Diplomatic Transcription
Our greatest novelist, Dostoéfsky, one of our best specimens of an earnest “Slavophil,” once met a young man whose views and feelings obviously found a response in his own heart. He listened and smiled whilst the other was talking and warmly demonstrating something or other in which he was deeply interested. Dostoéfsky, fixing his kind, earnest look upon him, as if he would penetrate the very soul of the speaker, gently tapping the young fellow’s shoulder, said: “What a capital man you might be! How I wish you had to spend some years, as I have done, in Siberian prisons! Capital school for forming a character and regaining faith, my dear friend!” added Dostoéfsky, with a tinge of melancholy and that peculiar concentrated enthusiasm which you often see in Russians, which was one of the great characteristics and attractions of our noble, generous Dostoéfsky.
I may be pardoned, I hope, if I add a little detail about my departed friend. He was exiled, in 1848, for taking part in a political plot. In reality, however, his participation was less than nothing; but he took upon himself his brother’s part, and voluntarily endured several years of hard Siberian prisoner’s life, where he became epileptic and lost his health.
Alas, poor Dostoéfsky! How well I remember the very last letter I had from him, and how pleased he was with the review I sent him of his “Buried Alive,”1 which appeared in the “Pall Mall Gazette” very shortly before his premature death. He was indeed a noble soul. To him self-sacrifice was part of his being, and his Siberian sufferings, which ruined his health, had built up a character and consolidated a faith which Russia ill could lose. Siberia was to him what the prison was to John Bunyan, whose life is so well described by Mr. Froude; and another great moralist, who touches the deepest heartstrings, Cervantes, also learned in a dungeon the wisdom the world has never ceased to enjoy.
Yet I am not reconciled to the injustice of fortune which sent Dostoéfsky to a Siberian prison: much less am I undertaking a defence of Siberia, because that simple-minded idealist found the miseries of his captivity useful to his soul. His name and his curious remark recurred to my mind the moment I wrote the word Siberia.
Dostoéfsky’s writings are little known to English readers. Some of them are translated into French. “Humiliés et Offensés” is now appearing as a feuilleton in the “Journal de St. Pétersbourg,” but in England he is chiefly known as the author of “Buried Alive.” It is to be regretted that Mr. Ralston, who is such a master of Russian language, has not reproduced some of Dostoéfsky’s best works in English, as he has done with Mr. Tourguéneff’s “Lisa” and other gems of our literature. “Buried Alive,” I see, has somewhat puzzled English readers. It describes in the form of narrative many of Dostoéfsky’s own experiences when he was in Siberia, more than thirty years ago. They belong to a past, separated from our time by the life of a generation and a whole reign of great reforms. His sketches possess an historical and psychological interest, but they are not to be regarded as descriptions of the Siberia of to-day.
I am, however, concerned just now with Siberia of three hundred years ago, Siberia at the time of the Russian conquest, of which, I fear, many English people now hear almost for the first time. It is a strange and romantic story in the annals of our country; the first conquest of the great north-east continent, recalling many memories of a troubled and tragic time, for Siberia was conquered in the reign of John IV., whom you know best as “Ivan the Terrible.” Terrible he was, no doubt, especially to the aristocracy whom he crushed, and to the Tartars whom he defeated. But I for one pardon him many of his sins because it was under his reign that England and Russia first became friends.
In those days the absurd superstition that England and Russia were natural enemies had not gained possession even of the Conservative party, if it existed under Elizabeth. It was John IV. who sent the first Russian envoy to the English Court, and although the poor ambassador was wrecked and nearly drowned on his way to London, he succeeded in reaching it safely. Ivan also granted exclusive commercial privileges to the English adventurers in Russia; and, strange to say, it was an Englishman, the seaman Jenkinson, who first showed Russians the way to Turkestan and Bokhara. With Ivan’s consent he hoisted the English flag in the Caspian, and it was our Tzar’s letter of recommendation which enabled him to make his way to the courts of the princes of Central Asia. Still more remarkable is the fact that it was by this gallant English sailor Jenkinson, that the Princes of Georgia first sent to Moscow their wish to be taken under the protection of the Tzar. It was Ivan who offered Elizabeth a monopoly of commerce with Russia in exchange for an offensive and defensive alliance against Poland and Sweden; and, in short, it was Ivan who began those overtures to England for friendship which all the best rulers of your country from Elizabeth to Chatham, and from Fox to some of the modern English statesmen, have cordially welcomed.
Nor should it be forgotten, that although Ivan was “terrible” enough in his vengeance, he lived in times when even in England kings did not quell rebellions with rose-water. His childhood was made miserable by the shameless license of the Boyards. He was neglected, ill-treated, and left to brood in solitude over the miseries their selfishness caused his people. But he was not altogether deprived of kindly feelings. As he rode in triumph through the bloody ruins of Kazan after the great victory which finally broke the power of the Mongol horde, he burst into tears. “They are not Christians,” he cried, “but yet they are men.” It was he who first summoned the Zemskyé Sobory, organised the national guard, checked the anarchy of the nobles, and founded the autocracy. “Ivan the Terrible,” says Mr. Rambaud, “in suppressing, in tyrannising over the aristocracy, at least put it out of their power to establish after him that anarchic noblesse, the hidden danger of Slav nations, which in Poland began by enfeebling royalty, and ended by enfeebling the nation.” And Wahl remarks, “Notwithstanding all his faults, it must be said of Ivan IV. that he possessed no small amount of common sense, that he broke the dangerous power of the Boyards, maintained the independence of the Russian Church, and seriously endeavoured to introduce civilising elements into his country.” Who knows but some Russian Mr. Froude may yet arise who will teach us to do tardy justice even to John IV.?
It was in his reign that we conquered Siberia. Three hundred years ago last October, Yermak, son of Timothee (Yermak Témofeïvitch), captured Isker, the capital of Siberia, and added the country to the Tzar’s dominions.
Three hundred years ago, Russia had but recently freed herself from the Tartar yoke. To-day it requires a strong effort of the imagination to conceive the possibility of the ancestors of the nomads of the steppes riding as conquerors through the ashes of Moscow. In 1581 the fact was only too recent. Ten years before, the Khan Davlet Ghirei had issued from the Crimea, while Ivan was at war with Poland and suddenly attacked Moscow. He burned the city to the ground, and after massacring thousands, carried 100,000 Russians into slavery. Nineteen years before, Ivan had captured Kazan, and there inflicted a defeat on the infidel similar to that which Charles Martel inflicted on the Arab invaders from across the Pyrenees; but the sudden raid of Crim Tartars reminded Russia that even in his death agonies the Tartar was to be feared.
Kazan fell in 1552. Moscow was burned in 1571. Liberia was conquered in 1581. So strange are the vicissitudes of nations. The Crimean Khan carried 100,000 Muscovites from their capital as slaves; only ten years before Yermak with 850 adventurers captured the capital of Siberia, made the Russian Tzar ruler over the domains of the descendants of Ghenghis Khan (or Tchinghis Khan, as he is called in Russia).
Yermak was the Russian Pizarro. Both lived in the same century. Pizarro with 168 men conquered Peru. Yermak with 850 overran Siberia. Pizarro was assassinated in the scene of his triumphs by companions jealous of his renown. Yermak perished beneath the weight of a cuirass given him by the Tzar when trying to cross the river Irtysh. In death as in life there is a curious parallel between the illustrious adventurer who gave the gold mines of the Incas to the sovereigns of Spain and the Cossack who offered our Tzar the gold mines of Siberia. The story is a simple one. I will try to tell it briefly.
Among the measures adopted by the Tzars in the sixteenth century to protect their Eastern frontier from the attacks of the Siberian tribes was the grant of lands on the Kama to the Stroganoffs, a wealthy merchant family, who raised and armed their own soldiers, settled colonies, and began to discover the mines of the Ourals. The Stroganoffs became powerful and dreamed of conquering the Siberians. At the same time a very different class of men, who called themselves “the good companions of the Don,” were actively plundering both the Tzar’s envoys and the merchants’ caravans. The Ataman of these “companions” was Yermak. The Stroganoffs made him friendly overtures, which were accepted and followed by a close alliance. Their small forces united they attacked Isker defended by Koutchum, and after very heavy losses and desperate struggles, Yermak triumphed; Koutchum fled; a cousin of his was made prisoner; and Siberia was conquered. According to the accounts of his companions, Yermak, that merciless adventurer of the Don, became as great as he was brave, as pious as he was sagacious, when master of Siberia. He was so merciful to the vanquished that they preferred his yoke to that of their own princes. Koutchum’s cousin, Magmetkul, was treated with the greatest honour. As the inhabitants of captured towns were conciliated by presents and good treatment, he advanced almost without opposition along the Irtysh and the Ob. Having conquered Siberia, Yermak thought it prudent to lay that vast territory at the feet of the Tzar, and sent some fifty of his followers with a mission to that effect. Ivan prepared them a splendid welcome, receiving them in royal state at the Kremlin. Amid joyous ringing of bells and blasts of trumpets, the embassy, followed by rich furs, golden vessels, and ancient armour, entered the reception hall. “Great Tzar,” said Koltzo, the chief of the deputation, as he knelt with his companions before the throne, “Yermak the Ataman of the Cossacks, and all those whom you condemned to death, have endeavoured to efface their sins by conquering for you a new kingdom. To your new possessions of Kazan and Astrachan, join now Siberia, oh mighty Tzar, and the Almighty aid you to keep it while the world lasts.”
Never have criminals condemned to death purchased their lives by so splendid a ransom. Even Ivan IV. was touched. He accepted Siberia as a Russian appanage, and thus we came into possession of the magnificent heritage, which, by a strange irony of fate, has done more to prejudice Russia in the opinion of the West than any other part of our dominions.
At the end of 1582 Ivan signed the decree accepting the gifts of Yermak, whom he created Prince of Siberia. The following year Yermak perished in the river Irtysh. The Russians inaugurated their sovereignty by building a chain of forts at Tumén, Tobolsk, and other places. Some twenty-five years later they established their head-quarters at Tomsk. In 1619 they had reached the Yenisei, and twenty years later they had reached the sea on the eastern shores of Asia. In 1650 they had seized the province of Amour.
Yermak became a popular hero. Although he spent but six years at the most on this side of the Ourals, his memory has been deeply implanted both upon Russian and Tartar. The latter have composed whole legends about him. Of the Tartar legends I know nothing; but his work remains, and will remain. He but began it in his rough fashion; but if we are to scrutinise too closely, how few of the world’s conquerors have been anything better than bandits on a great scale. Yermak had not one thousand outlaws, but he conquered or laid the foundations for the conquest of half a continent. Among the Pizarros, the Cortez’, and the Clives of history, Yermak has a right to a prominent place.
No doubt the history of Russian colonisation, like the history of all colonisations, has its romances, its tragedy and its heroes. Wherever there is life there is love, and where love exists there is romance always, and tragedy only too often.
But like so many other chapters in the history of civilisation, the half-intelligible necrology of many generations which have lived and died in Siberian land has left us but a few confused names and dates. Still—though unknown and unhonoured—they have laid the foundation of a mighty State.
In Siberia, they say, are signs that there once flourished a far more numerous population than that which now lives there: “Innumerable tumuli, inscriptions on the banks of the Lena, and ruins of ancient towns and fortresses are scattered over the country in every direction.” But the Siberians of old times are utterly gone. Let us now turn to the Siberians of to-day. The Tercentenary of Yermak’s conquest was celebrated by banquets last October in both the Russian capitals, and in the towns of Siberia. High hopes were expressed of the future of the country. There was no great display, but it was a kind of new tie between European and Asiatic Russia.
At the beginning of this reign the Minister of the Interior sent one of his superior employés to examine and report upon the prisons, the state of the exiles, the posts and telegraphs of Siberia, from the Ourals to Saghalin. I have not seen the report which was the result of these investigations. But I was glad to find not a bad substitute for it, which perhaps will be even better for English people, as not being drawn up by a Russian, in a work which is just being published in London. It is called “Through Siberia,” and is written by the Rev. Henry Lansdell, a clergyman who, in 1879 and 1880, went over very much the same grounds as the Russian official, and on very much the same mission.
It is the latest and the best account I have seen anywhere of Siberian facts, fresh and authentic records of what an English observer found in our “Asiatic Canada” at the close of the Emperor Alexander II.’s reign.
Siberia is an enormous subject. It takes half a year merely to travel over it; and Mr. Lansdell could not possibly, in the course of his rapid journey, spend much time in investigations. But he has supplemented his own observations by carefully compiling the most important facts from all the best and most recent authorities. If anyone wants to know what it is to be exiled to Siberia, he has only to read “Through Siberia.”
Of course I do not pledge myself to everything that Mr. Lansdell says. I suppose he is but a mortal, and as such liable to mistakes. And on one point I must make a slight reservation concerning this book, which fortunately does not affect its value as an authority concerning Siberia; perhaps in some eyes it will increase its value. Mr. Lansdell, with a most Christian spirit of charity, endeavours to do justice, and to explain the characteristics of the Russian Orthodox Church.
I do not complain of his efforts. An earnest desire to understand so important a question can only be useful, and for an Anglican clergyman of the Evangelical School he is surprisingly sympathetic. But if you want to see the difference between the interpretation of a faith by one who is without its pale and that of one who is a great authority upon this subject, who has made real sacrifices for the cause of Greek orthodoxy, and thus proved the depth of his convictions, you cannot do better than compare Mr. Lansdell’s appendix on “The doctrines of the Russian, Roman, and English churches,” and the lucid and powerful polemic by the learned Dr. J. J. Overbeck, whose “Plain Views of the Claims of the Orthodox Catholic Church as opposed to all other Christian Denominations” (Trübner & Co.), I would recommend to all who wish to understand the standpoint of the Russian Church.
No doubt, in England, which has been reared under the shadow of the Roman law, it is difficult to appreciate views formed by the school of Alexandria and the traditions of the undivided Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils. But if you understood them a little better, you would find much more intelligible such controversies as that which the dutiful and courageous Archbishop Michael of Belgrade is having with the creatures of Austria who form the Cabinet of Prince Milan.
However, I must apologise for digressing too much.
Mr. Lansdell, although not an authority on the Orthodox Church, kept his eyes open, and reports many things of interest about the church in Siberia. For instance he says:—
Siberia is divided in six dioceses, presided over by 7 bishops. It contains 1,515 churches and 1,509 clergy; 14 monasteries containing 147 monks, and 4 nunneries containing 62 nuns. . . . There would seem to be no difficulty in raising the necessary funds; and I must add that I was agreeably surprised in Siberia to see how well and how clean the churches were kept, even in the remotest and most out-of-the way places. . . . I called upon some few of the priests in Siberia, who, like the peasants, seemed decidedly superior to, and better off than, those in Russia.2
The chief interest of his book, however, is not in its ecclesiastical details, but in the account which he gives of Siberia and its prisons.
Few have, for instance, an idea of the dimensions of that enormous colony. I extract the following figures from Mr. Lansdell’s book, giving the statistics of area and population:—
Tobolsk, 800,000 square miles, 1,102,302 population.
Tomsk, 500,000 ,, ,, 838,000 ,,
Yeniseisk, 1,000,000 ,, ,, 372,000 ,,
Irkutsk, 300,000 ,, ,, 380,000 ,,
Yakutsk, 1,500,000 ,, ,, 235,000 ,,
Trans-Baikal, 240,000 ,, ,, 430,000 ,,
Amour, 173,000 ,, ,, 22,000 ,,
Primorsk, 733,000 ,, ,, 62,000 ,,
Saghalin 32,000 ,, ,, 15,000 ,,
Are these totals not appalling? I confess they confuse me. But if you take a map of Siberia, one could form some idea of its size by cutting out the size of Germany, France, Austria, and Hungary; for there would be sufficient land still left over to create Great Britain and Ireland out of the single province of Yeniseisk. But all that enormous expanse is empty. The population of Yeniseisk is only 372,000, or about half the population of Moscow. The whole population of Siberia is less than the population of London.
Siberians do not seem distressed at these distances, and think nothing of riding a hundred miles to attend a ball or a banquet; but entertainments of that sort are only held in towns, which are very few, only seventeen having more than 5,000 inhabitants. Of course much of Siberia is not fit for colonisation; the land is evidently greatly altered since the times of the mammoths and other antediluvian animals. But nevertheless there is undoubtedly a great want of population.
To supply that want has been the constant thought of Russian statesmen. It is that which partly has led them to establish penal settlements in Siberia. There is a certain appropriateness about that which is quite undesigned. It is perhaps not altogether unfitting that Siberia, conquered by a half-brigand, should become the home of the convict. Yet it deserves a better fate, and it is sure to have it sooner or later—I hope sooner than later.
At present, however, Siberia is interesting to Englishmen on account of its prisons and convict settlements, and it is therefore to what Mr. Lansdell says about these that I hasten to return.
The chapters in which Mr. Lansdell describes his experience of prison life in Siberia are particularly useful. With painstaking industry, he goes through all the monstrous incredible falsehoods which are so implicitly believed by so many English people, and shows point by point how false they all are. From the sentimental love-story of “The Exiles of Siberia” down to the lucubrations of Mr. Grenville Murray, he passes them all in review, and explains or corrects these popular narratives from his own personal experience in Siberia.
Mr. Lansdell differs from many “veracious” writers on Siberia, Herzen among the number, in having been in Siberia, and not only has he been in the country, but he has gone through all the prisons and mines which he could find in the course of a journey extending over more than seven thousand miles. It is no more than the simple truth which he speaks when he claims that he is in a unique position among all those who have written on the subject. He has gone where he pleased in Siberia. “A master key,” he says, “was put into my hand which opened every door. I went where I would, and almost when I would, and on no single occasion was admission refused, though often applied for at a moment’s notice.”3 Mr. Lansdell is not a novice in the work of inspecting prisons and convict establishments. He has, as he says, “visited prisons in nearly every country in Europe.” He belongs to neither of the political parties. His book is dedicated to Earl Cairns, and although he does refer to the Eastern Question, I am really unable to make out from his writings whether he sympathised with Lord Beaconsfield or Mr. Gladstone in the crisis in Turkey. “He has,” he says, “tried to be accurate,” and in his book he has given such an unprejudiced statement of what he saw and heard in the prisons and mines of Siberia that he appears to have satisfied both returned exiles and some Russian official inspectors of prisons, as to the correctness of his account. His testimony, therefore, is simply the best that exists, and henceforth in England there is no excuse for anyone who repeats the lying legends and calumnious traditions which seem to be handed from generation to generation by English Russophobes.
There is one important, very important, fact which I have omitted to mention about Mr. Lansdell’s book.[*]
Unlike most accounts of Siberian prisons which appear in England, it describes Siberia as it was in 1879 and 1880—not Siberia as it was twenty, fifty, or one hundred years ago. That little chronological fact really possesses more significance than you may think, even in Siberia, where, as Mr. Lansdell remarks, “days are of little importance, and hours of no moment.” What would you think of a Russian who passed off upon his credulous countrymen a frightful story of the horrors which undoubtedly existed in your penal settlements of Botany Bay, less than half as many years ago as the time that has elapsed since “The Exiles of Siberia” was written, as illustrating the fate of English convicts to-day? Yet this is the way English people are constantly treating Russians, and when their misstatements are pointed out, even journals “with the largest circulation in the world” refuse to correct their misstatements, as Mr. Tallack of the Howard Association can prove, if need be.
It may perhaps be indiscreet to say—but, after all, I am too much of a child of this century not to indulge in indiscretions—that I really did not expect so favourable a report from an Englishman, because “impartial Englishmen” often adore their prejudices, as the most tender-hearted mother adores her only child.
Of course I knew that the ridiculous stories told by your papers about the “quicksilver mines” and similar fables were false, but I wits afraid that in regions so far removed from the central power, where so small a population is scattered over such enormous expanse of territory, there might be occasionally horrible abuses of power, cruelties and horrors. But I learn from Mr. Lansdell’s very painstaking report that our poor convicts are not badly off, and that, although there are no doubt abuses to be investigated and removed by our Government, a humane and experienced English clergyman can say, after going through the country from end to end, that, “on the whole, my conviction is that if a Russian exile behaves himself decently and well, he may in Siberia be more comfortable than in many, and as comfortable as in most, of the prisons of the world.”[4]
It amused me to learn what is the great grievance of the exiles in Siberia. They have not got enough work to do! The prisoners beg for work, and often work cannot be found for them. It is, as Mr. Lansdell says, a grievance not peculiar to Russian prisons, but surely it might not be impossible to employ so many willing hands, if only in making roads? Instead of the popular English picture being true, which represents exiles being worked to death beneath the blows of the merciless “historic” knout, work is regarded as so much of a luxury that compulsory idleness is one of the punishments inflicted upon prisoners. “Most generally,” says Mr. Lansdell, “we found they had a happy-go-lucky way, especially in the small prisons, of opening the doors in the morning and letting the prisoners, if they did not misbehave themselves, go in and out the yard, as they liked—to sleep, to talk, or walk in the sun, and in some cases to smoke.”[5] They also play at cards, and receive frequent visits from their families. Mr. Lansdell, in short, confirms in the most conclusive way the strict accuracy of the statement I made two years ago, that our convict system is more open to the charge of too great leniency than to that of excessive severity.
I am, thank God, neither a judge nor a legislator; for to bring an accusation against another and to make him suffer, when he may be only a victim of circumstances or apparent guilt, must be a terrible duty; but if I were, I would certainly insist upon drawing a line between political prisoners and regular criminals. But crimes, from political motives or any other, still remain crimes.
The story of the fate reserved only for the very worst and most incorrigible of convicts, at three places in Siberia, is horrible. Those who say that shooting and hanging is better than flogging with the “plète” are perhaps right. Death is preferable to many things and
is a blessing reserved for the most desperate cases. I cannot prescribe how discipline should be maintained in a gang of hardened felons, and as yet I have found nowhere an absolutely good prescription. The plète is never inflicted except in cases where all other means have failed to reduce the incorrigible criminal to obedience.
Mr. Lansdell does not seem to have discovered even a single “horror”—this is especially the case in his researches among the political prisoners. Most English people imagine a political prisoner sent to Siberia is doomed to slavery in the cell or in the mine; and nearly everyone has been told that there are millions of these unhappy people, mostly Poles. Mr. Lansdell—most singular to say, is it not?—found no “millions.” On the contrary, with his best efforts, he discovered but very few political prisoners in all the prisons and mines which he visited. Of those whom he did meet “the majority were free and tolerably comfortable.” He says:—
The severest case of punishment of a political prisoner I met with was that of, I think, a Nihilist, at Kara, who had daily to go to work in the gold-mines; but, on returning, he had a room to himself, some of his own furniture, fittings, and books, one of which was on political economy. His wife lived in the neighbourhood, and could see him lawfully, and bring him food at frequent intervals; and it was not difficult for her to see him unlawfully, for just in front of his window passed the public road, on which she could stand and talk to him with ease.[6]
At one place in Siberia Mr. Lansdell met one of the would-be assassins of the late Emperor. He says:—
He was sentenced to the mines, and no doubt popular imagination pictured him chained, and tormented to within an inch of his life; whereas I found him confined, indeed, but only to the neighbourhood, and dressed, if I remember rightly, in a tweed suit.[7]
At Tobolsk, Mr. Lansdell met with a veritable political Polish prisoner, in the shape of a Polish doctor, who “had surrounded himself with small comforts, as Polish books, eau de Cologne, and cigarettes.”[8]
Not so long ago your papers reported a case which showed that in an English prison a prisoner is not allowed even to enjoy the company of a poor little mouse which he had tamed in his solitary cell. The gaoler killed it, and the authorities approved of it, saying, “Prisoners should not be allowed even such a luxury as a tame mouse.” The English system may be better than ours, but which is the most merciful?
My impression is (says Mr. Lansdell) that the greater number of the political exiles either go to prison only for a short time, or not at all, and are then placed in villages and towns, and there expected to get their living. . . . They do this in a variety of ways. Some are teachers of languages, some are tradesmen, and some are photographers. We met, for instance, two exile photographers at Tobolsk.[9]
The Irish in America are told every week in that curious paper the “Irish World” (a copy of which I am going to take back to Russia with me, as a reminder that England’s character can be painted in as black colours by the Irish as Russia is by the Poles) that Mr. Parnell and his brother legislators are “pining to death in the pestilential air of the British Bastille.”
Even an American like Mr. Henry George can say, and an Englishman like Mr. Cowen can print the remark, that “any half-civilised Indian chief in the most anarchical South American republic would disdain to treat his political prisoners as those in Kilmainham are treated.” Yet the Irish prison is accessible to everyone. Siberia is remote from all the world. How charmingly easy it is to invent sensational “horrors” about the latter, without fear of detection, and how tempting it is when so welcome a reception is assured beforehand to every tale which may discredit Russia!
But I am firmly convinced that when Englishmen begin to perceive that they have been misled by lying reports, and that their confidence has been absurdly misplaced, they are most eager to admit and to repair their mistakes. This is a noble and generous feature in English character, which I have observed myself more than once, and which I may some day describe perhaps in Russian. But, after all, are we not all easily misled? How easily! . . .
Well, be cautious in accepting the evidence of partial judges. By all means weigh carefully whatever is said by foreigners; but when a countryman of your own, just returning from Siberia, urges you not to accept like credulous children stories of “Muscovite tortures” in imaginary “quicksilver mines,” listen to his voice.
I am a Russian, and though I may guarantee that certain things are quite contrary to our national character, still, having never been myself in Siberia, I can only point out the facts I have learned from others. Mr. Lansdell, on the other hand, certainly deserves our confidence, precisely because of his good faith and impartiality. He is not a political refugee whose interest it is to paint his political opponents in the blackest possible colours. Of course it is difficult to hope that his testimony will be accepted by everyone; there are too many who, as a popular proverb says, “love truth, but invite the lie to dinner.” But I have faith that the majority of Englishmen will perceive the untrustworthiness of Nihilistic and Polish sources. If I am wrong, it would only prove that public opinion, even in England, has lost its value.
Mr. Lansdell testifies that in Siberia there are no quicksilver mines at all. Equally mythical is that other redoubtable legend, gravely printed in an English newspaper, that we feed our exiles with putrid horse-flesh purchased in Sheffield for the purpose—five tons every week. Really we do not want to come to Sheffield for objects of that sort, and there are sufficient quantities of dead horses in Russia if they were wanted. But let us be charitable, and hope that the Sheffield writer who printed that fable will be more fortunate and less easily found out, the next time he forges some other stories of that kind.
Mr. Lansdell dwells at some length on the irons which some prisoners wear. He says, “the heaviest Russian irons are about the weight, I imagine, of those formerly in use in England.”[10] About a seventh of the prisoners whom he saw in Western Siberia were chained; very few were chained in the East. Not even the worst prisoner ever wears fetters longer than eight years.
Punishments are solitary confinement, short rations, putting in irons and birching with rods, “facsimiles of those used in the prison of Coldbath Fields in London.”
Mr. Lansdell visited several hard-labour prisons. He says:—
The prisons of Tobolsk reminded me most of those I had seen in Vienna and Cracow, in which, however, in some respects, a comparison would result in favour of Siberia; for at Cracow the convicts had not only to work at the bench by day, but, if my memory does not fail me, to sleep on it at night. At Tobolsk a set portion of labour is imposed daily; but when this is done, the prisoner is at liberty to work for himself.[11]
At Tomsk, where the great mass of the prisoners had nothing to do, the governor said he had no law to compel them to work, and that the severest punishment he could inflict was three days’ solitude with bread and water. At Alexandroffsk, the central Siberian prison, Mr. Lansdell says he found the punishment cells well lighted and warmed, and “far more endurable than those in some English gaols.”[12]
Prisoners may see their friends every Sunday and holyday (if so, how I wish we had more holydays! though Mr. Lansdell says we have far too many already), write to them when they please, receive food daily, and money every week.
The prisoners have each ½ lb. of meat, and 2 ¾ lb. of bread a day, which Mr. Lansdell says “is in excess of the English convict allowance. The hospital arrangements were exceedingly good.”
The prisons of the worst repute are on the east of the Baïkal, and the worst of the worst is the penal colony of Kara. More than one-third of the 2,000 convicts there confined are murderers. What Mr. Lansdell found in that worst prison of the worst district of Siberia may be inferred from his account of the cell of a Jewish political prisoner condemned to the mines at Kara:—
Compared to the criminal wards in the other prisons, his cell was a little parlour. It was clean, and in a manner garnished. . . . [T]he Kara prisoner had certain pieces of furniture and eating requisites, the placing and arrangement of which indicated familiarity with the habits of decent society. One of his books I found was a treatise on political economy. . . . The room certainly was not large, but there was abundance of light, the outlook from the long window being not on a prison wall surrounded by chevaux-de-frise, but commanding a view of the Kara valley such as a Londoner might envy; while just outside was the public road along which could be seen everything that passed. I speak only truth, when I say that if I had the misfortune to be condemned to prison for life, and bad my choice between Millbank in London or this political’s cell at Kara, I would certainly choose the latter.[13]
The quicksilver mines, as I have said, do not exist. The silver mines at Nertchinsk Mr. Lansdell did not visit, but his chapter on the mode of mining there taken from the mouth of exiles who had worked in the mines is interesting. But as it is second-hand testimony I do not dwell upon it. He visited a gold mine near Krasnoïarsk, but it was worked by free labour.
The first real convict mines he saw were those at Kara. This is what he says:—
All the gold mining is done above ground. The convicts work thirteen hours a day for nine months in the year. During the three winter months they do not work. The food of the convict miner is 4 lbs. of bread, 1 lb. of meat, ¼ lb. of buckwheat a day, together with quarter of a brick of tea per month—a ration, Mr. Lansdell says, which is double of the highest English convict allowance. But although they are twice as well fed they do no more work. “They do not appear to be worked harder, I should think not so hard, as our own convicts at Portland.”[14] At night the convicts of the higher categories go to their families, the lower grade sleep in prison.
As to the impudent statement in “The Russians of To-day,” concerning “ladies being sent down the mines to rot and die,” Mr. Lansdell says that no women of any kind work in the mines of Siberia.
The hospital at Kara is a fine building, with large, lofty, airy, clean rooms. “The whole of the Kara penal colony,” says Mr. Lansdell, “bore about it marks of the superintendence of a man who conscientiously acted from a high sense of duty.” Mr. Lansdell’s account of the admirable way in which Colonel Kononovitch has transformed Kara from an Inferno into a model penal settlement is one of the most interesting chapters in the whole book.
Mr. Lansdell thus sums up his experience at the mines:—
That the men who worked in the mines had no easy task was plain, but it was equally plain that their labour, as compared with that of an English navvy or convict, was nothing extraordinary. . . . Comparing Siberian convicts with English, the Siberian has the advantage in more food, . . . more intercourse with his fellows, and far more permissions to receive visits from his family. The Kara convict, when in the higher category, receives besides 15 per cent. of what he earns for the Government; and even in the lower category he is credited with the money, though its payment is deferred till he mounts higher. Political prisoners also may write to their friends; and though by strict right, I believe, criminals in Siberia cannot do so, yet this rule is not carried out.[15]
At Saghalin he reports that all agree in saying the convicts are not overworked. In the coal mines the convicts spend eleven hours a day, doing as much work in that time as a willing worker could do in two hours. On the whole Mr. Lansdell is of opinion that so far from the Siberian prisons being intolerably bad, as regards the three primary needs of life, clothing, food, and shelter, are concerned, the Russian is as well off as, or better than, the English convict. Discipline is not so strict and seclusion is not so rigorous. But the religious advantages of the English convict, in Mr. Lansdell’s opinion, are greater than those of the Russian. However, I had better let Mr. Lansdell sum up in his own words. On leaving Siberia, he says:—
I had now followed the exiles from Moscow all across Siberia, and with the exception of the mines at Nertchinsk and Dui, had seen them under the varying circumstances in which they live. Looking at the matter calmly and dispassionately, I am bound to say that “exile to Siberia” no longer calls up to my mind the horrors it did formerly. I am quite prepared to believe that instances have occurred of bad management, oppression, and cruelty. I have already quoted some cases, but that the normal condition of things has been exaggerated I am persuaded. Taken at the worst, “condemned to the mines” is not so bad as it seems, and in the case of peasant exiles, willing to work, I cannot but think that many of them have a better chance of doing well in several parts of Siberia than at home in Russia.[16]
I need nothing more, and so let me quit this painful subject with an expression of gratitude for the conclusive testimony which so strongly supports the plea I ventured to make some time ago in my book on “Russia and England.”
Mr. Gallenga, in one of his excellent letters in “The Times,” says:—
Nothing can be more astonishing than the change that has been wrought in Russian minds with respect to the ominous name of Siberia. That legion, which imagination had invested with all the terrors of a place of expiation and torture, turns out now, in sober reality, to be an Eldorado. Not only is there no limit to its mineral wealth, but large tracts of its soil, in spite of the climate, give evidence of prodigious fertility, and offer a wide field for the energies of colonising enterprise. The condition of a prisoner at the present day, the Russians say, if he will only work, ought to appear not unenviable; for he is not only well-fed and lodged and cared for, but even free to choose and change his abode, to pursue the occupation he prefers, to earn money and make his fortune while he rehabilitates his character. So great his well-being appears to be, say the Russians, that crowds of free and voluntary emigrants follow in his track. Siberia and Central Asia are to Russia what Australia and Van Diemen’s Land were to England, with this difference, that the English penal colonies were at enormous distances beyond sea; Russia’s Asiatic possessions are integrant parts of her territory, and can be occupied and turned to the purposes of civilisation step by step and stage by stage, trade following on the settler’s path and railways annihilating distance.
Mr. Gallenga faithfully reports what he found, and it will be well for both countries when more observers as intelligent and truthful represent the English press in the Russian empire.
You have correspondents at Merv, but no correspondent at Moscow, and since Mr. Wallace has left us, is there one English correspondent of the English press in the whole of Russia? The only information you have, I am told, is from foreigners resident in St. Petersburg, that city which Mr. Gallenga says, “was not one of the cities of God’s own building.”
A good deal of Siberia, no doubt, is, like a good deal of Canada, a region of snow and ice, not likely to be ever more useful than it is to-day. Such, for instance, is the country about Yakutsk, where, as Mr. Lansdell says, the mean temperature is 18.5 Fahrenheit, and for two months every year the mercury falls to fifty-eight degrees below zero, freezing the ground to a depth of fifty feet below the surface. There the land only thaws three feet deep, but the crops nevertheless produce fifteenfold on average, and in particular places fortyfold. The people get accustomed to it, for a traveller notes with surprise that he found children running about hardly covered in the open air without any apparent discomfort, although the thermometer stood at 9° there.
There is one thing in which Siberia has the advantage of Canada. Your north is sealed to the world. Ours is the great highway through which the world will yet trade with Central Asia. The Yenisei, that gigantic river whose length, 3,472 miles, is exceeded only by that of the Nile, the Amazon, and the Mississippi, opens up a waterway from the Northern Sea to the Chinese mountains. Seventeen hundred miles from its mouth it is 1,000 yards in breadth. Only inferior to the Yenisei is the Ob—a river 2,700 miles in length, which drains a basin of more than a million square miles.
Mr. Lansdell, who describes both these magnificent rivers, does not mention a scheme which has been submitted by the Governor-General of Siberia to the Minister of Ways and Communications for uniting the basins of Ob and Yenisei, so as to create an uninterrupted waterway from Tumén to Irkutsk. A canal, 1,872 sagenes in length, between the Lakes Bolschoi and Kossof, would enable boats to pass the whole way from the Yenisei to Irkutsk. The cost of this great enterprise would be met by the recently reimposed tax on gold. Siberia is rich in gold, silver, and precious stones. Mr. Lansdell says that one-eighth of all the gold of the world is discovered in Siberia.
The latest official returns of the gold mines of Siberia show the latter are divided in three classes:—
The first are those of Olekminsk, where we have 320 mines, only forty-eight of which are now being worked; they yield 547,000 ounces of gold annually. In the region of the Amour eleven mines are being worked out of forty-three, yielding 100,000 ounces per annum. In the rest of Siberia and the Urals 339 mines are being worked out of a total of 1,939, and they yield annually 619,000 ounces.
Altogether our Siberian gold mines, which give employment to 70,000 persons, yield every year a million and a quarter ounces of gold.
An English friend tells me, on good authority, that the total of the production of your mines is larger than ours, but we are hardly at the beginning of our gold deposit, and in some of your colonies the yield is already falling off. There is almost no limit to the mineral wealth of our great undeveloped Siberia.
The greatest source of wealth, however, in those parts of the world, greater than the gold mines, is the inexhaustible fertility of the soil. To the testimony of many English and foreign writers whom I quoted three years ago I may now add that of Mr. Lansdell. After referring to the wealth of silver, copper, and iron in the Altai mountains, he says:—
But these are nothing compared with grain, for the production of which the country is admirably fitted. From the southern border of the Tobolsk province, for 600 miles northward, lies a district of fertile black earth; and so exclusively is it of this character in the valleys of many of the rivers, which overflow like the Nile and leave a rich deposit, that the geologist finds it difficult to pick up even a few specimen pebbles. It is like a vast tract of garden land, well suited for the production of wheat, oats, linseed, barley, and other cereals. Farther north are prairies for cattle, and a wooded region, inhabited by various fur-bearing animals, where the pine, fir, and birch abound. These remarks apply to the valley of the Obi no less than to that of the Yenisei . . . . Again, north of the wooded region come the tundras, over which roam the reindeer, wild and tame, . . . besides which, the rivers are so full of fish that the fishermen try not to catch too many because of the frequent breaking of their nets.[17]
Of the province of Tomsk Mr. Lansdell says the climate is good, and the land is valuable for agricultural purposes, while the mountainous districts are exceedingly rich in minerals.
It is unnecessary to multiply extracts, but I may add the following description of the “prairie” land of the lower Amour, in the extreme east of Siberia:—
The soil of this prairie is clayey, with an upper layer of rich black mould, which is covered with luxuriant grasses, attaining often the height of a man. Among them may be seen Manchurian panic grass, and succulent, broad-bladed kinds of which I do not know the names. . . . Small shrubs of cinnamon-rose are hidden everywhere by the grass, and, with vetches and other climbing plants, render travelling over these prairies, as Mr. Collins testifies, extremely difficult. This writer speaks also of grape and pea vines, and many varieties of flowers, among which the lily of the valley was so abundant as to fill the air with its fragrance. Below Aigun, the country on the north continues flat, and is covered with a rich black soil, in places fourteen inches thick.[18]
“Even Kamchatka is not so black as it is painted,” says Mr. Lansdell:—
The valley watered by the Kamchatka is composed of fine mould, and has abundant natural productions—fir, birch, larch, poplar, willow, cedar, and juniper, and that of larger size than in the same latitude elsewhere in Asia. Raspberries, strawberries, whortleberries, currants, and cranberries abound; and flowers are seen in spring in almost tropical luxuriance.[19]
There is an interesting observation about the climate:—
The great cold is not thought a grievance in Siberia, for a man clothed in furs may sleep at night in an open sledge when the mercury freezes in the thermometer; and, wrapped up in his pelisse, he can lie without inconvenience on the snow under a thin tent when the temperature of the air is 30° below zero.[20]
South of Yakutsk, he says in another place, “the weather was charming, and the new spring vegetation lovely”[21]:—
The summer climate, therefore, of those parts of Siberia through which I passed I consider simply delightful—neither oppressively hot by day nor unpleasantly cold by night.[22]
Of course a territory which borders upon the Arctic circle cannot be so uniformly comfortable as England or France—that is impossible. But all the world cannot be as convenient as the Englishman’s easychair. Siberia at all events possesses one vital advantage—men need not starve for want of food.
Mr. Lansdell confirms all that previous travellers have said concerning the cheapness of living in Siberia. There, as elsewhere, prices have risen, and the people of Tobolsk lament that meat is now at a ruinous price of 2d. per lb., having advanced to five times what it was thirty years ago. In 1877 meat was only ½d. per lb., and black grouse, capercailzie, and hazel grouse 9d. a pair. Between Tobolsk and Tomsk, Mr. Lansdell says:—
I was offered a pair of ducks for 2½d.; 10 brace of riabchiks, a sort of grouse about the size of a partridge, cost 1s.; a couple of fish called yass, weighing, I supposed, 1½lb. each, were offered for 1½d.; and 10 large fish, as a lot, for ¼d. each. At Juchova I was offered for 5d. a couple of pike, weighing probably 20 lbs., and a live duck for 1¼d.; whilst at the villages in the district we passed, which are not easily accessible, a young calf, I was told, could be bought for 6d.[23]
The price of a good horse is 4l. 10s. In Western Siberia, according to the same author, it is not uncommon to meet persons who have from 4,000 to 5,000 horses, and as many cows.
South of Tomsk he finds things even cheaper:—
The price of land and provisions at Barnaul was such as might make many a man sigh to live there. The price for the hire of cleared black soil was 3½d. an English acre. We saw them scratching the surface of it (for their instrument was so shallow that it was a mockery to call it ploughing), and yet such farming yields there an abundant crop. They take just a little of their stable manure for cucumber beds, but burn the rest to get rid of it, never thinking of putting it on the land; but when they have used a field for a few years, and it is becoming exhausted, they take fresh ground. The cost of provisions in this fertile district is of a piece with the prices quoted on the Obi. Black rye flour costs half a farthing per English pound; undressed wheat flour, such as we use for brown bread, costs 2s. per cwt.; whilst white wheaten flour costs up to 16s. for a sack of 180 pounds. The price of meat is similar. In the summer, when it will not keep and is dear, beef costs 1¼d. per lb.; but in winter, when it can be kept in a frozen condition, it sells for less than ½d. per English pound. Veal is more expensive, and costs 1½d.; whilst aristocratic persons, who live on grouse, have to pay as much as from 2d. to 2½d. per brace. In this part of Siberia it is rare to find a peasant without a stock of horses and cows, and a man with a family to help him can make an excellent living.[24]
At Krasnovosk, where he lodged at an hotel, he paid 2s. a day for the best room; turkeys were 3s., pheasants 6d. each.
At Nikolaevsk, at the height of the season, salmon weighing 15 to 25 lbs. can be got at 1d. each. When I wrote about Siberia two years ago, I quoted many other English testimonies. All agree in substance with what Mr. Lansdell says; he only confirms the truth which was already evident.
I will add two other testimonies from authorities of different nationalities, one a German, the other a Pole.
The German is Mr. O. W. Wahl, whose “Land of the Tzar” is hardly so much read in England as its merits deserve. This is what he says in his chapter on the Russians of Siberia:—
Life among the civilised classes of Siberian society consists of a perfect round of pleasure enhanced by the exhilarating influence of a beautiful South Siberian climate and the splendour of a gigantic nature. The name Siberia, so startling to European ears, produces an electric effect on whoever has lived in that country, as it is sure to recall sweet remembrances. The lower class as well as the higher both possess, more or less, the good qualities of the Russian character without its usual faults. Although the greatest part of the population has sprung from criminals, their habits are pure and simple, and their general probity is such as to render the locks for the door a matter of superfluity.[25]
Still more remarkable is the testimony of a Polish exile, who wrote, some thirty years ago—
Siberia will soon cease to be a region of terror and captivity, for it possesses all the means of becoming a land of prosperity and freedom. Siberia has no nobility, no peculiarly privileged class, very few officials, and a population which has never been in bondage, and knows how to govern itself.
And let me add to this a parting word, a quotation from Dostoefsky’s “Buried Alive:”—
In spite of the cold climate, Siberia is a nice snug place to live in, as the people are very simple-minded and conservative; innovations are abhorred, and things go on much as they did two hundred years ago. It is a pleasant country to live in. The climate is excellent, and there are many rich and hospitable merchants and wealthy foreigners scattered about the different towns and settlements. In short it is a blessed country. The difficulty is to know how to enjoy it; but there are some fortunate individuals who have learned the great secret of satisfactorily solving the riddle of life.[26]
Unfortunately, the solving of that riddle is a difficult task even in countries more blessed than Siberia! O.K.
[1] A translation by Marie von Thilo is published by Messrs. Longmans & Co., price 6s.
[2] Henry Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2 vols. (London: Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1882), 1:163, 176.
[3] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 1:vi.
[4] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 1:95.
[5] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 1:82–83.
[6] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:392–93.
[7] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:393.
[8] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:114.
[9] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:398.
[10] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:87.
[11] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:115.
[12] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:246.
[13] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:457–58.
[14] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:464.
[15] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:478–79.
[16] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:728–29.
[17] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:104–6.
[18] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:535–36.
[19] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:636.
[20] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:297.
[21] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:146.
[22] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:146–47.
[23] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:120.
[24] Lansdell, Through Siberia, 2:158–59.
[25] O. W. Wahl, The Land of the Tzar (1875).
[26] Fyodor Dostoefsky, Buried Alive (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1862).
Essay Subjects
People Mentioned in the Essay
- Alfred Nicolas Rambaud
- Anthony Jenkinson
- Benjamin Disraeli 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
- Charles James Fox
- Duke Charles Martel Prince of the Franks
- Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
- Genghis Khan Khan of Mongol Empire
- Hernando Cortez
- Ivan Turgenev
- James Anthony Froude
- John Bunyan
- Khan Devlet Geray
- Khan Kuchum
- O.W. Wahl
- Prince Magmetkul
- Queen Elizabeth Tudor I of England and Ireland
- Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich IV, the Terrible
- William Ewart Gladstone
- William Pitt I Earl of Chatham, Prime Minister of Great Britian
- William Ralston Shedden
- Yermak Timofeyevich
Countries Mentioned in the Essay
Citation
Novikoff, Olga. Fraser’s Magazine 105 o.s. (January 1882): 54–71.