14 The nobles and the privileged class in general know nothing about tilling the soil and felling timber for making huts. They must work and bear the same punishments as the others, but they lack the strength. Of necessity they seek light work and they often do nothing. They live in constant fear that their fate will be changed, that they will be sent to work in the mines, physically punished or put in chains, etc. In the majority of cases these people are already weary of life, humble and melancholy, and when you see them you find it impossible to regard them as criminals. You also find vicious and insolent persons who finally become utterly depraved, suffer from ''moral insanity" and give the impression of being criminal advenrurers; their manner of speech, smile, gait, cringing servility are all in a discordant and common key. No matter what happens, it would be terrible to be in their place. One convict, a former officer, as he was being transported in a prison van to Odessa, gazed through the window and ob- served "the poetic fishing with the aid of torches and blazing branches dipped in tar. . . . The fields of the Ukraine were al- ready green. In the oak and linden forests violets and lilies of the valley were visible along the roadway; and so the aroma of flowers and of lost freedom were intermingled" (Vladivostok, 1888, No. 14).
A former nobleman, a murderer, telling me how his friends saw him off, said: "I awoke to reality. I only wanted one thing— to vanish, to sink into the ground—but my friends did not under- stand this and they continuously tried to cheer me up and shower me with all kinds of attention." Nothing is more unpleasant for criminals of the privileged class, when they are being led along the street or transported in a prison van, than to find themselves the butt of the curiosity of free men, especially of their friends. If someone attempts to identify a prisoner in a crowd of convicts, shouting his name in a loud voice, he suffers untold agony. It is unfortunate that criminals of the privileged class are often jeered at in prison, on the street and in the press. I read in a newspaper about a former commercial councillor who was invited to breakfast while at a prisoner way station somewhere in Siberia, and when the gang was moved on, the hosts were minus one spoon: the commercial councillor had stolen it! This former Gentleman of the Imperial Bedchamber was described as a man who was thor- oughly enjoying himself, wallowing in seas of champagne and the company of as many gypsies as he pleased. This is brutal.
XVI Composition of the Convict Popttlation According to Sex - The Female Problem - Convict Women and Female Settlers - Male and Female Cohabitants - Free Women
there are 53 women to 1 oo men in the penal colony.' This ratio properly applies only to the population living in huts. There arc also men who sleep in prison and bachelor soldiers for whom, as one local official explained, all the convict women and all the women in contact with convicts serve as "a rcquisitc source for satisfying natural needs."' However, if this category of people is included in deter- mining the composition of the colony's population, it should be done with reservations. \Vhilc living in prison or bar- racks they merely regard the colony as a means for satis- fying their needs. Their visits to the colony are but harmful external influences which decrease the birth rate and in- crease morbidity. These inlluences can be greater or lesser depending on how close or far the prison or barracks is from the settlement. Life in a Russian village is similarly affected by roughnecks building a railroad which passes in the neighborh^^. If we combine all the men, including those in prison and in the barracks, the figure of 53 will be cut in half, and we will have a ratio of 100:25.
Although the figures of 53 and 25 arc low, they must not be regarded as unusually low for a new penal colony, which is developing under most unfavorable conditions. In Siberia, women represent only 10 percent of the popu- lation of convicts and settlers. If we examine deporcation practices as they affect non-Russians, we will find respect- able farmer colonists who have been so deprived that they joyfully welcomed prostitutes from the cities and paid the procurers 100 pounds of tobacco for each one. The so-called female problem is handled infamously on Sakhalin, but it is less disgusting than it was during the early development of penal colonies in Western Europe.
Nat only convict women and prostitutes come to Sakhalin. Thanks to the prison administration headquarters and to the Voluntary Fleet, which has succeeded in estab- lishing speedy and convenient communication between European Russia and Sakhalin, the problem of wives and daughters who wanted to follow their husbands and parents into exile became greatly simplified. Nat too long ago the ratio was only i woman voluntarily accompanying her husband to 30 convicts. Today the presence of free women is characteristic of the colony, and it is now diffi- cult to imagine Rykovskoye or Novo-Mikhaylovka with- out these tragic figures who "came to remedy their hus- bands' lives and lost their own." This may be one of the indications that our Sakhalin will nat be last in the history of penal servitude.
I will begin with the convict women. As of January i, 1890, women represented i 1.5 percent of the total number of convicts in all three districts.2
\'(/ith regard to colonization, these women have one important advantage: they join the colony at a compara- tively early age. Mostly they are neurotic women who have been sentenced for crimes of passion or crimes connected with their families. "I came because of my husband." "I came because of my mather-in-law. . . ." Most of them are murderers, the victims of love and family despotism. Even those who are sent out here for arson and for counterfeiting are being punished for their love affairs, since they were enticed into crime by their lovers.
The love element plays a fateful part in their sorrowful existence before and after their trials. While they are being transported by ship to penal servitude, they hear the r^or that they wiU be forced to marry on Sakhalin. This fright- ens them. On one occasion they begged the court to inter- cede for them, so that they would not be forced into mar- riage.
Some fifteen to twenty years ago convict women were immediately dispatched to a brothel when they reached Sakhalin. Vlasov wrote in his report: "Because of the lack of separate quarters, the women in Southern Sakhalin are housed in the bakery. . . . The island commandant Dep- reradovich ordered that the women's section of the prison be turned into a house of prostitution." There was no question of any work being available for them, since "only those guilty of a misdemeanor or who had not earned the favor of men were forced to work in the kitchen." The remainder served men's "needs" and were blind drunk. Finally, according to Vlasov, the women became so de- praved that while stupefied "they sold their own children for a pint of alcohol."