Exiles to Siberia may be grouped, according to the nature of their sentences, into four great classes, namely:
1. Kátorzhniki or hard-labor convicts.
2. Poseléntsi or penal colonists.
3. Sílni or persons simply banished.
4. Dobrovólni or women and children that go to Siberia voluntarily with their exiled husbands or parents. Persons belonging to the first two classes, who are always supposed to be criminals, are deprived of all civil rights and must remain in Siberia for life. Persons belonging to the third class, who are not necessarily criminals, retain some of their civil rights and may return to European Russia at the expiration of their terms of banishment. Convicts and penal colonists go to their places of destination in five-pound leg-fetters and with half-shaven heads, while simple exiles wear no fetters and are not personally disfigured. Exiles of the third class comprise:
a. Vagrants (persons without passports who refuse to disclose their identity).
b. Persons banished by sentence of a court.
c. Persons banished by the village communes to which they belong.
d. Persons banished by order of the Minister of the Interior.
The relative proportions of these several classes for 1885, the year that I spent in Siberia, may be shown in tabular form as follows:
| Penal Class. | Males. | Females. | Total. | |||
| I. Hard-labor convicts [kátorzhniki], punished by sentence of a court | 1,440 | 111 | 1,551 | |||
| II. Penal colonists [poseléntsi], punished by sentence of a court) | 2,526 | 133 | 2,659 | |||
| III. Exiles | a. Vagrants | 1,646 | 73 | 1,719 | ||
| b. Exiled by judicial sentence | 172 | 10 | 182 | |||
| c. Exiled by village communes | 3,535 | 216 | 3,758 | |||
| d. Exiled by executive order | 300 | 68 | 361 | |||
| IV. Voluntaries [dobrovólni], accompanying relatives | 2,068 | 3,468 | 5,536 | |||
| Totals | 11,687 | 4,079 | 15,766 | |||
