At the Alexandrovsk cemetery I saw a black cross with a picture of the Mother of God and the following inscrip- tion: "Here lie the ashes of the maid Afimya Kurnikovaya, deceased May 2 i, i 888, i 8 years of age. This cross was erected to honor her memory and the departure of her parents to the mainland in June, 1889."
A peasant is not permitted to leave for the mainland if he is not of trustworthy character and if he owes money to the government. If he is the cohabitant of a convict woman and has had children by her, his travel ticket is issued to him only if he has left sufficient property to provide for the future of his mistress and his illegitimate children (Order No. 92, 1889). On the mainland a peasant is regis- tered at his preferrcd volost}2 The governor in whose province the volost is situated then informs the island com- mandant, who in turn issues an order to the police ad- ministration to remove the peasant so-and-so and his family from the lists—and thus officially it comes about that there is one less "unfortunate." Baron Korf told me that if the peasant misbehaves on the mainland, he is returned by ad- ministrative order to Sakhalin for the rest of his life.
According to rumor, the people of Sakhalin live well on the mainland. I was able to read their letters but never saw how they live in their new locations. However, I saw one— not in a village, but in a city. One day the monk Irakly— the missionary and priest from Sakhalin—and I were leav- ing a shop together in Vladivostok, and a man in a white apron and high polished boots, probably a porter or a member of a cooperative, saw Father Irakly, was delighted and asked for his blessing. It appeared that he was once Father Irakly's spiritual charge, a peasant-formerly-a-con- vict. Father lrakly recognized him, and remembered his name and surname. "Well now, how are you getting on?" he asked. "Thank God, very well indeed!" the peasant said excitedly.
Those peasants who have not yet departed for the main- land live in posts or settlements and run their homesteads under the same miserable conditions as the settlers and convicts. They remain under the domination of the prison authorities and must remove their caps at fifty feet if they live in the South. The officials treat them a little better and do not beat them; however, they are not peasants in the true sense; they are still prisoners. They live near the prison and see it every day; and a happy coexistence be- tween a penal servitude prison and peaceful farming is un- thinkable. Some writers have described ring-dancing and singing in Rykovskoye and they say they heard the sounds of the accordion and distant singing. I neither saw nor heard anything of the sort and cannot imagine girls sing- ing and dancing around a prison. Even if I had heard a distant song mingling with the clanging of chains and the shouting of the guards, I would have regarded the singing as an act of malice, for a kind and merciful man does not sing near a prison.
The peasants and the settlers, their wives and their children, are all oppressed by the prison regime. The prison regulations, which resemble military regulations with their extraordinary strictness and continual tyranny, keep them under constant tension and fear. The prison administration confiscates their meadows, their best fishing sites and their best forests. Escapees, prison usurers and thieves cause them injuries; the prison executioner as he strolls down the street intimidates them; the guards debauch their wives and daughters. The prison is a perpetual reminder of their past, telling them where they arc and whom they belong to.
The local villagers do not yet comprise a society. There are still no mature native-born people of Sakhalin who regard the island as their motherland. There are very few old inhabitants. The majority are newcomers. The popula- tion changes annually; some arrive, others leave, and in many settlements, as I have already said, the inhabitants do not give the impression of a village community but of a rabble brought together by chance. They call themselves brothers because they suffer together, but they have very little in common and are strangers to one another. They do not share the same faith and they speak different lan- guages. The old-timers despise this motley crew and ask disdainfully how there can possibly be a community if in the same settlement you find Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Poles, Jews, Finns, Kirghiz, Georgians and gypsies. I have already mentioned the disproportional distribution of the non-Russian elements in the settlements.13
A diversity of another kind reacts adversely on the growth of each settlement: the colony is augmented by many aged, physically weak and psychically ill criminals, people incapable of work and those who are unprepared for practical life, people who lived in cities in their home- land and knew nothing about farming. As of January 1, 1890, according to data which I extracted from the prison reports, on the whole of Sakhalin including the prisons and the entire colony there were ninety-one members of the no- bility and 924 people from the towns—i.e., former re- spectable citizens, merchants, city dwellers and foreign na- tionals—totaling i o percent of those in penal servitude.14 Each scttlement has an elder chosen from among the homesteaders, always either a settler or a peasant, who is confirmed as the settlement supervisor. Elders are usually selected from among those who are sober, inteUigent and educated. The extent of their responsibilities has not yet been completely established, but they attempt to conduct themselves in the manner of Russian elders. They decide various petty matters, assign horses and carts to people in turn, intercede for their own people whenever necessary, etc. The Rykovskoye elder even has his own seal. Some receive a salary.
A prison guard is always stationed in each settlement, and most often he is an ignorant member of the lower echelon of the local command who always reports to visit- ing officials that everything is just fine. He oversees the conduct of the settlers and makes certain they do not absent themselves without permission and that they keep up with their farming. He is the settlement's nearest thing to an official, is often the sole judge, and his reports to the ad- ministration are actually documents which are quite im- portant in evaluating the extent to which a settler has succeeded in achieving a proper behavior and a settled way of life as a homesteader. Here is an example of a guard's report:
LIST
of Inhabitants of Verkhny Armudan Who Have Misbehaved
Surname and Name Criminal Record
Izdugin, Anany
Kiselev, Petr Vasilyev
Glybin, Ivan
Galysky, Semen
Kazankin, Ivan
Thief The same The same
Neglectful of his home,
obstinacc The same
Every office on Sakhalin contains a "Table for Calculating Sentences." It shows, for example, that a convict who has been sentenced for I7Y2 years will in acruality spend 15 years and 3 months in penal servitude. If he is fortunate enough to be eligible for an amnesty under an imperial edict, the term then is only 1 o years and 4 months. A person sentenced to 6 years is freed in 5 years and 2 months, and in the event of an amnesty, in 3 years and 6 months.
I did not include those convicts who lived in the homes of the officials in the capacity of servants. I believe that 25 percent live outside the prison, which means that out of every four con- victs, the prison yields one to the colony. This percentage will increase significantly when Clause 305 of the Code, which permits reformed convicts to live outside the prison, will also be applied in the Korsakov district, where, by order of Mr. Bely, all convicts without exception live within the prison.