Escapees often attempt to cross the strait somewhere close by the prison. This requires exceptional courage and favorable circumstances, and also—and most important—a good deal of previous experience of the enormous difficul- ties and risks involved in escaping in a northerly direction through the taiga. Incorrigible vagrants escaping from Voyevodsk or Due prison go to sea on the first or second day after their escape. There is no question of storms and peril. They suffer from a panic-stricken fear of pursuit and a great longing for freedom; even if they drown, it will be in freedom. They usually travel 5 or 10 versts south of Due, to Agnevo, where they build a raft and hurry over to the misty shore, which is 60 to 70 miles away over a cold and stormy sea. During my visit the same method was used by the vagrant Prokhorov in his escape from Voyevodsk prison. He is the same person as Mylnikov, whom I de- scribed in the previous chapter/'
They also escape on lighters and hay rafts, but the sea always smashes them unmercifully and throws them up on the shore. Once convicts escaped on a cutter belonging to the mining administration.r.
Sometimes convicts escape on the ships they are load- ing. In 1883 the convict Franz Kits escaped on the Triumph, having dug himself into the coal. When he was discovered and removed from the coal bunker, he answered all questions by saying, "Give me water. I haven't had a drink in five days."
Having reached the mainland in one way or another, the escapee heads west, begging food in Christ's name, get- ing work wherever possible, and stealing anything he can lay his hands on. They steal domestic animals, vegetables, clothing—in other words, everything that can be eaten, worn or sold. They are captured, held in prison for long periods of time, put on trial, and returned to Sakhalin with a terrible mark on their records. As the reader knows from reading about court trials, many of them reach the Khitrov market in Moscow ,7 and some return to their own villages.
In Palevo the baker Goryachy, a simple, openhearted and obviously g^^ man, told me how he rerurned to his own village, visited his wife and children, and was then sent to Sakhalin, where he is now completing his second term.
People say that escapees arc being picked up by Ameri- can whaleboats and taken to Amcrica," and this has been discussed in the press. It is possible, of course, but I never heard of a single case. American whaleboats working the Okhotsk Sea rarely approach Sakhalin and rarer still would they be standing close by when the escapees were on the desolate eastern shore. According to Mr. Kurbsky ( Golos, 1875, No. 312), whole colonies of vaqueros composed of Sakhalin convicts live in Indian territory on the right bank of the Mississippi. These vaqueros, if they actually exist, did not reach America on whaleboats, but probably through Japan. It does happen very rarely that people escape out of Russia altogether. Back in the 1820's we hear of some con- victs escaping from the Okhotsk salt works to the "warm islands," meaning the Sandwich Islands."
There is tremendous fear of the escapees, and this ex- plains why the punishment for escaping is so severe and so astonishing in its brutality. Whcn a notorious vagrant es- capes from the Voyevodsk prison or from a cell, the reports not only terrify the people on Sakhalin, but even residents on the mainland are afraid. They say that when Blokha escaped, the rumor of his escape so terrified the residents of
Nikolayevsk that the local police captain was compelled to send a telegram: "Is it true that Blokha escaped?"10
Escaping is dangerous to society in the first place be- cause it encourages and supports vagrancy, and in the second place because the fugitive occupies an illegal posi- tion by the fact that in the overwhelming majority of cases he cannot help but commit new crimes. The largest con- tingent of incorrigible criminals is made up of escapees. Up to the present time the most horrible and brutal crimes on Sakhalin have been committed by them.
Escapes are now mainly forestalled by repressive meas- ures. These measures decrease the number of escapes, but only to a certain extent, and if repression were brought to the peak of perfection it would still not exclude the possi- bility of escapes. There is a limit after which repressive measures lose their effectiveness. It is well known that a convict continues to try to escape even when a sentry is taking aim at him. He is deterred from escaping neither by a storm nor by the conviction that he will drown. There is also a limit beyond which the repressive measures them- selves are conducive to escape. Thus the terrible punish- ment for escaping consists of an extra term of years of penal servitude, and this has the effect of increasing the number of long-term prisoners and those with indefinite sentences while increasing the number of escapes. Generally speaking, repressive measures have no future in the struggle against escapes. They have nothing in common with the ideals of our legislation, which views punishment primar- ily as a measure of reform. \Vhen all the energy and re- sourcefulness of a jailer is spent day by day in placing the prisoner in a physical condition which makes escape im- possible, then it is no longer a question of reforming him, and there is in fact only the question of transforming him into a wild beast and making the prison his cage. These measures are also impractical. First, they are a heavy weight on the population innocent of escaping, while, secondly, im- prisonment in a strongly built prison, with the usual chains, cells, dark holes and iron balls, makes a person incapable of working.
The so-called humanitarian measures, with improve- ments in the prisoner's living conditions, whether they con- sist of an extra piece of bread or in giving him some hope in the future, also significantly decrease the number of es- capes. I will cite one example: in 1885, 25 setders escaped, but in 1887, after the 1886 harvest, only 7 escaped. Setders escape far less frequendy than convicts, while peasants- formerly-convicts scarcely ever escape. The Korsakov dis- trict has the least number of escapes because the crops are better, short-term convicts predominate, the climate is milder and it is easier to obtain peasant rights than on Northern Sakhalin, and on completing their sentence there is no need for them to rerurn to the mines to earn a piece of bread. The easier the prisoner's lot, the less danger of escaping. In this respect great expectations can be held for such measures as the improvement of prison conditions, the construction of churches, the founding of schools and hospitals, and providing for the needs of the convicts' fam- ilies, earnings, etc.
As I have already said, for each captured escapee who is returned to the prison, the soldiers, Gilyaks and others who are engaged in capturing fugitives receive a monetary reward from the government amounting to three rubles per head. There is no doubt that the monetary reward, so tempting to a hungry man, offers an inducement to them and increases the number of those who are "captured, found dead or killed." This inducement, of course, is not worth the ill effects which are inevitably visited on the island population as a result of the evil instincts aroused by the three-ruble reward. \Vhoever is forced to capture escapees, whether he is a soldier or a setder who has been robbed, will capture them without the reward of three rubles. \Vhoever captures them when it is not his duty to do so, not from necessity but simply because it is a profit- able affair, such a man is merely taking part in a miserable enterprise, and the three rubles are nothing more than an expression of his connivance at the basest possible alliance of interests.