He substituted barrels for whcclbarrows as a means of transporting coal, so that it would be easier to roll them along gangways. He also placed convict offenders in barrels and ordcred them to be rolled along the shore. "You know, when thcy roll that sweetheart around for an hour, the fellow becomes as gentle as silk." Desiring to teach the soldiers their numbers, he resorted to playing lotto. "When a number is called, whocver cannot cover it himself must pay a grivemiik [ten-kopeck silver coin]. Hell pay once or twicc, and thcn hc'll undcrstand that it isn't profitable. The ncxt time you'll find him laboriously studying his numbcrs and he learns them in a week." Similar absurdities reacted unfavorably on the Due soldicrs; at times they sold their weapons to thc convicts. When the major was about to give a thrashing to a convict, hc announced that the man would not come out of it alive and, in fact, the offender died immediately after the beating. Following this incident Major Nikolayev was tricd and sentenced to penal servitude.
When you ask an old settler if there have ever been any good people on the island in his time, he remains silent for a while, as if remembering, and finally he says, "There were all kinds." Nowhere are past times so quickly for- gotten as on Sakhalin, and this is because of the extraordi- nar/ turnover in the convict population, which changes basically every five years, and partly because of the lack of accurate archives in the local offices. What transpired twenty to twenty-five years ago is considered to belong to a dark antiquity, already forgotten, lost to history. What survived consists only of a few buildings, Mikryukov, about a score of anecdotes, and also some figures which cannot be trusted because there was not even one department which knew how many prisoners there were on the island, how many had escaped, died and so on.
"Prehistoric" times continued on Sakhalin until 1878, when Prince Nikolay Shakhovskoy, a distinguished admin- istrator and an intelligent and honorable man,10 was ap- pointed the leading authority over the penal convicts in the Primorskaya oblast. He left a work which is exemplary on many accounts. A copy of The Problem of Organizing Sakhaliii Island is to be found in the office of the island commandant. By preference the Prince was a man who kept to his desk. Under him the prisoners were no better off than they were before, but the observations which he shared with the administration and his staff, and his book, which was thoroughly candid and quite uninfluenced by outside sources, served as the forerunner of new and more beneficent ideas.
In 1879 the Voluntary Fleet began to function and slowly positions on Sakhalin began to be filled by natives of European Russia. In 1884 a new order was instituted on Sakhalin which stimulated an intensified influx, or as they say here, an infusion of new people. 11
At the present time we have three district towns in which officials and officers reside with their families. So- ciety is already so varied and well-educated that in Alex- androvsk, for example, they were able to present an amateur production of Zhenitba [The Wedding] in 1888. For the usual entertainments offered by officials and military officers on the great feast days in Alexandrovsk, they have now substituted gifts of money to poor convict families and poor children. The subscription list usually contains about forty signatures.
Sakhalin society makes a favorable impression on a visitor. It is cordial and hospitable, and can stand compari- son with our own social communities in all respects. It considers itself the most vivacious and interesting on the eastern shore. At any rate, officials here are reluctant to transfer to Nikolayevsk or De Kastri. But just as violent storms occur in the Tatar Suait and the sailors proclaim that these are the ahermath of a cyclone raging in the Chinese or Japanese seas, so in the same way the recem past and the proximity of Siberia reverberate on this so- ciety's life.
The type of rascals who came to work here aher the reforms of 1884 can be seen from the dismissal notices, from accoums of trials, and from official repons on acts of disorderly conduct which reached the poim of "insolem corruption" (Order No. 87, 1890). These are also evidem from anecdotes told about them, like the one about the weahhy convict Zolotarev, who associated with officials, caroused and played cards with them. When this man's wife found him in the company of the officials, she took to rebuking him for associating with people who could be a bad influence on his morals.
Even now we find officials who think nohing of beating a convict over the face, even when he belongs to the privi- leged class, and when a convict has failed to remove his cap quickly enough, he is told "to go to the guard and tell him to give you thirty lashes." Even tday we hear of such irregularities as the fact that two prisoners were believed t be absem at some unknown place for a year when they were actually receiving rations and being assigned to work (Order No. 87, 1890).
No every warden knows exacdy how many prisoners live in the prison at any particular dme, exacdy how many are fed from the common kettle, how many escaped and so on. The island commandam himself declares: "The general condition of affairs in all branches of administra- tion in the Alexandrovsk disuict leaves a distressing im- pression and requires many serious improvemems." Con- cerning the actual conduct of affairs, it was leh too much to the discretion of the clerks, who "run things without any comrol over them, judging by some accidemally dis- covered forgeries" (Order No. 314, 1888).12
I will speak in an appropriate place of the grievous plight in which the department of investigation finds itself in Sakhalin.
At the post and telegraph office the officials are rude and ill-disposed to their clients. Mail is distributed four or five days after its receipt. The telegraph men are ignorant; telegraph secrecy is nm maintained. I did not receive even one telegram which was no mutilated in the most barbaric fashion. Once when a piece of someone else's telegram was somehow included in mine, and I asked that the error be rectified so that I could find out the meaning of both tele- grams, they told me it could only be done at my expense.
An obvious role is being played in Sakhalin's new his- tory by representatives of the late administrative structure of the island, mixtures of Dcrzhimorda13 and Iago—men who in their dealings with inferiors recognize nothing but fists, lashes and abusive language, while they propitiate their superiors by their intellectualism and even by their liberalism.
Neverthcless, the "House of the Dead' no longer exists. Among the intellectuals working in office positions on Sa- khalin I met intelligent, good and honorable people whose presence is sufficient guarantee that the past cannm come back again. They no longer roll convicts in barrels and a prisoner can no longer be beaten to death or driven to suicide without shocking the local community and without its being discussed along the Amur and all over Siberia. Every evil action comes to the surface sooner or later, and becomes notorious; the proof of this lies in the grim past, when, in spite of all efforts to conceal them, these crimes aroused a good deal of talk and reached the newspapers, thanks to the intelligentsia of Sakhalin. Good people and good deeds are no longer a rarity. Recently a woman who had been a doctor's assistant died in Rykovskoye. She had served many years on Sakhalin because of her desire t devme her life to the suffering. One day while I was in Korsakov a convict was carried out to sea on a hay raft. The prison warden, Major S., went out on the sea in a cutter and, although caught in a storm which threatened his life, he spent the night until two o'clock in the morning at sea until he was able to locate the hay raft and rescue the convict.14