All of the state criminals belonging to the penal-servitude class are held at the Kará gold mines under guard of a foot company of the Trans-Baikál Cossacks consisting of two hundred men. The sending of these criminals to work with the common convicts in the gold placers is impossible.[1] To employ them in such work in isolation from the others is very difficult, on account of the lack of suitable working-places, their unfitness for hard physical labor, and the want of an adequate convoy. If to these considerations be added the fact that unproductive hard labor, such as that employed in other countries merely to subject the prisoner to severe physical exertion, is not practised with us, it will become apparent that we have no hard labor for this class of criminals to perform; and the local authorities who are in charge of them, and who are held to strict accountability for escapes, are compelled, by force of circumstances, to limit themselves to keeping such state criminals in prison under strict guard, employing them, occasionally, in work within the prison court, or not far from it. Such labor has not the character of penal servitude, but may rather be regarded as hygienic. Immunity from hard labor, however, does not render the lot of state criminals an easy one. On the contrary, complete isolation and constant confinement to their own limited circle make their life unbearable. ... There have been a number of suicides among them, and within a few days one of them, Pózen, has gone insane. A number of others are in a mental condition very near to insanity. In accordance with an understanding that I have with the Ministry of the Interior, all sufferers from mental disorder will be removed, if possible, to hired quarters in the town of Chíta,[2] since there are in Siberia no regular
- ↑ The governor-general does not say why this was "impossible," nor does he try to explain the fact that although the politicals were constantly sent to the gold placers under Colonel Kononóvich's management, no evil results followed, and not a single attempt was made to escape.
- ↑ Up to the time of our visit to the mines, three years and a half later, this promised removal had not been made. Insane politicals were still living in the same kámeras with their sane comrades, and intensifying, by their presence, the misery of the latter's existence. In East-Siberian prisons generally we found little attention paid to the seclusion or care of demented convicts. In more than one place in the Trans-Baikál we were startled, as we entered a crowded prison kámera, by some uncared-for lunatic, who sprang suddenly towards us with a wild cry or with a burst of hysterical laughter. The reasons for this state of affairs are given, in part, by the governor-general. There is not an insane asylum in the whole country, and it is easier and cheaper to make the prison comrades of a lunatic take care of him than to keep him in seclusion and provide him with an attendant. For educated
