yes, they make their way by foot along the mucky road, and in some places have to plow knee-deep or higher through the mud.” “We go!” The governor-general quickly got ready, and traveled in his tarantass to the settlement of Palevo and, as far as possible, further up the new road. This excursion was quite beyond the itinerary of vivid scenes of a wellfashioned Tymovsk District. Along the way, the general espied the newly founded, wretched settlements in all their horrifying splendor. Impoverished shacks stood among gaunt larches. A small clutch of downcast settlers 3 4

5

1894. [Trans.] The official flag of the Russian Empire was a tricolor consisting of horizontal white, blue, and red stripes. (This was revived as Russia’s state flag in 1991.) Iuvachëv is pointing out that the flag in Rykovsk was so poorly made that the blue stripe appeared black. [Trans.] I.e., A. M. Butakov. [Trans.]

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attempted to describe, in timid voices, the blighted “’tater” they planted in the cold, tundric soil… Pitiful poverty! Forcibly established on unproductive soil, these settlements, these various Taulans and Daldagans, had by then been abandoned and stricken from the rosters by order of the senior administration. With a stiff upper lip, the general pushed through the boggy land, further to Onor. During the trip from Rykovsk, the district commander had hoped the long, arduous journey down the impassable road would stop Nikolai Ivanovich; but the energetic general, who when on the barren steppes of Central Asia had not halted,6 pressed stubbornly on all the more. The district commander became absolutely dispirited. And why not?! He knew that further on, still sadder scenes would be revealed. In Onor, Nikolai Ivanovich stayed in a simple exile-settler’s hut and not with those terrible guards responsible for the “Onor Affair.” All the exiles were granted untrammeled access to the general and candidly told him their misfortunes. Late in the evening of the next day, the general returned to Rykovsk. He obviously wanted to become generally familiar with Tymovsk District, because in the morning, he again went rolling with Butakov north through the Tym River valley. At that end, the settlements of Derbinsk, Voskresensk, Uskovo, and others are more favorably placed: their wide meadows and fields, interspersed by beautiful groves, approximate to a certain extent the villages of some Russian visitor. The general would seem to have inspected everything in the district, but he did not think of leaving. He wanted to learn all about the seamy side of local life, not from the mendacious chancery paperwork, but from reality itself. So he now hospitably opened the doors of his vast quarters in the schoolhouse to anyone wishing to speak to him. This was a true holiday for Sakhalin’s exiles! From morning to evening, an entire crowd of supplicants arrived one after the other. Men and women, exiles and freemen, together rejoiced at the opportunity to state their needs and to file petitions. Some asked for their children’s food stipends to be increased, others to be enrolled in the peasantry, still others appealed for clemency from His Highness. Yet, most heard was a request by exile-settlers that the recent manifesto granting peasant status and the right to go to the mainland be applied to them. The general listened patiently to each supplicant, quickly made the correct appraisal, and did not delay his decision. His assistants Captain S. G.

6

A reference to Grodekov’s former service location. [Trans.]

THE NEW STATUS OF EXILE-SETTLER

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Leontovich and the seconded administrator A. A. Kulomzin worked day and night, with hardly a break, on the pile of business that had formed. All the district’s literate people engaged in developing petitions for exile-settlers. I was asked by acquaintances and non-acquaintances to write them as well. At one point, I had to bring a testimonial to the police administration. Always polite and favorable toward me, the official B——kh abruptly and rudely asked why I was bothering to write petitions for exile-settlers. Not wishing to be deceptive or to be doing anything in secret, I appealed to the district commander. “Yes, that’s the truth,” he told me, “you’re composing them for nothing, because there’s going to be a general order transferring all exile-settlers into the peasantry.” This was said so dejectedly, and at the same time in such a bitter voice, that it was as if he’d wanted to say: “For eight years, I’ve been a diligent servant. With pained heart, I sometimes kept exile-settlers from leaving the island, but that was according to the leadership’s orders. Now, with this unfortunate Onor business, the general has a low opinion of me, and I alone am being blamed for everyone else’s sins.”

CHAPTER 2 My meeting with General Grodekov • A false rumor about our relationship • Golden Hand • A tearful, sobbing confession • The energetic general • Rykovsk under the Russian flag • Resurrection of the dead • N. I. Grodekov’s parting speech • Old Lady Marˊia’s request On the fifth day of his sojourn in Rykovsk, General Grodekov unexpectedly visited me at home, to inspect the meteorological station. After talking a bit about the weather, he asked me to write a brief description of the local valley’s climate, and left. This encounter generated considerable excitement among the exile-settlers, who viewed my house not as an official establishment, but exclusively as a residential building given me by the government. “The general,” they said, “didn’t visit the district commander or the warden, but him, an exile-settler. That’s no accident! He must be his relative, or they were in the service together…” This news quickly spread throughout the settlement. Exiles besieged me with even more requests to petition the general for them. Two days after my meeting with Nikolai Ivanovich, a smartly dressed Jewish woman with heavily rouged cheeks came to me. I didn’t know her, but she quickly introduced herself: “Bloeffstein. Here, they call me ‘Golden Hand,’ but this is mistaken: the real Golden Hand is in Odessa, but they falsely put me here under that name.” Suddenly, she burst into tears. I hurriedly sat her down. “How can I be of service to you?” I asked. She didn’t respond, and sat and cried.

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I’d often happened to see the proverbial “Golden Hand” in the company of the exile Bogdanov, in his own right a Sakhalin celebrity due to his criminal exploits. Always giving me an unpleasant sensation, this couple would insouciantly stroll about the settlement and exploit local simpletons using various illegal stratagems. Only now was I getting the opportunity to see the woman up close. Had Sofia Bloeffstein wanted, she could have easily found accomplices for any criminal undertaking there. I don’t know how justifiably, but in Aleksandrovsk Post, popular rumor credited several major crimes to her “golden hands.” Following her second escape attempt from katorga, she was punished and sent across the Pilinga Range to our Tymovsk District. “Perhaps you want me to write a petition for you?” I asked her anew. She shook her head “no” and kept crying. I felt completely at a loss before such an abundant fountain of tears. Amid the sobbing, she finally began detailing how she had been roughly dealt with in Aleksandrovsk, shackled and savagely beaten with birch rods…1 Having listened to her grisly testimony, I could not at all imagine what she wanted from me. Without answering my question directly, she began complaining about the commander of Tymovsk District. “It seems to me,” I remarked to her, “the commander, on the contrary, treats you too leniently. He knows, for example, you’ve turned your home into a saloon, yet he looks the other way. And you’re not just selling pure vodka but have got some sort of special beer made out of narcotics, you know. They say as soon as you drink a glass, it’s like you’ve been nailed in the head for the whole day.” “Ah, what’re you on about?! What’re you on about?! I’ll bring you there now. You’ll see what you’ve said isn’t true.” “No, thank you! My watchman tried a glass of your beer and was tormented by a terrible headache the whole night… If you don’t want me to write you a petition, what is it you want of me?” “They say you’re a relative of the general… Can’t you tell him several words for me? …” Like the many other exiles who came with similar requests, I ended up disappointing her. Prison officials tried to block folks’ access to the general and to promote only their versions about the exile-settlers, but were successful at neither.

1

Doroshevich vividly describes this in his book about the penal colony (herein cited at the end of this book’s Foreword). [Trans.]

MY MEETING WITH GENERAL GRODEKOV

201

Nikolai Ivanovich categorically forbid them interfering with his hearing all the exiles’ requests. We were struck by the general’s energy: after working vigilantly all day, he hardly relaxed at night. Among other things, he asked to see D. S. Klimov’s statement on the “Onor Affair.”2 It’s said the description of the guards’ brutality horrified him. Indeed, this was clear from the prison officials’ faces. At that point, the district commander and the prison warden3 lost their heads and, for no reason, suddenly began loudly blaming one another publicly, in the square, in the presence of the general himself. This street scene is etched in my memory. Just a week earlier, they’d been princes of Sakhalin before whom katorga’s impotent slaves trembled. Now, they were feeling the ground beneath them shift and they felt humiliated, cursed, condemned, and impotent. On 6 May, the holiday commenced.4 Rykovsk settlement flew its flags. For once, they were true Russian ones. “Here is when Russia’s rule over us begins!” the exile-settlers joyfully exclaimed. They rejoiced over this. Up till then, the leadership had looked at them, with few exceptions, as dead and buried. “Don’t raise Hell!” they sternly warned. There had been needed someone in the role of a powerful Messiah who would come to this Sakhalin Hell and raise the dead. The exiles had long awaited him. Many were gray-haired old-timers who’d been exile-settlers for over ten years and thus anticipated their Savior. Indeed, the bones of some really were resting for eternity in the local graveyard. Suddenly, a man appeared who had given them hope just by accepting their petitions. “Well, God bless,” said these beaten folk, “we’ll get to see the world yet! …” Having warmly taken leave of the exile-settlers, N. I. Grodekov went to the officials and told them: “Mistakes, oversights, slip-ups—all these may be forgiven; but you, gentlemen, have no hearts! No hearts! …” Upon the general’s departure, a surprising calm emerged in the prison. In the mornings, neither the screams nor crying of men being punished was heard, and even the mare and birch rods were removed, though no instructions at all had been heard regarding this. The voices of administrators and guards were not so loud or harsh. For everyone, there stood the question: 2 3 4

This was the prison warden who launched the initial investigation into the Onor Affair. [Trans.] I.e., A. M. Butakov and N. N. Iartsev, the latter of whom had replaced Livin as Rykovsk Prison’s warden after he relocated to Korsakovsk Post. [Trans.] This date happens to be the birthday of Nicholas II according to the Russian Orthodox calendar. However, the “holiday” Iuvachëv proceeds to describe was evidently a makeshift liberation day for the Tymovsk District’s exiles. [Trans.]

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“What will the main administration in Khabarovsk say?” An old woman, still hearty and cheerful, waddled toward me. “Hello, Marˊiushka. What do you say?” “I heard we’ll be allowed off Sakhalin. I have a young daughter. ‘Come to us, Mommy,’ she says, ‘I’m married now and living well.’ I’ve so wanted to see my daughter. Though near death, I so want to see her there, the sweetheart… Please,” the old woman bowed to me, “write the general a little petition!” “Too late, Marˊiushka, he’s gone. But it doesn’t matter: you’ll be leaving without a petition. You’re going on ten years, you know, so how is it you’re still considered an exile-settler?” “Longer, longer! I’ve already lost count.” Following the general’s departure, one month went by, then another, then a third, but nothing was heard about any sort of general order transferring exilesettlers to the peasantry. Only the intensifying investigation into the “Onor Affair” was heard about. It is likely that the rumor spreading throughout Russia and overseas regarding the Onor atrocities predicated the arrival of still more top officials at the time. This time, old Marˊia5 didn’t miss out, and gave her petition to one of them. She came back to me, radiant and satisfied. “Well,” I asked her, “did they take the petition?” “He took, he took… And was he kind and sweet! ‘Grandmother,’ he asks, ‘why in your old age haven’t you left here?’ ‘Ain’t like I don’t want to,’ I tell him. ‘I’m alone here, but I got a daughter back home there. But I’m an old woman and completely at peace, and I’ll be buried wherever God decides.’ ‘Well, good, good,’ he says. Such a sweet, pleasant general! …” “But did he take your petition? Did he pass it to his adjutant?” “My piece o’ paper? He took it. Took it into his own hands this-a-way, that-a-way, and crumpled it all up when he was talkin’ with me; then he puts it in his pocket and says to me: ‘Very well, grandma, off you go!’ That’s how he took, he took!” “O sancta simplicitas!” I thought. The whole rest of the time I was on Sakhalin, Marˊia waited for an answer to her petition that had been so sweetly taken. Whether she received one and left for her daughter or if, to this day, she recites forty-day prayers6 for Sakhalin’s dead, as she’d done for the previous ten years, I do not know.

5 6

“Mar´iushka” and “Mar´ia” are affectionate diminutives of “Mariia.” [Trans.] In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the sorokoust (sing.) is a cycle of 40 days of prayer for the deceased. Iuvachëv’s portrait of a simpleminded but devout old peasant woman conforms to a sentimental trope common in Russian literature. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 3 The exile-settler Elizaveta K. • Her daughter’s arrival from Russia • Masha’s story about her journey • Matchmaking • Cohabitation with a laborer • A victim of jealousy • Masha’s illness • Abandoning cohabitation Another Rykovsk exile-settler, Elizaveta K., was not treated like Old Lady Marˊia. Disconcerted over the future of an adult daughter left behind in Moscow Province, she was scheming to invite her to Sakhalin and marry her off to a guard or any “good” man in general there. Elizaveta came to me for advice. “My Masha,” she said, “has been living with others ever since I was brought to Sakhalin. She’s now nineteen years old. Who’s going to protect her there? Were she living here with me, she wouldn’t be a maiden very long: there are few good brides here. Only, I don’t know if she can be assigned to me here on the government’s account.” “If your daughter agrees to come to Sakhalin, that can be done.” I feared trying to dissuade Elizaveta from her intentions. I imagined she knew full well the conditions of life there. It was true that few women were on Sakhalin, and that a modest young woman could absolutely count on a good selection, given that certain prison officials and educated exiles transacted even with simple female convicts not just to be their cohabitants but their legal wives. Finally, one had to guess that if a grown-up, literate young woman was agreeing to join penal laborers on Sakhalin, then she was having a difficult time getting married in Moscow. I wrote up the necessary paperwork and told Elizaveta what to do. My petition was crowned with unforeseen success. Masha arrived at Aleksandrovsk Post with exiles aboard the first steamer from Odessa.1 She 1

I.e., the first steamer of the shipping season, which means she would have arrived in April or May. [Trans.]

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was held for several days in quarantine along with the newly arrived female convicts. Her mother, as soon as she learned of Masha’s arrival, went to meet her in Sakhalin’s capital and soon returned with her to Rykovsk. Their first visit was to me. I’d imagined Masha to be a sickly or homely woman who, over despair for her fate, was risking finding fortune in the remote lands of penal laborers; but to my surprise, she proved to be a very attractive, vivacious young woman with pink cheeks. Enervated by the slew of novel impressions during her twomonth journey, she undertook with passion to regale me about her departure from Moscow, route past the “Arapian,” Indian, and Chinese lands, her arrival on Sakhalin, and her time in the quarantine hut. “Everyone told me not to go to Sakhalin. They tried to frighten me that the cold here is incomparable and there’s nothing to eat, and that penal laborers would destroy me… They tried to scare me about sea travel. When I got to the wharf, they tried to dissuade me there. I really don’t know if I can tell you why I decided to go so far away. In Moscow, I went to confession, took communion, and then arrived in Odessa—and once more, I went to confess to a priest, so as to have no remaining sins. I was told that a sinful person can’t cross the sea. As soon as I arrived on Sakhalin, there were suitors here… I’ll have to fight them off!” “You shouldn’t hurry with the suitors,” I told her. “Wait, watch the local folk, then you’ll know what not to do: you can figure everything out for yourself.” But a week hadn’t passed before Elizaveta and her daughter visited me again. “We’ve come for advice,” the mother solemnly announced. “Many suitors are proposing, and Masha likes one very much, but I’m afraid to give her to him: he’s a drinker! I want her to go with the provisions depot watchman. Have you not heard about him?” “No, I don’t know him.” “The man’s got a good vacation2 and has a large income… He bought a house here in Rykovsk not long ago. He’s not a drunk. Only… I really don’t know, maybe you can advise. He can’t get married right now, because he still has three months left in his sentence.3 What do you say?”

2 3

I.e., he held an easy position. [Trans.] By law, after a certain time when he enters the correctional category, a penal laborer obtains the right to marry. For example, someone sentenced to fifteen years katorga labor has the right to enter into a legal marriage only after two years in the probationer category and three years in the correctional category. If a penal laborer has entered into a marriage prior to being sentenced to exile then, according to the new law, the marriage is annulled if the wife refuses to follow her spouse. [Iu.]

THE EXILE-SETTLER ELIZAVETA K

205

“Wait three months. It’s not long! And you’ll know better in three months if he’s the man.” “We’ve agreed to wait, but he doesn’t want to. She either goes with him now or he’ll choose another. He tells me he has to go on duty, and it’s not right to leave home without a reward. That’s how everyone lives here, he says. I really don’t know what to do…” “It’s true,” I answered, “because they’re forbidden to marry, many here do not live in legal marriages and no one judges them for this. But, really, your watchman can wait all of three months. If he liked your daughter, he’d wait a bit! And be kinder toward you. And if he’s threatened to take another woman, then God will deal with him!” As must be, the mother was very attracted by the watchman’s income, and so, soon after our conversation, she installed her daughter in his home. Winter came. A paramedic arrived and told me the young couple was in the infirmary, inside the tents for skin disorders.4 “And so?” I asked. “He’s saying that Marˊia5 infected him, but Marˊia says he did her. No sorting it out!”6 Upon recovery, Masha, pale and crying, visited me without her mother. There was no special reason to visit me. She obviously wanted to explain herself, and the poor woman began telling the sad tale of her provisional marriage. “I didn’t think I’d come here to sit on my momma’s shoulder. It was to build her a home. So, I went with him. I can’t say he liked me. He was always stern, silent, so impersonal. No one dared visit him as a guest, and he left the house only for work. Here’s what happened: right off, he denied me a key and hid my overcoat and kerchief somewhere. I was allowed only to the depot, and even then, he’d come running to see if I was returning home. He was always afraid I’d leave him. He didn’t trust me even at night. He’d wake up in the morning. “ ‘Did you leave?’ he’d ask. “ ‘I didn’t go anywhere.’ “ ‘No, you’re lying! You ran to your lover.’ “He decided to tie the doors shut with a rope. If he heard a knock anywhere at night, he was at me once again: “ ‘Is that your lovers signaling you?’ “So, he’d curse and hit me every day, but then beg forgiveness. I ran off to my mother more than once. He’d come, start begging and promising he’d 4 5 6

Tents were apparently used to limit the spread of infection. [Trans.] “Mar´ia” was the young woman’s proper name, “Masha” being a nickname. [Trans.] Syphilis and veneral diseases in general were widespread on Sakhalin, cases of which appear to have increased as time went on. [Trans.]

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no longer hurt me, kiss my feet, but I’d suspect that he’d attack me again, like a beast. Once, that’s exactly what happened. It was evening, and he’d just removed a wood-splinter from his hand. “ ‘Lie down, Masha,’ he says, ‘I’m going to bed now.’ “As always, the door was locked with the key and the handles tied with the rope. I lie down, and he’s doing fine. We’re sleeping. Suddenly, he wakes me up in the middle of the night. “ ‘Marˊia, what’s this?’ he’s shouting. “I’m neither live nor dead, can’t understand a thing. “ ‘Why’d you put a knife on the bed?’ he says. ‘You wanted to stab me?’ “I couldn’t get a word out, because he grabbed me by the neck, dragged me from the bed to the floor, and began hitting me all over without stopping… Then he opened the cellar door and threw me in, in just my blouse, with the cold ground for my bed. I was beaten, my body hurt, it was freezing… ‘Well,’ I’m thinking, ‘this will be my death…’ Just as suddenly, he opened the cellar, pulled me up, laid me on the bed, and starts kissing my feet. “ ‘Forgive me, Mashenˊka,’ he says. ‘I beat you unfairly. I remember I put the knife on the bed last night after I removed the splinter.’ “He was kissing me all over and begging forgiveness until morning. But I’d decided to leave him. As soon as he left the house, I ran out to the street in just my dress, and with whatever remaining strength, ran through the backyard garden toward my momma’s house. And with no time to spare, because I see he’s running after me. My legs gave way. Thankfully, a neighbor was close by, so he couldn’t make me go back…” Obviously, their definitive break stemmed from both entering the infirmary; but about this she was modestly silent, and I did not insist the sad story be continued.7

7

This is the last of several clues indicating Masha had probably been a prostitute in Moscow. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 4 Women on Sakhalin • Exiled penal laborers • Abolition of corporal punishment • The female penal laborer’s unbridledness and showiness • The female penal laborer’s preference for freedom • Legal wives • Shamelessness • The card game • The chorister O—— Two kinds of women live in Sakhalin’s settlements: those exiled for criminality, and those freewomen who’ve voluntarily followed husbands sentenced to katorga labor there. There’s an enormous difference between them. The exiled woman, very often morally depraved by her time with other criminals in transfer prisons along the way, soon recognizes her power on Sakhalin. She’s needed there. However she is—good or bad, healthy or sick, young or old, beautiful or ugly—she can always find a cohabitant. And as soon as she enters a muzhik’s home, the administration immediately releases her from katorga labor. In 1893, exiled women were freed from the humiliation of corporal punishment. Because the island’s entire regime is founded upon the lash and the birch rod, the abolition of these brutal punishments for women essentially placed them beyond the law. The Sakhalin administration was rendered powerless against them. When corporal punishment is abolished, it should be for the island’s entire population, men and women alike, with alternative punishments being immediately devised to prevent the repetition of crimes. I will say several words about this elsewhere. “Well, Katka,1 we won’t suffer the Devil now!” one unbridled gal shouts to another, vulgarly waving her arms from side to side. 1

During my eight years on the island, I went through many laundresses and cleaners; and my comrades and I noticed a significant majority were named Ekaterina. I also

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There are indeed examples of striking impudence. It’s said one female convict murdered her cohabitant then bragged nothing could be done to her: “Slap me with ten years katorga? Go ahead! Better for me: I’ll get another ten years of rations.” Whereas women have been released from cohabitating with exile-settlers and from katorga labor, they have, at the same time, not been deprived of food provisions and government clothing until the end of their designated katorga terms. Just as there are many haughty, unbridled, flashy katorga gals, there are many crushed, beaten, pitiful freewomen who have gone there, either out of love for their husbands or because of poverty and humiliation back home in the village. They are so distinct that sakhalintsy can, at a single glance, tell whether a convict or a freewoman is going by. “Ah, you whore,” a settler mutters to herself in the wake of a female convict. “In Russia, you’d be going around in bast shoes, but here, it’s as if you’re strutting it: high boots with brass heels!” Of course, each exiled woman endeavors to be the cohabitant of a betteroff guard or exile-settler. And while young and considered a “laborer,” she discriminates and, as happens, replaces her cohabitant more than once; but over the years on Sakhalin, a woman tries to bind her fate more closely to her favorites so to achieve a union with one eventuating in a legal marriage. From a financial perspective, for an exile-settler, a female convict in the household is much better than having one’s own legal wife from Russia, because the latter, as a freewoman, does not receive government provisions. True, if she has children, the treasury provides a small food stipend for them, yet an exiled female convict is not denied this privilege. While still on their way to Sakhalin, husbands will usually begin writing to summon the wives they’ve left behind in Russia. But after they arrive on the island, their husbands, brutalized by katorga’s circumstances, instead of being grateful, disgracefully insult these unfortunate women: “Why’d you come here, and what’s more, with an armful of children?! Am I gonna feed you? You figured out how to get here, so figure out how to earn a kopek! … You legal! You legal, what’re you worth to me?” Ultimately, following a quotidian repetition of insults and beatings, the “legal wife” goes, weeping and sobbing, to earn a twopence through shameful industry. Take, for example, this filthy scene of legal cohabitation on Sakhalin. once happened to see a roster of women newly arrived to katorga, and among them the name Ekaterina was to be encountered most of all. [Iu.] “Katka” is a common abbreviation of “Ekaterina.” [Trans.]

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The husband’s sitting on a bench, darning some worn-out fur boots. A pair of small children is breakfasting on a potato with salt. The mother’s banging tin cauldrons on the stove. Suddenly, the door opens and, sailing inside, is a soldier from the local command, a large black papakha on his head. “Good tidings!” the soldier barks and stands akimbo, like the letter Ф, in the middle of the hut. Having turned away from the soldier, the mistress bangs away on the stove more energetically, but the husband, also without looking at him, unwontedly picks himself up, pulls on his sheepskin jacket, and slides a hatchet under his belt. “Well, time for me to go to the taiga for some firewood,” he grunts through his teeth to no one in particular, and leaves the hut. Hence the wife is bartered in broad daylight! The late M. A. Krzhizhevskaia, having attended the births of nearly every family in Rykovsk settlement, knew local exile-settlers’ lives quite well. By her estimation, the comparatively wealthy among them lived rather tolerably, but she could not imagine the most wretched fates of the wives of the poor exilesettlers. Such was their suffering, they nearly completely lost their sense of human dignity. “These ‘Russian women’2 here,” said Mariia Antonovna, “deserve from the public the warmest sympathy for their unfortunate lot.” I myself witnessed more than once extremely pitiful scenes of local family life, and was horrified by Sakhalin girls’ roles in it. If a husband was pushing his wife into disgrace, then there was nothing that could be said of his children. Since all of Sakhalin life was like that, this unique way of thinking about chastity was unintentionally accepted. For example, men and women would wash together in Rykovsk settlement’s communal bathhouses. True, in the prison, women bathed separately from the men, but then there was the passageway in the shared courtyard. To me, it seems a woman had to have lost the last residue of shame to let herself enter the crowd of men there… I saw much on Sakhalin, but those scenes always disgusted me. Moreover, in my day, one could not demand that wardens show respect for a woman’s chastity when, at any time, they could punish her like a muzhik with birch rods in public. On Sakhalin, with its expensive vodka and absence of public taverns, drinking among poor exile-settlers reached only a certain level, but on the other hand, there developed among them another insatiable passion—card-playing. 2

An allusion to Nikolai N. Nekrasov’s famous poem, “Russkie zhenshchiny,” about the wives who joined their Decembrist husbands in exile. [Trans.]

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Woe to a Sakhalin mother’s family if her husband were a gambler! In a fervor, he’d lose not just all the savings she brought from Russia, but her dresses, his food ration, and even the government seeds they were issued for sowing. In Rykovsk settlement, I got to know S——ia, a very kind and industrious woman. Her husband was a similarly clever and good worker. Unfortunately, he was very attracted to gambling. Whatever possible, he’d lose all of it at cards. You didn’t know how to help them. If you gave the wife money, the husband would take it and gamble. You’d send a sack of flour for the holiday, and he’d quietly drag it off to the maidan. The poor woman was never without tears. Neither imprecations nor rods nor any sort of restrictions could stop the predilection toward gambling there. In Rykovsk Prison, there was a charming tenor, the exile F——v. The warden, choirmaster, and my comrades tried to look after him. They could do nothing. As soon as he’d start gambling, he’d lose not just all of his money and his footwear, cassock, and cap, but also his government choir pay. He’d show up for singing in the most divers clothes, temporarily borrowed from others. He sometimes couldn’t join the choir for lack of clothes. Once in a while, you’d peek into the prison ward, and F——v would be sitting on the sleeping platform in just his underwear, waiting for a chance to recoup against someone. He admitted this was doing him no good, but in the presence of the prison wards’ nonstop temptation, he couldn’t right himself. In all other respects he was a very kind, clever, sober man.

CHAPTER 5 Personal morality’s importance in lifting a man • Comparison of a Russian to foreigners • Our peasant’s humiliating position • The exiled penal laborer Shalaev • Refusal to work • A voluntary loss of sight • What attention does for an exile • Good people on Sakhalin • Reasons for being sentenced to katorga More than once, a question has besieged me. “Is corporal punishment useful in katorga?” It seems to me this question is best answered by penal laborers who personally experience the lash or rod. When an exile sees that his human “I” is disrespected by others and he has no possibility of compelling respect for his personhood, he ceases to value himself, waves off the entire moral codex he’s ever accrued, and falls still lower, animalizing himself. In actuality, only the use of a cudgel or birch rods compels such a man to listen or to do anything. But that same exile only need be shown that he is considered to be a man, that his personhood is respected equally to that of other people, and immediately his “I” emerges within him and he begins to esteem his own name. By cultivating his sensibilities, a fully satisfactory man is not only protected against external insult, but he immunizes his moral constitution against all possible vices and crimes. It is unpleasant to listen to the Russian aristocrat when he, having returned from abroad, starts comparing foreigners to his Russian muzhik and, of course, finds the latter deficient. He’s a drunkard, a base swindler, a liar, a filthy, dissolute slave… In a word, according to his tongue, this vermin, our most contemptible muzhik, seems a nullity in the world. Even if we allow for this, then who is to blame for it? Why is the German or English peasantry so attractive to the visiting Russian aristocrat? What is it

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about a foreigner that does not obliterate a recognition of his human dignity, that prevents his being insulted and beaten? In our aristocrat’s eyes, he isn’t a chattel. See the foreigner, how he values his honor and won’t even allow his honesty to be doubted. It’s said a German will endure a reprimand for stupidity or laziness, but he will for nothing suffer the humiliatingly informal “you.” “Alles, alles,” he, terribly upset, indignantly tells his lord, “nur mit ‘sie’!” (“You can say anything, anything, albeit only with the formal ‘you’!”) How dissimilar the Russian muzhik, who is offended, cursed, beaten! And naught a word need be said regarding the vulgar informal “you” being shouted at him in mindless arrogance! It rarely happens that our muzhik exceeds the limits of his humiliating circumstances. Most often, he becomes a submissive chattel and drowns the needs of human personhood in his vodka. However, from inside their dormant consciences, some pry themselves loose through their own contrary tightfistedness, but then themselves deny others’ human dignity. On Sakhalin, where the personhood of the exile is definitively trapped, this all becomes exceedingly obvious. In Rykovsk Prison, for instance, there was the healthy young laborer Shalaev, exiled for a comparatively brief term. No less than other exiles, he could have figured out how, upon completing katorga, to set himself up somewhere on Sakhalin and to acquire his freedom in the usual time. But having gotten the birch rod, beatings, and various other insults for every trifle, Shalaev waved off his human dignity and declined to the level of a chattel. “I’m not going to work!” he decided. During that period, the terrible prison warden L—— left, and his duties were temporarily assumed by the recently arrived young man R——n. He took it upon himself to change Shalaev’s mind and promised him only the easy jobs, and then began threatening him with punishments, depriving him of meals more than once, and chaining him in place. Stubbornly, Shalaev refused to work. Learning of this, I visited him in his ward. Filthy, with an indifferent expression on his face and a prisoner’s cassock draped over his shoulders, Shalaev sat chained to the wall, picking at a floorboard. He responded to my queries unwillingly and mostly wordlessly, in a kind of strange mumble. “Mentally ill,” I said of him to the assistant warden. R——n smiled enigmatically in response. Ultimately, they somehow forced Shalaev to work. I lost track of him for some time. But one day, in the presence of the new warden, I encountered on the street a slowly shuffling prisoner with an upturned face, groping along with a cane. I look: it’s Shalaev! And blind in both eyes! Having heard my voice, he extended a hand and begged for alms.

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It turned out that Shalaev, so as not to go to work, had been rubbing some drug mixture into his eyes until he’d gone practically blind. Content with the animal instincts to eat, drink, sleep, and loll about without a care, he chose to deprive himself of his body’s best organ and voluntarily slipped into darkness. “What does he do now?” I asked his comrades in the ward. “What he does do?! Lies around pestering others, goes about collecting alms, and plays cards in the evenings.” “Cards?! … How does he do that? Really, he’s blind!” “Plays cards every night. One of his comrades sits next to him on the sleeping platform and instructs him throughout the entire game. He plays and gets a little money. So he gives some to his comrade.” That’s how young, healthy people lose themselves… But show them a little attention, approach them kindly, place them on an equal level, if just for a little while, and how these beaten, exhausted people suddenly transform. I know of several exemplars on Sakhalin. During my ongoing life on the island of outcasts, I constantly interacted with penal laborers, in prison, church, and during their remote assignments for the leadership. The attention I showed them all was various. Always courteous, polite, and amiable, I tried, by showing respect, to encourage them to acknowledge their human dignity. More than others, those exiles I dealt with unconsciously accepted my physical touch and sought to become even closer to me. But, time and again, they would cross my home’s threshold hesitantly, as if katorga life made them feel morally depraved. Beneath a skein of lies, obfuscations, and cunning, there sometimes appeared in their words and deeds a fearfulness and faithlessness toward me, so it is that those who consider themselves helpless slaves will diminish the caliber of human dignity. Later on, seeing I was neither deceptive nor saccharin, like some benefactors were, but instead seriously and steadfastly interested in them, they became more trusting and honest. Under my influence, they began to respect the person in themselves and even to fear doing anything unpleasant, not only that which was visible but which ran counter to their consciences. As such, there formed round me a group of people, of all ages and various faiths, striving to achieve an evangelical bond. So noticeable was their moral improvement, they soon won respect among other exiles. In fact, such good muzhiks as Aleksandr Katin, Nikolai Skorokhodov,1 Mikhail Baranov, Pëtr Kobchik, Evdokim Savelˊëv, Mikhail Riukhin, Aleksandr Lotsin, etc. would honor any country. I truly loved and

1

He returned home not long ago, to the village of Nikitinskaia, in Kadninkovsk District, Vologda Province. [Iu.]

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respected these people, regardless that they’d passed through Sakhalin katorga and all its terrible consequences. So now, recalling scenes of katorga life on the island, I can say that shameful corporal punishment keeps a man in the condition of a chattel even longer. If our goal is to rehabilitate exiled people, then we need to immediately abolish all impediments that denigrate a human being’s worth. I estimate that among penal laborers, ten percent can be found to be terrible, murderous monsters, people who are virtually irredeemable, but why, because of them, subject the remaining 90 percent to cruel measures that exterminate all their humanity? Really, their honest confessions of why they were sent there must be heard! … One, for example, straightforwardly admitted that, during the holidays, he stupidly smashed his neighbor’s ribs during a drunken fistfight; another broke into a rich merchant’s barn because he wanted to grab a sack of flour; a third got drunk and verbally gave his officer “his fair share”; a fourth ended up there for having joined a riot; a fifth torched his master’s house because of a bitter insult; a sixth, having been exiled to Siberia for a brief term, acquired another twenty years katorga through his escapes; a seventh, who would bribe officials with counterfeit money, began passing it off to the public; etc. As you look more closely at their crimes, you see most came to Sakhalin because of vodka and out of need. Certain old people, who had long beforehand finished their katorga terms, would tell me they’d been punished under false charges. And I trusted them. It’s impossible not to believe a person who’s got one foot in the grave and is being delivered from life’s final consequences.

CHAPTER 6 Losing the most favorable period of life • The difficult situation in exile • One night among the people • Farewell to friends • Butakov’s death • His honesty and kindness toward people • The Onor Affair • A new collection of administrators • Patience’s end I suffered terribly during my final year on Sakhalin. Between the ages of 23 and 35 I was not alone in struggling with the knowledge that this most favorable period, when all the fundaments of one’s future life are laid down and one pursues a career and ties the marriage knot that ensures one’s own family, was first being spent in pitiful vegetation in a stiflingly malodorous ward, then later in an atmosphere of unremitting humiliation. Had we on Sakhalin not the memories of previous lives among cheerful, healthy, satisfied people, had we not previously experienced the fortune of womanly love, not been delighted by theater, music, and the other arts, and, finally, had we not anticipated returning in the future to a cultured life in the cities where we’d spent our youths, then we would likely have given in to our baser instincts and, resigning ourselves to the circumstances of our stalls, soon approximated speechless animals. Such indeed was the tragedy of our banishment that, for twelve years, we constantly experienced the precipices of thinking about our past, of sleeping and envisioning our return to it again, and during that time, I distinctly remember the years, “all the best years,” going by and, along with them, my youth, strength, and energy. You’d look, as it were, at your own sickened body, as you pondered what remained of your cultural existence, your shattered nerves, your lofty status among others—and your spirit turned more bitter. And those who at first patiently counted down their exile practically by the minute, waffled until the end over the decisive question: Go back to Russia or remain in the Far East?

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Worse even than our sojourn on the island was the depth of sorrow felt at being outcast and alienated. Being an exile from the peasantry or tradesmen was much easier: there, he finds himself in a society of the same simple working people as he, and soon finds fellow countrymen, friends, and even a girlfriend among the female exiles, and so for him, the circumstances of settler life don’t pose much that’s new and the manual labor isn’t alien to him. The educated exile is a different matter. His abnormal situation and enforced bachelorhood impose, absent a compatible society, absent a permanent residence, absent any sort of cheering perspective of the future, albeit with constant homesickness, a terrific pressure on the wretch’s soul. Unlike the common laborers, he can’t even flee the island: for him, such an attempt would be tantamount to suicide. How educated people in Russia’s cities complain about loneliness! On Sakhalin, this loneliness feels even more oppressive and pushes a person into a psychological condition. Many of my comrades could not endure the isolation among people and became mentally ill. A large percentage died young, others ended as suicides… Letters from family and friends in Russia greatly sustained me. They continually reminded me that I was not dead to them and that resurrecting a better life was still possible for me. In the eighth year of my stay on the island, hope smiled for going to Russia. During that period, a growing sympathy toward certain sakhalintsy had begun passing from one person to another. It was as if fate wanted to facilitate my transplantation and, in good time, it tore out the roots I’d recently planted: people dear to me died, others left Sakhalin for the mainland, and the aged exile-settlers who remained went to the almshouse or to a different settlement. Finally, A. M. Butakov, who’d sheltered me more than once from the locality’s daily tempests, was struck down by a mighty club. To everyone, his death was unexpected. True, the influenza that raged there during the summer of 1893 had laid him up in bed, but after a week or two he improved and seemed as hearty as ever, as if it would be nothing for him to go through half of his large district on foot through the taiga. Suddenly, he was no more. A Sakhalin rumor surmised that the guilt he experienced following the Onor incidents killed him. This likely partly afflicted his health, but the primary cause of his sudden death was pneumonia. I sincerely loved Butakov as a man with the honorable principles of a hardworking and solicitous landlord. Using other Sakhalin officials’ methods, he could have acquired a large fortune through legal and illegal paths, but, in fact, a quite insignificant sum remained after his death and was at first barely enough for his large family. The unfortunate Onor Affair absolutely did not fit his character. I know of many instances of his secret philanthropy toward poor exile-settlers, and this is why I personally believe he was a kind and generous man. He made just such an impression on the many leading visitors to

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his district. If he allowed the commission of those atrocities in his district, then this was due, not to cruelty, but rather to his own weakness and gullibility toward people. For a long time, he most likely did not know what was going on in Onor, and when it was revealed to him, he, pitying the officials guilty of ignoring laborers’ complaints, took every measure to suppress the matter. After Butakov, his assistant B——kh and the Rykovsk Prison warden Ia——v died.1 Butakov’s remaining colleagues, the Derbinsk Prison warden O——v, the administration secretary M——n, and the Tymovsk infirmary doctor T——n, retired.2 In such way, the whole of Tymovsk District’s government staff suddenly turned over. I didn’t want to establish new relations with the incoming leadership and wanted to leave Rykovsk all the more. Everyone was scrutinizing me there. The grayness of prisoners’ lives had long bored me. Reports of robberies, murders, and other crimes no longer elicited surprise or indignation. Even the cries of men being punished were being heard (following a brief reprieve after N. I. Grodekov’s departure, birchings resumed in full). Life turned like a heavy wheel slowly spinning in sticky mud. With each new revolution it got further and further stuck, and the mud clung more and more to the spokes and the tire… A bit more, and the Sakhalin quagmire would suck me completely into its indescribable slime. “I can’t stay here anymore!” I told my comrades, and submitted a petition for a ticket-of-leave to the Ussuri Territory.

1 2

This refers to N. N. Iartsev. It is unknown whom “B——kh” represents. [Trans.] The last abbreviation in this list refers to Dr. Nikolai V. Tropin. It is unknown to whom the other abbreviations refer. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 7 A trip to Aleksandrovsk Post in winter • Meeting with the governor • Visiting comrades • Exiles’ situations • A noble tiller of the soil • An impromptu marriage • A village feast • A cheerful tour of huts In early November, a thick layer of snow fell on Sakhalin. Hence it was a snowy road that lured me to travel. Also, comrades urged me to travel to Aleksandrovsk for a personal interview with the governor if I wanted to leave Sakhalin aboard the first springtime steamer. My preparations didn’t take long; I also soon found a felicitous travel companion, the secretary of the police administration, who’d just begun his professional career there. We quickly acquired a pair of horses and harnessed them Siberian-style, in single-file. Such a method of traveling is needed there in the snow drifts. The attaching, that is, the lead, horse pushes its way through the snow with its broad chest, and it is the root horse that actually pulls the sleigh along the newly cut path. I’d never crossed the Pilinga Range nor seen the faintly defined Tatar Strait coastline during winter, so this trip offered me an interesting novelty. Just three colors reigned the entire way: sky blue, snowy white, and forest green. Amid this palette, the spruce and fir tree needles seemed even darker and the snow even clearer and brighter. As the snowy mountains rose, so lifted our mood. There was something ceremonial in the white road that seemed to abut the sky itself. It was quiet, clear, and fresh. The raging sea spread threateningly in a wide blue ribbon along the whitened shoreline. All the promontories, necessarily cloaked in snow, had assumed a softer form than during summer; but, in general, the scene was cold and lifeless.

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In Aleksandrovsk, I hurried to the island’s military governor without delay. Though it was an inconvenient hour, he greeted me very courteously and listened patiently to my extensive testimony about life in Sakhalin exile. Among other things, the general asked a lot about my jobs on the island. Having learned I was paid nothing for my work surveying Tymovsk District and measuring Aleksandrovsk Bay, he became indignant. “This shows that we unceremoniously exploited you!” the governor loudly cried. “My ethical responsibility is to correct my predecessors’ mistakes. List all your jobs while on Sakhalin, bypass the administration, and address it ‘to my eyes only,’ and I’ll order you immediately be paid at least two hundred rubles. Your monthly salary should be increased as well… But with regard to your leaving for the mainland, don’t be uneasy: there’s nothing keeping you here any longer. You can leave the island anytime!” I departed from him at peace concerning my liberation. I valued that such a stern general as we all considered Merkazin to be had been sympathetic and took me seriously. For two days, I paid visits to familiar officials and comrades-in-banishment and, on the third, went to the neighboring settlement of Novo-Mikhailovsk, where a small colony of educated exiles (including twelve women and children) had formed. Each had his own house. Even old D——ski had acquired a little hut for himself, and was pottering about it anxiously. B——ski’s expansive cabin interior was strikingly empty. I imagined how depressing it was for the young man to live inside it! However, he spent a large portion of time outside, either hunting in the taiga or as a guest of Aleksandrovsk comrades.1 The family men Khm——v and Sl——k owned full-scale farming operations, especially the former, who was married to a daughter of the local peasant Ch——.2 Most of all, I spent time with M——r.3 His first project had been creating a field of gigantic gourds, as a visual representation of his love of work and skill in the art of gardening. In addition to agriculture, he worked teaching local children grammar and poetry. Having read aloud from a pamphlet of his own poems, M——r tore out a page and gave it to me as a memento. They

1 2

3

The Polish political exiles Leon Durski and Stanislaw Bugajski had both belonged to the “Proletariat” party. They arrived on Sakhalin in 1887. [Trans.] Ivan I. Khmelevtsev had been in the People’s Will, Adam Slowik in “Proletariat.” “Ch——” may refer to the Cossack and political exile Vitalii V. Chërnov, but it seems instead that Iuvachëv is writing here about a non-political exile whose identity he for some reason wanted to protect. [Trans.] Iuvachëv’s fellow narodovolets, Ivan I. Meisner. [Trans.]

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sounded sad. They were more the despairing cries of an exhausted soul than the sweet sounds of prayers. The hut of the exile K——n, a former officer, looked the most cheerful of all.4 It showed an engagement with peasant work, and his yard was full of the accouterments of a rural operation. To everyone’s surprise, he, as the son of a leading nobleman and being short, sickly, and lily-fingered, persistently spent whole days during the summer behind the plow or with a harrow, scythe, or sickle, and produced firewood and construction lumber during the winter. Peasant work did not come easy to him at first, but little-by-little, he began getting by without others’ help, and by the time I was with him, he was personally doing all the hard and easy jobs himself. He lacked only a mistress of the house to complete his life. But then his choice fell on a beautiful, healthy young woman, the daughter of the local exiled peasant Ch.5 They’d been planning on finalizing the wedding no earlier than the Christmas holidays, and so had not been hurrying the preparations, when suddenly, I received my desired telegram. Just one day remained for them to possibly marry before the Christmas fast.6 Delighted by my arrival in Aleksandrovsk District, they decided not to delay getting married, and the groom immediately went to the city to complete the necessary formalities at the chancery. Thanks to the telephone and to comrades serving in local chanceries, everything was ready by three o’clock that afternoon. We now needed to hurry the groom to the settlement where the bride was waiting and the wedding would take place. Without stopping the horses, we dressed the groom in the sleigh. Comrades grabbed everything needed for the wedding, because K——n had nothing ready: neither a new outfit nor the rings nor the candles nor the other wedding accessories. This changing of clothes along the way amused us all. Merriment characterized the wedding itself. Novo-Mikhailovsk was not far away and, within an hour, our noisome file of sleighs reached the bride’s courtyard. People were gathered in such numbers that it was impossible to find a corner in the front room where, like a living wall, a gaggle of women were screening her off. After the church wedding, in which I participated as the bride’s best man, the village wedding feast began. The hasty gathering and preparations had stirred all of us up. The groom’s side, that is, his comrades-in-exile, got carried away by their youthful vivacity, and the peasants on the bride’s side, guardians 4 5 6

Sergei E. Kuzin, another narodovolets. [Trans.] It is unclear if this is the “Ch−” mentioned above or a different peasant altogether. [Trans.] Rozhdestvenskii post, which began on 15 November (Old Style). [Trans.]

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of old traditions and mores, tried to impose order on the feast. Laughter, jokes, conversation, singing, games, and dancing continued through the night. Only toward dawn was it decided to get some sleep. Everyone separated into two halves. The visiting men occupied B——i’s large cabin and the women went with the bride to spend the night in the groom’s house. But as soon as the sun rose the women, whose eyes hadn’t closed for a minute, roused everyone to their feet once more to continue the previous day’s orgy. Our noisy group decided to go to the huts of each of our comrades in NovoMikhailovsk. The scene was absolutely hilarious and will certainly remain in my memory a long time. Homeowners were not expecting a crowd of young people to suddenly burst into their homes with music and singing, and to begin dancing without taking off coats or felt boots. Some were caught out in their working clothes, others having just gotten out of bed—all the same, everyone got swept up and carried away by the general whirlwind of dancing. Snow and frost did not interrupt the merrymaking. On the contrary, the youngsters were crossing the streets, playing in the snow, horsing around, singing, laughing, and throwing each other into snowbanks. The merriment may be said to have spread throughout the hamlet. So it was until evening, when I left for home with a small group. The youngsters took us in their sleighs to Aleksandrovsk Post, where they once more showed up at comrades’ homes and swept them off to festivities of dancing and singing.

CHAPTER 8 Exiles’ hidden sorrows • The issue of Sakhalin’s sick • The female penal laborer’s life of fear • The fate of two Marˊias • A cousin’s spouse • A romance interrupted for ten years • The chancery’s mistake • The brides are delivered by steamer • Undeserved insults • The two Marˊias’ arrival in Vladivostok After I left for Rykovsk the wedding feast, upon the bride’s parents’ wishes, lasted for several more days. Such exceptional merrymaking was odd to see among Sakhalin exiles; it was a splotch of color on the gray background of life there. Those laughing, dancing people who seemed heedlessly cheerful were, in fact, profoundly sad. Even the healthy and married Pl——ski,1 who’d been in Aleksandrovsk the whole time, was always busy with his large farm, and who was notably better off than others, similarly lived in a deep gloom. Four days before K——n’s wedding, he was sobbing like a child and wanted to die. His wife,2 utterly devoted to the dairy farm and especially active and energetic, also seemed to be that type of person with frayed nerves. Every disagreement with her over religion, history, science, art, or the farm invariably ended in sobs. Many times, she grabbed me by the hands and, not letting go, told me, for an hour or two and with tears in her eyes, about the unendurable conditions of life on Sakhalin. Such anxiety could only be explained by her long confinement in prison and enslavement in exile. Yet these people, I repeat, were materially secure, married, and had the prospect of soon leaving Sakhalin. Imagine the situation for the bachelors,

1 2

Edmund Ploski. [Trans.] Maria Zofia Ploska. [Trans.]

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especially those whose katorga terms would not end, in their ironical expression, “until next century”!3 I’ve already said that marriage is the sorest question for educated exiles on Sakhalin. Whom do you marry there? A female convict, and you’re stuck forever! … One kind woman who understood the exiles’ difficult situation wrote, trying to summon some girlfriends from Russia. But none apparently responded. This is understandable. Just as a bird during mating season hurriedly begins building a nest for her future chicks, so a woman during her first attempt to get married instinctively worries about building a family refuge. But what can she count on on Sakhalin? Indeed, to acquire material security, few women have chosen to assume the terrible mantle of “wife of an exiled penal laborer.” Here I will allow myself a brief digression from the chronological order to talk about two Mariias who chose to come to Sakhalin as brides for exiled convicts they knew. One Mariia had a cousin in exile on Sakhalin. His family, especially his mother, would ask him in their letters not to tie himself to Sakhalin with a family, but to patiently wait to return to Russia, where he could find himself a good match. When he hit thirty-two, he’d completed only seven years’ katorga and much still remained; this meant he wouldn’t be able to enroll in the peasantry until he was forty-five. If he spent in this estate the several more years needed to obtain the right to return to Russia, then he would return home a living being, but only as a grizzled old man. Mariia had carefully thought all this through when she wrote her cousin: Wouldn’t he like her to come to him now, in the capacity of an inseparable spouse? Her cousin agreed. The energetic young woman quickly bustled around Petersburg, obtaining the permission to wed an exiled penal laborer on Sakhalin, and at the same time, she asked the pope in Rome to bless a legal union with her cousin (both were Roman Catholics).4 The other Mariia is a more complicated story. As a sixteen-year-old girl, she fell in love with her teacher N., who was soon arrested and exiled to Sakhalin. Mariia was ready to go to him, but first tried sending a letter to him on Sakhalin. No answer. No matter how often she wrote, the postman never brought her a single letter back from katorga. 3 4

These memoirs concern the late ‘eighties and early ‘nineties of the previous century. [Iu.] Despite her request for a papal dispensation, marriages between cousins were common prior to the twentieth century. [Trans.]

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Ten years passed. The exhausted young woman was nearly ready to bury her memories of her dear teacher when his brother came to her, bringing an entire parcel of letters postmarked during his early years of exile. “Where did you get these? Why am I getting them now?” the distraught Mariia asked the brother. It turned out that for four years in a row, N. had written to his pupil through another person, but that she hadn’t wanted to pass on the fiery love letters to the addressee, so they’d remained in her cabinet until she died. The lovers wrote, rejoicing that they’d found each other, but… ten years is a long time! Having experienced many years’ katorga on Sakhalin, the teacher N. could not, with the same ardor, summon his dear Mariia. To him, it would be a pity to subject a young woman to all the horrors of exile life. After much ambivalence, Mariia finally decided to go to the island of penal laborers, but first had to go to Petersburg to finalize the permit for legally marrying N. “Madam,” she was told in the capital, “this shows the exile N. got married a long time ago.” This news struck the poor young woman like a thunderbolt. “It’s not true! This can’t be!” Mariia, shedding tears, hysterically cried. “Here’s his letter where he’s calling me to him! I believe him! …” She was shown a list of Sakhalin exiles, where she herself read that her dear teacher N. had, for several years, really been “living in the home of his wife.” “If you won’t believe these documents,” the official told the utterly shattered woman, “then take the trouble to wait a few days, and I’ll query Sakhalin’s governor by telegram.” Not days but weeks passed, yet no answer was received from Sakhalin. This inflamed Mariia’s suspicions all the more, and she wrote a letter to her teacher’s brother. Completely bewildered, she also telegraphed N. himself, asking for clarification of the matter. The teacher N. was not allowed to see the official’s telegram, but a lowerranking staff member gave it to him in secret. Petersburg was questioning his marital status. Investigation showed that the rosters were mistakenly listing him in place of another exile whose family had followed him. It was actually he who was married and living in his wife’s home. Officials had been afraid to report their blunder to the strict governor, so they decided to wait until he left to inspect a different district before sending a response to Petersburg in his absence. This was why they were also keeping her telegram under wraps. Enraged by these officials, N. immediately complained to the governor. The general, of course, did not hesitate to respond to Petersburg with the correct information.

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These two brides Mariia, after protracted efforts, finally found themselves on one and the same steamer carrying them from Odessa to Vladivostok.5 They’d been assigned a so-called favorable spot in the women’s third-class general stateroom. With all sincerity and candor, the maidens told everyone they were traveling to Sakhalin to marry exiled penal laborers. Passengers treated them very kindly, and from the start, everyone formed one happy family. But it proved to have its own “monster,” who poisoned their interesting journey past India, China, and Japan. With them there was a young lady and first-class passenger bound for Vladivostok. Due to certain circumstances involving a male traveler in first class that discomfited her, she’d transferred to the general stateroom where both Mariias were. Boasting of her connections to the first-class passengers, she slighted her chance companions and treated them arrogantly and rudely. The young women suffered a variety of offenses from her. Finally, the cup of patience spilled over, and one of them allowed herself to modestly inform the lady they did not deserve the insults they were suffering nearly every day. The lady boiled over, and immediately began spewing complaints about the male traveler. About how, as soon as this young woman had appeared on deck, that first-class gentleman threatened her with his fists and accosted her with shouts and insults: “Convict! Sakhalin wench! … I’ll give you a flogging right now on deck! …” God knows how everything would have turned out; but someone informed the steamer’s captain, and he’d immediately stopped the hell-raising gentleman. Only then did the two Mariias understand what it meant to be tied by marriage to sakhalintsy. This incident instantly clipped their wings of delight, and they began approaching the island of outcasts in trepidation and a terribly dejected state. By that time, I was living in Vladivostok and, having anticipated a telegram, I encountered them on the wharf. Pale, shivering from the cold (it was midOctober), emotionally drained, these poor young women made a powerful impression. When the brides were introduced to the gentle society of friends of their future husbands and they were fed, warmed, and shown genuine affection and attention, they could not handle all that spiritual warmth from unfamiliar people and burst out in tears. They’d swallowed so many bitter pills along the way! … But so many sorts of ordeals yet awaited them on Sakhalin itself ! …

5

Volunteer Fleet steamers often stopped at Vladivostok before going on to Sakhalin. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 9 Vladivostok under military alert • Rumors of war • Sergeant-Major Kobchik • His punishment • Penal laborer military detachments • Exiles in the Crimean campaign • Arsenii Kobchik’s death • Stories about military campaigns • The tsar’s inspection • A Sakhalin passport • A new obstacle to leaving Easter had only just passed and the first springtime rivulets were appearing as I hastened my departure. During that time, I felt exactly like a bird in flight, and with the free ocean tugging at me, I could not calmly remain in Rykovsk behind the wall of the Pilinga Mountains. “I’m leaving aboard the first passenger steamer!” I said prior to departure during my goodbyes to Tymovsk exile-settlers. But when the first loaded steamer arrived, it brought sensational news: Vladivostok was on military alert and the entire region was preparing for war!1 “They probably won’t let you go to Vladivostok,” administrators skeptically told me. “You’ll need to alter your route and first go to Nikolaevsk, then down the Amur. But then, for all that, you’ll be mobilized for enlistment…” Upon this information, all personal calculations shifted to the second plan. Rumors were emerging among penal laborers and officials: What would happen on Sakhalin in the event of military action? “It won’t be touched. As an island of penal laborers, it will remain neutral,” one official remarked.

1

A reference to the intervention, in 1895, by Russia and other powers to end the SinoJapanese War. [Trans.]

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“No,” others vociferated. “Sakhalin, as a criminal depot, will be a dainty morsel for their fleet.2 As soon as all the foreigners land on the island and include all the penal laborers in their plans, it will fall into their hands! The local commands don’t have the strength to put up a resistance.” Penal laborers, too, did not refrain from bold predictions. Some were intrigued by the idea of being included in a plan. Most dreamed of joining the military’s ranks and then earning a full pardon. There lived in Rykovsk an exile I much loved, Pëtr Osipov, also known as Arsenii Kobchik.3 He was a good warrior from the days of Nicholas I.4 He had been in that strict school of a model regiment, wherein, in his expression, nine men get knocked about and the tenth is turned into a soldier; he then completed three difficult tours, in Hungary, beyond the Danube, and near Sevastopol (he was at the battle of Black River).5 Soon after the Crimean campaign, as a sergeant-major in the Vitebsk Regiment, Kobchik drunkenly talked back to a junior officer. For this, a field court-martial sentenced him to twenty years katorga labor. The whole regiment and the generals (he was quite renowned) very much pitied him and tried as possible to reduce his punishment to running the gauntlet.6 For escaping from the Nikolaevsk gold works, he was slapped with another ten years katorga. Despite all his sentence reductions, he spent nearly twenty-six years among the laborers at Kara and on Sakhalin. Two years before his katorga sentence was due to expire, Russia was preparing for war with Britain. It was decided to form small detachments of Sakhalin prisoners and to give them military training. All of Aleksandrovsk Prison’s exiled penal laborers were assembled in the yard and a representative of the local command addressed them with a speech, in which he briefly outlined the country’s position and said that whoever wanted to enter the warriors’ ranks should declare his intention to do so now. “I want to!” a 64-year-old man, gray as the moon yet satisfactorily straightening himself up in military fashion, shouted from the rows. This was Kobchik.

2 3 4 5 6

I.e., the Japanese. [Trans.] During escapes, penal laborers typically change their names, so that when they are returned to katorga they are sometimes listed under both names. [Iu.] He reigned from 1825 to 1855. [Trans.] In 1849, Nicholas I sent Russian troops to help crush the Hungarian Revolution. The Danube and Sevastopol military theaters formed part of the Crimean War (1853−56). [Trans.] This involved running between two rows of soldiers, each armed with a slender switch (shpitsruten) used to flay the victim’s naked back. The gauntlet would hardly have been much of a reprieve, however, since it often resulted in death. For this reason, it was abolished as part of the 1874 military reforms. [Trans.]

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Following him, the entire gray mass of penal laborers roused itself and declared its preparedness with enthusiastic cries. Since friendly relations with England soon prevailed, there proved no need for prisoner units; but it’s known that earlier, during the Crimean campaign, exiles on the White Sea’s Russian coast held out against the enemy just as firmly as did soldiers. Back to Kobchik. When, as an exile-settler, he was transferred to Rykovsk settlement, he was assigned part-time to a bachelor peasant and, as a worker, served him diligently. In gratitude, this peasant left him his hut when he departed for the mainland. At first, the old man somehow made ends meet by puttering around his garden, but he was finally obliged to give this up: old age had claimed him, and twenty-six years of katorga had rendered familiar the aches in his old bones. I would send Kobchik my government ration of flour and support him however I could. But suddenly there came a regulation: all incapacitated elderly were to be sent to an almshouse in one of the former prisons (at first, the almshouse was in Voevodsk Prison, then in Malotymovsk, but now it’s in Derbinsk7). My uncle was in a twist.8 “ ‘You wanna ration,’ the boss says, ‘then go to the almshouse. But if you wanna stay in your own home, you won’t get a ration.’ Them’s the regulations, they say. Lord, I spent my whole life in prison, and they’re gonna force me into prison again…” The wretched man began sobbing. Before I could arrange for him to peacefully remain in his home and not lose his flour ration, poor Kobchik fell ill. Late one evening, he called me to him and gave me the three rubles he’d long ago stashed for his funeral, and that night, he was gone. He died at age seventy-three. A surprisingly long-lived man! His ideal had been to burn down the hours and not be moved from his spot. During those moments, I was struck by tenderness for him. As I watched them take away this broad-shouldered old man with his treasured beard and enormous head of white hair, I couldn’t keep from calling out to him. For me, he had been a living record of those Nicolaevan days. When he’d start telling about his campaigns, all the ups and downs of the war against the Turks passed before me in fascinating scenes. “The Sovereign himself predicted a life in katorga for me, you know.” “How so?” I asked him.

7 8

Derbinsk Prison was closed when its 600 exiled penal laborers left for the Ussuri Railroad. [Iu.] Iuvachëv uses “uncle” affectionately, not literally. [Trans.]

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“After the training in the model regiment was over, they arranged for the tsar to review us. I was so well-built and adroit then, my uniform fitted me like a skin. Nicholas Pavlovich enters. He walked quickly past the ranks. His eyes were sharp—he noticed everything immediately! Suddenly, he stopped in front of me, poked my chest, and said: “ ‘Why’s your uniform so tight, brother?’ “It’s nothing, your Majesty!’ I answered him. “He walked on. Afterward, all the generals asked: ‘What did the Sovereign say?’ I told them. For thirteen years, I served the tsar honestly and sincerely, but the uniform really did prove too tight for me.” Because additional information was not changing the expectation of a war with Japan, Sakhalin’s commonfolk were concocting a bevy of fantastic prognostications. Since everybody wanted news from the other shore, I now became not the only one impatiently awaiting the passenger steamer. Finally, the Tymovsk Police Administration issued me a passport permitting me to settle in Eastern Siberia, though one that did not indicate my estate. According to the passport, I was neither a nobleman nor a townsman nor a peasant, just simply an exile. So that I could enroll in any rural or urban collective on the mainland, I was given still another document—an official certification of my behavior and activities on the island. Everything seemed ready, but a single hurdle prevented my going to Aleksandrovsk Post. A lot of snow had accumulated on the heights of the Pilinga Range. It would sometimes last through May before disappearing. During springtime, of course, it was impossible to imagine sleighs crossing the thick drifts of snow that gave way beneath horse hooves. I made up my mind not to hit the trail until May. I found myself a traveling companion, A. O. K., a trustee of the firm Kunst and Albers, from Moscow.9 During my final evening, I again visited acquaintances and once more bid my farewells. The night passed in heartfelt conversation with comrades. God knew whether I’d ever see them again!

9

This German-founded international trade company operated a branch on Sakhalin, where it specialized in importing liquor, among other things. It is not known who “A. O. K.” was. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 10 In a grave • A request from old men • Farewells and bidding goodbye to comrades • Through the snowy Kamyshev Pass • The island’s emptiness • Burning taiga • An encounter with Giliaks • Visiting the military governor • Arrival of the steamer Baikal • With comrades yet again Before leaving Rykovsk, I wanted, if just for a minute, to gather my thoughts in private, and so, at dawn, I rushed to the nearby hill where the village cemetery was located. Imaginarily bidding farewell to my dead friends, I took in the settlement’s expanse one last time. Snow began falling on the valley below. It glistened above the higher mountains beneath the sun’s amber rays. The bare ground around the peasant dwellings assumed a uniformly gray aspect. Amid them was the bright green of one of the church’s cupolas. A light, hazy fog drifted over the river, producing a scene of nature’s particular freshness during early spring. “If you want to say goodbye to Sakhalin,” I told myself, “then say goodbye here. Down there, you’ll be doing a lot of talking, bustling about, loud embracing, crying… but it’ll all be interrupted and scattered and not profound and, most especially, directed at people.” I walked slowly round several graves and recalled their sufferers’ unhappy lives. Grim scenes of the katorga island, on which I’d been a subject slave, arose before me… “Protect me, God, from anything similar!” I exclaimed, interrupting my reverie, and with haste departed the hill for the settlement. A bunch of penal laborers, exile-settlers, and beggars were already standing near my house. They’d all come to bid me farewell.

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“Greetings!” the nearest old man, Evdokim Savelˊëv, an exact copy of Turgenev’s Kasˊian from “Beautiful Swords,”1 said to me. He covered his face with his hands and began crying. I myself was barely holding back tears and could not think how to placate him. “I won’t see you anymore!” he was saying, sobbing louder and louder. “We’ll all see each other in the next world,” I began consoling the religious old man when, suddenly, a group of comrades-in-exile came out of my house to meet me. So as to conceal my distress, I began anxiously asking whether they’d packed my things and all was ready to go. My comrades expressed a desire to accompany me on foot while my travel companion K. dealt with the tarantass. As we walked through the settlement, past houses and the church where Mass was commencing, exile-settlers whom I knew jogged over, each wanting to express a few heartfelt wishes for my journey. Yet, by the time I reached the edge of the settlement along the Derbinsk Highway, my circle had come to consist of only my closest friends. Among them was one woman, a teacher from the Rykovsk school. Pausing to cast a final farewell glance at Rykovsk, I noticed one more person running up. This was an Armenian tailor who, during his military service, had experienced the famous Bayezid Siege.2 He, too, wanted to bid me farewell. The attention from this unfamiliar individual touched me very much. My travel companion K. overtook us after five versts. It was time for me to leave. Everyone began expressing more strongly, through tears and amid deep embraces and kisses, the hope of seeing one another again in Russia… Though the horses began quickly spiriting me westward, my comrades stood for a long time in place, wiping tears away with their peak-less caps before disappearing from view… Among us, I was the first swallow to fly away to the homelands, and my leaving filled them with the strong hope they’d soon follow me, but at that moment, they were quite grief stricken by the knowledge they’d still be there for an indeterminate number of years. I write now about that separation as if it’s a distant event for me, but to this day, some of them on Sakhalin await still their own springtime… Having lunched at the home of Derbinsk settlement’s local priest, Father Nikolai, we departed, accompanied by the noisy good wishes of the Tymovsk officials who’d gathered there. In Upper Armudan, we changed horses, 1 2

“Kasˊian with the Beautiful Swords” is a story from Ivan P. Turgenev’s Hunter’s Sketches. [Trans.] During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, Russian forces successfully defended the captured Bayezid Fortress against a siege lasting 23 days. [Trans.]

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because the mountain road ahead twisted along loosening snow through the so-called Kamyshev Pass. The horses were often up to their chests and barely moving forward. We jumped out of the tarantass and, with effort, forced the axle through the wet snow. The beautiful and unique scenes there intrigued us. Large and densely growing bamboo stood amidst a bunch of dazzling white snow. Its previous year’s flourishment of leaves was still green and bright, and I had great difficulty persuading my travel companion K. that they were the old shoots. After our three-horse team pushed through the snow drifts, we climbed once more into the tarantass and began negotiating the Arkovo Valley. We didn’t encounter a soul. Neither birds nor beasts. Irrespective of the abundance of animal species on Sakhalin, the center of the island cannot boast an especial number. One summer, three of my comrades made an excursion through virgin taiga in the direction of the Okhotsk Sea, and shot during that entire week only four pairs of hazel grouse. The deeper we descended into the valley, the sadder the taiga became: we were traveling over snowdrifts through a burned forest. The earth had been scorched of its grass and the gray ledges were covered like stubble by the blackened trunks of incinerated trees. This strange landscape had a kind of despairing lifelessness. I can’t imagine a better way to describe all this accursed land’s horror. I’d often crossed burnt taiga. Up close, it isn’t so dead: a leaf of grass is pushing through somewhere, and in places, the pink flowered Ivan-tea (Epilobium angustifolium3) covers the scorched earth. But you notice what’s been taken: only prominent are the blackened trunks, like tapers, against the gray background of naked forest. Forest fires happen every year there. The neighboring mountains around Rykovsk settlement have been totally burned. I happened to observe a chaotic scene of fire in the hills surrounding Aleksandrovsk Post. The view was especially striking at night, as a red, glowing stripe hung menacingly over the burning forest. Vertically defining itself like a bright ribbon, the fire spread quickly from tree to tree and toward the sea itself at Cape Jonquière. For several days, post residents were besieged by the fiery ring. No one moved to extinguish it. Sitting beneath his roof day and night, each homeowner tried only to protect his own hut from the burning embers. Each year during the June drought in Tymovsk District, there’s always a forest fire somewhere. Sakhalintsy watch and are accustomed to it, and they regard the loss of building timber quite calmly: much remains on the island. Vagabonds’ unattended campfires are the most common cause of fire. In the 3

A synonym of Chamerion angustifolium, whose popular names include “fireweed” and “rosebay willowherb.” [Trans.]

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taiga, it’s quite difficult to protect against them. If you calculate all that has been ravaged by fires, then it’s a gigantic area of several hundred thousand desiatiny! Passing through the Arkovo settlements, we encountered, once more, a certain animation along the road and in the prepared fields. Finding themselves a little ways from the sea, a Giliak family was walking with staffs in their small, elegant hands. The women had baby cradles on their backs. The men also had some sort of lading. The bosoms of both were loaded down with various provisions, from flints to tobacco and the cradles, and large bags swung from beneath their waists. With them were the dogs with their characteristic ears. Like our horned cattle, Giliak dogs serve as labor power and a tasty food. This unpretentious folk are not even squeamish toward carrion, and will with pleasure chomp down a dead keta or sea lion that’s washed ashore. With their unique customs, dress, and peculiar Russian jargon, Giliaks always riveted my attention, and now, upon leaving Sakhalin, I tried as possible to better discern every item and detail, so as to convey my memories of them to people in another world far from the island of penal laborers. Following our horses’ subsequent exertions along the seashore, we were in Aleksandrovsk. Early next morning, I went to say my goodbyes and Merkazin, the island’s military governor, was first-of-all. His house was in the settlement’s best spot, on an elevated flat that curved along the Aleksandrovka River. One side adjoined his large garden, or better said, open park, the other the wide square, with its church and government buildings. Sufficiently familiar with Siberian life, the governor little trusted his underlings, and for this reason was quite strict and demanding toward them. Poised as such in opposition to bureaucrats, he unintentionally protected exiles’ interests. He had a wonderful quality that benefited the island’s populace—accessibility. Anyone, freeman or penal laborer, could easily visit him after 7 o’clock in the morning (the general loved to rise early) and explain his request to him. As an acquaintance, I was met very graciously by the governor. Praising my recent literary work,4 he asked about my intentions. He recommended I leave aboard the passenger steamer Baikal, apologizing that it had been expected from one day to the next. A blizzard at sea was delaying the steamer. On 9 May, the weather changed: once more, there was blue sky, bright sun, and a calm sea. The long anticipated signal was given at last: “The Baikal’s arrived!” This news so elated me that I felt renewed, and gladly hurried to pack. Rykovskian farewell scenes were repeated. A similarly large host of 4

It is not clear what Iuvachëv is referring to, since it is understood he did not begin his journalism career until after arriving in Vladivostok. Perhaps Merkazin was aware of some writings that might have formed the basis of this memoir. [Trans.]

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comrades accompanied me the several versts to shore. Only those island residents fortunately permitted to leave with me were allowed onto the long wharf. I quickly boarded the steamer, introduced myself to the captain and passengers, stowed my baggage, and was bidding an imaginary goodbye to Sakhalin, when suddenly, Captain L——ski approached and explained that that night, the steamer would be taking on a load of coal at Dué. This gave me the opportunity to spend one more night with comrades, so I returned to shore. There was great animation regarding the mail just gotten from the steamer. Among other things, one of the new journals was carrying L. M. Tolstoi’s new story, “Master and Worker.” Regardless of the late hour, we all steeled ourselves to listen to the esteemed writer’s new work; but the day’s bustling had so destroyed me that, despite my wishes, I could not listen to the reading for long, and I excused myself. At the same time, a presentiment of something unwelcome was filling me with a strange sadness. “In any case,” I soothed myself, lying in bed, “tomorrow you’ll get away from Sakhalin.”

CHAPTER 11 Held back! • The governor’s explanation • Comrades’ efforts to distract me • Barge building • Japanese traders • Hasegawa’s opinion regarding an impending war • Japanese crafts • My understandings of an expected departure • Journey to Dué • A pitiful man The next morning, I’d just gotten out of bed, when the telephone station summoned me. “What’s going on?” I asked. “Just now,” the day watchman I——v answered from the wharf, “the general’s ordered you kept from boarding the steamer.” Greatly alarmed, I ran to the governor. “You were given a travel ticket mistakenly,” the general told me. “We don’t have the right to let you leave the island without a decision from Petersburg.” “So please send a telegram!” Incensed by this new obstacle to my leaving, I went to the steamer for my things. Sensing my upset, the passengers were very sorry for everything that was happening and couldn’t imagine what it meant. I, too, didn’t understand a thing. In the meantime, the general notified, by telegram, the district commander who had issued me the ticket. For his part, he telegraphed Aleksandrovsk to hold and return me to Rykovsk. “From one hour to the next it gets worse!” I thought. “It’s as if I’m some fugitive, or guilty for the issuing of the ticket. Just last year, I applied for a passport with the permission of the governor himself, and now it’s ‘Stop!’ ” The Tymovsk commander’s latest request was, of course, not fulfilled, and the general decided I could wait in Aleksandrovsk for the answer to his telegram. One of my exile acquaintances who is Jewish had left for Vladivostok the previous autumn. After setting foot on mainland soil, he telegrammed me in

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a rapture: “Like an Israelite, I’ve crossed the sea and stepped from an Egypt of labor and servitude into the Promised Land of the Asiatic mainland.” But next day, by order of Sakhalin’s governor, he was arrested, supposedly due to a mistaken release, and returned to Sakhalin aboard the first steamer. Thank God that, although I was being detained there on the wharf, I would definitely not be scandalously returned from Vladivostok under convoy, like some vagabond! Melancholy days followed. I was recalling so many disappointments and oppressive insults after eight years on Sakhalin, heightening even more my emotional torment. Comrades tried to distract me, during the day, by dreaming up various walks through Aleksandrovsk’s neighborhoods, and during the evening, by arranging literary soirées. One of my favorite strolls was along the shore, because life could always be seen there. Even in the perfect calm of the outgoing and incoming tide, the coastal scene would change, revealing various types of ocean flora and fauna. Not far from the mouth of the Aleksandrovka River, I became aware of a new type of Sakhalin enterprise—the construction of wooden barges. The free wood and labor there provide an opportunity for what is the comparatively cheap construction of these vessels, not just for local needs but to fulfil a contract with the Amur Steamship Company. Walking along one day, we happened upon some Japanese traders who’d arrived there. The exile population wants very much for Sakhalin to be opened up to greater trading and for its current trade tariffs to be lowered, but Russian merchants and the island administration itself prevent the opening of stores there so they won’t compete with the Colonization Fund’s government shops.1 The Japanese proved to be gracious hosts, and one of them, Kanesiru Hasegawa, surprised us with his knowledge. He was universally well read, subscribed to Japanese and British journals, and was au courant with all the news concerning Japanese politics. Possessing a good command of Russian, he proved an extremely interesting conversationalist. Among other things, he related several episodes from the Sino-Japanese War and, in so doing, showed

1

Sakhalin’s first state agronomist, M. S. Mitsul´ (see fn. 3, Part II, Chapter 9), established the Colonization Fund to assist in settling the island. It was used to import goods in bulk and make them readily available to exiles through loans, grants, and lines of credit. In this, it was quite successful, at first. However, over time, Mitsul´ and other managers embezzled the fund’s monies and transformed it into little more than a clearing house for over-priced liquor. After Iuvachëv left Sakhalin, the Colonization Fund was disbanded and replaced by the Sakhalin Economic Fund, which, however, did not much improve over its predecessor. [Trans.]

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us many of those photographs and patriotic pictures that so zealously illustrate his people’s journals. “But what if the Japanese go to war against Russia?” we asked. “For us,” the Japanese answered with a condescending smile, “it will be a trifle. Waging war against Russia will be much easier than against China.” “How so?!” we shouted in unison, astonished by this little man’s smug tone. “Have you a great fleet in the Great Ocean?!” the Japanese tested us. “And you’ve only one fortress on the entire seaboard, and it can hold out only a short while. If we took Port Arthur, we would control Vladivostok—mere trifles. Your Russian island is but a key that defends the fortress.” True, at that time, we were poorly prepared for a large war in the East, yet I was amazed by the assurance with which he spoke of victory over a second great empire. He went so far in his bellicose fever as to equate England with China, and seemed prepared to battle the entire world. And he was saying all this in a foreign land, among Russians. I could imagine what they said back home! … Praising his people’s bravery, Hasegawa pulled two Japanese swords from their lacquered wood sheaths and grandly demonstrated the quality of their blades. We noticed he also had a pile of typical Japanese items. At that time, they were all new and interesting to me. Even the simple knickknacks made of straw, reed, paper, or wood were remarkably elegant. What marvelous plaiting! Everything was sleek, beautiful, and extremely refined in taste and decoration. I noticed there was no carelessness or coarseness, though I didn’t know then how weak and fragile they also were! Loudly praising the Japanese goods, I committed a minor indiscretion. I was under the impression that if a guest, arriving for the first time in the home, picks up some item, then by custom the Japanese must gift it to him. To correct my mistake, I asked to buy something as a memento, but my comrades stopped me: “Don’t be hasty: there’s plenty of this rubbish in Vladivostok, only there, it’s half the price.” I was trying to busy myself with things to smooth over my agonizing wait, visiting comrades and seeing the sights in Aleksandrovsk Post, where one had to go see the Sakhalin Museum that opened during that time. I didn’t need to seek out a job, for there were always plenty there. I managed at the time to get daytime hours around the governor’s house, to put in order the meteorological station that had been transferred there,2 and to write pieces for the journals. The physician P——ii,3 an official liaison between observers and the Main

2 3

Transferred from the nearby Korsakovsk suburb. [Trans.] Leonid V. Poddubskii was Aleksandrovsk Post’s senior physician and director of Sakhalin’s Medical Division from 1892 to 1900. [Trans.]

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Physical Observatory, undertook on his own initiative to garner me a small gratuity for literary works concerning Sakhalin. “If the administration won’t think to do this, then dreaming of a gratuity’s going to be unpleasant for me,” I’d mentioned to physician P——ii. Next day, I asked him by letter not to raise the issue, but despite my wish, he appealed to the general. The latter remembered his previous year’s promises, and now issued me the hundred rubles. Truth be said, this proved useful early during my sojourn in Vladivostok. That same day, news came from Petersburg that they had no objection to my moving from Sakhalin Isl. to Eastern Siberia. “Well, finally!” I shouted with relief. The German steamer Velox, chartered by the Volunteer Fleet, was in the Dué roads, loading coal. “If it’s getting coal, it will be leaving this wretched island soon,” I decisively concluded, and asked the district commander if I could go to Dué. At the time, a steam cutter carrying a party of penal laborers was preparing to go there. I joined it. Onboard was a person who was most intrigued by me the entire way, who shared the secrets of his past with me, and, pitying his own dependent position, offered this as a kind of justification. “We’re—the little people!” he incessantly punctuated. He then began cursing the general for his rudeness, inconsistency, and strictness toward officials. Practically a stranger to him, I couldn’t at all understand what he was talking about. Later, it was made clear to me: this was a petty man who’d wanted to look good in front of the governor, and had boiled up all that kasha over my passport so that the governor got so scared, he had to ask Petersburg to confirm in writing what was earlier telegraphed to him. That evening, having learned of the possibility of traveling aboard the Velox to Vladivostok and completed goodbye visits to Dué officials I knew, I returned in the steam cutter to Aleksandrovsk once more, to grab my things and conclusively bid farewell to it forever. Because I was not trying to leave aboard a Russian steamer, I had to avail myself of the Germans’ services. It was as if my Russian birthplace were spurning me while I was trying to get home after a twelve-year separation…

CHAPTER 12 The governor’s new request • Difficult connections • Invaluable victims • Aboard the steamer Velox • My travel companions • Loading of coal by penal laborers • Double supervision • The war against the secret gift of liquor • Communication by water • A lack of restraint • Setting sail • “Forward yo!” Once more, I had to appear before the governor. Seeing me, he hurried to congratulate me, invited me into his cabinet, and spoke at length about the war, the Amur Territory, Manchuria, and even Sakhalin. He promised all assistance for my path ahead. He asked that I telegraph him in case of any misunderstandings during my Siberian ordeals. Upon parting, he wished me well. Long farewells mean many tears. I had been getting escorted off Sakhalin for two weeks. Each day, in not just one but another place, kisses, embraces, and good wishes were repeated. Yet, I cannot remember how, during my final goodbye to comrades on the wharf, I found myself aboard the steam cutter. One mourner, A. V., a widower since his first year on Sakhalin, could not keep from sobbing out loud…1 Upon parting from comrades, I was struck as much by sadness as by pity for them. Most were good, kind people, yet, having been carried away by notions of improving humankind, their hearts had swayed them too far and… they ended up on Sakhalin. There, these castaways from Russia were held in low esteem by the law-abiding class. Neither in the past nor present nor future did they have any sort of foothold where their broken hearts could find peace… Besides myself, leaving Sakhalin aboard the Velox was a certain young man who’d worked in the coal mining office, as well as the Rykovsk exile Ia——v’s widow and her five children, two of whom were five-month-old twins. The 1

These initials do not correspond to any of the politicals known to be on Sakhalin at that time. [Trans.]

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steamer’s crew packed us into some cabins and we mentally thanked the captain for his courtesy. However, his attentiveness later proved quite costly in Vladivostok.2 I was in a hurry to board the vessel, or, better put, in a hurry to get away from Sakhalin: the steamer had been at Dué for too much of the day. Despite not wanting anymore to turn my attention to things Sakhalin, I unwittingly began watching some penal laborers at work. They were loading coal under double supervision. On one side, the steamer’s crew was keenly making sure they didn’t set anything aside on the shore, on the other, the administrator I——v and guards were attentively watching so that no penal laborer purchased a bottle of vodka from the sailors.

Penal laborers queuing at a well At that time, liquor smuggling was the topic of the day on Sakhalin. The governor had issued a whole series of strict orders about guarding the island’s coast against the contraband, but I was convinced they all had little effect. Preventing sailors who arrived on ships from illegally selling alcohol was practically impossible. For example, at night, they would very cunningly float the 2

Unfortunately, Iuvachëv fails to elaborate on this cryptic comment in the following pages. [Trans.]

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alcohol atop incoming waves. They’d toss a barrel of vodka overboard and the waves pushed it ashore, straight into convicts’ hands. I personally managed to persuade a pair of youngsters to return a large case of liquor to a known Sakhalin supplier’s store in Vladivostok. Apropos this, all the regulations caused only grumbling, both onshore and at sea. For instance, steamers were prohibited from loading at night and, consequently, ships unnecessarily idled for several days off Sakhalin’s inhospitable and dangerous shores. This was one more constraint that inspired still greater hatred toward the katorga island. Finally, the 19th of May3 became the lucky day I could say a final “Goodbye” to the Sakhalin coastline: the steamer weighed anchor, and we began sailing across the Tatar Strait to the desired mainland. Even now, Charon smuggles across the Styx those condemned to a modern Russian Hades. Even now, the deceased are delivered from that graveyard and, in that very moment, these dead men begin resurrecting a new life… As the contours of Dué and Cape Jonquière faded into the foggy distance, I began recounting my eight years on Sakhalin to a certain navigator of distant voyages. It was very pertinent to recall, while departing, my former life on the katorga island and to emphasize the results. I ended up not speaking for long: new events and new impressions compelled this person to turn away. “Forward yo!” … This invigorating sailors’ call suddenly interrupted the heavy memories of the past and directed all my thoughts ahead, to different currents… The sea was relatively calm. The small waves did not deter our ship from following its appointed course; it was as if they were fawning the steamer’s breast. Trust not, it’s said, the quiet sea! But as an experienced helmsman, I greatly hoped to overcome all contrary winds and to pass with good fortune dangerous rocks and perfidious shoals, so as to boldly forge the distant path ahead.

3

1895. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 13 Sakhalintsy in Vladivostok • The difficulty of dissociating oneself from the island of penal laborers • The region’s gray fogs • S. G. Iurkevich’s letter • Ocean industry • No harvest due to drought • First bees on Sakhalin • Robbery and murder • The agricultural colony’s difficult circumstances • The antagonism between penal laborers and exile-settlers The days were overcast, as often happens in Vladivostok during spring. Dense fog from large clouds trailed through the high mountains and settled in the valley, encircling the city’s tall buildings. Everything was gray, gloomy, wet. On a mountain slope rising above a seaside suburb there appeared, through the fog, from moment to moment, the small white house of the same Transcaucasian hero from Sakhalin who, ten years earlier, had arrived with me aboard the Volunteer Fleet steamer to Aleksandrovsk Post. Now, I was dining with a small group at his table. With us sat the homeowner’s wife, a lively woman who’d also experienced the art of Sakhalin katorga, and a guest from Khabarovsk who, long before I did, left Sakhalin, where he’d been a teacher. “Lord!” the host proposed, “we’ve all been on Sakhalin, so drink to the health of the sakhalintsy!” “And to you!” added the Khabarovsk guest. “It’s time to put an end to this shameful tone. I became a townsman long ago, but to this day, can’t dissociate myself from the sakhalinets caste. No, no, yes, it demeans me. But have you”— he turned to me—“enrolled in the townsman estate?” “No,” I answered, “I’m still a regular sakhalinets: my passport references Sakhalin. I’ve tried to sever my connection to it, but this hasn’t proved easy. First, to get around this enormous region one quite often needs an official pass; and second, it’s so little enlightened by laws and regulations here that

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nearly every day the question arises, if not for me then for others, of exploring America. All my efforts and the governor’s personal explanations have yielded nothing: up to now, I’ve got just the ticket from Sakhalin, and so I still wear the skin of a former exile. Breaking away from the katorga island is hard! I supposed that as soon as I left it, I’d quickly bury my entire past. But no! It’s impossible to forget a life of so many years, indeed, reminders of Sakhalin are always around me. Wherever you go, you bump into a sakhalinets. My landlady is the wife of a prison warden who’s under arrest and is being tried for embezzlement here; also, I dine with sakhalintsy, work with sakhalintsy, and my servants are sakhalintsy. During chance meetings, you conceal your Sakhalin identity, but this isn’t possible for long. A new acquaintance’s second or third question requires you to say where you’ve come from and how you’ve ended up here. In Vladivostok, especially if he’s come from the island recently, a simple fellow gives himself away with just a single sign. Used to doffing his cap before every gentleman, he cannot nonchalantly pass by an official’s or officer’s fur hat without stepping off the sidewalk and removing his cap.” “But we shan’t curse everything Sakhalin,” my host bandied. “Look, is there such vile weather in Tymovsk District as there is here during the month of May? I left the administration today and could see nothing in the bay because of the fog! A kind of dampness sits on the face and clothing and, indeed, the heart turns gloomy and melancholy…” “There isn’t such weather in Tymovsk District,” I conceded, “but the island’s coast is rarely without fog. Only, there, it isn’t accompanied by such high temperatures and so mold doesn’t grow in your shoes every day, as here in Vladivostok. But, to the point, not long ago, I received this letter from Rykovsk settlement, from the exile and former teacher Iurkevich. He was always passionately defending the possibility of running a profitable farm on Sakhalin, and would have measured Tymovsk District as being no less than the shores of the Ussuri. Iurkevich personally took up grain farming many years ago, then, with his acceptance into the peasantry, he went to earn his living in the Ussuri Territory, but he’s since returned to Sakhalin, where his wife and children had remained. I tell you this only as a matter of general interest.” “Please, read it, read it!” the sakhalintsy begged, terrifically curious. “He writes: ‘I’m realizing an old dream to operate a little boat, and have once more asked to be allowed to have a small schooner built for me in the Arkovo Valley. I plan to be a seafood merchant and a cooper for Nikolaevsk. In northern Sakhalin, at Cape Golovachev, they’ve discovered a fishing ground for fish as good as are caught at the mouth of the Amur. Besides Zotov and the Jew Rubinshtein, a lot of exile-settler worker cells go there in simple rowboats and earn a lot. In Rykovsk, there wasn’t much of a harvest this year. There was a bad drought in June and July, and the grain sown in the fields toward the

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Tarai Bridge all dried up; by contrast, the grain in the fields toward Derbinsk settlement was fine. In April, I brought two beehives back from the mainland, and now have five hives and have been eating Sakhalin honey. The hives are active.1 As you’ve probably heard, M——r2 married his young pupil, but his wife was soon murdered. The paramedic G. poisoned himself. The assistant district commander found him and brought him to the hospital. S——ia has died…’ ” As I read, my listeners oohed and aahed at this news, but I didn’t interrupt the oration. “ ‘…Life here drags on as sadly as usual. Robberies and murders haven’t let up. During the past four months, five murders associated with robberies have been discovered, and how many unknown ones have taken place, God only knows… Thefts occur nightly, sometimes two or three in one night. A large ox was taken from the exile-settler Zinchenko’s yard. They found it behind the forge in the prison yard. Many livestock disappear without a trace. Anyone found in possession of anything that’s been stolen goes straight to prison. They even steal government oxen and sell them along the Aleksandrovka. Peasants fear for life and property. They recall the Butakov administration with longing. The murderers B. and S., sentenced indefinitely to katorga, walk about the settlement freely. Also, the secret vodka stills haven’t moved. The leadership’s at odds with itself, especially the prison warden with the doctor. One day in the prison, they permitted themselves to argue with each other in front of the prisoners. Penal laborers capitalize on this, of course. The exile element feels great pressure. Prosperous peasants and traders must leave the island. Private trade is being restricted, but government trade is being expanded. As such, there’s simply no hope of getting by on Sakhalin. I’ll probably end up leaving with my family for Kamchatka, where the contractor S. suggests there’s a very lucrative spot for me. In my opinion, everything good on Sakhalin is being ruined. It wasn’t long ago that a decent teacher from among the exile-settlers would be paid five rubles a month and, at the same time, have to work in the chancery (as a clerk) during the vacation. How else could he support himself, especially if he had a family? At one time, there was a life to be made in Rykovsk, but now that’s just a memory’…” “Yes, they’re not writing joyfully from the countryside!” the Khabarovsk guest said, after I’d finished reading. “Well, you’ve got new regimes, new reforms, new staffs! And no discernible improvements because of them. There’s simply been an increase in the number of officials. Add to them the 1 2

This letter was written in the winter of 1896–1897. St. Gr. Iurkevich is being accorded renown as Sakhalin’s first beekeeper. [Iu.] The political exile Ivan I. Meisner (see fn. 3, in Part IV, Chapter 7). [Trans.]

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control personnel. To this point, the administration, with all its power, has clearly had no tangible success with the island’s agricultural colony.” My interlocutors turned to me, as the most recent departee from the island. “I can’t say anything different,” I told them. “I left the island when Tymovsk District, in particular, was in a time of great change. Frequent turnover among the leadership, a massive transfer of penal laborers to railroad work, and the rapid departure of prosperous peasants to the mainland influenced sakhalintsy’s overall mood and noticeably altered local life. Everything became somehow shaky, unstable. After Butakov, there wasn’t a single commander who could endure five years of service, and the wardens changed even more rapidly. This universal tide caught up everyone and curiously pushed the katorga island’s population to new extremes, wherein the pulse of life beat even more feverishly. Initially, during the founding of settlements in Tymovsk District, there wasn’t any noticeable dissension among exile-settlers, people weren’t even in the peasant estate and, at that time, the small number of exile-settlers was in practice creamed from the penal laborers. The workers among them had one and the same instinct: clear and work the land and build homes. Exile-settlers differed little from penal laborers in terms of their material existence. But over the years, the situations for both changed. A rather significant peasantry emerged, with good farms and independence vis-à-vis the district commander. On the other hand, penal laborers were clearly distinct from them, in a discrete group strictly controlled by guards and the prison warden. As such, there eventually emerged two classes of exiles—penal laborers and exile-settlers—who, pressured by local incidents, approached each other with profound enmity. Like starving wolves, penal laborers preyed each night on anything that wasn’t nailed down, and exile-settlers paid a terrible coin for this. Of course, such a state of affairs was never going to reconcile an exile-settler to the conditions of life there. The wealthy are hurrying to leave and only the poor remain, yes, and only with thoughts of how to abandon the terrible and hateful Sakhalin.” I told them a little more about the conditions of life on Sakhalin, and then we remembered our comrades still on the island and spoke about them for the rest of the evening.

CHAPTER 14 Distance and time make an impression • The Sakhalin kaleidoscope • Can good come from bad? • The school of humiliation • The pathetic incident with Riukhin • Pathways for saving the soul • To suffer is the exiles’ common lot • Farewell, Sakhalin As I now write my memoirs, I am ridding myself of Sakhalin by a distance of ten thousand versts and a considerably long time, and the wealth of new impressions given me by my peregrinations through Russia and abroad obscure to a certain extent everything Sakhalin. The many things that were so sickening in katorga have been cleared up, cured, or calmed. As the suffering I endured passes into oblivion, I’m already starting to forget exiled heroes’ names, though I will always remember my Sakhalin exile in general. It is impossible to absolutely forget that foul, hellish, yet at the same time, personally singular and unprecedented, life in Sakhalin katorga. When you imaginarily transport yourself to the world’s end where lies the wretched island, there sweeps across the imagination: barracks, wards, maidany, penal laborers, guards, executioners, mares, rods, whips, wheelbarrows, chains, cassocks, prison sandals, shaved heads, labor quotas, rations, skilly, ramson, keta, sables, bears, Giliaks, yurts, sleighs, vagabonds, cordons, exile-settlers, cohabitants, blizzards, taiga, coal shafts… This Sakhalin kaleidoscope is so complex in consistency, it will hang before my eyes my entire life. Sakhalin by itself, without prisons, might offer an interesting, colorful picture; but, to its grief, its various colors are concealed by the katorga population’s gray gloom, discoloring that island of two seas as does the ocean fog sometimes to be found rising over southern Japan’s delightful niches. I try to find the good in everything, and even in the bad, I search for the better. What good did my eight-year life on Sakhalin do me? … I developed no career there, acquired no money, did not become healthy… Perhaps I gained renown? O Sakhalin renown! just as I often had to diligently hide you from

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people in the Far East, where Russian life is confounded with exiles, so now, in Russia, I’m sometimes obliged to conceal you as a horribly disgraceful thing… The great Russian penal laborer Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii sees in the severe punishment on the island and in katorga a means for saving criminals. They, in his expression, purge themselves through suffering. I say: an ascetic life makes a man, to a certain extent. Only one who has experienced it will understand the grief of another. Only one who has experienced hunger, cold, and pain can sympathize with another’s hunger, cold, and pain. On this count, of course, katorga makes its mark and prompts affection for a neighborly, rather than a wealthy, rich, and satisfying, life. I would hear prisoners proudly say: “A beggar’s more likely to be fed among us in katorga than on Nevskii Prospect.” That’s the truth. Not only do they feed but they dress him there. And this is done, not out of abundance, but despite the paucity of their means. Yet, in addition to physical suffering, want, and patience, Sakhalin also gives the exile a sense of utter humiliation. This is the only thing that lashes and rods do! With what weeping a penal laborer sometimes humbly beseeches the warden not to strap him to the mare! It so happened that fear of this humiliating punishment led one man to lose his mind and run into the woods. I’m recalling a pathetic episode involving the ward attendant Mikhail Riukhin. One day, he accidentally broke a window in the barracks. Not a great crime (is this even a crime?). But Riukhin, having earlier observed many similar examples, concluded he’d be punished with birch rods for this, and so, in a state of panic, he escaped that night into the taiga. Neither deep snow nor crackling frost stopped him. Only the rapid, still unfrozen Tym River could interrupt his mindless flight. Yet, he didn’t return to the prison or didn’t go to the bridge that would have taken him to the river’s other side, but crawled into the hollow of the first fallen tree he saw and hid there. An exile-settler who was hunting accidentally followed Riukhin’s tracks through the snow and came to his tree. He dragged the wretched ward attendant’s freezing body from the hollow, and presented him to the prison warden as a captured vagabond. Riukhin was spared the humiliating punishment that time, but at such a price! They brought him to the infirmary. More than anything, a beaten penal laborer’s sense of insult remains an open wound throughout his life. An exile needs to have a particularly Christian passivity to forgive katorga all his torments and humiliations and to forget its evils. Furthermore, there are certain religiously disposed old people who compare Sakhalin to the deserts where God rescued his adherents, and they regard their existence on it as indicative of the special design God has for saving souls.

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But I’ve heard that those desert hermits tearfully and fervidly beseeched God with the psalms of David: “Forgive us, Lord, forgive us, for so much shamefulness. Most of all, fill our souls with reproaches for our gluttony and humiliations for our pride…” I experienced better conditions than others: I was well provided for, enjoyed the leadership’s attention and protection, had at my disposal a government house with a flower garden, yet, most importantly, I had various jobs that required, on my part, great attention and activity and thus distracted me from the humiliating thoughts and impressions concerning my fate. Still, during all that, I mentally suffered very much, if not for myself, then for others. Suffering—such was Sakhalin’s ethical atmosphere! Rare was the person not impacted by a morbidity that is only got rid of after many years living among cheerful people in Russia. During my departure from Sakhalin Island, my heart was conciliatory: I condemned neither the fate nor the people with which I’d ended up. From both exiles and officials, I parted as a friend, accompanied by warm blessings and kind wishes. But… tragic island of unfortunates! I sincerely wish you well during the whole of my absence, and do not want hurled again at you such as what I saw. Perhaps you shall still remain a place in which to dump all rejects, all those undesired limbs severed from the organism of Russia, or you shall, upon development of an industrial sector, with your own little fleet and your minerals, coal, forests, fish, and kerosene, join the ranks of the other districts or self-administered governorates or, finally, you shall eventually play some role in future events in the Far East1—whatever the case, I give you my farewell and I pray to God that my comrades remaining to you shall soon follow my example and leave you forever.

1

Since before recorded time, civilization, beginning with India, Assyria, Chaldea, Media, Persia, Greece, and Rome, has always moved westward, and it is now pushing its way via America into Japan, China, and Siberia. Sakhalin, bordering the northern series of the Japanese islands, lies as well in the path of civilization. [Iu.]