We found in Omsk very little that was either interesting or instructive. The city was the place of exile of a well-known and talented Russian author named Petropávlovski, but as we were not aware of the fact we missed an opportunity to make the acquaintance of a man whose wide and thorough knowledge of Russian life, as well as of the exile system, might have been in the highest degree useful to us.[1] The only letter of introduction that I had to deliver in Omsk was a brief note from the editor of a newspaper in St. Petersburg to Colonel Paivtsóf, president of the West Siberian branch of the Imperial Geographical Society. The latter received me very cordially, gave me some useful information with regard to the comparative merits of different routes from Semipalátinsk to Tomsk, and went with me to see the little museum connected with the Geographical Society, which, apparently, was the only evidence of culture that the city afforded. Mr. Frost, meanwhile, made explorations in the neighborhood; discovered and sketched a wretched suburb north of the river Om, which seemed to be inhabited chiefly by poor, common criminal exiles, and made the drawing of the police station that is reproduced on page 141. I tried to find the ostróg[2] where the gifted Russian novelist Dostoyéfski spent so many years of penal servitude and where, according to the testimony of his
- ↑ Mr. Petropávlovski has written a great deal for the Atéchestvenia Zapíski and other Russian magazines under the pen-name of "Karónin," and a volumeof his collected stories was published in Moscow in 1890. His field as a writer is the Russian village and the everyday life of the Russian peasant, and he has shown in that field not only great accuracy of observation and faithfulness of portrayal, but a sympathetic comprehension of all the sufferings that the common people are forced to endure as one of the results of a bad system of government. I do not know for what specific reason he was banished to Siberia, but I presume that his writings were regarded by the censor as "pernicious in tendency."
- ↑ The word ostróg meant originally a stockaded entrenchment and was applied to the rude forts built by the Cossacks as they marched eastward into Siberia three centuries ago. The custom of confining criminals in these forts finally gave to ostróg the meaning of "prison," and up to the present century nearly all of the prisons in Siberia were known as ostrógs.
be glad to give some illustrations of the "harrying" to which Mr. X referred, if I could do so without disclosing his identity.
