Russian Prisons. Griffiths Arthur

      CHAPTER I

       GENERAL SURVEY

       Table of Contents

      Commencement of judicial reform in Russia—Abandonment of knout and branding iron—The plet—Two classes of prisons, the “lock-up” and the “central” or convict prisons—Experiences of a woman exiled from Russia—Testimony of Carl Joubert—The state of the central prisons—The “model” prison in St. Petersburg—Punishments inflicted—The food in different prisons—Attempted escapes—Myshkin—His early history and daring exploits—Failure of his plan to rescue Chernyshevski from Siberia—His escape, recapture, and sentence of death—The prisoner Medvediev.

      A definite movement toward judicial reform began in Russia in the early sixties. The old law courts with their archaic procedure and evil repute as sinks of bribery and corruption were abolished. Trial by jury was revived, and justices of the peace were established to dispose of the smaller criminal offences. Shortly afterward, two of the most disgraceful features in the Russian penal code, the knout and the branding iron, disappeared. The punishment of splitting the nostrils to mark ineffaceably the prisoners exiled to the salt mines of Okhotsk also ceased, and the simple Chinese no longer were surprised with the sight of a hitherto unknown race of men with peculiar features of their own. The knout, however, had long served its devilish purpose. It was inflicted even upon women in the time of Peter the Great, and was still remembered as an instrument which would surely kill at the thirtieth stroke, although in the hands of a skilful performer a single blow might prove fatal.

      Flogging did not go entirely out of practice and might still be ordered by peasant courts, in the army and in the convict prisons. But another brutal whip survived; the plet is still used in the far-off penal settlements, although rarely, and only upon the most hardened offenders. It is composed of a thong of twisted hide about two feet in length, ending in a number of thin lashes, each a foot long, with small leaden balls attached, and forms a most severe and murderous weapon. The number of strokes inflicted may vary from twenty-three to fifty and at Saghalien in some cases reaches ninety-nine. If the victim has money or friends, the flogger is bribed to lay on heavily; for when the blow is so light as to fail to draw blood, the pain is greater. By beginning gently the flagellator can gradually increase the force of each blow until the whole back is covered with long swollen transverse welts which not uncommonly mortify, causing death.

      At one time trial by court-martial could sentence a soldier to the frightful ordeal of the “rods,” flogging administered by comrades standing in two ranks between which he moved at a deliberate pace while they “laid on” the strokes with sticks upon his bare back. This is exactly the same penalty as that of “running the gauntlet,” or “gantlope,” well known in old-time military practice, and sometimes called “Green Street” in Russia, for the rods used were not always stripped of their leaves. The infliction might be greatly prolonged and the number of strokes given sometimes amounted to several thousand. Devilish ingenuity has now replaced the physical torture of knout and plet by a modern device for inflicting bodily discomfort, nothing less than riveting a wheelbarrow to a man’s legs, which he must take with him everywhere, even to bed—the apology for a bed on which he passed the night.

      Russian prisons are of several classes. There are first the “lock-ups,” or places of detention for the accused awaiting trial, scattered throughout the country, and quite unequal in the aggregate to the accommodation of the number of prisoners on hand. It has been estimated that to lodge all adequately, half as many more than the existing prisons would be required. Those of another class, the houses of correction, the hard labour or “central” prisons where compulsory labour is exacted, are very much like the “public works” convict prisons in the English system. Many of these are established in European Russia; more are to be found in Western Siberia, and, on somewhat different lines, in the penal settlements of Eastern Siberia.

      In the provincial “lock-ups” or ostrogs the conditions have always been deplorable. They are horribly overcrowded with wretched, hopeless beings for whom trial is often greatly delayed, and who lie there in inconceivable discomfort at the mercy of brutal and extortionate gaolers, “packed like herrings in a cask, in rooms of inconceivable foulness, in an atmosphere that sickens even to insensibility any one entering from the open air,” says one writer.

      The same author gives the experiences of a lady who was expelled from Russia for opening a school for peasants’ children, and who was transferred to the Prussian frontier from prison to prison. “At Wilna,” she says, “we were taken to the town prison, and detained for two hours late at night in an open yard under a drenching rain. At last we were pushed into a dark corridor and counted. Two soldiers laid hold of me and insulted me shamefully. After many oaths and much foul language, the fire was lighted and I found myself in a spacious room, in which it was impossible to take a step in any direction without treading on the women sleeping on the floor. Two women who occupied a bed took pity on me and invited me to share it with them. … The next night we were turned out from the prison and paraded in the yard for the start under a heavy rain. I do not know how I happened to escape the fists of the gaolers, as the prisoners did not understand the evolutions and performed them under a storm of blows and curses; those who protested were put in irons and sent so to the train, although the law prescribes that in the cellular wagons no prisoner shall be chained.

      “Arrived

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