20 If we are to judge by fragmentary records and suggestions made on the spot, literate persons bear their punishment better than the illiterate. Apparently there are more habitual criminals among the latter, while the former obtain their peasant rights more readily. In Siyantsy I recorded I 8 literate males, of whom I 3—that is, almost all the literate adults—have achieved peasant status. As yet it is not cuscomary to teach reading and writing ro adults although there are days in the winter when the prisoners sit helplessly in the prison because of the bad weather and lan- guish there with nothing to do. On such days they would eagerly study reading and writing.
Because so many convicts are illiterate, letters home are usually written for them by the more literate convicts, who act as scribes. They describe the sad local life, their poverty and misfortune, they beg their wives for divorces, etc., but in such a way that they seem to be describing yesterday's drunken revels: ''Well, finally I am writing a little bit of a letter to you. . . . Free me from marriage ties," etc., or else they wax philosophical and it is difficult to understand what they mean. One such scribe in the Tymovskoye district \\'as named Baccalaureate by the other scribes because of his florid style.
The Free Population - The Lower Ranks of the Local Military Command - Guards The Jntelligentsia
SOLDIers are called "Sakhalin pioneers" because they lived here before the establishment of penal servitude.1 Beginning with the fifties, when Sakhalin was first occu- pied, and almost to the eighties, the soldiers performed all the work now being done by the convicts in addition to their military duties. The island was a wilderness. It had no dwellings, no roads, no cattle, and the soldiers were obliged to build barracks and houses, cut roads through the forest and carry burdens on their shoulders. If an official engineer or scientist arrived on Sakhalin, he was assigned several soldiers who were used in place of pack horses. The mining engineer Lopatin wrote: "Planning to go into the interior of the Sakhalin taiga, I couldn't even think of rid- ing horseback and transporting my baggage by pack horse. Even on foot I encountered great difficulties in climbing over the steep Sakhalin mountains, which are covered either with dense windfalls or by the local bamboo. In this man- ner I traveled over i,6oo versts on foot.2 And following him walked soldiers lugging his heavy baggage on their backs.
The entire small force of soldiers was scattered over the western, southern and southeastern shores. The sites where they lived were called posts. Abandoned and forgotten to- day, at that time they played che same role as the settle- ments of today and were regarded as the nuclei of a future colony. A company of riflemen was stationed at the Murav- yevsky Post; three companies of the Fourth Siberian Bat- talion and a mining battery platoon were at the Korsakov
Post. The remaining posts, such as, for example, Manuisky and Sortunaisky, contained only six soldiers. The six men, separated from their company by a distance of several hun- dred versts and under the command of a corporal or even a civilian, lived like real Robinson Crusoes. Life was primi- tive, extremely monotonous and boring. If the post was situated on the seashore, a boat arrived in the summer with provisions and departed. In the winter a priest came to supervise the fast. Dressed in fur trousers and jacket, he looked more like a Gilyak than a priest. Misfortune brought the only variety into their life: a soldier was carried out to sea on a hay raft, or he was clawed by a bear, or he was snowbound, or he was attacked by escaped convicts, or scurvy insidiously crept upon him. Or, getting bored with sitting in the snow-covered shack or with walking around the taiga, he began manifesting "uproariousness, drunken- ness, impertinence," or was caught stealing or embezzling ammunition, or was coun-martialed for disrespect rendered to somcbody"s convict mistress.:!
Due to the diversity of his labors, the soldier did not have the time to improve his military training and forgot what he had bcen taught. The officers also became careless, while the drill unit was in a truly deplorable state. Reviews were always accompanied by misunderstandings and ex- pressions of dissatisfaction by the authorities.4
The service was harsh. People coming off sentry duty immediately went out on a convoy, from the convoy back to sentry duty or to the hayfields or to unload government cargo. There was no rest day or night. They lived in tight, cold and dirty quarters which differed little from the prisons. Until 1875 the Korsakov Post sentry lived in the penal prison. The military guardhouse was also situated there; it was nothing more than a dark and wretched hovel. "Perhaps such crowding is permissible for convicts as a punitive measure," writes Dr. Sintsovsky. "But a sentry is something else again and knows why he should be
made to suffer similar punishment."^
They ate the same wretched f^^ as the prisoners, and were dressed in tatters because no clothing could have with- stood the wear and tear resulting from their work. The soldiers who chased escaped convicts over the taiga tore their clothing and shoes so much that on one occasion in Southern Sakhalin they themselves were mistaken for es- caped convicts and shot at.
At the present time the island's military defense con- sists of four commands: Alexandrovsk, Due, Tymovsky and Korsakov. As of January, 1890, there were 1,548 men in the lower ranks of all four commands. As before, the sol- diers carry a heavy burden of work incommensurate with their strength, their intelligence and the requirements of military regulations. True, they no longer cut roads through the forest nor build barracks, but, as in former times, a soldier who returns from sentry duty or from drill can never depend on getting any rest; he may immediately be ordered out on a convoy, or sent to mow hay, or com- manded to capture escaped convicts. Supply requirements divert a significant number of soldiers, and this results in a constant shortage of men for convoy duty, and the sentries cannot be scheduled in three shifts. \'\'hen I was in Due at the beginning of August, Go men of the Due command were out mowing hay, half of them having marched out to hayfields 109 versts distant.
The Sakhalin soldier is meek, taciturn, obedient and sober. The only drunken soldiers who acted boisterously on the streets were those I saw at the Korsakov Post. They sing rarely, and it is always the same song: "Ten girls, and only one man. Where the girls go, there go I. ... The girls go into the forest, I'm right behind them. . . ." This is a gay song they sing with such ennui, such boredom that when you hear them you begin pining for your homeland and you feel all the wretchedness of the Sakhalin countryside. They humbly bear all privations, and they are indifferent to the dangers which so often threaten their lives and their health. But they are coarse, backward and confused, and from lack of opportunity they never come to be inspired with any military skills and have no conception of honor, and therefore they are continually commming the same mistakes as those enemies of order whom they are called upon to guard and to pursuc.0 They disclose their limita- tions in sharp relief when they find themselves unable to fulfill those obligations which demand some intelligence, as happens when they become prison guards.