Chapter IX: 229 (2)

My first act of allegiance to the party almost led to my arrest. We received a trunkful of proclamations from the Kief headquarters of the organization, and about twenty people undertook to distribute them. I and several others went to the theater. We sat in the gallery, in different corners, and waited for the end of the performance. As soon as the curtain was lowered, each of us threw down two bundles of proclamations. The whole parterre floor was covered with them. The policemen who were stationed in the building immediately ran to the gallery. One of the theater ushers, who was standing at the door, saw me throw the proclamations. He grabbed me by the shoulders and called for the police. But the gallery was thronged with working-men and students who all sympathized with us. A dozen hands seized me and tore me away from his grasp. A fight started. Some one threw a large kerchief on my head. When the police reached our floor, they locked the door and began to look for the culprits. The fight became general. The usher, accompanied by a policeman, vainly looked for me. I was already seated at the other end of the gallery, looking quite unconcerned. The gray kerchief saved me from his detecting eye.

LIEUTENANT PETER PETROVICH SHMIDT

Implicated in the Uprising of the Sevastopol fleet, executed in 1906
]

One of the most pressing needs of our group was the establishment of a secret printing-office. The shipments of literature from Kief were, of necessity, very irregular and attended with great risks. It was found impossible to establish one at Odessa, as the gendarmes were on our track. Several members of our group had already been arrested. It was, therefore, decided to do our printing at Kishinev, which city is several hours’ ride from Odessa. I do not know what inspired them with such confidence in me, but I was chosen by the executive committee for this responsible undertaking. Naturally, I was very proud of their high opinion of my abilities as a conspirator.

With a suit-case filled with type and various typographical paraphernalia, I came to Kishinev and settled in a quiet little lane. A new sign with a boot painted on it, bearing the inscription “Repairing neatly done,” was placed over the front door. Inside a cobbler’s bench with a complete set of instruments bore testimony to our honorable occupation. A local comrade spent there a couple of hours every day mending my old shoes. Under this cloak I kept my suit-case containing the typographic outfit.

I found work as a seamstress. Not wishing to remain alone at night, I slept at the house of an old couple whose daughter was one of my Odessa friends. She had written them about me, and they were glad to accommodate me. They lived with their granddaughter, a little girl of eight.

Thus I established myself, and waited for the promised compositor and “copy” to arrive. But days and weeks passed, and they did not come. I wrote letter after letter, without getting any reply. Finally I decided to go to Odessa myself to investigate. But a very unfortunate circumstance prevented me from carrying out my decision.

-----

Footnote 4:

Cabmen.

Footnote 5:

A little over thirty-six pounds.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

III

I

ON the night of February 8, 1902, all the four of us were awakened by thunderous knocks on the door. Then we heard the words, “In the name of the law: open!” But before the old man had time to unlatch it, there was a crash, and the door flew wide open. The room filled with gendarmes and police. Without saying a word to us, they looked about the house,—there were two rooms and a kitchen—and began a long and careful search. Everything in the house was turned upside down. They cut pillows and mattresses, they tore the lining of old hats, they even examined the backs of pictures on the wall. But nothing suspicious was to be found: there were not even any books in the house. The disappointed gendarmes were on the point of departing, when one of them picked up my dress which lay on a chair. He fumbled in its pocket, and drew forth a few pieces of type. These were capital letters which I had borrowed from a type-setter, an acquaintance of mine, intending to add to my supply, but had forgotten to put them in my suit-case. The faces of the gendarmes instantly changed. Each of them closely examined the unfortunate letters. They handled them with as much care as though they were not mere metal type, but dynamite bombs.

The gendarme officer sat down and began to write a _protocol_.[6] He only asked me:

“Does this dress belong to you?”

“Yes.”

“You are arrested. Dress yourself.”

Much to my terror, he turned to the old man with the same words. The old woman and the little girl began to cry. In great agitation I tried to explain to the officer that the old man knew nothing about the type found in my pocket, but he rudely interrupted me:

“No use of talking. This question will be settled later. It is not our business to decide who is right and who is wrong.”

At the officer’s command the gendarmes closed around us in a circle and we were led out of the house. The old woman wept. The little granddaughter, who ran crying after her grandfather, was roughly pushed aside. I had only time to call out to my hostess, “Forgive me!” when the door slammed behind us.

The night was dark and cold. Surrounded on all sides by police and gendarmes, we walked in the middle of the road, with our heads lowered. The old man was silent, and his silence was terrible to me. I could not see clearly what was my guilt before him, but the feeling grew in my heart.

“O God, this is how I have repaid these good old people for their kindness,” I thought as I walked along.

I absolutely forgot that I was being marched to prison. The sight of that gray head bowed before the gendarmes had made me oblivious of my own plight.

At last we arrived, and the heavy gates of the prison swung open before us. We were led to the office. There we were searched. The governor at the prison wrote down our names, and ordered one of the guards to put us in cells. I dared not look at the old man, but he extended me his hand and said:

“Be brave. Don’t be afraid.”

A lump rose in my throat, and I could not utter a word. Afterward I could not forgive myself that I had not asked this good old man’s pardon.

Occupied with these thoughts, I did not even notice where I was being led. I only remember climbing a narrow staircase. The guard stopped in a long, dimly-lit corridor and opened one of the doors. I entered, and he immediately closed the door after me and turned the key in the lock. I remained standing near the door, listening to his retreating steps.

Through a little hole in the door I could see the hanging lamp in the corridor. This lamp also lighted my cell. I looked about me. The cell was about nine feet by six. It contained a small table, a stool, and a wooden cot. A narrow window, with double iron bars, was high in the wall.

I stood in this dark cage, having no desire to move. The only thought in my mind was that the door was locked, and that I could not go out of that place.

Suddenly footsteps were heard. My heart began to beat with hope: Maybe they are going to release me! But the guard came, put out the lamp in the corridor, peeped into the door-hole, and calmly walked away.

The feeble light of the approaching day penetrated the double bars, and I could see the bare stone walls of my cell which were painted black half-way from the floor. The light seemed to have roused my energies.

My first thought was to look out of the window. I approached it, but it was high above my head. I dragged the stool over and climbed upon it. Opposite me, at a distance of about twenty paces, I saw a row of narrow iron-barred windows. The gray stone wall which surrounded the prison did not seem high from my point of observation.

“I will escape from here,” I decided immediately. “I can’t remain in this hole.” But days, weeks, months passed, and I still sat within those walls.

II

In the morning a guard entered my cell and brought me black bread and hot water.

“Tell me,” I asked him, “how long do you think I shall be kept here?”

The guard looked at me in surprise.

“And how are _we_ to know?” he answered, and went out.

A few days later I was called to the examination. It was necessary to cross the prison yard to get to the office.

“Comrade!” I heard several voices issuing from somewhere. I raised my head and saw hands with white handkerchiefs, which fluttered in the wind, thrust out between the window bars. They greeted me.

“Good-morning!” I shouted cheerfully. But the heavy arm of the guard was on my shoulder.

“You must not speak to them, otherwise I will put you in the _kartzer_.”[7]

But it was too late: I already knew that I was not alone there.

The gendarme colonel met me very cordially. His broad face was smiling, and his little gray eyes looked at me insinuatingly.

“Be seated.” He pointed to a chair near his table. “What is your Christian name? Surname? What is your age?”

I told him.

“Well, how do you like to be in prison?” he asked me in a free manner.

“Oh, it’s terrible!” I said.

“Well, you see, you are too young yet to be in prison, and I shall be glad to release you. It all depends on you, though.”

“How?” I asked, surprised.

“You have only to tell—” here the colonel took from the table drawer the unfortunate pieces of type which were found in my pocket, “who gave you _this_, then I will immediately release you.”

“I cannot tell,” I said.

“It would be very imprudent on your part not to tell. You will fare badly, and regret it.”

“But if I should name the person who gave me these letters you will arrest him. How can I do such a thing?”

“Oh, he is already in prison, anyway, and we know who he is.”

“Then why do you ask me to name him?”

“That is only a little formality which the law requires for your release. Sign this paper, and I will let you free.”

He shoved a paper over to me. I looked at the paper upon which my release depended, and doubt rose in my mind. Is it really so? Does he not fool me? And suddenly I remembered a little book I had read in Odessa, entitled: “Comrades, decline to give evidence!” In this booklet, published by the Socialist-Revolutionists’ Party, it was explained that the gendarmes took advantage of the inexperience of young political prisoners and obtained from them incriminating evidence by false promises of release, etc.

“I decline to give evidence,” I said.

The colonel took from the table drawer a little book and handed it to me.

“Have you read this book?” he asked.

It turned out to be the very same booklet.

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

I was silent.

“Don’t be afraid,” the colonel went on. “I ask this as a private person, not as the gendarme colonel. I am simply curious to know who could have given you this booklet.”

The colonel’s tone was so simple and so sincere, and in general he was not as I had pictured to myself a gendarme colonel ought to be. I hesitated. The colonel, evidently guessing my thoughts, put his plump hand on mine and said:

“We are not such bad people.”

“Then why do you keep this old man B——?” I asked. “If you are a nice man, you must release him, because you know that he is not guilty of anything.”

“That does not depend upon me,” the colonel answered.

“Then I don’t believe you,” I cried. “You merely want to get a confession from me, so that you might arrest several more innocent people.”

“The worse for you,” the colonel said, changing his tone sharply. He got up, opened the door, and summoned the guard.

“The examination is over. Take the prisoner to the secret division.”

I was led out by another passage, and soon found myself in a low, circular cell. A heavy smell of dampness filled the air, as in a grave. The tiny window was on a level with the ground. Only the lower part of the prison wall could be seen from it; not a bit of sky or anything which might cheer the prisoner’s eye.

But I did not think of comforts then. A feeling of gladness that I had not fallen into the gendarme’s trap filled me. The thought that they had not discovered the house where I kept the type was a great relief to me. And the knowledge that I was not alone in prison, that all around me were comrades who were also fighting for liberty and justice, raised my spirits still more.

“If they only should let the old man out,” I thought.

I paced my half-dark cell, not knowing how to give vent to my feelings.

“It is impossible they should keep me long here,” I thought to myself.

I was then not quite seventeen. Life was just beginning to unfold before me. It was still shrouded in mystery. Everything in the world seemed so beautiful and attractive. Suddenly the stone walls of the prison had shut out everything from my view.

For many days I could not believe that I was there to stay. From morning till night I dreamed how my door would open and the guard would say: “You are free!”

Three times a day he came to my cell bringing me food, and every time I heard his footsteps near the door my heart filled with hope that he would utter those magic words: “You are free!” But days, weeks, months passed, and the guard, instead of freedom, brought me bread and _kasha_.

My dreams faded, and the thought that they had forgotten me in this grave occurred to me more and more frequently.

“Why am I not called to the examination?” I asked the governor, who sometimes came to the evening roll-call.

“That is not our affair,” was his invariable reply. “Write a petition.”

The darkness and dampness of my cell began to have their effect upon me. I began to suffer with insomnia. The twenty-minutes’ daily walk in the prison-yard became a torture to me. The sun shone so brightly without the prison walls, and here I was shut up, deprived of its rays, deprived of my freedom, without which I felt I could not live.

III

Easter came, my second one in prison. Easter had been my favorite holiday in the village, but here it made me still more sad. The church bells which toll so solemnly and joyfully outside, in liberty, here in the prison, sounded like the ringing of bells at a funeral.

There is no holiday for the prisoner. On such days he feels still more keenly that he is not free and is deprived of the possibility of being with those dear to him. The longing for my folks at home and the desire to know something about them almost drove me insane. My enforced solitude on those days became unbearable.

On the second day unusual sounds reached my ear; now loud, now subdued, they seemed to crowd into my cell from all sides. Guards ran past my door more and more frequently. I became uneasy. What can it mean? In alarm I paced my cell, like a caged animal, seeking to escape from those sounds which filled me with a strange foreboding. I knocked on the door, and the guard came.

“What is going on?” I asked him. He only motioned with his hand, and went away. But I felt that those sounds would drive me mad. I knocked again, and the same guard came.

“I cannot stand it any longer,” I began, greatly agitated. “I shall go mad if you don’t tell what are these cries. For God’s sake, only one word!” I implored him.

The guard looked at me for a few seconds, and said in a whisper:

“It was ordered to kill the Jews, that’s what it is.”

All my blood rushed into my head at these words. I remained standing near the door, unable to take a step.

An hour or so later the door of my cell opened, and the governor entered.

“Collect your things. You are transferred to another cell.”

His words made no impression upon me. It was all the same to me whether I was to remain in this hole or go to a better cell, or even be released. I heard nothing, I was conscious of nothing but the cries of the Jews who were being killed.

A strange sight greeted my eyes when I was led out of my cell. The whole prison yard was covered with feathers which the wind brought from town. These were from the Jewish pillows and feather-beds torn by the rioters.

Soon the prison filled with Jews who sought protection within its walls, but this did not enter into the plans of the authorities, and an order was issued not to let any more Jews into the prison.

For two days and two nights the massacre of the Jews continued, and their agonizing cries were heard in our prison. Only on the third day they began to arrest the rioters, who were so drunk that they could not walk, and the police carried them into the cells.

Several days after the _pogróm_ I was called to the examination. The procureur and the same gendarme colonel met me with very solemn faces. The procureur said to me:

“You are accused of belonging to a secret society which has for its object the overthrow of the existing form of government, and of conspiring against the sacred person of his Imperial Majesty. With this aim in view you took part in the establishment of a secret printing-office and the distribution of forbidden proclamations which instigated a pogróm in the city of Kishinev. Are you guilty of the criminal offenses?”

I was dumfounded.

“How is that?” I protested when I had regained my power of speech. “I have been in prison since February 8, 1902, so how can I be accused of instigating the pogróm which took place only a few days ago?”

“The point is,” said the procureur, “that the letters which were found in the pocket of your dress are of the same identical type with which the forbidden leaflets were printed. As to your plotting to overthrow the existing form of government, this can be seen from your letters to Nicholai Shpeizman. In one of them you say: ‘I shall not rest until I shed the blood of the vampire.’ Do you admit that these letters—” here he took out of a portfolio a bundle of my letters to Comrade Nicholai, who was serving in the army,—“found on Private Shpeizman, and which are written in Yiddish, are yours?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but these letters were written a year ago, and I do not remember having used the expression you attribute to me.”

“This will be the business of experts to determine,” he said. “And now, the preliminary inquest in your case has been terminated, and by order of his Excellency, the Minister of the Interior, Plehve, you will be put on trial.”

The examination was over, and I was led back to my cell. After this examination it became clear to me that I would not be released so soon. The letters which were found on Comrade Nicholai were ample evidence against me, as I spoke in them, in no uncertain tones, about the tyranny of the government. The thought that my comrade must have been arrested and, being a soldier, would surely be court-martialed, darkened my existence still more.

In the meantime the prison was being filled with politicals and anti-Jewish rioters. The latter were being arrested because they declared that they had been ordered to “kill the Jews.” Small cells built for one now sheltered two or three people.

One night a woman carrying a little baby in her arms was brought into my cell. She was arrested, together with her husband and servant. Her husband, one Alexander Orloff, was one of the leading spirits of the Social-Democratic Party, and at his house was found a secret printing-office where the first issues of the well-known, forbidden journal _Iskra_ (The Spark) had been printed.

The presence of the woman and her nine-months-old baby completely changed my prison life. My own sufferings seemed to me as nothing compared to those of the mother and child. This child later played a great part in my life.

A few weeks after their arrest, Mrs. Orloff chanced to see her husband through the window, and called out to him, “Good-morning!” Just at that moment the governor of the prison was crossing the yard. He immediately ordered to put her in the kartzer. When the guard came to take her she refused to go, saying that she could not leave the baby. Then the governor ordered that she be taken by force. Hearing this, I shouted to Mr. Orloff: “Your wife is being taken to the kartzer.” He began to knock on the door of his cell, calling for the governor. Several guards came into his cell, gave him a terrible beating, and tied him hand and foot. On learning of it, all the politicals began to make a terrific noise, knocking on the doors with their feet, throwing the furniture on the floor, and shouting for the governor to come. He came, but with a company of soldiers. He lined them up in the yard, and himself with several soldiers came into our cell. Mrs. Orloff held the baby in her arms, pressing it close to her breast.

GUARDING THE ROAD TO THE AKATÚI PRISON
]

“Soldiers,” she addressed herself to them, “is it possible that you will have the heart to tear me away from my little baby?”

She cried and the baby, frightened by the sight of strange men, screamed at the top of its voice. The soldiers were taken aback, and did not dare come near her. Then the governor himself approached her, seized her by the arms, and began to squeeze them above the elbows. After a struggle which lasted a few minutes the arms of the mother relaxed, and the baby fell to the floor. A pitiful moan filled the cell.

“Take him,” shouted the governor to the soldiers, “and get him out of here.”

I seized a log and threw it at the governor’s head, but he jumped aside. He ordered to take me also to the kartzer.

When Mrs. Orloff and I were led to the kartzer the whole prison was in an uproar. The noise of falling furniture, knocking, and shouting was deafening. The common-law criminals had seen the soldiers carrying somewhere a half-naked child and joined the politicals in the protest.

Soon the procureur arrived. He visited every cell and assured the prisoners that the child had been restored to its mother, and that the mother had been released from the kartzer. The common-law criminals quieted down, but the politicals, knowing from past experience that his word could not be trusted, continued the noise. Then they were all tied, and lay helplessly on their cots.

In the meantime Mrs. Orloff, locked in the dark cell, was frantic with anxiety over her child’s condition. After several hours we were let out from the kartzer, and the baby was brought to the mother. Happily it was not injured; only bruised in some parts of the body.

As we learned later, Mr. Orloff, on hearing that the soldiers forced their way into his wife’s cell, decided to commit suicide. He managed to break a window, and with a piece of glass began to cut an artery in his arm. A guard happened to open his door at that time and frustrated the attempt. When this had been reported to the governor, he ordered to release us from the kartzer.

IV

Because of the crowded condition of our prison it was impossible to maintain a régime of strict isolation. The politicals who had relatives in town were allowed interviews with them. Notwithstanding that these interviews took place in the presence of gendarmes, they succeeded in sending verbal messages to friends outside, and also found out what was going on without the prison walls. The news that the Orloffs, their servant, and I would be put on trial reached the outside world.

In those years politicals had not been tried in any court. Since the seventies they had been exiled in the “administrative order,” which means that any one suspected of “political unreliability” was sent, after a more or less protracted stay in prison, to some remote northern province, or to Siberia, for as many years as the Minister of the Interior, the chief of the gendarmes, or any gendarme general, or colonel saw fit. This was a new move against the politicals by the all-powerful Plehve. The advantage it offered was the possibility of sending them to hard labor, whereas under the old order they were “only” exiled.

This departure from the time-honored “system” aroused great interest in the liberal circles of Russian society, particularly among the members of the legal profession. Several prominent St. Petersburg lawyers, Maklakoff, Pereverzeff, Kalmanovitch, and others, wrote to the procureur offering their services to us free of charge.

At last copies of the indictment were delivered to us. The crime with which I was charged was punishable by from eight to twelve years’ hard labor. The main evidence against me were my letters, of which the strongest passages were quoted in the indictment.

The trial was set for October 15, 1903. A few days before the trial I was called to the prison office. Instead of the gendarmes I had expected to meet, I saw two gentlemen in civilian clothes. The guard told them my name and went out, leaving me alone with them. This was the first time since my imprisonment that I was alone with free people, without the company of gendarmes.

The two gentlemen regarded me for some time in surprise, and then one of them said:

“I am Maklakoff, attorney-at-law, and this is my colleague, Mr. Ratner. We came to defend you. Are you really the author of the letters which are quoted in the indictment?” he asked, again looking me over in surprise.

“Yes, of course,” I replied.

“How old were you when you wrote those letters?” asked Mr. Ratner.

“Sixteen.”

They laughed heartily, and shook my hands.

“That’s clever, very clever!” exclaimed Maklakoff. “Eight years’ hard labor for letters written at sixteen! Fine!”

He began to pace up and down the room, somewhat agitated. Suddenly he stopped, as if remembering my presence, and said:

“But you needn’t worry. We will see that you are acquitted.”

“No,” I said, “it will hardly be possible to acquit me. You know when I wrote those letters, I really had no serious intentions. But after they have kept me in these stone walls for over nineteen months, my mind is made up, and nothing, nothing can ever change it. I hate this despotic government with all the fibers of my soul, and I will fight it to the last drop of blood in me. And I intend to tell this openly to the czar’s court.”

They remained silent for some time.

“We understand you,” they said, “and this makes us wish still more to be of help to you.”

They bade me good-by in a very friendly manner and went away, having promised to see me again before the trial. After this interview a beautiful bouquet was brought to me every morning, together with my bread and water. I learned later that these bouquets were sent by my lawyers, who had obtained special permission from the procureur.

At last the long-awaited day of the trial arrived. On the fifteenth of October, early in the morning, I was led out of the prison gate. The autumn sun greeted me from a cloudless sky. The air was cool and fragrant. My eyes, which for many months had seen nothing but gray walls, bathed in the green grass. The open space before the prison fascinated me.

“To escape,” an inner voice whispered to me.

A carriage was waiting near the gate. I entered it, and two gendarmes with drawn sabers took their seats on each side of me. The carriage rolled fast over deserted streets, and after a short ride stopped in front of a massive brown-brick structure. It was the court-house.

“Here we are!” said one of the gendarmes. They led me into the prisoners’ room and locked me in there. But soon the door opened, and the lawyers, counsel for the defense, came in one by one, six of them. They were more agitated than I, because they already knew the verdict which had been ordered by Plehve in advance, and felt the futility of their efforts to save us.

At ten o’clock two gendarmes in brand-new uniforms, with drawn sabers, took me to the court-room. The immense hall was empty. Only in a corner, opposite a long table covered with a green cloth, sat my comrades. Gendarmes, with drawn sabers, stood in front and back of them, but before I reached their bench I noticed, amid a sea of vacant chairs, the bent figure of an old man. He sat with his head bowed low. “Father!” The thought struck me like an electric shock. Instantly I ran to him, and before the gendarmes had time to recover from their surprise, I was near him. “Father, dear!” I had time to say. The trembling arms of my father were torn from my neck, and the gendarmes led me to the prisoners’ bench, holding me fast with their free hands.

“The Court enters! Rise!” called out the court _príestav_ in loud tones.

The judges entered, took their seats, and the farce of a trial began. The secretary read the indictment. All of us were charged with having established a secret printing-office and published the forbidden journal _Iskra_. I, in addition, was charged with having uttered threats against the czar’s life. The usual questions were asked. In answer to the presiding justice’s question:

“Do you acknowledge yourself guilty?” I replied:

“No. From the letters it will become clear to you that I had no connection with the publication of the _Iskra_, which is a Social Democratic organ. I say this, not because I want to clear myself, but because I am a convinced Socialist-Revolutionist, and as such have been and always will be an enemy of the existing form of government. I do not expect mercy from anybody.”

The witnesses gave favorable testimony, with the exception of the official translator of my Yiddish letters. He maintained that one of my expressions was, “I shall not rest until I shed the blood of the vampire,” while another translator, not official, said that the sentence read: “I shall not rest until the blood of the vampires is shed.” While admitting that my Jewish was poor and ungrammatical, he asserted that this particular sentence was written clearly and correctly, and that he had translated it exactly. May heaven forgive him! He was simply afraid of the gendarmes.

On the second day the speeches of the prosecution and the defense were made. The procureur demanded the maximum sentence of twelve years’ hard labor, saying there was no question of my guilt, as I had acknowledged in my speech that I was a Social Democrat. My counsel, Mr. Ratner, said in his speech:[8]

“Private letters cannot serve as evidence before any court, particularly in a case which concerns general idealistic convictions. Such letters always bear the stamp of a subjective mood and therefore cannot have the value of exact evidence. But if letters are to be believed, how is it possible to pick out one at will and to discard the other? to believe one and not to believe the other? We must believe Miss Sukloff that she is a Socialist-Revolutionist, and the repeated statement of the procureur that she is a Social Democrat is utterly incomprehensible. Between the Socialist-Revolutionists and the Social Democrats there is a great difference.... The labor organ which Miss Sukloff says in her letters she wants to publish can by no means be the _Iskra_. Everybody knows perfectly well that this organ is published abroad, and was being issued long before Miss Sukloff wrote her letters, consequently she could not have in view the _Iskra_ when she wrote about the intention of herself and her friends to issue a paper....

“As regards the word ‘vampire,’ to consider it, particularly in view of the doubtful conscientiousness of the translator, a deliberate intention to commit a definite terrorist act, is juridically impossible. It is simply a poetical expression of the terrorist mood which agitates now, by force of circumstances, not one young heart in Russia. Whether it was written ‘vampire’ or ‘vampires’ is, after all, of no import to us, because in the letter is expressed only an abstract intention, and to punish for such intentions no court has ever attempted.... The substance of the accusation is that the accused had definite opinions, convictions, and general intentions, and all this is quite comprehensible, if one will be more attentive to her manner of life. A worker since fifteen, vivid and bright, she ponders over the strange contrast between her own and her chums’ position on the one hand, and that of, let us say, their customers, while her own mental superiority to those bedecked ladies could be no secret to her. Reasoning logically, not hampered by prejudices which did not fasten upon her, her thought came to certain conclusions. Meeting with people of greater mental development, she, under their influence, adopted at first the Social Democratic teachings; but her mind, being of wider scope, did not stop there, and thanks to her militant temperament, she, having become acquainted with the views of the Socialist-Revolutionists, joined them.... We ourselves in her place would undoubtedly thirst as much as she for emancipation and the possibility of a better life for herself and others. It must be noted that, notwithstanding the specifically Jewish persecution she was subjected to, the accused did not engage in a narrow-nationalistic struggle. She had a broader outlook, and the interests of all humanity are dearer to her. This is a talented nature, responsive to all good; in some other country she might have been happy, but here, among us—alas! This is not possible. The court may, of course, convict her, but it will hardly be a triumph of justice; it will be another ill-considered, unjust verdict, of which history knows not few.”

After two days of anxious waiting the verdict was announced: We were sentenced “to be deprived of all rights and exiled to Eastern Siberia for life.”

-----

Footnote 6:

Report.

Footnote 7:

A dark, windowless cell, in which prisoners are kept on bread and
water.

Footnote 8:

Quoted from the _Revolyutzionnaya Rossiya_, the organ of the
Socialist-Revolutionists, No. 37.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IV

I

THE thought that I would be exiled to Siberia did not frighten me in the least. The desire to escape from those odious walls was so great that I would have been glad to be led not only into exile, but even to the gallows. But day after day, month after month went by, and I still sat in the Odessa prison, whither my comrades and I were transferred several days after the trial, impatiently waiting to be transported to Siberia. To all my protests and insistent requests to send me there the prison authorities made one reply:

“We are awaiting special instructions from St. Petersburg with regard to you and your comrades.”

“What more can they do to me?” I frequently asked myself. A feeling of rage filled my heart more and more often as the months passed. I could no longer speak calmly with the authorities. At their very sight my blood began to boil.

“How much longer will you torture me within these walls?” I cried whenever the prison governor appeared.

Conflicting rumors about the war with Japan penetrated into our cells, but they could not hide from us that Russia was being defeated by the Japanese. With every Japanese victory the prison authorities relaxed the severe discipline more and more. This relaxation of the prison régime, bought at the price of thousands of Russian people slain in battle, made our life a little easier. The hope that the Japanese might help us free ourselves from the despotic government gave us new strength to bear and wait.

In July, 1904, the minister of the interior, Plehve, that pillar of reaction who had boasted that he would “wipe out the revolution in Russia,” was killed by a bomb thrown at his carriage by Yegor Sazonov, a member of the “Fighting League” of the Socialist-Revolutionists’ Party. This happy news was brought to us by the prison authorities themselves who were greatly elated at the death of their chief. Plehve was cordially hated not only by the people, but even by his own subordinates. The appointment of Prince Svyatopolk-Mirski as minister of the interior put an end, for a short time at least, to the sufferings and hardships, which political prisoners were forced to endure.

Soon after the assassination of Plehve, my comrades and I were unexpectedly included in a party of convicts who were being exiled to Eastern Siberia. Before leaving the prison we learned what it meant to be “deprived of all rights and exiled to Siberia for life.” We were summoned to the office and told to put on convict garb. The dress of a female convict consists of a coarse gray linen shirt, a skirt made of the same material, a pair of black _kotí_, or slippers, with square linen foot-wrappers in lieu of stockings, a long gray _khalát_[9] with a yellow diamond-shaped patch in the back between the shoulders, and a gray kerchief. This dress changes a person beyond recognition. When we were led back to our cells our comrades did not recognize us. I was frightened by my own reflection in the mirror when I saw myself in this garb for the first time. There is something terribly degrading in it.

“What have I done? what have I done?” I repeated in great agitation. I paced my cell, with difficulty dragging my feet dressed in enormous, ugly kotí. And the feeling of hatred toward my oppressors grew in my heart and I could not overcome it.

On the next morning my comrades and I were lined up with a party of convicts who were being transported to Siberia for robbery and murder. Our wrists were chained to theirs, and in this fashion we were marched four abreast, in the middle of the dusty road, to the railroad station.

For the last time I looked at the big city to which I had come in quest of knowledge and happiness.

“Oh God!” I thought to myself, “I left my father and mother, sisters and brothers; I left my native fields, and came to this great city to find the key to a better life: and _this_ is what I found!”

“Farewell, farewell, my native land ...” began the prisoners in a chorus when the train started. Their plaintive tones accompanied by the jingling of the chains made an indelible impression upon me.

The convict car was filthy and crowded to its utmost capacity. The prisoners were making themselves comfortable, and their familiarity with the surroundings suggested to me that they were not making this dreadful journey for the first time.

The _stárosta_, or head-man, elected by the convicts figured out with the help of the under-officer of the convoy the amount of _kormovíye_[10] for the party. Ten kopecks was the sum a convict received for his daily subsistence. For this money one could buy on the road one and one-half pounds of bread. But peasant women meet the trains, especially in Siberia, and give alms to the hungry, unfortunate convicts—bread, milk, pies, and other eatables.

After an agonizing ride which lasted about two days, we arrived in Kief. There we were placed in the forwarding prison. A forwarding prison differs from a regular one in that the former is, in most cases, wholly unfurnished, and the only article a cell contains is a large wooden tub called _parásha_. We slept on the dirty floor with nothing under us but our overcoats.

For two days we were kept there, and were not even let out for the daily walk. There were fifty people in our _kámera_,[11] twenty-five women and as many children. Some of the children became sick, and their unhappy parents lived in constant fear that they would die from lack of pure air. Mrs. Orloff begged the prison governor to permit her to take her sick child out in the yard for a few minutes, but his only answer to the distracted mother was:

“_Peresýlni_[12] are not supposed to be let out for a walk in the forwarding prison. To-morrow you will leave here.”

SIX POLITICAL PRISONERS AND THEIR GUARDS

Resting at the étape in their march to Akatúi.
Miss Sukloff is second from the left
]

From Kief we were taken to Kursk, and after spending two days in the forwarding prison went on to Voronezh. And thus changing from the crowded convict car to the forwarding prison and from the forwarding prison to the convict car, and stopping in every large city, we finally crossed the Urals and reached the town of Tyumén, in Siberia, after three weeks’ travel. The Tyumén forwarding prison is located at a great distance from the city, and the muddy road over which we were marched came near becoming a grave-yard for some of us.

George Kennan, the well-known American writer, describes this prison in these words:[13]

“I looked around the cell. There was practically no ventilation whatever, and the air was so poisoned and foul that I could hardly force myself to breathe it. We visited successively in the yard six kámeras, or cells, essentially like the first, and found in every one of them three or four times the number of prisoners for which it was intended, and five or six times the number for which it had adequate air space. In most of the cells there was not room enough on the sleeping-platforms for all the convicts, and scores of men slept every night on the foul, muddy floors, under the _nari_,[14] and in the gangways between them and the walls....”

In these germ-infested barracks we were kept for three long months. Typhus fever and other epidemic diseases carried off two or three people every day, and we escaped death only through some miracle.

Winter had already set in when we started out again. In a blinding snow-storm we were lined up by the soldiers of the convoy, and began our journey to Krasnoyarsk. The convict car was even more filthy and crowded than in European Russia. The severe Siberian frosts did not add to our comforts. There were the usual stops for a day or two in a forwarding prison, and marching to and fro, in half-torn shoes, over roads covered with ice and snow.

Tormented with hunger and cold, exhausted by the hardships of Siberian travel in winter, and extremely fatigued we dragged ourselves into the forwarding prison at Krasnoyarsk after sixteen days of travel. Here at last we learned to which places we were to be banished.

One morning the prison governor brought in a bundle of official papers. These contained our several destinations. To my inexpressible terror I was to be sent _alone_ to the village of Aleksandrovskoye, in the province of Yeniseisk, about three thousand miles from my native province of Vilna. I stood before the governor, listened to his words, but could not believe that I was to be parted from my friends, taken to a remote, lonely village, and left there to pass my days alone.

“How is that? how is that?” I kept repeating the meaningless words, knowing perfectly well that the governor had nothing to do with designating the place of exile and could not change anything.

From Krasnoyarsk we were taken to Kansk. The Kansk forwarding prison, which was the last _étape_ of our memorable journey together, almost became the grave of the whole party. We came to the prison in the evening. The barrack in which we were placed had evidently not been heated for a long time, as ice and snow lay on the floor all along the walls. We asked the head-keeper for some wood, and made a fire in the stove. After the fire had burned out, we closed the chimney and went to sleep. At night a child began to cry. Some of us heard his cries, but could not move from our places. Attracted by the child’s cries, a keeper came and called to us, but seeing that we did not respond, opened the door. Then he understood the cause of our silence. The cell was filled with fumes of charcoal, and we all lay in a stupor. He immediately summoned a number of soldiers who carried us out on the snow and rendered first aid. As soon as we had fully recovered we were taken to our respective destinations. The Orloffs were sent to the village of Ribinskoye, in the province of Yeniseisk, about thirty miles from Aleksandrovskoye. They went first. Then two guards came and took me.

From Kansk we had to travel on foot. Before starting the exiles on their march the prison doctor examines them, and if any are found to be weak or infirm _telyégas_[15] are provided for them to ride in. To my great luck the doctor decided that I was too sick to walk, and I was allowed to ride in a cart.

MISS SUKLOFF READING IN HER CELL
]

Two guards escorted me to the first étape and delivered me under signature to the _uryádnik_.[16] The uryádnik summoned the head-man of the village and ordered him to procure a horse. After a long dispute the peasants found an old nag, and I, under the escort of the village constable, proceeded to Aleksandrovskoye. In every settlement which we passed on the way the peasants, and particularly the women, regarded me very curiously. On learning that I was an exile they fed me, and in one village the women even gave me a pair of high felt boots, as I suffered terribly from the extreme and continuous cold.

Finally we arrived at the _vólost_, or rural district, to which Aleksandrovskoye belonged. Here the uryádnik and the vólost scribe opened the papers which the constable had carried all the time in a sealed envelope.

“There are special instructions with reference to you,” said the scribe to me.

“What are those special instructions?” I asked.

“It is stated here that you are a political offender and must be guarded very closely,” he replied.

I slept that night at the scribe’s house, and on the next day he took me to the village of Aleksandrovskoye, which was about eighteen miles from the vólost. The village consisted of perhaps thirty huts, and was inhabited mostly by Russian colonists. At the house of the _stárosta_,[17] to which I was first taken by the scribe, women and peasants gathered and began to consider what should be done with me. The women, folding their arms on their breasts, stood shaking their heads compassionately and saying in melancholy tones:

“Poor girl, poor girl! Your parents must have shed bitter tears when you were taken from them in such tender years.”

Some of them offered to take me to their homes. One old peasant who stood thoughtfully stroking his long, white beard thus settled his doubts:

“It means, then, that she was sent to us for life and we may do with her whatever we want. Did I understand you rightly?” He turned to the scribe who was explaining to the peasants how to treat me.

At last, after a long discussion, it was decided that I would stay at the house of the church watchman. The uryádnik ordered the constable to come every morning to my house to see if I was still there. At parting he warned the peasants:

“Remember that you are all responsible for her.”

The peasants made the sign of the cross, and in a body led me to the house of the church watchman.

Yet for a long while the women continued their expressions of sympathy and shed tears, repeating, “You poor, unfortunate orphan,” before I was finally left alone. When they cried and called me “orphan” I really felt that I was alone, alone in this whole great world. I sat helplessly looking about myself, and a feeling of pity for myself filled my heart. But the immediate environment did not give these feelings a chance to grow. The people would not let me rest for a minute.

My host, an old man white as snow, soon came in and asked me:

“Can you read?”

After receiving an affirmative reply, he extracted a letter from his pocket. It was from his son, a soldier in the Manchurian army.

The news that I could read traveled fast. All the peasants gathered all printed and written matter they could find in the village and brought me to read to them. They surrounded me on all sides and listened to me with respectful attention. The desire to know about the war with Japan was not mere curiosity on the part of the illiterate peasants. They had a blood interest in it, as nearly every one of them had a son, a husband or a brother on the battlefield, from whom they had not received word for months, and despaired of ever hearing from them.

On the morrow the women came to me carrying bowls of milk, plates of butter, and various other gifts, and begged me to write to their sons and husbands. Listening to the tales of woe of these old mothers and young wives, who desperately clung to the last hope that their loved ones had not been killed, but only wounded and crippled for life; looking at the little orphans who already knew that they were to see their fathers no more, I forgot my own grief and thought only of what I should do to lighten their terrible burden. But to my great sorrow I had no means of being useful to them, and all I could do was to write letters to people whom I believed to be dead.

A few days after my arrival the village priest came to see me. He was a robust man of a very cheerful disposition and liked to drink a great deal. He spoke to me in a fatherly manner.

“Only do not get discouraged. There is nothing eternal in this world,” he said in answer to my statement that I had been sent there, not for a term of years, but for life. “My daughter is going to be married,” he continued, “and there is no one here to make dresses for her, so you had better come to live with us and help her with the sewing.”

I consented, as I was very glad to do something to earn my bread.

II

I was no longer in prison, I saw no more the prison walls, but I did not feel myself free. The purposeless life in a remote Siberian village seemed to me worse than a prison. The peasants, together with the priest, drank for two or three days during the week. They spent all their money at the Government liquor shop, and when they had no ready cash they pawned anything they could conveniently carry out of the house. It seemed that only the _vódka_ gave them the possibility of forgetting the miseries of their wretched existence. In those “drunken” days I hid myself in some corner that no one might see me, and sat looking at the heaps of snow which separated me from the rest of the living.

“You must escape, you must escape from here,” an inner voice grew more and more insistent within me.

The scribe, the uryádnik, and the constable were the only people supposed to keep watch over me, and they seemed neglectful of their responsibility. They may have supposed that the dense forest which surrounded the village was the best guard.

“To escape, to escape,” I repeated to myself in the long, sleepless nights, staring into the darkness and making plans, each one more fantastic than the other.