I did not suffer hunger or any inconvenience during my travels round Sakhalin. I had read that supposedly the agronomist Mitsul suffered terrible privations while sur- veying the island, and was even forced to eat his dog. Since then the situation has changed considerably. Your present- day agronomist rides on good roads, and even in the very poorest settlements there are guardhouses, or so-called quarters, where a warm lodging, a samovar and a bed can always be found.
When explorers set out for the interior of the island, into the taiga, they take with them American canned goods, red wine, plates, forks, pillows and anything else they can pack on the backs of convicts, who are used on Sakhalin in place of draft animals. Some people still eat rotten wood with salt, and even practice cannibalism, but this does not apply to tourists or officials.
In the following chapters I will describe the posts and the settlements and will acquaint the reader with the various types of convict labor and the prisons to the extent that I was able to know them in a short time. Convict labor on Sakhalin is extremely varied. The labor is not special- ized; it does not depend on coal- or gold-mining, but encompasses the entire range of Sakhalin life and is spread throughout the populated areas of the island. Digging out stumps in the forest, building houses, draining swamps, fishing, mowing, loading and unloading cargo on ships are all types of convict labor which have necessarily merged with the life of the colony to such a degree that they cannot be isolated. Convict labor can be discussed as something existing independently on the island only if we embark on a precise survey of the location of mines and the organiza- tion of factory work.
I will commence with the Alexandrovsk valley and the settlements along the Duyka River. This valley was first chosen for settlement in Northern Sakhalin not because it had been explored better than all the others or because it satisfied the aims of colonization, but purely by chance, because it was closest to Due, where penal servitude was first established on Sakhalin.
1 The length of the sentence was added to his name. He was actually 48 years old.
IV The Duyka River - The Alexandrovsk Valley - The Alexandrovka Slobodka - Vagrant Krasivy - The Alexandrovsk Post - Its Past - Yunts - The Sakhalin Paris
when the duyka river, also called the Alexandrovka, was charted by the zoologist Polyakov, it was some 70 feet wide in its lower reaches. Its banks were luxuriant with tremendous stands of trees reaching down to the water; the lowlands were covered with forests of fir, larch, alder and willows, and surrounded by impassable swamps. Now the river is only a long, narrow puddle. In its width, barren shores and slow current it resembles the Moscow canal.
It is only necessary to read Polyakov's account of the Alexandrovsk valley and then glance at it today to under- stand what a tremendous amount of hard and forced labor has already been expended on cultivating this area. "From the heights of neighboring mountains," writes Polyakov, "the Alexandrovsk valley is stifling, dark and heavily forested . . . a tremendous fir and pine forest covers a sig- nificant portion of the valley bottom."
He writes of swamps, impassable marshes, forbidding quagmires and forests where "in addition to tremendous trees standing in their bare roots, the ground is often covered with huge, half-rotten trunks fallen from age or storms. Moss-covered hillocks often protrude amid the roots of the fallen trees, beside the gulleys and ravines."
Now an entire city stands on the former taiga with its swamps and ravines; roads have been built, there are green meadows, rye fields and market gardens are harvested, and already complaints are heard of the scarcity of trees.
The appalling labor and struggle of the convicts who worked in waist-high swamps, in freezing cold, in icy rain, lonely for home, suffering all manner of indignities, beaten by birch rods—all this makes a horrifying impression. It is not surprising that one kindly Sakhalin official always reads aloud to me from Nekrasovs sad poem "The Railroad" while we are driving to some destination.
A small stream, called the Malaya Alexandrovka, falls into the Duyka on the right side, at its very mouth. On both sides of the stream lies the Alexandrovka settlement, or the Slobodka, which I have already mentioned. It lies in the suburbs of the post and has already merged with it. However, since it differs from the post in a number of peculiar ways and has an independent life, it must be described separately.
This is one of the oldest settlements. Colonization began here soon after penal servitude was instituted in Due. This area was chosen, as Mitsui writes, because of its luxurious meadows, good timber, navigable river and rich soil. "Obviously," writes this fanatic who considered Sa- khalin the promised land, "it was impossible even to doubt that colonization could be successful; however, of the eight men who were sent for this purpose to Sakhalin in 1862, only four settled near the Duyka River." And what could those four possibly do? They worked the soil with pickaxes and spades, sowed winter grain in the spring rather than summer grain, and the result was that they were soon plead- ing to return to the mainland. In 1869 an agricultural farm was organized on the present site of Slobodka. A very im- portant question was to be resolved here: Could forced labor by convicts be successfully used in agriculture?
For three years the convicts dug out stumps, built cabins, drained the swamps, made roads and plowed the soil. At the end of their term none wished to remain, and they petitioned the Governor-General to be allowed to return to the mainland because agriculture was unproductive and there was no way to make a living. Their petition was granted. However, the so-called farm continued to exist. In time the Due convicts became settlers. Convicts arrived from Russia with their families and had to be placed on the land. Orders were issued that Sakhalin was to be regarded as a fertile land and suitable for agriculture. Wherever life could not be maintained by natural resources, it slowly but surely expanded artificially, through coercion, at the cost of a vast expenditure of money and human labor.
In 1879, Dr. Augustinovich found 28 cabins m Slo- bodka.1
At the present time thcre are 15 households in Slo- bodka. The houses are covered with planks, are spacious, and sometimes contain several rooms. The outbuildings are solid and each household has its own vegetable garden. There is one bathhouse for each two dwellings.
My ccnsus rcvealcd 39% desyatins of land under tillage and 24Y2 desyatins in hay, 23 horses, and 47 head of live- stock, including horncd cattle, oxen, sheep, goats and pigs.
Owing to the status of the householders, Slobodka is considered an aristocratic settlement. One of the house- holders is a court councillor married to a settler's daughter, another is a free man who followed his convict mother to the island, seven are peasants formerly exiled, four are settlers, and only two are convicts.
Of the 24 families residing there, only 4 are illcgal.
The age groups of Slobodka are almost normal; the working age is not so sharply predominant as in other settlements. There are children, young people and old people over sixty-five and even over seventy-five.
The question is, how can one explain the comparatively prosperous standing of Slobodka cven in the light of state- ments made by the local homesteaders, who say it is impos- sible to make a living there by farming. It is, however, possible to indicate some of the factors which under ordi- nary circumstances would be conducive to a normal, settled and prosperous life. For example, Slobodka contains a large percentage of older inhabitants who arrived on Sa- khalin prior to 1880 and have already grown accustomed to this land and feel at home. It is also very important that wives followed 19 of the men and almost everyone who settled on a plot already had a family. There are enough women, and only nine of the men are bachelors, though none is living in solitude. Generally speaking, Slobodka was lucky, one of the fortunate circumstances being that a large percentage of the inhabitants was literate: 26 men and i i women.