One official said to me: "It's very bad that women are sem here from Russia in the autumn rather than in the spring. In the wimer the woman has nothing to do, she is not a helpmate to the peasant, but only another mouth to feed. That is the reason why good homesteaders receive them reluctantly in the autumn."
This is exactly the way they discuss working horses when feed is expccted to be expensive during the winter. Human dignity, the femininity and modesty of convict women, are ncver taken into account. It seems to be im- plied that all of a woman's virtues were burned out of her in her disgrace, or they wcre lost by her during her incar- ceration in prison and at convict way stations. \X'hen they punish her corporally, they are nat constrained by the con- sideration that she might be suffering overwhclming shame. But degradation of her pcrson never rcachcd thc point where she was forccd into marriage or cocrced into cohabi- tation. Rumors of compulsion in this rcspcct are thc samc idle talcs as gallows on the scashorc or being forccd to work undcrground.0
Neither a woman's age, nor diffcrences of religion, nor vagrancy are deterrents to cohabitation. I have met fcmale cohabitants fifty years old and morc, living with young sct- tlcrs and evcn with guards who have barely passed twcnty- fivc. Somctimcs an old mothcr and hcr grown daughtcr arrive togcther in pcnal scrvitudc. Both become cohabitants with scttlcrs and both begin to bcar childrcn as if running a race. Catholics, Luthcrans and cvcn Tatars and Jcws oftcn livc with Russians. In onc hut in Alcxandrovsk I found a Russian woman with a large company of Kirghiz and Cau- casians whom shc was serving at tablc and I rccorded her as the cohabitant of a Tatar, or, as she callcd him, a Che- chenets. In Alcxandrovsk, the Tatar Kcrbalay, who is known herc to everyone, livcs with the Russian Lopushina and has had three children by her.7
Vagrants also attempt to live a family life and one of them in Derbinskoye, named Vagrant Ivan 35 Years, even announced to me with a smirk that he has two cohabitants: "One is here; the other is billcted in Nikolayevsk." Another settler has been living for thc past ten years with a woman named Not Remembering Her Kin as though she were his wife, and he still does not know her real name or birth- place.
In answer to the question How are they getting along, the settler and his cohabitant usually answer, "We live well." Some of the convict women told me that at home in Russia they had suffered from the insolence and beatings of their husbands, and rebukcs for each piece of bread eaten, while here, in penal servitude, they learned to enjoy the world for the first time. "Thank God! I am now living with a fine man; he feels compassion for me." Those in penal servitude sympathize with their cohabitants and treasure thcm.
Baron Korf told me: "Here, because of the scarcity of women, a peasant must plow, cook, milk the cow and wash his laundry, and if he is fortunate enough to obtain a woman, he really holds on to her. Take a look how he clothes her. A woman is honored by the convicts."
"Which, by the way, doesn't prevent her from going around with black-and-blue marks," added General Konon- ovich, who participated in the conversation.
There arc quarrels and brawls, and black-and-blue marks result, but the settler still chastises his cohabitant cau- tiously, since she has the upper hand. He knows that she is an illegal wife and can leave him any time and go to some- body else. Understandably the convicts do not feel for their women only because they know they may be abandoned. No matter how simple the composition of illegal marriages on Sakhalin, even here love in its purest and loveliest form is not a stranger. In Duc I saw an insane convict woman suffering from epilepsy who lives in her cohabitants hut. He is a convict, and nurses her very carefully, and when I said it must be difficult for him to live in one room with the woman, he said joyfully, "Not at all, your worship; it's a question of having compassion for her!" In Novo-Mik- haylovka the cohabitant of one settler has long been unable to walk and lies day and night on rags in the middle of the room while he takes care of her. \Y./hcn I tried to convince him that it would be more convenient to take her to a hospital, he spoke of his pity for her.
With these good and commonplace families, there also exists a type of free family, which partly accounts for the bad reputation of the "female problem" among convicts. From the very first moment of coming in touch with them, you find something nauseating in their artificiality and hypocrisy. They give you the feeling that they have been corrupted by prison life and slavery, and the family has long since rotted away and something which is not a family has taken its place. Many men and women live together, because they feel this is the way it should be, this is the custom in penal servitude. Cohabitation has become tradi- tional in the colony, and these people, possessing sick and weak-willed natures, have submitted to the arrangement although nobody has forced them into it.
A fifty-year-old Ukrainian peasant woman in Novo- Mikhaylovka came here with her son, also a convict. Her daughter-in-law had been found dead in the well, and so she left her husband and children and lives here with a cohabitant. Obviously all this is most repugnant to her, and she is ashamed to speak about it before a stranger. She despises her cohabitant, and at the same time she lives with him and sleeps with him; that's the way it has to be in penal servitude. The members of similar families are so alien to each ather that no matter how long they live to- gether under one roof, even five or ten years, they do not know how old the others arc, from which guberniya they came, or their patronymic. Asked the age of her cohabi- tant, a woman looks aside wanly and lazily, and usually answers, "Who the devil knows!" While the cohabitant is working or playing cards somewhere, the female cohabi- tant lolls in bed, lazy and hungry. If one of the neighbors enters the hut, she gets up unwillingly and says with a yawn that she "came because of her husband," and she is innocent of the crime for which she has been made to suffer. "The boys killed the devil, but they sent me to penal servirude." Her cohabitant returns home; there is nothing to do, there's nothing to talk about with the woman; the samovar should be lit, but there's no sugar or tea. Seeing his lazy cohabitant, a feeling of boredom and lassitude over- whelms him, but he never mentions his hunger or vexa- tion. Instead he sighs, and falls into bed.
When women in these families engage in prostitution, their cohabitants usually encourage them. A cohabitant regards a prostitute who earns a piece of bread as a bene- ficial domestic animal and respects her; that is, he himself prepares the samovar and is silent when she argues with him. She changes cohabitants frequently, selecting the one who is richer, or has vodka, or she changes them out of sheer boredom, for the sake of variety.
A convict woman receives prison rations which she shares with her cohabitant; sometimes this woman's ration is the only source of food for the family. Since the female cohabitant is formally listed as a worker, the settler recom- penses the government for her as for a worker. He pledges to deliver 20 p^^s of freight from one district to another or to deliver scores of logs to the post. This formality, how- ever, is only obligatory for peasant settlers and does not apply to convicts who live on posts and do nothing.
Having completed her term, the convict woman is trans- ferred to settler status and stops receiving food and cloth- ing allowances. Thus transfer to settler status does not ease her lot on Sakhalin. Convict women who receive rations from the treasury live better than settler women, and the longer the prison term, the better it is for the woman. If she has an unlimited term, this means that she is assured her piece of bread for an unlimited time. Settler women usually achieve peasant rights on favorable terms, that is, m six years.
At the present time there are more free women in the colony who voluntarily followed their husbands than there are convict women. Their ratio to the total number of convict women is 2:3. I recorded 697 free women. There was a total of 1,041 convict, settler and peasant women, which means that the free women represent 40 percent of all the adult women.8