The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin

Semenov employs Chinese, Koreans and Russians. It was only in 1886 that our settlers began to make a living here. They probably came on their own initiative, because the prison supervisors were more interested in sauerkraut than in sea cabbage. The first attempts were not very suc- cessful. The Russians had little experience from the techni- cal point of view. Now they have become used to the work and although Demby is not as satisfied with them as with the Chinese, it is reasonably certain that in time some hundreds of settlers will be able to earn bread here.

Mauka is in the Korsakov district. At present 38 people live here: 33 male and 5 female. All 33 have homesteads. Three have already achieved peasant status. The women are all convicts and live as cohabitants. There are no children and there is no church. The tedium must be overwhelming in winter when the workers go home. The civil administra- tion consists of one jailer, and there is a military detach- ment composed of a corporal and three soldiers.²

The comparison of Sakhalin to a sturgeon is most apt in the southern part, which resembles a fish tail. The left half of the tail is called Cape Krilon, the right, Cape Aniv- sky, and the semicircular bay between them, Aniva. Krilon, around which the ship makes a sharp turn to the northeast, looks like an attractive town in the sunlight and the soli- tary red lighthouse resembles an aristocratic villa. The large headland juts into the sea, which is green and smooth as a lovely water meadow. The earth is covered with velvety grass, and to someone on a sentimental journey all it seems to lack is a herd of cattle wandering under the shade trees on the edge of the forest. But they say the grasses here are poor and that agriculture is barely possible because Krilon is hidden in salt-laden fog for most of the summer, and the fog is destructive to vegetation.³

We passed Krilon and entered Aniva Bay before noon on September 12. The entire shoreline was visible from one cape to the other, although the diameter of the bay is 80 to 90 versts.⁴

Practically in the center of the semicircular shore is a small hollow called Lasosey [Salmon] Bay. Here lies the Korsakov Post, the administrative center of the Southern region.

A most pleasant chance meeting awaited our shipmate the happy lady. On the Korsakov waterfront lay the Vladi- vostok, a ship of the Voluntary Fleet, which had just arrived from Kamchatka. The lady's officer husband was on board.

So many cries of joy, so much uncontrollable laughter, such a tremendous fuss!

From the sea the post looks like a charming town, not at all Siberian, possessing a distinctive character of its own which I cannot put into words. It was settled almost forty years ago, when Japanese homes and sheds were scattered here and there along the south shore, and it is quite pos- sible that these Japanese buildings influenced it and gave it some characteristic features.

We are told that Korsakov was founded in 1869, but this is correct only for the penal colony. Actually the first Russian post on Lasoscy Bay dates from 1853-54. It lies on an incline which even today bears the Japanese name Khakhka-Tomari. Only the main street is visible from the sea, and from afar the road and the two rows of houses seem to drop sharply to the shore, but this is only in perspective, for in reality the slope is not very deep. New wooden buildings shine and shimmer in the sun. A plain church, old and therefore of beautiful architecture, gleams whitely. There are tall poles on all the houses, probably for flags, and they give the town an unpleasant aspect, as though it bristled.

As on the northern routes, the ship drops anchor a verst or two from the shore, and the pier is used only by cutters and barges. A cutter came out to our ship. It had officials on board, and immediately there were joyful cries: "Boy, some beer! Boy, a jigger of cognac!" Later a whaleboat came up, rowed by convicts dressed as sailors. At the prow sat the district commander, I. I. Bcly, who, when the whaleboat reached the ladder, gave out the order in naval fashion: "Lift up oars!"

\Vithin a few minutes Mr. Bely and I became ac- quainted. \Ve went ashore together and I dined with him. From our conversation I learned that he had just returned on the Vladivostok from the so-called Tarayka, where con- victs are now building a road. The Tarayka lies on the shore of the Okhotsk Sea.

His quarters are small, but pleasant and luxurious. He loves comfort and a good cuisine, and this is obvious from the nature of the entire region under his supervision. Trav- eling over it later I found not only knives, forks and wine- glasses in the jailers' quarters and at way stations, but there were even clean napkins. I found guards who knew how to make a tasty soup. There are fewer fleas and cockroaches here than in the North. According to Mr. Bely, when he was working at the road-construction site in Tarayka he lived in comfort in a small mansion, had his own chef and read French novels in his free time."

By origin he is a Ukrainian, by education a former law studem. He is young, not over forty, which is about average for a Sakhalin official.

Times have changed. Young officials are now more common than old ones, and should an arist portray a scene showing a prisoner being flogged, the paiming would depict an intelligent young man in a smart new uniform instead of the former old drunken captain with a purple nose.

We talked on and on. Evening came and the lamp was lit. I bade farewell to the hospitable Mr. Bely and went to the quarters of the secretary of the police administration, where lodgings had been prepared for me. It was dark and quiet, the sea murmured dully and the starry sky seemed gloomy, as if it knew that nature was preparing something evil.

I had walked down the street almost to the sea, and saw the ships at anchor, and when I turned to the right, I heard loud voices and boisterous laughter. Brightly lit windows glowed in the darkness. I seemed to be approach- ing a provincial club on an autumn evening. These were the quarters of the secretary. I climbed the ancient, creaking stairs to the veranda and entered the house. In the parlor, through the fog and tobacco smoke usually found in tav- erns and damp premises, I saw military men and officials gliding like gods walking on clouds. I was already ac- quainted with one of them, Mr. von F., the agricultural inspector, whom I had met previously in Alexandrovsk. I saw the rest for the first time, although all greeted my appearance with such complacency that they gave the im- pression they had known me for a long time. They Jed me to the table and compelled me to drink vodka, half diluted with water, and some very bad cognac. I was served some tough fried meat served by the convict Khomenko, a Ukrainian with a black mustache. Another visitor at the party was the director of the Irkutsk magneto- meteorological observatory, E. V. Shtelling, who had ar- rived on the Vladivostok from Kamchatka and Okhotsk, where he was trying to obtain instruments for the meteoro- logical station.

Here I also met Major S., the warden of the Korsakov prison, who had formerly served under General Greser in the Petersburg police. He is a tall, stout man with that solid, impressive carriage which I have found only in private and police officials. Recounting his brief meetings with many famous Perersburg writers, he called them by their first names, Misha and Vanya. And when he invited me to lunch and dinner, he twice addressed me familiarly as ty [thou].⁽¹

When the guests departed at 2 a.m., I went to bed. Suddenly I heard a roaring and a whiscling sound. It was the northeaster. Now I knew why the sky had been lower- ing all evening. Khomenko came in from outside and told us the ships had sailed and a tremendous storm was raging on the sea. "But don't worry, they'll come back," he said and laughed. "How can they fight it?"

The room became cold and damp. It was probably no more than six or seven degrees. Poor F., the young secre- tary of the police department, could not get any sleep; he had a severe cold and racking cough. Captain K., who shared his quarters, also could not sleep. He came out of his room and spoke through the partition:

"I get the Nedelya.' Would you like to have it?"

In the morning it was cold in bed, in the room, in the town. When I went out of doors a cold rain was falling, a strong wind bent the trees, and the sea roared. The gusts of wind and rain were hurled against your face and they drummed against the roofs like bird shot. The Vladivostok and Baikal, unable to battle the storm, had returned and now lay at anchor, shrouded in mist. I took a walk along the streets and along the shore near the jetty. The grass was soaked, the trees showered water.

Near the guardhouse on the jetty there lies the skeleton of a young whale. Once it was happy, playful, roaming the expanses of the northern seas. Now the white bones of the giant lie in the mud, pounded by rain.

The main street is paved and well maintained, with sidewalks, street lamps and trees. It is swept daily by an old man bearing the brand of a criminal. In the street there are only the offices and homes of the officials, and not one convict is housed there. Most of the houses are new and pleasant looking. The heavy prison atmosphere, which is so obvious in Due, is missing. In those four streets of Korsakov, there are more old buildings than new, and there is no lack of houses which are twenty or thirty years old. In Korsakov we find more old buildings and more old officials than in the North, indicating perhaps that the South is more conducive to a settled and peaceful life than the two Northern districts. I observed that life was more patriarchal here, the people were more conservative, and even the very worst customs were observed more carefully.

Corporal punishment is administered more frequently than in the North; they have been known to beat fifty men at a time. In the South a stupid custom initiated long ago by a forgotten colonel has survived. When a group of pris- oners on the street or along the shore moves in the direc- tion of a free citizen, then from 50 feet away you hear the guard shouting, "Attention! Caps off!" And so, sunk in misery, with bared heads, the prisoners scowl at you as though they feared that if they had taken off their caps at 20 or 30 feet, rather than 50, you would have beaten them with a stick. This is what Mr. Z. and Mr. N. do.

I am sorry I did not meet the oldest Sakhalin officer, Second Captain Shishmarev. At his age and as an old in- habitant he could have argued with old Mikryukov, who lives in Palensk. He died several months before my arrival, and all I saw was the house where he lived. He settled on Sakhalin in prehistoric times when there was no penal servitude, so long ago that a legend grew up concerning the origin of Sakhalin. In this legend the officer's name is closely connected with a geological cataclysm.

Once upon a time, in a remote age, Sakhalin did not exist. Suddenly a submerged cliff rose above sea level, and on the cliff there sat two creatures—a gray stallion and Second Captain Shishmarcv. Wc arc told that he wore a woolen frock coat with epaulets, and in his official reports he described non-Russians as "barbaric forest dwellers." He had taken part in several expeditions. Once he went down the Tym River with Polyakov and quarreled with him. We can read all this in the expedition's reports.

Korsakov Post has 163 inhabitants, 93 malc and 70 female. Including the free men, soldiers, their wives and children, and the prisoners sleeping in the prison, the popiilation is a little over i,ooo.

There arc 56 homesteads. None of these are rural, but rather urban and boiirgeois. From the agricultiiral point of view they are completely meaningless. There arc only 3 dcsyatins of arable land and only 18 dcsyatins of meadow- land, also used by the prison. lt is necessary to sec how close the houses arc to each other and how they cling picturesqiiely to the slope and along the bottom of a valley-like ravine to understand how whoever chose the site failed to realize that homesteaders would come to live here as well as soldiers.

The homesteaders answered the question about what work they do and how they supported themselves by say- ing: "A little work, a little trade. . . ." As to additional earnings, as the reader will sec below, the inhabitant of Southern Sakhalin finds himself in a better position than one in the North. If he wants to, he can earn extra money during the spring and summer, but the Korsakov people are not particularly interested, for they rarely try to earn extra money. They are citizens who live by uncertain means —uncertain because they are fortuitous and haphazard. Some live on money brought from Russia, and these arc in the majority; another is a scribe; a third is a clerk; a fourth runs a store, although by law he has no right to do so; a fifth exchanges odds and ends from prisoners for Japanese vodka, which he sells, etc. The women, even the free women, engage in prostitution, and this includes a woman of the privileged class, of whom it is said that she com- pleted her course at an institute. It is not so cold and people are less hungry here than in the North. The convicts whose wives sell their bodies smoke Turkish tobacco at 50 kopecks a quarter-pound. Prostitution appears to be more malignant here than in the North, although in fact there is probably very little difference.

There are 41 families. Of these, there are 21 couples who are not legally married. There are only 10 free women, which is 16 times less than in Rykovskoye and 4 times less than in a hole-in-the-wall like Due.

There are some interesting characters among the Korsa- kov convicts. I will mention Pishchikov, a convict with an indefinite term, whose crime provided the material for G. I. Uspensky's "One on One." This man flogged his wife to death. She was an intelligent woman, and nine months pregnant. He flogged her for six hours. He did this because he was jealous of some things that had happened to her before their marriage. During the recent war she had fallen in love with a captured Turk. Pishchikov carried letters to the Turk, invited him to meet the young woman, and generally helped both parties. When the Turk left the town, the girl fell in love with Pishchikov because he had been so kind to her. Pishchikov married her, and had already sired four children when he was troubled with a fit of jealousy.

He is a tall, thin, handsome man with a huge beard, a secretary in the police department, and consequently he wears the clothes of a free man. He is most industrious, extremely courteous, and judging from his expression, he has withdrawn into himself and locked the door. I visited his quarters, but he was not at home. He has a small room in a hut. His immaculate bed is covered with a red woolen blanket, and on the wall near the bed there hangs a framed portrait of a lady, who is probably his wife.

The Zhakomin family is also interesting. It consists of the father, a former skipper who served on the Black Sea, his wife and son. In 1878 all three were tried at a Niko- layevsk court-martial for murder and sentenced. They as- sure you they were innocent. The old lady and the son have served their terms, but the old man, Karp Nikolaye- vich, remains a convict. They operate a small store and their rooms arc very well furnished, even better than those of rich Potemkin in Novo-Mikhaylovka. The old Zhakomins traveled to Siberia on foot; their son came by sea. The son arrived three years before his parents, and there is an im- mense difference between the two methods of travel. \'{'hen you listen to the old man you are petrified. He speaks of the horrors he saw and suffered before his trial, the agonies in various prisons, and the three-year march across Siberia. His young daughter, who voluntarily followed her father and mother, died of exhaustion. The boat which brought them to Korsakov was shipwrecked near Mayka. So the old man tells the story, and thc old woman weeps. "Well, so what?" says the old man, waving his hand. "This is how God wamed it!"

Culturally Korsakov is obviously behind the districts in the North. It has no telegraph or meteorological station.⁸ The climate of Sakhalin can be judged only by the frag- memary, chance reports of various authors who served here or, like me, had visited for short periods. According to these data, taking mean temperatures, summer, autumn and spring are warmer by 2° in Korsakov Post than in Due, and winter is less severe by 5°. However, on thc Aniva River, which is not far east of Korsakov, the temperature in the Mu- ravyevsky settlement is significantly lower, closer to that of Due than of Korsakov. In Naybuchi, which is some 88 versts north of Korsakov Post, the commander of the Vsadnik recorded a temperamre of 2 ⁰ of frost on the morning of May i i, 1870, when it snowed. As the reader can see, the South here has nothing in common with the usual idea of a southern climate. The winter is as severe as in Olonetskaya guberniya, the summer is like summer in Arkhangelsk. Krusenstern saw snow in the middle of May on the western bank of the Aniva. In the northern part of the Korsakov region, in Kusunnay, where sea cab- bage is harvested, there were 149 rainy days, while in the Muravyevsky Post in the south there were 130. Neverthe- less, the climate is still more favorable in the Southern region than in the two regions of the North, and life should be better here. In the South, thaws occur in the middle of winter. None such have ever been seen near Due and Rykovskoye. Ice breaks in the rivers sooner and the sun shines through the clouds more frequently.

The Korsakov prison stands on the highest point of the posc and is probably the healchiest place in the neighbor- hood. The modest prison gates are located where the main street runs into the prison enclosure. That rhese are not ordinary gates is evident only from the sign posted outside and from the crowd of convicts who mill around each eve- ning before being permitted to enter the wicket gate one at a time to be searched. The prison yard is located on a slope. Alchough it is enclosed and there are buildings all around, the blue sea and the far horizon can be seen from inside the prison, and there would appear to be fresh air within the prison walls.

\'\'hen I inspected the prison, it became obvious to me from the beginning that the local administration tried ro isolate the convicts from the settlers. In Alexandrovsk the prison shops and the living quarters of several hundred convicts are spread all over the post; here, however, all the workshops and even the firehouse are located within the prison compound. With rare exceptions, even reformed prisoners are not allowed to live outside the prison. The post is self-contained. You can live for a long time at the post and never notice that the prison lies at the end of the street.

The barracks are old, the air in the wards is fetid, the latrine is far worse than in the northern prisons, the bakery is dark, the solitary cells are dark, unventilated and cold. Sometimes I saw prisoners in the solitary cells shivering from the cold and dampness. Only one thing is better here than in the North. The cell where the prisoners are shackled is much larger and the number of convicts in chains is comparatively smaller. Of those in the wards, former sailors are the cleanest; even their clothing is cleaner.⁹

While I was there, only 450 persons slept in the prison, the remainder having been commandeered for outside work, especially road-building. The total number of convicts in the district is 1,205.

The local prison wardcn delights in showing visitors the fire trucks. Thesc trucks are well-made and in this respect Korsakov surpasses many largc cities. The barrels, watcr pumps and axes in thcir cascs all glisten like toys, as though thcy had been specially prcpared for cxhibition. The fire alarm sounded. At once the convicts dashed out of the workshops coatless and hatlcss, cxactly as they wcrc. In a minute cvcrything was ready and they werc rolling thun- derously down thc main street. The spectacle was im- prcssive, and Major S., thc crcator of the firc trucks, was completely satisficd. Hc asked me many times if I likcd them. It was regrettablc that old men were forced to par- ticipatc in the game, dragging thc fire trucks into thc street and running with thcm. Thcy were not wcll enough for it, and should havc staycd bchind.

¹ Someone suggested a project: to construct a dike at the nar- rowest part of thc strait to hold back the cold currents. This project is naturally and historically justifiable. It is known that when the isthmus existcd, the climatc of Sakhalin was remarkably mild. Nevertheless, the construction of thc dikc would bring fcw benefits. Thc flora of the southcrn part of the westcrn shore would be enrichcd by many ncw species, but the climatc of the lower part of the island would hardly change for thc better. Thc entire southern part lies close to the Okhotsk Sca, where ice floes and even icebergs float in the middle of summer. The Korsakov region is separatcd from this sea only by a low mountain range, and then, near the sea, lie the lowlands, full of lakes and opcn to the cold winds.

2 Semenov runs a store in Mauka which is very expensive. The prices on food staples are high so that the settlers must spend half their wages to feed themselves. The commander of the clipper ship Vsadnik reported in 1870 that the clipper intended to land ten people near Mauka to prepare the land for cultivation because a new post was being planned in this location during the summer.

Let me add that all this took place at a time when there were some slight misunderstandings berween the Russians and the Japanese. I have found further information in the Kronstadt Newj (1880), No. i i 2, in an article entitled "Sakhalin Island. Some Interesting Information Regarding Mauka-Koyuv [Mauka-Cove] ." According to the article Mauka is the headquarters of a company which has received the right from the Russian government to harvest sea plants for i o years and the population consists of 3 Europeans, 7 Russian soldiers and 700 Koreans, Ainus and Chinese laborers.

That the cabbage business is profitable and is expanding can be seen from the fact that Semenov and Demby already have imi- tators. A setder named Birich, a former instructor and steward for Semenov, borrowed money, constructed all the necessary buildings for the industry near Kusunnay, and began inviting setders to work for him. He has some 30 employees. This is an unofficial undenaking, and there is no jailer. The Kusunnay Post, abandoned long ago, is one hundred versts south of Mauka at the mouth of the Kusunnay River, which was once the boundary between the island's Russian and Japanese administrations.

3 Nonh of Krilon I saw the rocks into which the Kostroma crashed and settied after being lost in the fog. Dr. A. V. Shcherbak, who was escorting the convicts on the Kostroma, set off signal rockets after the shipwreck. He told me later that he lived through three prolonged emotional experiences. During the first, which was the longest and most excruciating, he believed they would inevitably sink; the convicts were screaming with panic; the women and children were taken off on a lifeboat under the command of an officer; they headed toward where they thought the shore would be, and soon disappeared in the fog. The second experience came when they hoped they might be rescued; a gun was heard boom- ing from the Krilon lighthouse, this being a sign that the women and children had reached the shore safely. The third experience came when the air was suddenly filled with the music of the cornet being played by the returning officer, and then he felt complete confidence in being rescued.

⁴ N. V. Rudanovsky, a Russian officer and one of G. I. Nevel- skoy's fellow adventurers, was the first to investigate and describe the Aniva shore. The details are available in the diary of N. V. Busse, who participated in the Amur expedition. The diary is called "Sakhalin Island and Its Expedition of i 853-54." There is also the article by G. I. Nevelskoy and Rudanovsky: "In Connec- tion with the Memoirs of N. V. Busse" in Vestnik Evropy [News of Europe] (1872), VIII, and Nevelskoy's notes. Major N. V. Busse, a nervous and quarrelsome man, wrote that "Nevelskoy's attitude in the preparation and spirit of his papers is not suffi- ciently serious," and about Rudanovsky he said: "he is difficult as a subordinate and an intolerable companion." He said that Ruda- novsky '"made obtuse remarks," while Boshnyak was described as "a dreamer and a child." He was irritated when Nevelskoy lit his pipe slowly. While spending the winter in Aniva with Ruda- novsky, senior officer Busse tiresomely demanded all the honors due his rank and the observance of all minor conventions. All this occurred in the wilderness, when they were living "eye to eye," and when the young man was completely immersed in im- portant scientific work.

a» Men have almost forgotten the time when officers and officials serving on Sakhalin suffered any privations. In 1876 they paid four rubles for a pood of white flour, three rubles for a bottle of vodka, and "practically no one ever saw fresh meat." ( Ruuky Mir [Russian World], 1877, No. 7.) Nothing is said about how the common people lived. In fact, they suffered dire poverty. Only five years ago the correspondent of Vladivoitok wrote that "no- body could put his hands on half a jigger of vodka, while Man- churian tobacco (similar to our makhorka) cost 2 rubles 50 kopecks per pound. The settlers and some guards smoked Bohea tea leaves and brick tea" ( I 886, No. 2 2).

^G In all fairness I must admit that Major S. was most respectful of my profession of letters, and during my entire stay in Korsakov he went to j:reat lengths to keep me from getting bored. Several weeks before my arrival he was just as solicitous about the Eng- lishman Howard, also a writer seeking adventure. Howard had been shipwrecked in a Japanese junk on the Aniva. He later wrote some absolute nonsense about the Ainus in his book Life with Trans-Siberiatt Savagei.

'' Nedelya [The Week] was a Sunday newspaper.—TRANS.

⁸ In my presence E. V. Shtelling expressed the desire to build a meteorological station, and he was strongly supported by the mili- tary doctor, an old inhabitant of Korsakov and a very fine man. But I see no reason why the station should be built in Korsakov, which is open to the east winds. It should be built in some more central location, such as the Vladimirovka settlement. Moreover, in Southern Sakhalin, where each locale has its own climate, it would be more efficient to establish meteorological observation points in several places simultaneously: in Busse Bay, Korsakov, Krilon, Mayka, Vladimirovka, Naybuchi and Tarayka. This will not be easy, but the problems are not insuperable. The services of educated convicts could be employed. As experience has shown, they quickly learn to conduct observations on their own, and all that is needed is someone to supervise them.

⁹ I. I. Bely was successful in organizing naval convicts into an expert crew for work at sea. The senior man among them is a convict called Golitsyn, a little man with whiskers. When he sits at the rudder and bellows his command "Cut the spar," or "Oars in the water," he acts with rypical authoritative severiry. Not- withstanding his commanding appearance and seniority, I saw him beaten rwo or three times for drunkenness and coarse language.

After him, the most expert seaman is convict Medvedev, an intelligent and courageous man. When the Japanese consul, Mr. Kuze, was returning from Tarayka, Medvedev was at the helm. A guard was with them in the whaleboat. Toward evening the wind freshened and it turned dark. When they were ncar Naybuchi, the entrance to the Nayba River could not be seen and it was danger- ous to land. Medvedev decided to spend the night at sea in spite of the storm. Mr. Kuze sharply commanded him to stay close to shore, but Medvedev disobeyed and kept taking the boat farther and farther out to sea. The storm raged all night. The waves ham. mered at the boat, and every moment they were in danger of being swamped and overturned. The consul later told me it was the most terrifying night of his life. When Medvedev sailed into the mouth of the little river at dawn, the whaleboat was still shipping water while crossing the bar. Nowadays when Mr. Bely sends anyone with Medvedev, he always says, "No matter what he does, please be quiet and don't protest."

Two brothers attract attention in the prison. They are former Persian princes who are addressed in letters from Persia by their full titles. They were sentenced for murder in the Caucasus. They dress in Persian clothing, in tall lambskin hats with foreheads bare. They are still probationers and are not permitted to carry money. One of them complained that he has no money for tobacco, and he thinks that if he could smoke his cough would get better. He glues envelopes for the office very clumsily. After watching him work, I said, "Very good!" Obviously this praise was received with great satisfaction by the former prince.

The secretary at the prison is a convict called Heyman, a stout, handsome, dark-haired man, formerly a Moscow police officer sentenced for corruption. While I was at the prison he dogged my heels. Each time I turned around, he respectfully removed his hat.

The local executioner is called Minayev. A merchant's son, he is still quite a young man. The day I saw him he told me he had just flogged eight men with birch rods.

XIII Poro-an-Tomari, Muravyevsky Post - First, Second and Third Drop - Solovyevka - Lyutoga - Goly Mys - Mitsulka - Listvenichnoye - Khomutovka - Bolshaya Yelan - Vladimirovka - The Farm, or Firm - Lugovoye - Popovskiye Yurty - Berezniki - Kresty - Bolshoye and Maloye Takoe - Galkino-Vraskoye - Dubky - Naybuchi - The Sea

i will begin the survey of the Korsakov district with the populated areas lying along the banks of the Aniva. The first settlement, four versts southeast of the post, bears the Japanese name of Poro-an-Tomari. It was settled in 1882 on the site of a former Ainu village. It has 72 inhabitants, 53 male and 19 female. There are 47 home- steaders, of whom 38 live alone. Although the area around the settlement seems spacious, each homesteader has only one-quarter of a desyatin of arable land and less than one- half desyatin of meadowland. This indicates either that no more can be obtained or that it is extremely difficult to clear more land. Nevertheless, if Poro-an-Tomari were located in the North it would long since have had 200 homesteaders and 150 co-owners. In this respect the Southern administra- tion is more moderate and prefers to found new settle- ments rather than expand the old.

I recorded nine old men from sixty-five to eighty-five years of age here. One of them, Yan Rytseborsky, who looked like one of those soldiers of Ochakiv days,^J was 75 and so old that he has probably forgotten whether he was guilty of any crime. It is strange to learn that they have all been sentenced to life terms for robbery. Baron Korf transferred them to the status of settler because of their advanced age.

Settler Kostin lives in a dugout. He never comes out- side, permits no one to visit him, and prays continually. They call the settler Gorbunov "the slave of God," because he wandered about the land when he was free. By profes- sion he was an artist, but now he is a shepherd in Third Drop, probably because he loves solitude and contempla- tion.

Some 40 versts eastward is the Muravyevsky Post, which exists only on the map. It was founded a comparatively long while ago, in 1853, on the shore of Lasosey Cove. When there were rumors of war in 1854, it was razed to the ground and rebuilt 12 years later on the banks of Busse Bay, or the Twelvefoot Harbor, which is the name of a shallow lake which joins the sea by a canal. Only small boats drawing a few feet of water can pass through the canal. In Mitsui's time it held 300 soldiers, who suffered from severe scurvy. The post was founded in order to con- solidate Russian influence on Southern Sakhalin. After the treaty of 1875 it was abandoned as useless, and they say that the abandoned huts were burned by escaped prisoners.²

A charming shore road leads to the settlements west of Korsakov Post. On the right arc steep clay hills and ravines thick with greenery. To the left is the clamorous sea. On the sand, where the waves burst into foam and roll back as though overcome with weariness, the seaweed poured out by the ocean lies along the coast in green rib- bons, exuding the sweet but not unpleasant odor of rotting sea plants. The smell is just as typical in the southern area as the wild ducks always rising, which are a source of amuse- ment during the cntire journey along the coast. Steamboats and sailing vessels arc rare visitors here. There is nothing to see on the horizon or closer to shore, and therefore the sea looks deserted. Occasionally you see a clumsy hay raft which barely moves, and sometimes it will have a dark, ugly sail, or you will see a convict wading through knee- high water and dragging a roped log behind him. You never see anything else,

The steep coast is broken by a long, deep valley, through which there flows the little Untanay or Unta River. At one time this was the site of the Untovsk farm, which the convicts called Dranka [Bedraggled], for obvious reasons. At the moment this is the site of the prison vegetable garden and only three settlers' huts remain. This is known as Fint Drop.

There follows Second Drop, which has six homestead- ers. An old man, a peasant formerly exiled, I ives here with an old woman, the maid Ulyana. Very long ago she killed her baby and buried him, but in court it was stated that she had not killed him but buried him alive, and thought she would be acquitted. The court sentenced her to 20 years. Telling me about this, Ulyana cried bitterly, then she dried her eyes and asked, "Won't you buy some sauer- kraut?"

There arc 17 homesteads at Third Drop. It contains 46 inhabitants, 17 of whom are women. There are 26 home- steaders. All the people here are substantial and prosperous. They have a large number of livestock and some even earn their living raising and selling livestock. I must admit that in all probability the chief reasons for such prosperity are g^^ climate and excellent soil. However, I also think that if the Alexandrovsk or Due officials were invited to take charge here, there would be 300, not 26, homesteaders within a year, not counting co-owners, and all of them would prove to be negligent and self-willed householders, and would languish without a piece of bread. I believe the example set by these three tiny settlements enables us to establish the rule that when a colony is still young and unstable, the fewer the homesteaders the better. The longer the street, the greater the poverty.

Four versts from the post lies Solovyevka, founded in 1882. It has the most convenient location of all the Sakha- lin settlements. It is near the sea and close to the mouth of the Susui, a fine fishing stream. The inhabitants raise cattle and sell milk. They also engage in agriculture. It has 74 inhabitants, 37 male and 37 female, with 26 house- holders. They all have arable meadowlands on an average of one desyatin per person. The soil is only good along the slopes near the sea and further inland it is quite poor, having formerly been covered with fir trees.

There is one more remote settlement along the Aniva River. It is 25 versts from the post, or 14 if you travel by sea. It is called Lyutoga. It is 5 versts from the mouth of the Lyucoga River and was founded in 1886. Communica- tion with the post is extremely difficult. One must travel along the coast or by cutter; the settlers use hay rafts. It has 53 inhabitants, 37 male and 16 female, and 33 home- steaders.

The road past Solovyevka turns sharply to the right at the mouth of the Susui and then runs northward. The map shows that the upper reaches of the Susui are close to the Nayba River, which falls into the Okhotsk Sea. A long line of settlements lies along both of these rivers. These are con- nected by a single road 88 versts long. This row of settle- ments is wholly characteristic of the Southern region, its very essence, while the road is the beginning of the post road with which they want to unite Northern Sakhalin with the South.

I had become fatigued, or lazy, and did not work as zealously in the South as I had in the North. Often I spent entire days on outings and picnics and had no desire to continue visiting the huts. When help was graciously offered, I did not refuse it.

My first trip to and from the Okhotsk Sea was in the company of Mr. Bely, who wanted to show me the entire region. Later, while continuing my census, I was always accompanied by the settlement inspector N. N. Yartsev.³

The settlements of the Southern district have their own peculiarities, and a person who recently arrived from the North cannot fail to observe them. First, here there is considerably less poverty. I did not see any unfinished or abandoned huts, and plank roofs are as commonplace and normal here as thatched and bark roofs in the North. The people look younger, healthier and more cheerful than their Northern counterparts, and this, as well as the comparative prosperity of the district, can probably be explained by the fact that the main contingent of prisoners living in the

South comprises short-term convicts, which means that for the most part they are young and are less exhausted by penal servitude. You meet some who are only twenty to twenty-five years old, have already served their sentences, and are homesteaders. There are quite a number of peasants- formerly-exiles who are between thirty and forty years old.⁴

Another favorable aspect of the Southern settlements is that the local peasants are not anxious to leave for the mainland. For example, of the 26 homesteaders in the above-mentioned Solovyevka, sixteen have achieved peasant status. There are very fcw women. Some settlements do not have even one woman. In comparison to the men, the majority of the women look ill and old. One is compelled to believe the local officials and setders who complain that only "useless" women are sent to them from the North while the Northerners retain the young and healthy for themselves. Dr. Z. told me that in performing his duties as the prison doctor, he decided to examine a group of newly arrived women and found all of them suffering from female illnesses.

The terms co-owner and half-owner are not used at all in the South, since each plot of land is assigned to only one homesteader. However, there are homesteaders who are assigned to settlements but have no homes, exactly as in the North. There are no Jews in the post nor in the settle- ments. Japanese prints hang on thc walls of some of the huts. I also saw some Japanese silver coins.

The first scttlement on the Susui is Goly Mys. It has only been in existence since last year and the huts are still unfinished. It has 24 men but not a single woman. The settlement stands on a hill which was formerly called 'Bald Cape." The stream is quite a distance from the houses and is reached by going downhill. There is no wcll.

The second settlement is Mitsulka, named in honor of M. S. Mitsul."

In the days when there was no road, there was a way station at Mitsulka, where horses were kept for officials traveling on government business. The grooms and laborers were permitted to remain for the duration of their terms;

they settled near the station and set up their own home- steads. There are only 10 holdings with 25 inhabitants, 16 male and 9 female. After 1886 the regional commander refused to permit any more settlers in Mitsulka, and he was right, because the land is poor and there is only enough meadowland for ten homesteads. Now the settlement has 17 cows and 13 horses in addition to sheep, goats and swine, and the treasury data also show 64 chickens. However, this number would not be doubled if the number of households were doubled.

In speaking of the peculiarities of the Southern district, I forgot to mention one thing: very often people are poi- soned by wolfsbane (Aconitum napellus). In Mitsulka the settler Takovy's pig died of wolfsbane poisoning. Takovy greedily ate the liver and almost died himself. When I was in his hut he could barely stand and scarcely speak, but he recalled the liver with a smile. One could see by his swollen, bluish face how dearly he had paid for it. Some- what earlier an old man called Konkov was poisoned by wolfsbane and died. His house stands empty.

This house is one of Mitsulka's sights. Several years ago the prison warden L., mistaking a climbing plant for a grapevine, notified General Gintse that there are grapevines in Southern Sakhalin which could be successfully cultivated. General Gintse immediately instituted a search for a pris- oner who had formerly labored in a vineyard. They soon found the settler Rayevsky, an extremely tall man, who said he was an expert. They believed him and give him an offi- cial d^^ment before sending him by the first ship from Alexandrovsk Post to Korsakov. Then they asked him, "Why have you come?" and he answered, "To grow grapes." They looked at him, read the document and shrugged their shoulders. The vine dresser went wandering around the district, his cap tilted debonairly. Since he had been sent out by the island commandant, he did not feel it necessary to report to the inspector of the settlements. A misunderstanding occurred. In Mitsulka his extreme height and the dignity with which he carried on his pursuits aroused suspicion. They thought he was a vagrant, bound him and sent him to the post. There he was held in prison for a long time while the investigations continued. Finaliy he was released, and evenrually he settled in Mitsulka, where he died, and Sakhalin was left without vineyards. Rayevsky's house reverted to the government for debts unpaid and was sold to Konkov for 15 rubles. When paying his money, old Konkov winked slyly and said to the district commander, "Weil, wait a bit, 111 die, and then you'll have more trouble with the house." And sure enough, soon afterward he was poisoned by wolfsbane and the govern- ment again has the house on its hands.^r>

In Mitsulka lives the Sakhalin Gretchen, the daughter of the settler Nikolayev. Tanya, born in Pskov g«bemiya, is sixteen years old. She is blond and slender; her features are fine, soft and delicate. She has been promised in mar- riage to a guard. When passing through Mitsulka I always saw her sitting at her window and dreaming. God knows what this young and lovely girl, whom fate has brought to Sakhalin, is dreaming about!

The new settlement of Listvenichnoye [The Larches] is five versts from Mitsulka. The road here cuts through a larch forest. It is also caiied Khristoforovka, because a long time ago a Gilyak named Khristofor used to set sable traps here. It is not a good site for a settlement, because the soil is very poor and unfavorable for cultivation.' It has fifteen inhabitants, no women.

A bit farther along the Khristoforovka River, a few convicts previously made various wooden objects. They were permitted to settle there to serve out their sentences. However, the site was found to be unfavorable and in 1886 their four huts were moved to another location four versts north of Listvenichnoye, and this became the foundation of the Khomutovka settlement. It is thus cailed because a free settler, the peasant Khomutov, at one time used this as a hunting site. It has 38 inhabitants, 25 males and 13 females. This is one of the most uninteresting settlements, although it can pride itself on having one specialty. Here lives the settler Bronovsky, who is known throughout the Southern district as a passionate and insatiable thief.

Three versts farther on there is the Bolshaya Yelan settlement, founded two years ago. The river valleys cov- ered with elms, oak, hawthorn, elder, ash and birch are here called yelan. They are usually protected from cold winds. While the vegetation on the neighboring hills and marshes is unpleasantly sparse and differs little from that of polar regions, we find luxurious vegetation and grasses twice as tall as a man in the yelan. On sunny summery days the whole place steams, the air grows sultry as in a bathhouse, and the warmed soil turns all grasses into hay, with the result that in one month rye grows almost a sazhen high. The yelan reminds a Ukrainian of his native tree-encircled grasslands, where meadows alternate with orchards and groves, and these are the best sites for settle- ments.s

There are forty inhabitants in Bolshaya Yelan, 32 male and 8 female. There are 30 homesteaders. When the settlers cleared land for their homesteads, they were ordered co save as many old trees as possible. Thanks to this, the settlement docs not look new. In the courtyards and along the streets stand stately broad-leafed elms, so old that they might have been planted by their grandfathers.

Among the local inhabitants the Babich brothers of Kiev gubemiya are interesting. At first they lived in one hut, later they began quarreling and begged the administra- tion co separate them. One of the Babich brothers com- plained of the other and said, ''I'm just as afraid of him as of a snake."

Five miles farther is Vladimirovka, settled in 1881, and named in honor of a major named Vladimir, who was in charge of penal work. The settlers also call it Chernaya Rechka [Black Stream]. Inhabitants, 91: 55 male and 36 female. It has 46 homesteaders, 19 of whom are bachelors, and they milk their cows themselves. Only 6 of the 27 families are legally married.

As an agricultural colony this settlement is worth as much as both the Northern districts put together. However, of the great number of women who have followed their convict husbands to Sakhalin, those women who are free and umouched by prison and the most valuable to a colony, only one has been settled here, and even she was recemly imprisoned on suspicion of having murdered her husband. The unfortunate free women who are forced to languish in Due by the Northern officials in family barracks would be of inestimable value here. In Vladimirovka there are over 100 head of horned cattle, 40 horses, fine meadowland, but there are no housewives, and therefore no true homesteads.11

In Vladimirovka the settlemem inspector, Mr. Y., lives in a government house with his wife, who practices as a midwife. Here there is an agricultural farm known by the settlers as "the firm." Mr. Y. is interested in the natural sciences and especially in botany, and he calls plants by their Latin names. When beans are served at his table, he will say, "This is Phauolus." He calls his nasty little black dog Favus. Of all the Sakhalin officials he is the most knowledgeable in agronomy and he goes about his work lovingly and conscientiously, but the yield on his model farm is often poorer than that of a settler, a state of affairs which evokes surprise and derision.

In my opinion this accidental difference in crop yields is no more due to Mr. Y. than to any other official. A farm which has no meteorological station or cattle, no manure, no decem building, no agricultural expert who will work from morning to night, is not a farm, but rather a "firm"; it is an empty plaything pretending to be a model agricul- tural station. It cannot even be called a research station because there are only five desyatins of land. As to quality, there exists an official documem stating that an average plot was purposely chosen "with the aim of demonstrating by example to the settlers that with known methods and with the best kind of cultivation even an average plot can successfully yield a satisfactory result."

A love story took place here in Vladimirovka. A cer- tain Vukol Popov, a peasant, caught his wife in bed with his own father, pulled up his sleeves, and murdered the old man. He was sentenced to penal servitude, sent to the Korsakov district and then assigned to the firm of Mr. Y. as a coachman. He was young, handsome and athletically built, and he had a mild and earnest character. He was al- ways silent and thinking about something, and from the start the settlers trusted him. When they left home they were sure that Vukol would not steal the money in the chest and would not drink the alcohol in the pantry. He could not marry in Sakhalin because his wife was still liv- ing back home and would not give him a divorce. Such, very roughly, was our hero.

The heroine was a convict, Yelena Tertyshnaya, co- habitating with a settler called Koshelev. She was an absurd, stupid and homely woman, and she began arguing with her lover, who complained to the district commander. As a punishment she was assigned to work at the firm, and here Vukol saw her and fell in love with her. She also fell in love with him. Koshelev obviously noticed this, because he began to beg her passionately to return to him.

"Well, that's fine, but I know you well enough," she said. "Marry me, and then I'll come back."

Koshelev presented a petition to marry the maid Ter- tyshnaya, and this was granted by the administration. Mean- while Vukol declared his love and begged her to live with him. She also declared her love for him, saying:

"I can come and see you, but I can't live with you! You are married, while I am a woman and must think of myself. I must marry a good man."

When Vukol learned that she was going to marry Koshelev, he became despondent and poisoned himself with wolfsbane. The woman was questioned, and she ad- mitted she had spent four nights with him. They say that two weeks before his death, watching her scrub the floor, Vukol said:

"Women, women! I went to prison over one woman and J'II probably have to die for another!"

In Vladimirovka I met the convict Vasily Smirnov, who was sentenced for forging credit notes. He had com- pleted his sentence and his settler's term and was now engaged in hunting sables. This was something he obvi- ously enjoyed very much. He told me that the forged credit notes netted him 300 rubles a day, and he was caught after he had abandoned forgery and was living hon- estly. He spoke about forging notes like a specialist. In his opinion present-day credit notes could be forged by any woman. He spoke calmly of the past, not without irony, and was very proud that he was defended in court by the lawyer Plevako.

Just outside Vladimirovka you come upon a vast stretch of meadowland covering an area of several hundred des- yatins, in a semicircle four versts in diameter. On the road where the meadow ends there is the Lugovoye settlement, or Luzhki, founded in i 888. It has 69 men and only 5 women.

Four versts farther on, you arrive at Popovskiye Yurty, which was settled in i 884. They wanted to name it Novo- Alexandrovsk, but this name was later abandoned, Father Simeon Kazansky, known as Pop Simeon, rode on a dog sleigh to Naybuchi to "place a fast" on the soldiers, but was caught in a raging snowstorm and became seriously ill (others say he was returning from Alexandrovsk). Luckily there were Ainu fishing yurts nearby, where he found shel- ter. His driver went to Vladimirovka, where free settlers were living at the time. They came for him and brought him to Korsakov Post. He was barely alive. After this the place where the Ainu yurts had been was called Popov- skiye, and the name was given to the whole district.

The settlers also call their settlement \'V'arsaw because it contains many Catholics. There are i i i inhabitants, 95 males and 16 females. Of the 42 homesteaders, only io are married.

Popovskiye Yurty stands exactly in the middle between Korsakov Post and Naybuchi. Here ends the basin of the Susui River, and after crossing the slight, almost impercep- tible ridge of the watershed we descended into the valley watered by the Nayba.

The first settlement of this basin is eight versts from the Yurty and is called Berezniki, because at one time it was full of birch trees. This is the largest of the Southern settlements. It has i 59 inhabitants, 142 male and 17 female; 140 homesteaders. There are already four streets and a cleared area, where it is planned to build a church, a tele- graph station and a house for the settlement inspector. If the colonization is successful, they also propose to make Berezniki the small district center of several villages. But the site is very boring and the people are bored. They are not keen on the new district and think only of serving their sentences as soon as possible and leaving for the mainland. When I asked one settler if he was married, he answered in a bored tone, "I was married. I murdered my wife." An- other man, who was spitting blood, followed me around when he heard I was a doctor. He kept asking me if he had consumption and gazed searchingly into my eyes. He was terrified of the thought that he might not live long enough to obtain his peasant rights and would die on Sakhalin.

Kresty [The Crosses], founded in 1885, lies five versts farther on. Some while ago two vagrants were murdered here and over their graves there once stood crosses, which have now vanished. There is another version: a coniferous forest, which was cut down long ago, formed a cross over the Yelan. Both explanations are poetic; obviously the name Kresty was given by the settlers themselves.

Kresty stands on the Takoe River right at the mouth of a tributary. The earth is clay with a good silt topsoil. There are almost yearly harvests. There are many meadows, and fortunately the people turned out to be g^^ farmers. How- ever, during the first years the settlement differed little from Verkhny Armudan and almost perished. Thirty men were assigned simultaneously to the area, but the tools did not arrive from Alexandrovsk for a long time and the set- tlers were left bare-handed. In pity for them, the prison officers gave them some axes so that they could cut down trees. Then for three whole years no livestock was given to them, for the same reason that Alexandrovsk failed to send any tools.

It has 90 inhabitants, 63 males and 27 females; 52 homesteaders.

In Kresty there is a shop run by a retired sergeant major who was formerly the inspector of the Tymovsky dis- trict. He sells groceries, bracelets and sardines. When I entered the shop he obviously took me for a very important official, because he immediately, and without any reason, began explaining to me that at one time he had been in- volved in something but had been put right, and hurriedly showed me various official documents attesting to his serv- ices. Among others, he showed me a letter from a Mr. Schneider, which ended, as I recall, with the following words: "And when it gets warm, then ardor thaws." Desir- ing to show me that he was no longer indebted to anybody, the sergeant major began burrowing among his papers to find some receipts, which he never found, and I left the shop with the firm belief that he was completely innocent, and also with a pound of ordinary peasant candies. He soaked me for the candies, charging fifty kopecks.

The settlement after Kresty is on a river which falls into the Nayba. The river bears the Japanese name of Takoe, and the settlement is called Takoyskaya. It is well known because free settlers formerly lived there. Bolshoye Takoc has officially existed since 1884, but was founded much earlier. They wanted to call it Vlasovskoye in honor of Vlasov, but the name did not take. It has 71 inhabitants, 56 male and I 5 female; 47 householders. A man who was formerly a surgeon's assistant at a medical school resides here permanently and the settlers regard him as a first-rate doctor. A week before my arrival his young wife poisoned herself with wolfsbane.

Close to the settlement, especially along the road to Krcsty, there arc some magnificent elms. There is a good deal of greenery, succulent and dazzling, as though it had been just washed. The Takoyskaya valley flora is incom- parably richer than in the North, but the northern scenery is more vivid and often reminded me of Russia. True, nature in Russia is mournful and grim, but it is grim in a Russian way. Here it smiles and grieves, perhaps in the Ainu fashion, and it arouses an indefinable sadness in the Russian soul.¹⁰

In the Takoyskaya valley, 4Y2 versts from Bolshoyc Takoe, lies Maloye Takoc, on a stream which flows into the Takoe.¹¹ lt was founded in 1885. It has 52 inhabitants, 37 male and 15 female. It contains 35 homesteads. Only 9 have "wives" and none are legally married.

Some eight versts farther on there is a district which the Japanese and Ainus called Siyancha. Formerly a Japanese fishing shed was located here, and this became the settlement of Galkino-Vraskoye or Siyantsy, founded in 1884. This site, at the fall of the Takoe River into the Nayba River, is lovely but most impractical. In the spring and autumn, and even during the summer rains, the Nayba, which is capricious like all mountain rivers, overflows and floods Siyantsy. The strong Nayba current closes off the inlet of the Takoe and that, too, overflows its banks. The same occurs with the small tribucaries of the Takoe. During that period Galkino-Vraskoye resembles Venice and they row about in Ainu boats. The floors of the huts which are built on low-lying plots are usually flooded. The site was chosen by a certain Ivanov, who understood as much about the matter as he knows about the Gilyak and Ainu lan- guages, of which he is the official translator. At that time he was the assistant to the prison warden and he discharged the duties which are today discharged by the inspector of settlemems. The Ainus and the setders warned him that the site was swampy, but he paid no attention to them. Whoever complained was beaten. In one flood an ox was lost, in another a horse.

The fall of the Takoe into the Nayba creates a penin- sula which is reached by a high bridge. It is quite beautiful here. The area is enchanting. The inspector's house is well- lit and clean; it even has a fireplace. A terrace overlooks the river and an orchard blooms in the garden. The watch- man is an old convict named Savelyev, who serves as a manservant and cook when officials spend the night here. When he was serving dinner to me and another official, he served something incorrectly and the official shouted an- grily, "Fool!" I glanced at the timid old man and I re- member thinking that all the Russian intelligentsia had been able to accomplish with penal servitude merely served to debase it to serfdom in the most vulgar manner.

Galkino-Vraskoye has 74 inhabitants, 50 males and 24 females. There are 45 householders, 24 of whom have peasant status.

The last settlement on that road is Dubky [The Oaks}, founded in 1886 on the site of a former oak forest. In the eight versts between Siyantsy and Dubky you see burned- out forests, and between them cultivated land where they say kapor tea grows. As you ride along, you are shown the stream where the settler Malovechkin used to fish: now the stream bears his name. Dubky has 44 inhabitants, 31 male and i 3 female. It has 30 householders. The site is con- sidered good, on the principle that where there are oaks, the land is good for wheat. A large part of the land which is now under tillage and hay was swamp land until recently. On the advice of Mr. Y. the settlers dug a canal a sazhen deep to the Nayba and now it has g^^ soil.

Possibly because this is the last settlement and is prac- tically isolated, card-playing and tenacity are highly de- veloped. In June the local settler Lifanov lost everything and poisoned himself with wolfsbane.

It is only four versts from Dubky to the mouth of the Nayba, but this area is impossible to settle because the mouth of the river is marshy, the seashore is sandy and the vegetation is of the sand and sea variety, sweetbrier with very large berries, and so on. The road leads to the sea but you can also go downriver on an Ainu rowboat.

Once the Naybuchi Post stood at the mouth of the river. It was established in 1866. Mitsul found 18 buildings and dwelling places, a chapel and a supply depot. One correspondent who visited Naybuchi in 187 1 wrote that it had 20 soldiers commanded by a cadet. In one hut he found a tall, beautiful woman, the wife of a soldier, and she served him fresh eggs and black bread. She praised the local life, and only complained that sugar was very ex- pensive.¹²

Today there is no trace of these huts, and as you glance around the wilderness the beautiful woman seems to be a myth. They are building a house which will either be the living quarters of an inspector or a way station, and that is all. The sea looks cold and troubled. It seethes with fury, and the high gray waves smash down on the sand as though shouting in despair, "God, why did you create us?"

This is the Pacific Ocean. On this bank of the Nay- buchi there can be heard the sound of convicts hacking away with their axes at a new building site, and far away there lies the coast of America. To the left through the fog you can see the headlands of Sakhalin, to the right more cliffs . . . and not a single living soul around you, not a bird, not a fly. You ask yourself for whom do these waves roar, who hears them during the night, what are they call- ing for, and for whom they will roar when you have gone away. Here on these coasts you are gripped not by thoughts but by meditations. It is terrible, but at the same time I want to stand there forever and gaze at the monotonous waves and listen to their thunderous roar.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Dnieper Cos- sacks constantly harassed the Turks, whose main seaport was Ochakiv, on the Black Sea.—TRANS.

At one time the Muravyevsky mines were located here. They were worked by post soldiers under arrest, which means that the post had its own small penal prison. The local administrators assigned them to work as punishment "for insignificant transgres- sions" (Mitsui). No one knows who would have benefited from the coal if it had been sold, since it was all burned together with the buildings.

Before 1870 the military authorities founded the posts of Chibisansky, Ochekhpoksky, Manuysky, Malkovsky and many others. All of these have been abandoned and forgotten.

In September and the beginning of October, excluding those days when a northeaster blew, the weather was marvelously warm. Riding along with me, Mr. Bely complained that he was very lone- some for the Ukraine and there was nothing he wanted so much as to see a cherry tree heavy with fruit. While spending the night at guardhouses, he always rose very early. When I awoke at dawn, I saw him standing at the window reciting in a low voice: "A white light rises over the ciry, a young woman sleeps a deep sleep. . . ." Mr. Yartsev also constantly recited poetry from mem- ory. Sometimes when I was bored during our journeys I asked him to recite something and with great feeling he would recite a long ^^m. Sometimes he would recite two poems.

For example, 70 percent of the inhabitants of the Korsakov Post are between cwenty and forty-five years old. It was the former custom, though not the law, to assign newly arrived short-term convicts, who were considered to be lesser criminals and not in- corrigible, to the South, where it is warmer. However, the neces- sary caution was not always exercised in allocating long- and short-term convicts according to prison lists. Thus the former island commandant, General Gintse, reading the list while on board a ship, himself decided to send the short-term convicts to the South. Among these fortunate ones there were later found twenty vagrants and those who were called "Not Remembering" —i.e., the very worst type of incorrigible and hopeless criminals. At the present time this custom has obviously been abandoned, since now long-term and even life-term convicts are also sent South, while I met short-term convicts in the terrifying Voyevodsk prison and in the mines.

The agronomist Mikhail Semenovich Mitsŭl was one of those who took part in the expedition of 1 870 sent from Petersburg under the command of Vlasov. He was a man of rare ethical standards, industrious, an optimist and idealist, enthusiastic and possessing the ability to communicate his enthusiasm to others. He was then about thirty-five years old. He carried out his duties with exceptional exactitude. In investigating the Sakhalin soil, flora and fauna, he went on foot over all the land included in present day Alexandrovsk and Tymovsk, the western coast, and the entire southern part of the island. There were no roads on the island then. Occasionally he came upon miserable paths which vanished in the taiga and swamps, and every journey, whether on horseback or on foot, was like a martyrdom. The idea of a penal agricultural colony astonished and fascinated Mitsul. He devoted himself to it wholeheartedly, fell in love with Sakhalin, and just as a mother sees no wrong in a beloved child, he paid no atten- tion to the frozen soil and mists of the island which became his second homeland. He thought of it as a flourishing oasis. Neither the meteorological data, practically nonexistent at the time, nor the bitter experiences of men who had come in previous years, which he obviously disbelieved, changed his opinion. Had he not seen the wild grapes, the bamboos, the giant grasses and the Japanese? Later in life he became a manager, and then a civilian adviser, always enthusiastic and indefatigably industrious. He died on Sakhalin from a severe nervous disorder at the age of 41. I saw his grave. He left a book: An Outline on Sakhalin Island in Respect to Its Agriculture (187 3). This is a lengthy poem in praise of Sakhalin productivity.

⁰ A convict handed me a slip of paper resembling a petition, which bore the following title: "Confidential. Something about

Our Wretched Hole. To the Great-Hearted and Benevolent Litera- teur Mr. Chekhov, Who Has Graced This Unworthy Island of Sakhalin with His" Presence. Post of Korsakov." In the petition I found a poem entitled "Wolfsbane":

Near the river proudly grows, In a suampy place, in a hollow, That blue leaf, so beautiful, In medicine called Aconite.

This is the root of the tiolfsbane, Planted by the hand of the Creator. Often it tempts people And sends them to the grave, Bestowing them on Abraham's bosom.

Those who selcct the sites of new settlements find that larches indicate the presence of poor, swampy soil. The subsoil clay does not drain water, but forms a peat bog. Marsh rosemary, cran- berries and moss appear, the larch itself deteriorates, grows crook- edly and is covered with Iceland moss. The larches here are ugly, with thin trunks, and they soon wither away without reaching maturity.

Cork trees and grapevines grow here, but they have degen- erated and resemble their forebears as little as Sakhalin bamboo cane resembles Ceylon bamboo.

In one of his orders General Kononovich testifies that "partly because of its isolation and the difficulties of communication, and partly because of private considerations and designs which in the full sight of my predecessors had the effect of ruining all these affairs and corroding everything touched by their rotten breath, the Korsakov district was continuously ignored and unfairly treated, and not one of its most pressing needs was examined, satisfied or resolvcd" (Order No. 318, 1889).

One verst from Bolshoye Takoe, a mill was built on the river by a German convict called Laks, by orders of General Konono- vich. He also built a mill on the Tym near Derbinsk. At the Takoe mill they charge one pound of flour and one kopeck for milling a pood of grain. The settlers are satisfied, because formerly they paid fifteen kopecks for a pood or milled the grain them- selves on a homemade elm hand mill. A canal had to be dug and a dam built for the mill.

I am not naming here the small tributaries where the Susui and Naybuchi watershed settlements lie, because they all have hard-to-pronounce Ainu or Japanese names such as Ekureki or Fufkasamanay.

¹² Michman V. Vitgeft, "Two Words About Sakhalin Island,'" Kronstadt News (1872), Nos. 7, 17 and 34.

XIV Tarayka - Free Settlers - Their Failures - The Ainus, Boundaries of Their Dispersion, Enumeration, Appearance, Food, Cloth- ing, Habitations, Temperament - The Japanese - Kusun-Kotan - The Japanese Consulate

the siska settlement is situated at a place called the Tarayka, located on one of the southernmost tribu- taries of the Poronaya, which falls inta Terpeniye Bay. All of the Tarayka belongs to the Southern district, although this affiliation is farfetched because it is some 400 versts from Korsakov and the climate is forbidding, worse than in Due. The projected district mentioned in Chapter X will be called the Taraykinsky district. It will include all the settlements along the Poronaya, including Siska. In the meamime, only Southerners are being setded here. Gov- ernment data show only 7 inhabitants, 6 males and 1 female. I did not visit Siska but quote an excerpt from someone's diary: "The setdemem and the locality are deso- late. First, there is no clear water or The inhabitants

use well water that turns red from tundra seepage during rainy periods. The sandy shore on which the senlement stands is surrounded by tundra. . . . The site is distressing and depressing."¹

In order to finish with Southern Sakhalin, it remains to say a few words about those people who formerly lived and still live here independent of the penal colony. I will begin with the attempts at free colonization.

In 1868 one of the Eastern Siberian offices decided to settle twenty-five families in Southern Sakhalin. These were to be free peasants, immigrants who had already settled along the Amur. Their conditions were so miserable that one author calls their settlement lamentable and the set- tlers themselves wretched. These were Ukrainian peasants, natives of Chernigovsk guberniya, who, before living on the Amur, had settled in Tobolsk guberniya, also unsuccess- fully. In proposing that they resettle on Sakhalin, the ad- ministration made tremendously enticing promises. They announced that they would provide each family with free flour and groats for two years, would supply all agricultural implements, cattle and seeds on credit, and would lend money, the debt being repayable in five years. They were also to be free of taxes for twenty years and excused from military service. Ten of the Amur families agreed to emi- grate. These were joined by eleven families from Balagansk district, Irkutsk guberniya, a total of 101 people. In August of 1869 they were sent out on the transport Mandzhur to Muravyevsky Post. Thence they were to be taken around Cape Aniva via the Okhotsk Sea to Naybuchi Post, from which it was but thirty versts to the Takoyskaya valley, where it was proposed to found the free colony. However, autumn had come, no ship was available, and therefore the Mandzhur landed them and their possessions at Korsakov Post, from which they planned to travel overland to the Takoyskaya valley. At the time there was no road. Accord- ing to Mitsul, Ensign Dyakonov "bestirred himself" and fifteen soldiers to cut a narrow road for them. He obvi- ously bestirred himself very slowly, because sixteen of the families did not wait for the road to be completed and went ofT to the Takoyskaya valley, crossing the taiga in oxcarts. On the way they were caught by a heavy snow- storm and were obliged to abandon some of the carts and make runners for the rest. Upon reaching the valley, on November 20, they immediately set to work building bar- racks and dugouts to protect themselves from the freezing cold. The remaining six families arrived a week before Christmas, but since there was no room for them and it was too late to build houses for them, they left to find shelter in Naybuchi. They then went on the Kusunnay Post, where they wintered in the soldiers' barracks. They returned to Takoyskaya valley in the spring.

"At this point all the slovenliness and ignorance of the administration became evident," writes one author. They had been promised various agricultural articles costing i,ooo rubles and 4 heads of cattle for each family. But when the emigrants were put aboard the Mandzhur at Nikolayevsk, there were no grindstones, no working oxen, there was no place on the ship for the horses, and the plows had no plowshares. The plowshares were brought by dog sledge during the winter, but only nine were supplied. When the settlers at once sent requests for plowshares to the administration, their pleas "did not receive the proper anention." Oxen were delivered to Kusunnay in the fall of 1869, but they were exhausted and half dead. No hay had been prepared in Kusunnay and of the 4 i oxen, 25 died during the winter. The horses remained to winter in Nikolayevsk bm since feed was dear, they were auctioned off. The money was used to buy new horses in Zabaikal, but these proved to be even worse than the former ones and the peasants rejected several of them. Seed grains were all mixed up together, regardless of germination periods. Summer rye was delivered in the same bags with winter rye, with the result that the homesteaders came to lose all faith in the seeds and although they cook them from the warehouse, they either fed them to the cattle or ate them themselves. Since there were no grindstones, the r'e was not ground. They boiled it and ate it as porridge.

After a number of crop failures, they were hit by a flood in 1875 which finally destroyed the setders' remain- ing ambition to farm on Sakhalin. Again they began migrating. A group of twenty houses for the exiles was built at Chibisani, on the banks of the Aniva, halfway be- tween the Korsakov and Muravyevsky Posts. They later began to plead to be allowed to settle in the South Ussuriy- sky Kray. They waited impatiently for the permission, as for a special favor, for ten long years. Meanwhile they lived by hunting sable and fishing. It was not until 1886 that they reached the Ussuriysky Kray. A correspondent writes: "They are abandoning their homes; they are completely des- titute; they are bringing only a part of their belongings, and each one has only one horse" (Vladivostok, 1886, No. 22). At the present time there stilJ exists a burned-out area not too far from the road between Bolshoye and Maloye Takoe. This is the site of the former free settlement of Voskresenskoye. The huts abandoned by the settlers were burned down by vagrants. They say that even now the huts are standing in Chibisani, with the chapel and the school building. I did not visit it.

Only three free settlers remain on the island: Khomu- tov, whom I have already mentioned, and two women who were born in Chibisani. They say that Khomutov is "roam- ing around somewhere," and supposedly lives at the Muravyevsky Post. He is rarely seen. He hunts sable and catches sturgeon in Busse Bay. As to the women, onc— Sofya—is married to Baranovsky, a peasant-formerly-exiled, and lives in Mitsulka. The other, Anisya, is married to the settler Leonov and lives in Tretya Pad. Khomutov will soon die and Sofya and Anisya will leave for the mainland with their husbands and so there will soon be only a memory of the free settlers.

Free colonization on the southern part of Sakhalin must therefore be called unsuccessful. It is difficult to ascer- tain whether the fault lies with the natural conditions which were so grim and inimical to the settlers or whether the whole matter was ruined by the ignorance and negli- gence of the officials, since the experiment was short-lived. In addition, the experiment was made with people who were obviously nomadic, for they had acquired a taste for nomad life during their long ravings over Siberia. It is difficult to say whether the experiment might have proved successful if it had been repeatcd.²

Actually, the unsuccessful experiment can be educational for the penal colony in two respects. First, the free settlers did not farm for any length of time, and in the last ten years before returning to the mainland they lived only on fishing and hunting. At the present time, Khommov, de- spite his debilitating age, finds it more advantageous and gainful to catch sturgeon and shoot sable than to sow wheat and plant cabbage. Second, it is impossible to hold a free healthy man, full of life, in Southern Sakhalin when he is told daily that only two days' distance from Korsakov there lies the warm and rich South Ussuriysky Kray.

When asked who they are, members of the native popu- lation of Southern Sakhalin, the local foreigners, do not respond with the name of a tribe or nation, but say simply, "Ainu," a word which means "a man." In Shrenk's ethno- graphic map the area inhabited by the Ainu, or Aynu, is indicated in yellow. This color completely covers Matsmay Island and the southern section of Sakhalin up to Terpeniye Bay. They also live on the Kurile Islands and are therefore called Kurils by the Russians. The number of Ainu living on Sakhalin is not known exactly, but there is no doubt that this tribe is dying out extremely rapidly.

Dr. Dobrotvorsky, who served in Southern Sakhalin³ twenty-five years ago, states that there was a time when there were 8 large Ainu settlements having almost 200 inhabitants each year near Busse Bay alone. Close to the Nayba he saw traces of many settlements. At the time he considered three census figures taken from various sources: 2,885, 8 and 2,050, but he felt the last one was the most authentic. According to one author who was his contemporary, Ainu settlements existed along the shore on both sides of Korsa- kov Post. Howcver, I did not find even one settlement re- maining, and I saw only a few Ainu yurts near Bolshoye Takoe and Siyantsy. The number of Ainu given in the Record of the Number of Foreigners Living in the Kona- kov District in 1889 is 581 males and 569 females.

The reasons for the extinction of the Ainu is given by Dobrotvorsky: he says they were devastated by wars which apparently took place some time ago on Sakhalin, and there was a low birth rate due to the infertiliry of the Ainu women, but the chief reason was that they suffered from disease. Syphilis and scurvy were always prevalent among them. They may also have suffered from smallpox.⁴

All of these reasons usually given for the chronic ex- tinction of foreigners do not explain, however, why the Ainu are becoming extinct so rapidly, almost in front of your eyes. There has been no war within the last rwenry- five or thirry years, nor any significant epidemic; neverthe- less during that period the tribe decreased by more than half. It seems to me it would be more accurate to suppose that this swift extinction, their vanishing, is caused not only by their dying out but also by the migration of the Ainu to the neighboring islands.

Before Southern Sakhalin was occupied by the Rus- sians, the Ainu were virtually Japanese serfs. It was so much the easier to subjugate them because they are meek and timid, and because they were hungry and could not live without rice.⁵

After occupying Southern Sakhalin, the Russians freed the Ainu and they have safeguarded their freedom up to the present day, and they have protected them from op- pression and refrained from interfering in their private lives. In 1884 some escaped convicts murdered a few Ainu families. They also tell the story that an Ainu dog-sledge owner who refused to carry mail was beaten with birch rods, and there have been attempted rapes of Ainu women. However, they speak of similar oppressions and injuries as isolated cases and extremely rare occurrences.

Unfortunately, the Russians did not bring rice along with freedom. With the departure of the Japanese nobody fished any more, wages stopped and the Ainu began to starve. They were unable to survive on fish and meat, as do the Gilyaks. 1liey needed rice. Hunger forced them to disregard their dislike of the Japanese, and they began migrating to Matsmay. I read in one correspondents re- port in Golos [Voice] ( 1876), No. 16, that an Ainu dele- gation is said to have arrived at Korsakov Post and begged for work, or at least for potato seeds and lessons on how to cultivate the soil for potatoes. We learn that they were refused work, but promised the potato seeds; the promise was not kept. The suffering Ainu continued to move to Matsmay. Another report concerning 1885 ( Vladivostok, No. 28) says the Ainu made some petitions which were obviously ignored and they desperately wanted to leave Sa- khalin for Matsmay.

The Ainu are as dark as gypsies. They have tremen- dous beards and mustaches, and thick, wiry black hair.

Their eycs are dark, expressive and gentle. They are of medium height and have a strong, stocky physique. Their features are massive and coarse but, in the words of the sailor V. Rimsky-Korsakov, thcy have neither the flat faces of the Mongols nor the slit eyes of the Chinesc. It would appear that the beardcd Ainu closely resemble Russian peasants. Actually, when an Ainu dons his khalat, which is similar to our farmer's short coat, and belts it, hc resembles a mcrchant's coachman.n

The Ainu's body is covered with dark hair which at times grows quite thick and in bunches on his chest, al- though it is far from being hirsute. This chest hair, and his heavy bcard and thick wiry head of hair, is so rare in aboriginals that it astounded travelers, who rcturned home and spoke of "the hairy Ainu." Our Kazakhs who exacted tributc in furs from them on the Kurile Islands during the last ccntury also callcd thcm "hairy ones."

Thc Ainu live closc to othcr peoplcs whose facial growth is extremely sparsc, therefore it is not difficult to undcrstand why thcir tremendous bcards cause ethnog- raphcrs quite a problem. To this day science has still not discovered thc Ainu's proper place in the racial scheme of things. Thc Ainu are categorized either as Mongols or as Caucasians. Onc Englishman said they were thc descend- ants of Hcbrews who had scattcrcd over the Japanese Islands in ancicnt times. Thcre are two opinions which may be fairly accurate: first, that the Ainu belong to a special racc which formerly populatcd all the castern Asiatic is- lands; second, according to our Shrenk, they were a paleo- Asiatic people which was squeczed out of Asia onto the ncighboring islands by Mongolian tribes, the course of the migration from Asia to the islands being through Korea. At any rate, thc Ainu moved from the south to the north, from a warm climate to a cold one, constantly changing their living conditions for the worse. They are not warlike and they despise violence. It was not difficult to conquer, cnslavc or expel them. They werc forced out of Asia by the Mongols, from Nippon and Matsmay by the Japanese, on Sakhalin the Gilyaks did not permit them to live beyond the Tarayka, and on the Kurile Islands they came up against the Kazakhs, and so they finally found themselves in an intolerable situation. Now, usually hatless, barefoot, their trouser legs pulled up above their knees, the Ainu meet you on the road, bow low, while at the same time glancing at you cordially, mournfully and sorrowfully, as though they were complete failures, and wanted to apologize for having full-grown beards while unable to scratch a living for themselves.

Details on the Ainu can be obtained in Shrenk, Dobrot- vorsky and A. Polonsky.' The information on Gilyak food and clothing also applies to the Ainu, with the addition that the lack of rice, for which they inherited their craving from ancestors who once lived on the southern islands, is a serious deprivation. They do not like Russian bread. Their food is more varied than that of the Gilyaks. In addition to meat and fish they eat various plants, mollusks and what lower-class Italians call frutti di mare. They eat very little, but often, almost every hour. Gluttony, a vice of all the northern savages, has not been found among them. Since breast-fed babies must make the transition from milk di- rectly to fish and whale fat, they are weaned late. Rimsky- Korsakov saw an Ainu woman suckling a three-year-old boy who was quite capable of getting around by himself and even had a little knife stuck in his belt like a grown-up man.

Their clothing and housing show a strong southern influence—not that of Southern Sakhalin, but of the tropi- cal south. In the summer the Ainu wear shirts woven of grass or inner bark. Formerly, when they were not so im- poverished, they wore silk khalats. They do not wear hats, and walk barefoot in the summer and autumn until snow- fall. Their yurts are smoky and smelly but are much lighter, cleaner and, as it were, more cultured than those of the Gilyaks. Racks for drying fish usually stand near the yurts, emitting a foul, stifling odor. Dogs howl and fight. Occa- sionally you can see a cage made of tree trunks with a young bear sitting in it. He will be butchered and eaten in the winter at the so-called Bear Festival. One morning I saw a little Ainu girl feeding a bear by thrusting in mois- tened dry fish on a little shovel.

The yurts are made of rough wood and planks, the roofs of thin poles covered with grass. Plank beds line the walls. Shelves mounted over them contain their belongings. In addition to hides, jars of fat, nets, kitchenware and the like, you find baskets, tinwear and even musical instru- ments. The master of the house can usually be found sitting on the plank bed, always smoking a small pipe, and when you ask him a question he answers unwillingly and tersely, although courteously.

In the middle of the yurt is a hearth with burning wood, the smoke escaping through an opening in the roof. A large black kettle hangs on a hook over the fire and contains a bubbling, sulphurous, foaming fish soup which I believe no European would eat for love or money. Mon- strosities crouch around the kettle. In the same degree that the Ainu men are solid-looking and handsome, so are the Ainu wives and mothers repugnant. Some authors describe the appearance of Ainu women as hideous and even loath- some. Their coloring is a swarthy yellow, akin to parch- ment, their eyes are narrow, their features massive. Straight, wiry hair hangs over their faces in shaggy strands, like straw on an old barn. Their clothing is untidy and ugly. Together with all this they are extraordinarily thin and have a senile look about them. The married women use a blue coloring on their lips as a result of which their faces lose all semblance of humanity. When I had the oppor- tunity to see them and observe the gravity, almost the grimness, with which they stirred the kettles with their spoons and removed the filthy foam, I felt I was seeing real witches. The younger and older girls do not give such a repulsive impression.⁸

The Ainu never wash, and they sleep in their clothing.

Almost all those who have described the Ainu refer to their characteristics in the best possible light. The con- sensus is that they are a gentle, modest, good-natured, trustworthy, loquacious, courteous people who respect prop- erty, are brave when out hunting, and according to Dr.

Rollen, the companion of La P^rouse, they are intelligent. Unselfishness, forthrightness, fidelity in friendship, and generosity are their customary traits. They are truthful and cannot countenance deceit. Krusenstern was enraptured with them. After enumerating their wonderful spiritual qualities, he concludes: "Such truly rare qualities, for which they are not beholden to an exalted culture but to nature alone, awoke in me the sentiment that they are better than all the others I have known up to this time."!J

Rudanovsky writes: "There cannot be a more peaceful and modest people than those we encountered in the south- ern part of Sakhalin." All violence arouses disgust and fear in them. Polonsky describes the following grievous episode recorded in the archives: It happened long ago, in the past century. Cherny, the captain of the Cossack troop escorting the Ainu from the Kurile Islands into Russian subjugation, decided to beat some of them with birch rods. "'When the Ainu saw the preparations for the beating they became ter- rified, and when the Cossacks began tying the hands of two Ainu women behind their backs in order to obtain satis- faction more conveniently, some of the Ainu escaped to an inaccessible cliff, while another fled out to sea in a canoe loaded with twenty women. The women who had not been able to escape were beaten. The Cossacks then took six men with them in a canoe, and in order to prevent them from escaping, they tied their hands behind their backs. This was done so brutally that one of them died. They tossed his body weighted down with a rock into the sea, his swollen hands looking as though they had been scalded, and Cherny exclaimed to his comrades in high elation: "That's the way we do it in Russian style!"

Finally, a few words about the Japanese, who played such a leading role in the history of Southern Sakhalin. It is a fact that the southern third of Sakhalin has belonged to Russia only since 1875. Previously it was subject to Japan. In A Gt^ide to Practical Navigation and Nautical A.rtronomy by Prince Golitsyn, published in 1854, a book used by sailors even today, Northern Sakhalin, with the Capes of Maria and Elizaveta, is described as Japanese.

Many people, including Nevelskoy, doubted that Southern Sakhalin belonged to Japan. Even the Japanese themselves were not convinced about it until the Russians suggested it to them by their strange behavior.

The Japanese first appeared in Southern Sakhalin at the beginning of this century, not earlier. In 1853, N. V. Busse recorded a conversation with some old Ainu men, who remembered the time when they were independent. They said, "Sakhalin is the land of the Ainu. There is no Japa- nese territory on Sakhalin." In 1806, the year of Khvostov's piratical expedition, there was only one Japanese settlement on the banks of the Aniva, and it was all built of new wooden boards. It was obvious that the Japanese had only recently settled thcre. Krusenstern was on the Aniva in April when the herring were running. The water seemed to boil with an amazing multitude of fish, whales and seals. The Japanese had no nets or seines and caught the fish in pails. This shows they had no conception of the wealth of fish to be found here; later, of course, large-scale fisheries werc established. These first Japanese colonists were prob- ably cscaped convicts or men exiled from their homeland for having visited a foreign country.

Our diplomats first turned their attention to Sakhalin at thc beginning of the century. Ambassador Rezanov¹⁰ was authorized to conclude a trade alliance with Japan and "to acquire Sakhalin Island, which is independent of both the Japanese and the Chinese." He conducted himself with ex- treme stupidity. "Taking into consideration the Japanese intolerance of the Christian faith," he forbade the members of his party to cross themselves and ordered the confisca- tion without any exceptions of all crosses, holy pictures, prayerbooks and "everything that represents Christianity or bears a Christian symbol." If one is to believe Krusen- stern, Rezanov was denied a chair during the audience, he was not permitted to wear his sword and, "bowing to the stiff-necked attitude of the Japanese," he walked barefoot. And this was an ambassador, a Russian nobleman! It would, I imagine, be difficult to demonstrate a greater lack of dignity.

Having suffered a complete fiasco, Rezanov decided to revenge himself upon the Japanese. He ordered the naval officer Khvostov to terrorize the Sakhalin Japanese. This order was not given in exactly the customary manner, but rather deviously; it came in a sealed envelope with the explicit instruction that it was to be opened and read only when he arrived at his destination.¹¹

Thus Rezanov and Khvostov were the first to admit that Southern Sakhalin belonged to the Japanese. Howcvcr, the Japancse did not take possession of thcir new propcrty, but merely sent their surveyor Mamia-Rinzo to ascertain what kind of island it was. In general, although shrewd, hard-working and cunning, the Japanese conductcd them- selvcs sluggishly and indecisively thoughout thc entire his- tory of Sakhalin, and this can only be explaincd by thc fact that thcy had as littlc faith in their own rights as thc Russians had in theirs.

Apparcntly thc Japancsc, after getting to know the island, thought of establishing a colony, or perhaps an agricultural settlement, but experimcnts in this direction, if there werc any, could only have rcsulted in disillusionment sincc, according to the engincer Lopatin, Japanesc laborers suffered greatly and were quite unable to withstand thc win- ter. Only Japanesc traders, rarely accompanicd by thcir wives, camc to Sakhalin. They lived hcre in bivouacs, and only a small group, amounting co a scorc or two, rcmaincd to spend the winter. The rcst returned home on junks. Those who remained did not sow anything, they did not have vcgetable gardcns or horned cattle, but thcy brought all necessary supplies with them from Japan. The only thing attracting them to Sakhalin was the fish. It brought them tremendous profits bccausc it was caught in great abundance, while the Ainus who did all of the hard work cost them almost nothing. The profit from the fishing in- dustry reached 50,000 and later 300,000 rubles a year. It is therefore not surprising that thesc Japanese overlords took to wearing sevcn silk kimonos, one on top of the other.

At first the Japanese had factories only on the banks of the Aniva and in Mauka, their main office being at the

Kusun-Kotan gap, where the Japanese consul now resides.¹²

Later they cut a road from the Aniva to the Takoyskaya valley. They maintained supply depots near the place known today as Galkino-Vraskoye. The road has not yet overgrown and is called the Japanese Road. The Japanese also reached the Tarayka, where they caught migratory fish in the Poronaya River and established the Sitka settlement. Their boats sailed as far as Nyisky Bay. The boat with the beautiful rigging seen by Polyakov in 1881 on the Tro was Japanese.

The Japanese were interested in Sakhalin strictly for commercial reasons, just as the Americans were interested in Tyuleni [Seal] Island.i3 After the Russians founded the Muravyevsky Post in 1853, the Japanese began to show some political activity. Knowing that they might lose their large profits and free labor compelled them to look closely at the Russians and they attempted to strengthen their in- fluence on the island in order to offset Russian influence. But again, probably from lack of confidence in their own rights, they carried on the struggle with the Russians in an almost ludicrously irresolute manner, and acted like chil- dren. They limited themselves merely to spreading gossip about the Russians among the Ainus, boasting that they could slaughter all the Russians at any time they pleased. Wherever the Russians built a post, a Japanese picket out- post was immediately stationed there, on the opposite side of the river. In spite of their desires to appear terrifying, the Japanese nevertheless remained peaceful and amiable. They sent sturgeon to the Russian soldiers, and when the Russians asked for nets, the Japanese gladly satisfied their requests.

A pact was concluded in 1867 whereby Sakhalin be- came the common possession of both countries with the right of joint domain. The Russians and Japanese recog- nized their equal rights to the island. In other words, neither of them considered the island to be their sole possession.¹⁴

By the treaty of 1875 Sakhalin definitely became a part of the Russian Empire and the Japanese were recompensed with the gift of all of our Kurile Islands.1⁵

Alongside the mountain pass where the Korsakov Post is situated is another pass which has retained its name since the time when it was the Japanese settlement of Kusun- Kotan. No Japanese buildings remain. However, there is a shop run by a Japanese family which sells groceries and various trifles, where I purchased hard Japanese pears, but this was built later. On the best location in the pass there is a white house where from time to time a flag can be seen waving—a red circle on a white background. This is the Japanese consulate.

One morning during a northeaster when it was so cold in my quarters that I wrapped myself in a blanket, I was visited by the Japanese consul, Mr. Kuze, and his secretary, Mr. Sugiama. I immediately began to apologize that it was so cold.

"Oh, no," my guests said. "'Ic is very warm here!"

By their facial expressions and tones of voice they at- tempted to tell me not only that it was warm in my quar- ters, but that I was living in an absolute paradise on earth. Both are pure-blooded Japanese of medium height, with Mongoloid faces. The consul is about forty years old, he wears no beard, his mustache is barely visible, and he is of solid build. The secretary is about ten years younger and wears blue eyeglasses, obviously a consumptive—a victim of the Sakhalin climatc. There is another secretary, Mr. Suzuki. He is below medium height, has a very large mus- tache which droops in Chinese fashion, and has narrow, slanting eyes—an irresistibly handsome man in the eyes of the Japanese. Once, when telling me about a Japanese minister, Mr. Kuze said, "He is as handsome and manly as Suzuki." They wear European clothing outside their home and they speak Russian very well. \'{Then I visited the con- sulate I often found them reading Russian or French books. They had a bookcase full of books. They had had European education, were exquisitely courteous, considerate and cor- dial. The Japanese consulate was a warm and charming meeting place for the local officials. Here they could forget the prison, penal servitude and office squabbles, and relax.

The consul is the intermediary between the Japanese who come to trade and the local administration. On the most solemn occasions he and his secretary, dressed in full regalia, drive from the Kusun-Kotan pass to the post to the District Commander and congratulate him on the holiday. Mr. Bely returns the compliment. Every year on December i he goes with his staff to Kusun-Kotan to congratulate the consul on the birthday of the Emperor of Japan, and drink champagne. \'V'hen the consul visits naval vessels, he re- ceives a seven-gun salute. During my visit there arrived the orders of Anna and Stanislav, both of the third degree, to be awardcd to Kuze and Suzuki. In full dress, Mr. Bely, Major S. and Mr. F., and the secretary of the police depart- ment, ceremoniously departed for Kusun-Kotan to present the Orders. I went with them. The Japanese were tremen- dously touched by both the orders and the solemnity of the occasion, for they greatly delighted in such things. They served champagne. Mr. Suzuki did not conceal his pleasure, and cxamined the order from all sides with sparkling eyes, like a child with a toy. I detected a struggle in his "hand- some and manly" face. He wanted to dash to his quarters and show the order to his young wife (he had married re- cently), and at the same time politeness demanded that he remain with the guests.¹⁰

Now that I have completed the survey of the settled arcas of Sakhalin, I will proceed to discuss various matters, some important and others unimportant, which comprise the contemporary life of the colony.

The settlement lies at a crossroads. Those traveling from Alexandrovsk to Korsakov in the winter or vice versa always stop here. A way station was built in 1869 near the present, formerly Japanese, settlement. Soldiers and their wives, and later convicts, lived here. A brisk trade flourished during the winter, spring, and at the end of summer. During the winter the Tungus, Yakuts and the Amur Gilyaks came to trade with the foreigners in the South, while during the spring and late summer the Japanese came to fish from their junks. The name of the way station, the Tikhmenevsky Post, has been retained to the present day.

This experiment applies only to Sakhalin. However, in his article "Banishment to Sakhalin" ( Vestnik Evropy, 1879, V),

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Professor D. G. Talberg considers it of general importance and, applying its results generally to our ineptirude in colonization, he comes to the following conclusion: "Is it not time for us to give up all our colonizing efforts in the East?"' In their introduction to Professor Talberg's article the editors of Vestnik Evropy state that "we will scarcely find another such example of colonizing ability demonstrated by the Russian people in the past when they seized all of the European East and Siberia." Furthermore, the esteemed editors base their opinion on the work of the now de- ceased Professor Yeshevsky, who presented "an amazing picrure of Russian colonization."

In 1869 a trader brought twenty Aleuts of both sexes to Southern Sakhalin from Kodiak Island to hunt game. They were settled near Muravyevsky Post and were supplied with provisions. They did absolutely nothing but eat and drink. In a year the trader moved them to one of the Kurile Islands. At approximately the same time two Chinese political exiles were settled in Korsakov Post. Since they expressed the desire to engage in farminc;, the governor-general of Eastern Siberia ordered each of them to be supplied with six oxen, a horse, a cow and enough seeds for two years. They received nothing, however, presumably because no stock was available, and finally they were sent to the mainland. Among the unsuccessful free colonists can also be included the Nikolayevsk town.dwcller Semenov, a tiny, gaunt man, forty years old, who now wanders all over the Southern District searching for gold.

3¹ He left two serious works: The Southem Section of Sakhalm Island (an abstract from a military medical report), published by the Siberian Division of the Imperial Russian Geo.graphic Society ( 1870), VoL I, Nos. 2 and 3, and An Ainu-Russian Dictionary.

It is difficult to believe that this disease which devastated Northern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands could have bypassed Southern Sakhalin. A. Polonsky writes that when a person died in a yurt, the Ainus abandoned it and built another one elsewhere. Such a custom obviously arose at the time when, fearing epidemics, the Ainus abandoned their infected dwellings and settled in other locations.

An Ainu told Rimsky-Korsakov: "The sizam sleeps while the Ainu works for him; he chops trees, catches fish;the Ainu doesn't want to work—but the sizam beats him."

⁸ In the book by Shrenk which I have already mentioned there is a picture of an Ainu. See also the book by Friedrich von Hellwald, Natural History of Tribes and Peoples, Vol. II, which depicts a mature Ainu dressed in a khalat.

⁷ A. Polonsky's research work "Kurily" [The Kurilians] was published in the Reports of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society ( 187 i ), Vol. i 4.

N. V. Busse, who rarely said anything good about anybody, stated the following about the Ainu women: "One evening a drunken Ainu came to me. I knew him to be a real tippler. He brought along his wife, so far as 1 could understand, with the aim of offering up her fidelity to the connubial couch and thus to wheedle fine gifts from me. It seemed that the Ainu woman, who was quite pretry in her own way, was ready to assist her husband in his plan, but I pretended not to understand their explanations. . . . On leaving my house, right before my own eyes and in full sight of the sentry, the husband and wife paid their debt to nature without any ceremony. This Ainu woman did not demonstrate any feminine modesty whatsoever. Her breasts were practically uncovered. The Ainu women wear the same garments as the men, consisting of several loose short khalats belted with a low sash. They do not wear shirts or underwear and therefore the slightest disarray of their clothing discloses all their hidden charms." But even this dour author admits that "among the young girls there were some who were pretty, with pleasant, soft features and ardent black eyes." Be it as it may, the Ainu woman is very retarded in her physical development. She ages and withers sooner than a man. This can be attributed perhaps to the fact that during the age-long migrations of the people the lion's share of priva- tions, hard work and tears fell to the woman.

Here he tells of their great qualities: "When we visited an Ainu dwelling on the bank of Rumyantsev Bay, 1 noted the most delightful harmony in a family which comprised ten persons. One could almost say there was absolute equaliry among its members. After having spent several hours with them we were unable to determine who was the head of the family. The older members demonstrated no signs of authoriry over the younger. When gifts were distributed to them, not one showed the slightest sign of discontent that he had received less than another. They vied with each other to serve us in every possible way."

Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov (1764-1807), the founder and leading spirit of the Russian-American Company, was the Russian Ambassador to the court of Japan before his appointment as Governor of Kamchatka. The Russian-American Company set up its headquarters in Sitka in Alaska, and from there Rezanov made his famous journey to San Francisco, offering furs to the govern- ment of California in exchange for food. He became engaged to the beautiful daughter of the Comandante of San Francisco, but died shortly afterward of fever during a journey through Siberia. Chekhov's verdict on him is not borne out by serious historians. —^^NS.

¹¹ Khvostov destroyed Japanese homes and barns on the banks of the Aniva and awarded one Ainu elder with a silver medal on a Vladimir ribbon. This piracy greatly alarmed the Japanese gov- ernment, which began to take measures to defend itself. Shortly thereafter Captain Golovin and his companions were taken prisoner on the Kurile Islands, exactly as though they were in a state of war. When the governor of Matsmay later released the prisoners, he told them solemnly: "You were all captured because of Khvostov's raids, but we have now received from the Okhotsk administration the explanation that his raids were acts of piracy. This is clear to us, and therefore we are ordering your release."

^J2 Particulars may be obtained in Venyukov's "A General Survey of the Gradual Expansion of Russian Boundaries in Asia and Means for Their Defense. The First Region: Sakhalin Island,"' Military Miscellany (1872), No. 3.

¹³ Tyuleni Island lies in the Sea of Okhotsk, I 1 miles off Cape Patience in Southern Sakhalin.—^^NS.

1⁴ It was obviously because of the Japanese desire to legalize the servitude of the Ainu that a risky clause was included among others in the pact, in which foreigners who have fallen into debt can repay their debt through work or by offering services. How- ever, there were no Ainus on Sakhalin whom the Japanese did not consider their debtor.

1.1 Nevelskoy always regarded Sakhalin as a Russian possession, basing this claim on the occupation of the island by our Tungus in the seventeenth century, the first description of which appeared in 1742, and the occupation of Southern Sakhalin by the Russians in 1806. He believed the Orochi tribe consisted of Russian Tungus, with which ethnographers disagree. It was in fact first described in writing not by the Russians but by the Dutch; and as for the occupation in i 806, the primacy of the Russian claim is refuted by the facts. Undoubtedly, the right of first exploration belongs to the Japanese, and the Japanese were the first to occupy South- ern Sakhalin. However, it seems that we overreached ourselves in our generosity. "Out of respect," as the peasants say, we could have given the Japanese the 5 or 6 Kurile Islands closest to them, but instead we gave them 22 islands, which, if we are to believe the Japanese, bring in I,ooo,ooo rubles in profits annually.

^1G Relations are splendid between the local administration and the Japanese, which is as it should be. They serve champagne to each other on solemn occasions, and they find other means to maintain good relations. I cite verbatim one of the letters received from the consul: "To the Honorable Commander of the Korsakov Post: With respect to Order No. 741, dated August 16 of this year, I have made arrangements to distribute supplies consisting of 4 barrels of salted fish and 5 bags of salt to the men who suffered an accident on the brig and on the junk. In addition, in the name of these poor fellows, I have the honor to express to you, gracious sir, the extremely sincere recognition of your friendly compassion and your gift to a neighboring nation, a gift which is so imponam to them and which, I feel absolutely certain, they will always remember with gratitude. Kuzc, Consul of the Japanese Empire." This letter gives some idea of the success achieved by the young Japanese secretaries in learning our language. German officers who have learned Russian, and foreigners who translate Russian literature, write our language in an incomparably worse fashion.

Japanese courtesy is not cloying, and I find it charming. No matter how often it is practiced, it is not obnoxious, in accord- ance with the proverb "Butter docs not spoil the porridge." A Japanese wood-turner in Nagasaki from whom our naval officers bought various knickknacks always politely praised everything Russian. He would see an officer's trinket or wallet and go into raptures, saying, "How magnificent! How elegant!" Once one of the officers brought an extremely crudely fashioned wooden ciga- rette case from Sakhalin. "Won't I pull a fast one on him now," he thought. "Let us see what he'll say now." But when they showed the cigarette case to the Japanese, he did not falter for a moment. He shook it in the air and said in tones of wonder, "How strong it is!"

XV Convict Householders - Transfer to Settler Status - Choice of Sites for New Settlements Housekeeping - Half-Owners - Transfer to Peasant Status - Resettlement of Peasants-formerly-convicts on the Mainland - Life in the Settlements - Proximity of the Prison - A nalysis of the Population by Birthplace ami Stctte - Village Authorities

when punishment, in addition to its primary aims of vengeance, intimidation or correction, is combined with other aims, such as colonization, it should properly be adapted to the needs of the colony and yield to compro- mises. The prison is antagonistic to the colony; their imerests are completely opposed to one another. Life in prison wards enslaves and eventually degcnerates the con- vict. The instincts of a settied householdcr, of good manage- ment, of family life are stifled in him by habits acquired through a gregarious existence. He loses his health, grows old, becomes morally weak. The longer the time he spends in prison, the less likely will he become an energetic and useful member of the colony. Instead he will become a burden to it.

For this reason our colonizing system chiefly requires a reduction in the length of prison terms and of penal servi- tude. Our Code on Convicts makes significam compromises in this respect. For convicts who are regarded as on their way to reformation, ten months coum as a year, and con- victs in the second and third categories—i.e., those con- victed for four to twelve years—find that when they are assigned to the mines each year of work is credited as a year and a half.¹

Convicts regarded as on their way to reformation are permitted by law to live outside the prison. They can build homes, get married, possess money. But the facts far surpass the Code. To ease the transition from convict status to one of greater independence, the Governor-General of the Amur region in i 888 permitted the freeing of industrious and well-behaved convicts before the end of their term. In announcing this order (No. 302), General Kononovich promised to free them from work two and even three years before completing the full term of penal servitude. Actually, without any legal clauses or orders but solely as a result of necessity (because it is good for the colony), all convict women without exception, many of them on probation and even those who have been sentenced to indefinite terms, and all those convicts who have families or are good draftsmen, surveyors, drivers of dog sleighs, etc., live out- side the prison, in their own homes and in free men's quarters. Many are permitted to live outside the prison out of "common humanity," or because it is assumed that if X. lives in a hut rather than in prison no harm will result, or if it happens that Z., who has been sentenced to an unlimited term, is permitted to live in a free man's quarters because he arrived with his wife and children, then it would be absolutely unjust to refuse the same per- mission to N., who was sentenced to a short term.

As of January i, 1890, there was a total of 5,905 con- victs of both sexes in all three Sakhalin districts. Of these, 2,124 (36 percent) were sentenced to terms up to 8 years. There were 1,567 ( 26.5 percent) sentenced from 8 to i 2 years, 747 (12.7 percent) from 12 to 15 years, 731 (12.3 percent), from 15 to 20 years. There were 386 ( 6.5 per- cent) sentenced to indefinite terms, and there were 175 ( 3 percent) who were regarded as incorrigibles and sen- tenced from 20 to 50 years. Those with short terms, with sentences of up to 12 years, comprise 62.5 percent, i.e., over half of the entire number. I do not know the average age of those recently sentenced, but judging from the pres- ent composition of the penal population, it should be not less than 35. If the average length of an 8-to-io-year term is added to this, and if we consider that a man ages much more rapidly in penal servitude chan in ordinary circumstances, it is obvious chat if the actual term is served and if the Code is observed with strict adherence co con- finement in prison and work under the supervision of convoys, etc., not only the long-term convicts but over half of the short-term convicts will become a part of the colony after their colonizing abilities have been completely spent.

In my time there were 424 convict homesteaders of both sexes who had plots of land. I recorded 908 convicts of both sexes who lived in the colony, and among them were wives, cohabitants of both sexes, laborers, lodgers, ctc. There was a total of 1,332 who lived outside the prison in thcir own huts and frec men's quarters, which is 2 3 perccnt of the cotal number of conviccs.²

There is almost no difference in homesteading between thc convicts and the homesteading settlers in thc colony. Convicts who are laborers on homesteads work cxactly like our pcasant workcrs. Rclcasing a prisoner co work for a good pcasant homcstcadcr, also a convict, is a unique penal mcasurc dcvcloped from Russian cxpcricncc, and it is un- doubtcdly morc humane chan thc condition of Australian farmhands. Convict lodgers spcnd thc night in thcir own quarters and must appear for labor assignmcnts and work just likc thcir comradcs living insidc thc prison. Craftsmcn such as cobblers and cabinct makcrs oftcn scrve thcir sen- tence in their own quartcrs.^;l

No particular disharmony is obscrved from the fact that a fourth of all thc convicts live outside thc prison, and I would enthusiastically admit chat it is not easy co regulate our penal system precisely bccause the remaining three- fourths live insidc the prison walls. \Y/e can naturally only speak of the advantages of huts over common wards as a probability, since absolutely no observations have so far bcen made on the subject. No one has yet proved chat crimes and escapes occur less frequently among convicts living in huts than among chosc living in prison and chat the work of the former is morc productive chan chat of the latter. In all probability the prison statistics which even- tually deal with chis problem will decide in favor of the huts. One thing is certain. The colony will gain if every convict arriving on Sakhalin, regardless of his term, could immediately begin building a hut for himself and his fam- ily, and in this way his colonizing activities will begin very early while he is still comparatively young and healthy. Nor would justice suffer, for the criminal on the very first day of joining the colony would suffer his greatest trials before being transferred to settler status and not afterward.

When the convict s term is completed he is free from work and is transferred to settler status. There are no delays connected with this. If the new settler has money and administrative patronage, he remains in Alexandrovsk or settles in the settlement which is most desirable to him, and he either buys or builds a house unless he acquired one while in penal servitude. Even farming and labor are not obligatory for such a person. If he is a member of the ignorant masses which constitute the majority, he usually settles on a plot of land in the settlement where the ad- ministration orders him to go. If the settlement is crowded, and there is no suitable land available for a plot, he is placed on a homestead which is already established as a co-owner or half-owner, or he is made to settle on a new location.⁴

The selection of sites for new settlements, which de- mands experience and some specialized knowledge, is en- trusted to the local administration—in other words, ro the district supervisors, prison wardens and settlement super- visors. There are no specific laws or instructions controlling the selection of sites, and the whole matter finally depends on the caliber of the staff members, whether they have been in service for a long time and whether they are acquainted with convict population and the terrain. For example, Buta- kov knew the North, Bely and Yartsev were knowledgeable about the South. Then it was a question of whether they had come recently, whether they were philologists, law students and infantry lieutenants, or merely uneducated persons who had never served anywhere before. The majority were young townsfolk who knew nothing about life. I have already written about the official who refused to believe the settlers and the natives when they told him the site he had chosen would be under water in the spring and during heavy rains. During my stay an official with an es- cort rode some i 5 to 20 versts to inspect a new site and returned the same day, having supposedly made a thorough inspection in the course of two or three hours. He approved the site and said he had had a most enjoyable trip.

Rarely and reluctantly do the older and more experi- enced officials go out in search of new sites, since they are always occupied with other matters, while the younger officials are inexperienced and careless. The administration is sluggish, affairs are always being delayed, and the result is the overcrowding of already existing settlements. Finally, help is sought from convicts and military guards, and according to the reports they have sometimes succeeded in selecting good sites. Because there was no more space for distributing plots in the Tymovsk or Alexandrovsk districts, and because at the same time the number of poverty- stricken people was rapidly increasing, General Konono- vich proposed in his order (No. 280) of 1888 "to organize land-seeking parties composed of reliable convicts under the supervision of completely efficient and literate guards with experience of these affairs, or even officials, and to send them out to seek locations appropriate for settlements." These parties are wandering over unexplored territory un- trodden by the mapmakers; they search for sites with no available data on their height above sea level, the compo- sition of the soil, the water and so on. The administration can only guess at the suitability of these sites for settle- ment and farming, and so it happens that the final decision about the site is made haphazardly and at random. More- over, they never seek the opinion of a doctor or of a topog- rapher, who is nonexistent on Sakhalin, and the surveyor appears at the new site after the land has been cleared and is already populated.⁵

Recounting his impressions to me after his tour of the settlements, the Governor-General expressed himself as fol- lows: "Penal servitude does not begin with penal servitude, but with colonization." If the severity of the punishment is measured by the amount of work done and the physical deprivations resulting from the work, then the settlers on Sakhalin often suffer far more severe punishment than the convicts. The settler arrives at a new place which is gen- erally marshy and covered with trees, and he has only a carpenter's ax, a saw and a shovel. He fells trees, uproots stumps, digs canals in order to drain the site, and during the entire period of these preparatory labors he lives under the open sky, on the damp ground. The delights of the Sakhalin climate, with its gloom, almost daily rain and low temperature, are never felt so keenly as during this time when a man cannot escape even for a moment from the sensation of piercing dampness and shivering fits over many weeks. This is the true febris sachalinensis* with head- aches and rheumatic pains over the entire body caused not by infections but by climatic influences.

Thc settlement is built first and the road leading to it comes later, rather than the ocher way round. For this reason a tremendous amount of strength and health is in- voluntarily wasted on transporting heavy burdens from the post at a time when there are no footpaths to the new site. A settler loaded down with tools, provisions and so on walks through the dcnse taiga, either up to his knees in water, or scrambling over mountains of windfalls, or en- tangled in stiff clumps of marsh rose.

Clause 307 of the Code 011 Convicts states that people outside the prison must be supplied with lumber for build- ing their homes. The clause is interpreted to mean that the settler must cut and prepare the lumber for himself. In the past convicts werc assigned to help settlers, and money was provided for hiring carpenters and purchasing material; but this arrangement was abandoned when it was discovered, as one official told me, that "the plan resulted in idleness, and the convicts worked while the settlers played games of pitch-and-toss." Now the settlers do their own work, help- ing one anOther. A carpenter builds the frame, a stovemaker builds up the stove, sawyers cut the boards. Anyone who lacks the strength or the know-how but has some money can hire someone to do the work. Those who possess strength and endurance do the hardest work. Anyone who is weak or has lost the habit of hard peasam-like work in prison, if he is not playing cards or pitch-and-toss, or is nm bundling himself up against the cold, takes on some comparatively light work. Many break down with fatigue, lose courage and abandon their unfinished homes. The Chinese and Caucasians who do nm know how to construct Russian huts usually cscape during the first year. Almost half of the homesteaders on Sakhalin have no homes, and the explanation seems to be that the setders encoumcr great difficulties at the outset when they setde down. According to data I took from the report of the agriculmral inspcnor, homesteaders in 1889 without homes constituted 50 percem of the total in the Tymovsk district, in thc Korsakov dis- trict thc figure was 42 perccm, and in thc Alexandrovsk dis- trict, wherc households are built with lcss difliculty and the sctders buy their homcs more oftcn than build them, it was only 20 percem.

Whcn the framc is completed, window glass and iron- ware are givcn to the homcsteader on crcdit. Thc island commandam spcaks about this crcdit in one of his ordcrs: "'With extremc regret wc inform you that this crcdit, to- gether with many others, is a long timc in corning, and this lack of credit paralyzes the will to seule down. . . . Last autumn during my tour of the Korsakov region, I saw houses which were waiting for glass, nails and iron stove bolts; today I again saw thesc houscs in the same state of cxpectancy'' (Order No. 318, 1889).'

They do not consider it necessary to invcstigatc a new site evcn after it is setded. They send out fifty to a hun- dred homestcaders to the new site and add scores morc every year. Meanwhile nobody knows how much arable land is available for how many peoplc, which is the reason why exuaordinarily soon after having setded the new area, the new setdement is beset by ovcrcrowding and a surplus of people. This is nm only evidem at the Korsakov Post; every one of the posts and setdemems of both the Northern disuicts is crammed with people. Even such an undoubtedly solicitous person as A. M. Butakov, the commander of the

Tymovsk district, settles people on plots haphazardly, with- out giving thought to the future, and in no other district are there so many co-owners and multi-cohomesteaders as in his. It seems that the administration itself has no faith in the agricultural colony and has little by little come to believe that the settler requires the land only for a short while, perhaps a period of six years, since as soon as he achieves peasant status he will immediately leave the island, and under such conditions the problem of plots has merely formal significance.

Of the 3,522 homesteaders whom I recorded, 638, or 18 percent, are co-owners. If we exclude the Korsakov dis- trict, where only one settler is assigned to a plot, this per- centage will be significantly greater. In the Tymovsk dis- trict, the younger the settlement, the larger the percentage of half-owners. In Voskresenskoye, for instance, there are ninety-seven homesteaders, seventy-seven of whom are half- owners. This means that each year it becomes more diffi- cult to find new sites and to divide up the plots for settlers.⁸

Organizing his homestead and running it properly be- comes a permanent obligation on the settler. For laziness, negligence and reluctance to occupy himself with home- steading he is reverted to the communal labor, that is, to convict status. He is sentenced to penal servitude for one year, and is removed from his hut to prison.

Article 402 of the Code permits the Governor-General of the Amur "to maintain at government cost those Sakha- lin settlers who are acknowledged by the local authorities to possess no private means." At present the majority of the Sakhalin settlers receive clothing and food allowances equal to prison rations from the government for the first two or three years after being released from penal labor. The administration renders such assistance to settlers on the grounds that it has a humane concern for their practical needs. In fact it would be difficult to see how a settler could build a hut, plow the land and earn his bread at the same time. Nevertheless, it is quite common to find an order showing that some settler is being deprived of his rations

218

because of negligence, laziness and because "he did not begin building a house," etc.⁹

After ten years of settler status, the settlers are per- mitted to transfer to peasant status. This new term is accompanied by extensive rights. A peasant-formerly-a- convict can leave Sakhalin and settle anywhere he wishes in Siberia, with the exception of the Semirechensk, Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk provinces. He is permitted to join peas- ant societies with their approval, and can livc in cities, and engagc in trade and industry. Hc is now subjcct to trial and punishment by civil courts and not by thc Code on Convicts. Hc also reccivcs and sends correspondcnce through thc regular postal scrvice without the prcliminary censorship establishcd for convicts and scttlcrs. Ncvcrthc- lcss, thc main clcmcnt of cxile still rcmains in this ncw status; hc cannot rcturn to his homcland.¹⁰

Thc grant of pcasant rights in tcn ycars is not condi- tioned by any spccial provisions in thc Code. Exccpt for the conditions providcd in thc clauses to Articlc 375, the con- dition rcquiring a tcn-year pcriod is not dcpcndcnt upon whcthcr the sctdcr was a farming homcstcadcr or an ap- prenticc. Whcn wc talkcd about this, thc Supcrintcndent of Prisons of the Amur Kray, Mr. Kamorsky, confirmcd that the administration docs not havc thc right to rctain an exilc in his scttlcr status for longcr than tcn years, or to placc any conditions upon his rccciving pcasant rights. Howcvcr, I did cncountcr some old folk on Sakhalin who had cnjoycd scttlcr status for morc than tcn years and had not as yct bccn awardcd pcasant staws. I was unablc to chcck thcir claims against thc official list and thercforc can- not judgc as to thcir veracity. The old folk can makc mis- takes or cvcn lie, although with thc stupidity and confusion rampant among thc clcrks and thc ignorancc of thc younger officials, all kinds of capriccs can bc expccted from the Sakhalin officcs.

The ten-year tcrm can be cut to six ycars for those set- tlers who "bchaved in thc approved fashion, cngagcd in beneficial work and acquircd settler characteristics." This privilege pcrmitted by Article 377 is widely used by the

219

island commandant and the district commandants. Almost all of the peasants with whom I became acquainted re- ceived this status in six years. Unfortunately, "beneficial labor" and "settler characteristics," which are the conditions enumerated in the Code for receiving the privilege, are understood differently in the three districts. For example, in the Tymovsk district a settler will not become a peasant so long as he is indebted to the government and his hut is not covered with boards. In Alexandrovsk a settler does not practice farming, does not need tools and seeds, and there- fore incurs smaller debts. He therefore can obtain his rights more easily.

One unconditional requisite is imposed: the settler must become a homesteader. Penal convicts more than others are people who by nature are incapable of becoming home- steaders, and they feel comfortable only when they are working for somebody else. When I asked whether a settler who does not have his own homestead because he works as a cook for an official or is a bootmaker's apprentice can ever profit from the reduction and actually receive peasant rights, I was told that it was true in the Korsakov district; the answers were more vague in both the Northern dis- tricts. Under such conditions there can obviously be no talk of norms, and if a new district commandant demands iron roofs and the ability to sing in a choir, it will be difficult to convince him that his demands are arbitrary.

\X'hen I was in Siyantsy, the settlement inspector or- dered twenty-five settlers to gather around the guardhouse and announced to them that by a decree of the island corn- mandant they had been transferred to peasant status. The decree was signed by the general on January 27, and an- nounced to the settlers on September 26. The joyful tid- ings were received in total silence by all twenty-five settlers. No one crossed himself or expressed gratitude; they all stood there with grave faces and were silent as though all of them had become homesick with the thought that every- thing on earth, even suffering, comes to an end. When Yartsev and I asked which of them would remain on Sa- khalin and which would leave, not one of the twenty-five expressed the desire to remain. They all said they yearned to return to the mainland and would gladly leave immedi- ately, but they had no money and would have to think it over. As they talked, they agreed that it is not sufficient to have money for the fare because they would also have to spend money on the mainland. They would have to plead for acceptance into society and entertain everyone, and they would have to buy land and build a house, and finally they would need about 150 rubles. And where could they get a sum as large as that?

In spite of its size, I found only 39 peasants in Rykovskoye, and they had no intention of putting down their roots here. They were all planning to leave for the mainland. A man called Bespalov was building a large two- story house with a balcony on his plot; it was rather like a country villa. They were all observing the building with perplexed looks on their faces, and they could not under- stand why he was building it. That a rich man with grown sons should remain in Rykovskoye forever when he had the means to settle anywhere outside of Sakhalin gave them the feeling that he was suffering from a strange whimsical extravagance. When I asked a cardsharp peasant in Dubky if he would go to the mainland, he stared proudly at the ceiling and answered, "I will make an effort to leave."¹¹

The peasants are driven from Sakhalin by a feeling of insecurity, loneliness and constant fear for their children. The main reason is the peasant's passionate longing to live in freedom before he dies and to live a real life, not a prison existence. They speak of Ussuriysky Kray and the Amur, both of them nearby, as the promised land. You sail on a boat for three or four days, and then you come upon freedom, warmth, harvest. People who have moved to the mainland and settled there write to their Sakhalin friends saying that people shake hands with them and vodka costs only 50 kopecks a bottle.

Once when I was strolling along the pier in Alexan- drovsk, I entered the cutter boathouse and saw an old man of sixty or seventy and an old woman. They were sur- rounded with bundles and bags and were obviously all ready to travel. We started to talk. The old man had re- cently received his peasant rights and was now leaving for the mainland with his wife; he would go to Vladivostok and then "wherever God sends us." They said they had no money. The boat was scheduled to depart in twenty-four hours but they had already come to the pier and were hid- ing in the cutter boathouse with their belongings and wait- ing for the boat, as though they were afraid they would be turned back. They spoke of the mainland with affection, with reverence and with the conviction that they would find a truly happy life.

At the Alexandrovsk cemetery I saw a black cross with a picture of the Mother of God and the following inscrip- tion: "Here lie the ashes of the maid Afimya Kurnikovaya, deceased May 2 i, i 888, i 8 years of age. This cross was erected to honor her memory and the departure of her parents to the mainland in June, 1889."

A peasant is not permitted to leave for the mainland if he is not of trustworthy character and if he owes money to the government. If he is the cohabitant of a convict woman and has had children by her, his travel ticket is issued to him only if he has left sufficient property to provide for the future of his mistress and his illegitimate children (Order No. 92, 1889). On the mainland a peasant is regis- tered at his preferrcd volost}² The governor in whose province the volost is situated then informs the island com- mandant, who in turn issues an order to the police ad- ministration to remove the peasant so-and-so and his family from the lists—and thus officially it comes about that there is one less "unfortunate." Baron Korf told me that if the peasant misbehaves on the mainland, he is returned by ad- ministrative order to Sakhalin for the rest of his life.

According to rumor, the people of Sakhalin live well on the mainland. I was able to read their letters but never saw how they live in their new locations. However, I saw one— not in a village, but in a city. One day the monk Irakly— the missionary and priest from Sakhalin—and I were leav- ing a shop together in Vladivostok, and a man in a white apron and high polished boots, probably a porter or a member of a cooperative, saw Father Irakly, was delighted and asked for his blessing. It appeared that he was once Father Irakly's spiritual charge, a peasant-formerly-a-con- vict. Father lrakly recognized him, and remembered his name and surname. "Well now, how are you getting on?" he asked. "Thank God, very well indeed!" the peasant said excitedly.

Those peasants who have not yet departed for the main- land live in posts or settlements and run their homesteads under the same miserable conditions as the settlers and convicts. They remain under the domination of the prison authorities and must remove their caps at fifty feet if they live in the South. The officials treat them a little better and do not beat them; however, they are not peasants in the true sense; they are still prisoners. They live near the prison and see it every day; and a happy coexistence be- tween a penal servitude prison and peaceful farming is un- thinkable. Some writers have described ring-dancing and singing in Rykovskoye and they say they heard the sounds of the accordion and distant singing. I neither saw nor heard anything of the sort and cannot imagine girls sing- ing and dancing around a prison. Even if I had heard a distant song mingling with the clanging of chains and the shouting of the guards, I would have regarded the singing as an act of malice, for a kind and merciful man does not sing near a prison.

The peasants and the settlers, their wives and their children, are all oppressed by the prison regime. The prison regulations, which resemble military regulations with their extraordinary strictness and continual tyranny, keep them under constant tension and fear. The prison administration confiscates their meadows, their best fishing sites and their best forests. Escapees, prison usurers and thieves cause them injuries; the prison executioner as he strolls down the street intimidates them; the guards debauch their wives and daughters. The prison is a perpetual reminder of their past, telling them where they arc and whom they belong to.

The local villagers do not yet comprise a society. There are still no mature native-born people of Sakhalin who regard the island as their motherland. There are very few old inhabitants. The majority are newcomers. The popula- tion changes annually; some arrive, others leave, and in many settlements, as I have already said, the inhabitants do not give the impression of a village community but of a rabble brought together by chance. They call themselves brothers because they suffer together, but they have very little in common and are strangers to one another. They do not share the same faith and they speak different lan- guages. The old-timers despise this motley crew and ask disdainfully how there can possibly be a community if in the same settlement you find Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Poles, Jews, Finns, Kirghiz, Georgians and gypsies. I have already mentioned the disproportional distribution of the non-Russian elements in the settlements.¹³

A diversity of another kind reacts adversely on the growth of each settlement: the colony is augmented by many aged, physically weak and psychically ill criminals, people incapable of work and those who are unprepared for practical life, people who lived in cities in their home- land and knew nothing about farming. As of January 1, 1890, according to data which I extracted from the prison reports, on the whole of Sakhalin including the prisons and the entire colony there were ninety-one members of the no- bility and 924 people from the towns—i.e., former re- spectable citizens, merchants, city dwellers and foreign na- tionals—totaling i o percent of those in penal servitude.¹⁴ Each scttlement has an elder chosen from among the homesteaders, always either a settler or a peasant, who is confirmed as the settlement supervisor. Elders are usually selected from among those who are sober, inteUigent and educated. The extent of their responsibilities has not yet been completely established, but they attempt to conduct themselves in the manner of Russian elders. They decide various petty matters, assign horses and carts to people in turn, intercede for their own people whenever necessary, etc. The Rykovskoye elder even has his own seal. Some receive a salary.

A prison guard is always stationed in each settlement, and most often he is an ignorant member of the lower echelon of the local command who always reports to visit- ing officials that everything is just fine. He oversees the conduct of the settlers and makes certain they do not absent themselves without permission and that they keep up with their farming. He is the settlement's nearest thing to an official, is often the sole judge, and his reports to the ad- ministration are actually documents which are quite im- portant in evaluating the extent to which a settler has succeeded in achieving a proper behavior and a settled way of life as a homesteader. Here is an example of a guard's report:

LIST

of Inhabitants of Verkhny Armudan Who Have Misbehaved

Surname and Name Criminal Record

Izdugin, Anany

Kiselev, Petr Vasilyev

Glybin, Ivan

Galysky, Semen

Kazankin, Ivan

Thief The same T^he same

Neglect^ful o^f his home,

o^bstinacc The same

Every office on Sakhalin contains a "Table for Calculating Sentences." It shows, for example, that a convict who has been sentenced for I7Y2 years will in acruality spend 15 years and 3 months in penal servitude. If he is fortunate enough to be eligible for an amnesty under an imperial edict, the term then is only 1 o years and 4 months. A person sentenced to 6 years is freed in 5 years and 2 months, and in the event of an amnesty, in 3 years and 6 months.

I did not include those convicts who lived in the homes of the officials in the capacity of servants. I believe that 25 percent live outside the prison, which means that out of every four con- victs, the prison yields one to the colony. This percentage will increase significantly when Clause 305 of the Code, which permits reformed convicts to live outside the prison, will also be applied in the Korsakov district, where, by order of Mr. Bely, all convicts without exception live within the prison.

3 In Alexandrovsk almost all homesteaders have lodgers, and this gives it an urban aspect. I noted seventeen persons in one hut. Such crowded quarters, however, differ little from common wards.

⁴ Sakhalin is comparable to the most remote places in Siberia. Probably because of the exceptionally rigorous climate, the only settlers were those who had served their sentence on Sakhalin and so, even if they were not accustomed to it, they could come to terms with it. It is obvious that attempts are being made to change this arrangement. While I was there, a certain Juda Gamberg, sentenced to exile in Siberia, was sent to Sakhalin as a settler by order of Baron Korf. He settled in Derbinskoye. Settler Simeon Saulat, who did not serve his sentence in Sakhalin but in Siberia, now lives in Dubky. There are exiles serving in the administra- tion here.

⁵ In time to come, the selection of new sites will be made by a commission composed of Prison Department officials, a topog- rapher, an agronomist and a doctor. It will then be fairly clear from the reports of the commission why each site was chosen. At present, the usual idea is to settle people along river valleys and near existing or projected roads, and this has some justification. But it is more a matter of routine than a definite system. If they select a particular river valley it is not because it has been in- vestigated more thoroughly than others and is best for farming, but because it is close to headquarters. The southwestern shore is distinguished by its comparatively mild climate, but it is farther from Due or Alexandrovsk than the Arkovskaya valley or the Armudan River valley, and therefore the latter are preferred. When they settle people on sites along the projected road, they are not considering the well-being of the people in the new settle- ment, but instead they are thinking of the officials and the drivers of dog sleighs who will eventually travel along the road. If it were not for this simple plan to settle the barren road with human beings, to guard the road and provide shelter for travelers, it would be difficult to understand the need for the projected settlements on the road running the whole length of the Tym from the upper sources of the river all the way to Nyisky Bay. The people will probably receive money and food supplies from the government for guarding and looking after the road. If those settlements become a continuation of the present agricultural col- ony, and if the administration is dependent on rye and wheat, Sakhalin will acquire a few more thousand starving, under- privileged paupers fed by nobody knows what.

⁸ Sakhalin fever (Lat.).

⁷ This is where the money which should have been received during his term of penal servirude as wages would have come in useful for the settler. According to the law, the prisoner sen- tenced to convict labor is entitled to receive I o percent of the customary wage. For example, if road work is valued at the cus- tomary wage of 50 kopecks a day, a convict is supposed to receive 5 kopecks. During the period of his incarceration the prisoner is permitted to spend not less than half of his earnings. The remaining sum is to be given him upon his release. The money he has earned is not supposed to be applied to the payment of any civil penalties or court costs. In the event of the convict's death, it is to be given to his heirs. Prince Shakhovskoy, who was the commandant of the Due prison in the seventies, expresses his ideas in a report, The Problem of Organizing Sakhalin Island, written in I 878, which should be adopted by the present adminis- tration as being fully informative and a guide to action. "Re- munerating convicts for their work at least provides the prisoner with some private possessions, and private property tends to attach him to a place. By mutual agreement, this remuneration permits the prisoner to obtain better food and to keep his clothing and quarters cleaner; and the grcawr the sum of things which accustom him to conveniences, the greater the suffering when he is deprived of them. The complete absence of these conveniences and the continually melancholy and unfriendly atmosphere in which he lives produce in the prisoner a callous attitude to life, and all the more toward punishment. So it happens that when the number of men flogged reaches 80 percent of the total, we were forced to doubt the advantages of flogging for punishing men who are pre- pared to be flogged simply because they have acquired some neces- sities of life. Remuneration evokes independence among convicts, prevents bargaining of clothes, helps them in their homesteading and significantly decreases government expenditure with respect to attaching them to the soil after they are transferred to settler status."

Tools are given on credit for 5 years with the condition that the settler pay a fifth of the price annually. At the Korsakov post a carpenter's ax costs 4 rubles, a ripping saw i 3 rubles, a shovel i ruble 80 kopecks, a rasp 44 kopecks, nails io kopecks per pound. A woodsman's ax is issued on credit at 3 rubles 50 kopecks only in the event that the settler did not take care of his carpenter's ax.

⁸ The homesteader and the co-owner live in one hut and sleep on one stove. Neither religion nor sex is a deterrent to co-owner- ship. I recall that the co-owner of settler Golybev in Rykovskoye was the Jew Lyubarsky. In the same settlement, settler Ivan Khavriyevich had a female cohomesteader, Marya Brodyaga.

I have already spoken of the povercy in which the local peasant inhabitants live, regardless of the many loans and assistance re- ceived from the government. Here is a scene depicting this beg- garly existence which came from the pen of an official: "In the village of Lyutoga I entered the very poorest hovel. It was owned by settler Zerich, an inept tailor by trade, who has been in the process of settling himself for four years. The povercy and want are appalling. There is absolutely no furniture except for a de- crepit table and a tree stump which serves as a chair. Except for a tin tea kettle made from a kerosene can, there is no evidence of any dishes or kitchenware. Instead of a bed, there is a small pile of straw covered with a sheepskin coat and an extra shirt. He has none of the tools of his trade except for a few needles, a few gray threads, several buttons and a copper thimble which he also uses as a pipe for smoking tobacco. The tailor perforated a hole in it, and whenever he so desires, he inserts a thin mouthpiece made of a local reed. His total supply of tobacco could fill half the thimble" (Order No. 318, 1889).

Before 1888 those who received peasant rights were forbidden to leave Sakhalin. This prohibition destroyed all hope in a settler for a better life and instilled in him a hatred for Sakhalin. Since it was a repressive measure, it would only increase the number of escapes, crimes and suicides. Justice herself became the victim of its practicalicy, since the Sakhalin convicts were prohibited the same things which were permitted to Siberian convicts. This measure was evoked by the consideration that if the peasanrs should leave the island, Sakhalin would eventually become merely a place for penal servitude and not a colony. How could convicts living out their lives on Sakhalin make a second Australia out of the island? The vitalicy and growth of a colony does not derive from prohibitions or orders but from the presence of conditions which will guarantee a peaceful and secure life at least for their children and grandchildren if not for the convicts themselves.

I met only one man who expressed the desire to remain on Sakhalin for the rest of his life. He is an unfortunate man, a farmer from Chernigov, condemned for raping his own daughter. He does not like his homeland because he left a bad reputation. He never writes to his grown-up children, hoping they will forget him. He will not leave for the mainland because he is too old.

A small administrative district which generally includes only a few villages.—TRA^^NS.

^3 In answer to the question '"What guberniya do you come from?" I received replies from 5,791 persons. These were: Tam- bov 260, Samara 230, Chernigov 201, Kiev 201, Poltava 199, Voronezh 198, Donskoya Oblast 168, Saratov 153, Kursk 151, Perm 148, Nizhegorod 146, Penzen 142, Moscow 133, Tver 133, Kherson 131, Ekaterinoslav 125, Novgorod 122, Kharkov i 17, Orel i 1 5. Figures for the remaining guberniyas were less than one hundred. All the Caucasian guberniyas were included to a total of 2 1 3, or 3.6 percent. There is a larger percentage of Caucasians in prison than in the colony, which means that they are unable to endure their sentences with fortitude, and very few become settlers. The explanation is given by their frequent escapes and perhaps their high death rate. The guberniyas of the King- dom of Poland include a total of 4 55 convicts, or 8 percent. Finland and the Ostzeyskiye guberniyas include 167, or 2.8 per- cent. These figures give only an approximate idea of the population according to places of birth, but would anyone dare to draw the conclusion that Tambov guberniya is the most criminal and that the Ukrainians, of whom there are actually very many on Sakhalin, are more criminal than the Russians?

¹⁴ The nobles and the privileged class in general know nothing about tilling the soil and felling timber for making huts. They must work and bear the same punishments as the others, but they lack the strength. Of necessity they seek light work and they often do nothing. They live in constant fear that their fate will be changed, that they will be sent to work in the mines, physically punished or put in chains, etc. In the majority of cases these people are already weary of life, humble and melancholy, and when you see them you find it impossible to regard them as criminals. You also find vicious and insolent persons who finally become utterly depraved, suffer from ''moral insanity" and give the impression of being criminal advenrurers; their manner of speech, smile, gait, cringing servility are all in a discordant and common key. No matter what happens, it would be terrible to be in their place. One convict, a former officer, as he was being transported in a prison van to Odessa, gazed through the window and ob- served "the poetic fishing with the aid of torches and blazing branches dipped in tar. . . . The fields of the Ukraine were al- ready green. In the oak and linden forests violets and lilies of the valley were visible along the roadway; and so the aroma of flowers and of lost freedom were intermingled" (Vladivostok, 1888, No. 14).

A former nobleman, a murderer, telling me how his friends saw him off, said: "I awoke to reality. I only wanted one thing— to vanish, to sink into the ground—but my friends did not under- stand this and they continuously tried to cheer me up and shower me with all kinds of attention." Nothing is more unpleasant for criminals of the privileged class, when they are being led along the street or transported in a prison van, than to find themselves the butt of the curiosity of free men, especially of their friends. If someone attempts to identify a prisoner in a crowd of convicts, shouting his name in a loud voice, he suffers untold agony. It is unfortunate that criminals of the privileged class are often jeered at in prison, on the street and in the press. I read in a newspaper about a former commercial councillor who was invited to breakfast while at a prisoner way station somewhere in Siberia, and when the gang was moved on, the hosts were minus one spoon: the commercial councillor had stolen it! This former Gentleman of the Imperial Bedchamber was described as a man who was thor- oughly enjoying himself, wallowing in seas of champagne and the company of as many gypsies as he pleased. This is brutal.

XVI Composition of the Convict Popttlation According to Sex - The Female Problem - Convict Women and Female Settlers - Male and Female Cohabitants - Free Women

there are 53 women to 1 oo men in the penal colony.' This ratio properly applies only to the population living in huts. There arc also men who sleep in prison and bachelor soldiers for whom, as one local official explained, all the convict women and all the women in contact with convicts serve as "a rcquisitc source for satisfying natural needs."' However, if this category of people is included in deter- mining the composition of the colony's population, it should be done with reservations. \Vhilc living in prison or bar- racks they merely regard the colony as a means for satis- fying their needs. Their visits to the colony are but harmful external influences which decrease the birth rate and in- crease morbidity. These inlluences can be greater or lesser depending on how close or far the prison or barracks is from the settlement. Life in a Russian village is similarly affected by roughnecks building a railroad which passes in the neighborh^^. If we combine all the men, including those in prison and in the barracks, the figure of 53 will be cut in half, and we will have a ratio of 100:25.

Although the figures of 53 and 25 arc low, they must not be regarded as unusually low for a new penal colony, which is developing under most unfavorable conditions. In Siberia, women represent only 10 percent of the popu- lation of convicts and settlers. If we examine deporcation practices as they affect non-Russians, we will find respect- able farmer colonists who have been so deprived that they joyfully welcomed prostitutes from the cities and paid the procurers 100 pounds of tobacco for each one. The so-called female problem is handled infamously on Sakhalin, but it is less disgusting than it was during the early development of penal colonies in Western Europe.

Nat only convict women and prostitutes come to Sakhalin. Thanks to the prison administration headquarters and to the Voluntary Fleet, which has succeeded in estab- lishing speedy and convenient communication between European Russia and Sakhalin, the problem of wives and daughters who wanted to follow their husbands and parents into exile became greatly simplified. Nat too long ago the ratio was only i woman voluntarily accompanying her husband to 30 convicts. Today the presence of free women is characteristic of the colony, and it is now diffi- cult to imagine Rykovskoye or Novo-Mikhaylovka with- out these tragic figures who "came to remedy their hus- bands' lives and lost their own." This may be one of the indications that our Sakhalin will nat be last in the history of penal servitude.

I will begin with the convict women. As of January i, 1890, women represented i 1.5 percent of the total number of convicts in all three districts.²

\'(/ith regard to colonization, these women have one important advantage: they join the colony at a compara- tively early age. Mostly they are neurotic women who have been sentenced for crimes of passion or crimes connected with their families. "I came because of my husband." "I came because of my mather-in-law. . . ." Most of them are murderers, the victims of love and family despotism. Even those who are sent out here for arson and for counterfeiting are being punished for their love affairs, since they were enticed into crime by their lovers.

The love element plays a fateful part in their sorrowful existence before and after their trials. While they are being transported by ship to penal servitude, they hear the r^or that they wiU be forced to marry on Sakhalin. This fright- ens them. On one occasion they begged the court to inter- cede for them, so that they would not be forced into mar- riage.

Some fifteen to twenty years ago convict women were immediately dispatched to a brothel when they reached Sakhalin. Vlasov wrote in his report: "Because of the lack of separate quarters, the women in Southern Sakhalin are housed in the bakery. . . . The island commandant Dep- reradovich ordered that the women's section of the prison be turned into a house of prostitution." There was no question of any work being available for them, since "only those guilty of a misdemeanor or who had not earned the favor of men were forced to work in the kitchen." The remainder served men's "needs" and were blind drunk. Finally, according to Vlasov, the women became so de- praved that while stupefied "they sold their own children for a pint of alcohol."

When a party of women reach Alexandrovsk today, they are accompanied ceremoniously from the prison to the pier. The women, bent under the weight of bundles and knapsacks hanging fore and aft, stagger along the road, pale from seasickness, while mobs of women, men, children and office workers follow behind, like the troops of people who follow comedians at a fair. The scene brings to mind a run of herring on the Aniva River, when the fish are followed by whole schools of whales, seals and dolphins determined to feast on the spawning herring. The peasant settlers fol- low the crowd with obvious and honorable intentions: they need housewives. The women look to see whether they can find fellow countrywomen. The clerks and guards need "girls." This usually happens in the early evening. The women are locked up in wards which have been prepared for them, and then all night long the talk goes on in the prison and at the post about the new arrivals, about the joys of family life, about the impossibility of homesteading without women, etc.

During the first twenty-four hours, before the boat has left for Korsakov, the women are assigned to districts. This distribution is made by Alexandrovsk officials, and there- fore this district receives the lion's share as to quantity and quality. The nearest district, Tymovsky, receives slightly fewer and less qualified women. The North makes a careful selection. Here, as though they have been filtered out, remain the youngest and prettiest, so that the good fortune of living in the Southern district falls only to the lot of those who are getting old or those who "did not earn the favor of men." No thought is given to the agricultural colony during this distribution, and so, as I have already stated, women in Sakhalin are assigned to districts with no thought of a fair distribution. Furthermore, the worse the district, the less hope for success in colonization, and the more women there are. In the worst district, Alexandrovsk, there are 69 women to 100 men; in the second worst, Tymovsky, 47, and in the best, Korsakov, only 36.®

One parry of women chosen for the Alexandrovsk dis- trict arc designated as servants of the officials. After their experienccs in prisons, thc prison vans and the ship's hold, thc well-lit rooms of an official must seem to these women to be an enchaming palace, and the lord of the palace ap- pears as a good or evil genius with unlimited power over her. Howevcr, she soon becomcs accustomed to her new circumstances, while thc prison and thc ships hold can long bc heard in hcr spccch: "I don't know"; "Eat, your worship"; "Exacdy so."

A second batch of women enter the harems of the clerks and the guards. Thc third batch, the majority, go to live in the setders' huts. Only the richer sctders and those with influence get these women. A convict, even a convict on probation, can get a woman if he has some money and influence within the prison hierarchy.

At the Korsakov Post the newly arrived women are again housed in separate barracks. The district commander and the sctdemem supervisor decide which of the setders and peasams is worthy of having a woman. Preference is given to those who have settled down, are good homebodies and are well behaved. These few chosen ones are ordered to appear on such and such a day at the post, in the prison, to receive a woman.

So it happens that on the designated day, along the whole length of the long road from Naybuchi to the post, there can be seen travelers making their way to the south; these are the suitors or bridegrooms, as they are called, not without irony. They all have a peculiar look about them; they actually look like bridegrooms. One has donned a red bunting shirt, another wears a curious planter's hat, a third sparts shining new high-heeled boots, though nobody knows where he bought them and under what circum- stances. When they arrive at the post they are permitted to enter the women's barracks and they are left there with the women. The suitors wander around the plank beds, silently and seriously eyeing the women; the latter sit with downcast eyes. Each man makes his choice. \Vithout any ugly grimaces, without any sneers, very seriously, they act with humanity toward the ugly, the old and those with criminal features. They study the women and try to guess which of them will make good housekeepers by looking into their faces. If some younger or older woman "reveals herself" to a man, he sits down beside her and begins a sincere conversation. She asks if he owns a samovar, and whether his hut is covered with planks or straw. He an- swers that he has a samovar, a horse, a two-year-old heifer, and his hut is covered with planks. Only after the house- keeping examination has been completed, when both feel that a deal has been made, does she venture to say:

"You won't hurt me in any way, will you?"

The conversation comes to an end. The woman signs herself over to such and such a settler, to such and such a settlement—and the civil marriage is completed. l1ie set- tler leaves for his home with his cohabitant, and as a final act, to make a good impression, he hires a horse and cart, and frequently it happens that this costs him his last penny. At home, the first thing she does is set up the samovar, and all the neighbors, seeing the smoke, jealously comment tlut so-and-so has finally got a woman.

There is no penal labor for women on the island. True, the women sometimes scrub the floors in offices, or work the gardens, or sew bags, bm there is no systematic or clearly defined work in the sense of hard compulsory labor, and probably there never will be.

In this way the prison yields all the convict women to the colony. \Vhile they are being transported to the island, the officials do not think in terms of punishment or reform but only of their ability to bear children and work home- steads. Convict women are assigned to settlers as laborers, according to Article 345 of the Code on Convicts, which permits unmarried women convicts "to earn their living by working in the nearest settlements of older inhabitants until they get married." This article, however, exists only as a screen for the law which prohibits fornication and adultery, since a convict woman or a woman settler who livcs with a settler is not primarily a female farmhand but his cohabitant, an illegal wife who has achieved her status with the knowledge and consent of the administration. In the government dcpartments and in the orders issued by them, a woman living under the same roof with a settler is recorded as existing in "the joint organization of a home- stead" or in "joint housekeeping."⁴ The man and the woman are described as "a free family."

\XIe can say definitely that with the exception of a small number of women from the privileged class and women who arrive on the island with their husbands, all convict females become cohabitants. This may be regarded as a rule. I was told that when one woman in Vladimirovka refused to become a cohabitant and announced that she had come here to serve a sentence of penal servitude, to work and to do nothing else, her words caused great consterna- tion."'

Local practice has developed a peculiar view of the convict woman, and this probably exists in all penal colo- nies. She is regarded as being neither a person, nor a home- maker, nor a creature lower than a domestic animal. The settlers in the Siska settlement presented the following petition to the regional supervisor: "We humbly beg your worship to release to us one head of horned cattle for milk- ing in the above-mentioned locality and one of the female sex for keeping house." The island commandant, speaking in my presence with a settler from the Uskovo settlement and making various promises, said among others:

"As to women, I will see that you get what you want."

One official said to me: "It's very bad that women are sem here from Russia in the autumn rather than in the spring. In the wimer the woman has nothing to do, she is not a helpmate to the peasant, but only another mouth to feed. That is the reason why good homesteaders receive them reluctantly in the autumn."

This is exactly the way they discuss working horses when feed is expccted to be expensive during the winter. Human dignity, the femininity and modesty of convict women, are ncver taken into account. It seems to be im- plied that all of a woman's virtues were burned out of her in her disgrace, or they wcre lost by her during her incar- ceration in prison and at convict way stations. \X'hen they punish her corporally, they are nat constrained by the con- sideration that she might be suffering overwhclming shame. But degradation of her pcrson never rcachcd thc point where she was forccd into marriage or cocrced into cohabi- tation. Rumors of compulsion in this rcspcct are thc samc idle talcs as gallows on the scashorc or being forccd to work undcrground.⁰

Neither a woman's age, nor diffcrences of religion, nor vagrancy are deterrents to cohabitation. I have met fcmale cohabitants fifty years old and morc, living with young sct- tlcrs and evcn with guards who have barely passed twcnty- fivc. Somctimcs an old mothcr and hcr grown daughtcr arrive togcther in pcnal scrvitudc. Both become cohabitants with scttlcrs and both begin to bcar childrcn as if running a race. Catholics, Luthcrans and cvcn Tatars and Jcws oftcn livc with Russians. In onc hut in Alcxandrovsk I found a Russian woman with a large company of Kirghiz and Cau- casians whom shc was serving at tablc and I rccorded her as the cohabitant of a Tatar, or, as she callcd him, a Che- chenets. In Alcxandrovsk, the Tatar Kcrbalay, who is known herc to everyone, livcs with the Russian Lopushina and has had three children by her.⁷

Vagrants also attempt to live a family life and one of them in Derbinskoye, named Vagrant Ivan 35 Years, even announced to me with a smirk that he has two cohabitants: "One is here; the other is billcted in Nikolayevsk." Another settler has been living for thc past ten years with a woman named Not Remembering Her Kin as though she were his wife, and he still does not know her real name or birth- place.

In answer to the question How are they getting along, the settler and his cohabitant usually answer, "We live well." Some of the convict women told me that at home in Russia they had suffered from the insolence and beatings of their husbands, and rebukcs for each piece of bread eaten, while here, in penal servitude, they learned to enjoy the world for the first time. "Thank God! I am now living with a fine man; he feels compassion for me." Those in penal servitude sympathize with their cohabitants and treasure thcm.

Baron Korf told me: "Here, because of the scarcity of women, a peasant must plow, cook, milk the cow and wash his laundry, and if he is fortunate enough to obtain a woman, he really holds on to her. Take a look how he clothes her. A woman is honored by the convicts."

"Which, by the way, doesn't prevent her from going around with black-and-blue marks," added General Konon- ovich, who participated in the conversation.

There arc quarrels and brawls, and black-and-blue marks result, but the settler still chastises his cohabitant cau- tiously, since she has the upper hand. He knows that she is an illegal wife and can leave him any time and go to some- body else. Understandably the convicts do not feel for their women only because they know they may be abandoned. No matter how simple the composition of illegal marriages on Sakhalin, even here love in its purest and loveliest form is not a stranger. In Duc I saw an insane convict woman suffering from epilepsy who lives in her cohabitants hut. He is a convict, and nurses her very carefully, and when I said it must be difficult for him to live in one room with the woman, he said joyfully, "Not at all, your worship; it's a question of having compassion for her!" In Novo-Mik- haylovka the cohabitant of one settler has long been unable to walk and lies day and night on rags in the middle of the room while he takes care of her. \Y./hcn I tried to convince him that it would be more convenient to take her to a hospital, he spoke of his pity for her.

With these good and commonplace families, there also exists a type of free family, which partly accounts for the bad reputation of the "female problem" among convicts. From the very first moment of coming in touch with them, you find something nauseating in their artificiality and hypocrisy. They give you the feeling that they have been corrupted by prison life and slavery, and the family has long since rotted away and something which is not a family has taken its place. Many men and women live together, because they feel this is the way it should be, this is the custom in penal servitude. Cohabitation has become tradi- tional in the colony, and these people, possessing sick and weak-willed natures, have submitted to the arrangement although nobody has forced them into it.

A fifty-year-old Ukrainian peasant woman in Novo- Mikhaylovka came here with her son, also a convict. Her daughter-in-law had been found dead in the well, and so she left her husband and children and lives here with a cohabitant. Obviously all this is most repugnant to her, and she is ashamed to speak about it before a stranger. She despises her cohabitant, and at the same time she lives with him and sleeps with him; that's the way it has to be in penal servitude. The members of similar families are so alien to each ather that no matter how long they live to- gether under one roof, even five or ten years, they do not know how old the others arc, from which guberniya they came, or their patronymic. Asked the age of her cohabi- tant, a woman looks aside wanly and lazily, and usually answers, "Who the devil knows!" While the cohabitant is working or playing cards somewhere, the female cohabi- tant lolls in bed, lazy and hungry. If one of the neighbors enters the hut, she gets up unwillingly and says with a yawn that she "came because of her husband," and she is innocent of the crime for which she has been made to suffer. "The boys killed the devil, but they sent me to penal servirude." Her cohabitant returns home; there is nothing to do, there's nothing to talk about with the woman; the samovar should be lit, but there's no sugar or tea. Seeing his lazy cohabitant, a feeling of boredom and lassitude over- whelms him, but he never mentions his hunger or vexa- tion. Instead he sighs, and falls into bed.

When women in these families engage in prostitution, their cohabitants usually encourage them. A cohabitant regards a prostitute who earns a piece of bread as a bene- ficial domestic animal and respects her; that is, he himself prepares the samovar and is silent when she argues with him. She changes cohabitants frequently, selecting the one who is richer, or has vodka, or she changes them out of sheer boredom, for the sake of variety.

A convict woman receives prison rations which she shares with her cohabitant; sometimes this woman's ration is the only source of food for the family. Since the female cohabitant is formally listed as a worker, the settler recom- penses the government for her as for a worker. He pledges to deliver 20 p^^s of freight from one district to another or to deliver scores of logs to the post. This formality, how- ever, is only obligatory for peasant settlers and does not apply to convicts who live on posts and do nothing.

Having completed her term, the convict woman is trans- ferred to settler status and stops receiving food and cloth- ing allowances. Thus transfer to settler status does not ease her lot on Sakhalin. Convict women who receive rations from the treasury live better than settler women, and the longer the prison term, the better it is for the woman. If she has an unlimited term, this means that she is assured her piece of bread for an unlimited time. Settler women usually achieve peasant rights on favorable terms, that is, m six years.

At the present time there are more free women in the colony who voluntarily followed their husbands than there are convict women. Their ratio to the total number of convict women is 2:3. I recorded 697 free women. There was a total of 1,041 convict, settler and peasant women, which means that the free women represent 40 percent of all the adult women.⁸

Many impulses work on the women who forsake their homeland and follow their criminal husbands imo exile. Some do so out of love and sympathy; some from a firm conviction that only God can separate a husband and wife; some leave home out of a feeling of shame. In an obscure village the stigma of a husband's crimes still falls upon the wife. For example, when the wife of a criminal is rinsing her laundry in the river, the other women call her a jailbird. Some of the women are lured to Sakhalin by their husbands, and they fall imo the trap.

While still in the ship's hold, such prisoners write lcners home, saying it is warm on Sakhalin, there is much land, the bread is cheap and the adminisuation is wonderful. They write in the same manner from the prison, sometimes for several years at a stretch, always fabricating new allure- mems. They rely on the ignorance and gullibility of their women, and this reliance was frequemly justified, as shown by the facts.⁹

Finally, there arc women who go to Sakhalin because they are under the strong moral influence of their husbands. Such women probably participated in the husbands' crimes or enjoyed the fruits of crime. They were not arrested, only because there was insufficient evidence to bring them to court. The majority of the women who come to Sakha- lin are moved by compassion and pity leading to self-sacri- fice, and the unshakable force of conviction. In addition to the Russian women who voluntarily follow their husbands, there are also Tatars, Jewesscs, gypsies, Poles and Gcr- mans.¹⁰

When free wives arrive on Sakhalin they do not re- ceive any great welcome. Here is a characteristic episode: On October 19, 1889, 300 free wives, teen-agers and children arrived in Alexandrovsk on the Volumary Fleet ship Vladi- vostok. They sailed from Vladivostok for three to four days in cold weather withom any hot f^^. Among them, so I was informed by the doctor, there were 26 who suffered from scarlet fever, smallpox or measles. The ship arrived late at night. The commander, who evidemly feared bad weather, ordered the passengers and freight to be disem- barked that same night. They unloaded from midnight to 2 AM. They locked the women and children on the pier in the cutter shed and in the warehouse built for storing merchandise; the sick were put in a quarantine shed spe- cially built for the purpose, and their possessions were thrown helter-skelter into a barge. Toward morning the rumor spread that waves had torn the barge loose during the night and carried it out to sea. The women went into hysterics. In addition to all her possessions, one woman lost 300 rubles. The officials recorded the disaster and blamed the storm, but on the next day they began to find the lost anicles in the possession of criminals in the prison.

On arriving on Sakhalin, a free woman at first looks stunned. She is dismayed by the appearance of the island and the conditions of penal servitude. She tells herself in despair that she was not deluding herself when she came to join her husband and she expected the worst, but the reality proved even worse than her expectations. After speaking a few words to the women who arrived before her and after seeing their living conditions, she is thoroughly convinced that she and her children are doomed. Although more than ten or fifteen years remain of her husband's term, she dreams hopelessly about Russia and has no desire to hear about local farming, which she regards as insignificant and beneath contempt. She cries day and night and is full of lamentations as she remembers the relatives she left behind, as though they were dead. Her husband, acknowl- edging the enormity of his guilt before her, remains sullenly silent, but finally, coming out of his shell, he begins to beat and berate her for having come to him.

If the free wife arrived without money or brought so litde that it was only sufficient to buy a hut and if she and her husband do not receive anything from home, they soon begin to suffer hunger. There is no way to earn money, there is no place to ask for charity, and she and the chil- dren must be fed on the prisoner's rations which the con- vict husband receives from the prison and which is scarcely enough to feed one adult.¹¹

Here daily thoughts move in only one direction: what can I eat and how can I feed my children? In time her soul hardens from constant hunger, the mutual reproaches over a piece of bread, the conviction that it will never get any better. She comes to the conclusion that on Sakhalin no one ever fed well on delicate feelings, and so she goes out to earn five or ten kopecks, as one woman expressed herself, "with her own body." The husband also becomes hardened, he cares nothing for cleanliness, everything seems unimportant to him. At the age of fourteen or fifteen the daughters, too, arc sent out on the merry-go-round. The mothers haggle over them and arrange for them to live as cohabitants with rich settlers or guards. And all this takes place all the more easily because a free woman passes her time in complete idleness. There is absolutcly nothing to do in the posts; in the settlements, especially those in the Northern districts, the amount of farming that goes on is insignificant.

In addition w indigence and idleness, the free woman has yet a third source of misfortune—her husband. He may squander his rations and even the wife's and children's clothing on drink or cards. He may commit another crime or try to escape. The settler Byshevets of the Tymovsky dis- trict was being held in a cell in Due while I was there. He was accused of planning a murder. His wife and children lived nearby in the barracks, his house and homestead had been abandoned. In Malo-Tymovo, the settler Kuchcrcnko escaped, leaving his wife and children behind. Even if the husband is not included among those who murder or escape, the wife lives in daily dread, hoping against hope that he will not be punished, that he will not be accused unjustly, that he does not overstrain himself, or get sick, or die.

The years pass, old age approaches. The husband has served out his term of penal servitude and his term as a settler and is petitioning for his pcasant rights. The past is buried in oblivion, and he bids farewell to it, while there gleams before him, as he leaves for the mainland, the thought of a new, sensible, happy life far away. But it docs not always happen in this way. The wife dies of consump- tion and the old husband leaves for the mainland alone.

Or else she becomes a widow and does not know what to do, or where to go.

In Derbinskoye, a free woman, Alexandra Timofeyeva, left her husband, a milker, for the shepherd Akim. They live in a tiny, filthy hovel and she has already given him a daughter, while the husband took another woman as a co- habitant. In Alexandrovsk, the free women Shulikina and Fedina also left their husbands and became cohabitants. Nenila Karpenko became a widow and is now living with a setder. Convict Altukhov became a vagrant and his wife Ekaterina, a free woman, is now illegally married.¹²

According w the tenth census, there were 104.8 women to 100 men in the Russian guberniyas (1857--60).

This figure only indicates the composition of convicts by sex, and is useless if it is interpreted as an index of sexual morality. Women are more rarely sentenced to penal servitude, not because they are more moral than men but because, as a result of the social order and to a lesser degree because of the peculiarities of their nature, they are less exposed to external influences and to the risk of committing serious crimes. They do not work in offices or join the armed forces, they do not leave home for seasonal work, they do not labor in forests, in mines or at sea, and therefore they do not commit criminal breaches of trust or of military discipline or crimes which require masculine strength, such as looting the mails, highway robbery, etc. The laws concerning crimes against chastity, rape, seduction and unnatural vice are only applicable to men. On the other hand, women commit murder, torture, cause severe crippling and conceal murder more frequently than men. Among the men, 47 percent are murderers; among the women conviCts, 57 percent. As to those sentenced for poisoning, the number is not only relatively greater, but forms an absolute ma- jority. In I 889, there were more fe^le poisoners than men in all three districts, almost three times as many, but the relative proportions were 23 to 1. Nevertheless, fewer women than men arrive at the colony, and, regardless of the annual quota of free women, men still constitute an overwhelming majority. Such an unequal division of sexes is inevitable in a penal colony, and a balance will be achieved only when penal servitude comes to an end, or immigrants fl^^ the island and merge with the convicts, or when our own Mistress Frey appears, energetically propagating the idea that wholesome young women from por families should be transported to Sakhalin so that some kind of family life can be developed.

For information on Western European and Russian penal servirude, and for some partial observations on the female prob- lem, see the well-known book by Professor I. L. Foynitsky, A Study o/ Punishment in Relation to the Priion System.

In one of his articles Dr. A. V. Shcherbak writes: ''The de- barkation was only completed during the morning. All that re- mained was to embark the convicts who had been designated for the Korsakov Post and to receive the various delivery receipts. The first batch, 50 men and 20 women, were sent without delay. The itemized list of men did not indicate any trades, while the women were very old. They were sending out the worst" ("With Penal Prisoners," New Times, No. 5 38 i ).

For example, there is this order: "In accordance with the petition made to the commander of the Alexandrovsk district, presented in the report of January 5, No. 75, the convict Akulina Kuznetsova of the Alexandrovsk prison is moving to the Tymovsky district for joint housekeeping with settler Alexey Sharapov" (No.

25, 1889).

It is difficult to understand where women would live if they refused to become cohabitants. There are no separate quarters for them in penal servirude. In his report of I 889, the chief of the Medical Department writes: "Upon arrival in Sakhalin, they themselves must worry about living quarters . . . some of them cannot neglect any means whatsoever for obtaining funds to pay for them."

⁸ I personally was doubtful about these rumors. Nevertheless, I verified them on the spot and collected all instances which could serve as a basis for them. They say that three or four years ago, when General Gintse was the island commandant, a foreign con- vict woman was forcibly married to a former police officer. The convict Yagelskaya of the Korsakov district received thirty lashes because she wanted to leave her cohabitant, the settler Kotlyarov. It was in this place, too, that the settler Yarovaty complained that his woman refused to live with him. The following disposition was made: "NN. beat her." "How many?" "Seventy." The woman was beaten, but she still insisted on her own way and she moved in with settler Malovechkin who could not praise her enough. The settler Rezvetsov, an old man, caught his cohabitant with a certain Rodin and went to make a complaint. The follow- ing order was issued: "She is to be brought to the prison." The woman came. "You so-and-so, so you don't want to live with

Rezvetsov? Birch rods!" And Rezvetsov was ordered to beat his cohabitant himself, which he did with gusto. In the end she won out, and I have recorded her not as Rezvetsov's cohabitant, bur as Rodin's. And this is the sum of all the cases remembered by the people here. If due to her quarrelsome nature or debauchery a woman often changes cohabitants, she is beaten; but even such cases are rare and crop up only when settlers complain.

7 In Verkhny Armudan I recorded cohabitant Ekaterina Petrova living with the Tatar Tukhvatuli. He has children by her. This family's hired hand is a Muhammadan, as are the boarders. In Rykovskoye, settler Mahomet Uste-Nor lives with Avdorya Med- vedeva. In Nizhny Armudan the cohabitant of the Lutheran set- tler Peretsky is rhe Jewess Leya Permut Prokha, while in Bolshoye Takoe the peasant-formerly-convict Kalevsky cohabits with an Ainu woman.

^H In the first ten years of transportation by ships, from 1879 to 1889, the ships of the Voluntary Fleet carried 8,430 convict men and women and 1,146 members of their families following them into exile.

⁰ One prisoner even bragged in a letter that he had a foreign silver coin. The tone of these letters is cheerful and jocular.

Sometimes husbands voluntarily follow their wives into exile. There are three on Sakhalin: the retired soldiers Andrey Naydush and Andrey Ganin in Alexandrovsk, and the peasant Zhigulin in Derbinskoye. Zhigulin, who followed his wife and children, is an old man and behaves very oddly; he appears to be perpetually drunk and is the laughingstock of the whole street. One old Ger- man came with his wife to be with his son Gotdieb. He does not speak a word of Russian. Among other things, I asked him how old he is.

"I was born in 1832," he answered in German. Later he wrote 1890 with a piece of chalk and subtracted 1832.

A convict, a former merchant, was accompanied by his steward, who, incidentally, remained only one monrh in Alexandrovsk and then returned to Russia. According co Article 264 of the Code on Convitls, Jewish husbands cannot follow their convicted wives into exile and the lauer are only permitted to bring the babies they are suckling, and chen only with the husband's consent.

Here one is struck by the difference the circumstances of this free woman, a legal wife, and her convict woman neigh- bor, a cohabitant, who daily receives three pounds of bread from the prison. In Vladimirovka one free woman is suspected of kill-

246

ing her husband. If she is convicted and sentenced to penal servi- tude, she will begin receiving rations; this means that she will be in better circumstances than before the trial.

!2 The Code on Convicts also covers free women. In Article 85 we read: "Women who go voluntarily should not be separated from their husbands during the entire journey and are not subject to strict supervision." In European Russia or on a ship of the Voluntary Fleet they are free of all supervision. However, when the prison party is walking across Siberia or is being conveyed in cans, the convoy guards do not have time to distinguish in the crowd who is a convict and who is free. In Zabaikal I happened to see men, women and children bathing together in the river. The guards, standing in a semicircle, did not permit anyone to pass their cordon, not even children. According to Articles 17 3 and 153, women who voluntarily accompany their husbands "re- ceive clothing, shoes and food money during the trip until the designated place is reached""; they receive what amounts to a pris- oner's fation. But the Code does not state how the free women are supposed to cross Siberia—by foot or by cart. According to Article 407 they arc permitted temporary leaves of absence from their place of exile and may travel into the interior provinces if they receive their husbands' permission. If the husband dies in exile or if thc marriage is dissolved as a result of a new crime, according to Article 408, the wife may return to her homeland at government expense.

Describing the circumstances of criminals' wives and their children, who are only guilty because fate has decreed that they should be related to criminals, Vlasov states in his report that this "is probably the darkest page in our entire deportation system." I have already spoken of the disproportionate number of free women distributed in the districts and settlements, and how little they are respected by the local administration. Let the reader re- call the Due barracks for families. The fact that free women and their children are kept in common wards, as in prison, under dis- gusting circumstances, together with prison cardsharps, with their mistresses and their pigs, that they are kept in Due, in the most horrible and hopeless place on the island, paints a sufficient pic- ture of the colonizing and farming policies of the local authorities.

X VII Composition of the Population by Age - Family Status of Convicts - Marriages - Birth Rate - Sakhalin Children

even if the figures referring to the age groups of the convicts were distinguished by an ideal exactitude and were incomparably more complete than mine, they would still be practically useless. First, they are irrelevant, because they arc not based on natural or economic conditions but on juridical theories which have come into existence as a result of the Code on Convicts and the arbitrary actions of the people in the Prison Administration Headquarters. The age groups of the population will change only when a change occurs in their attitude to penal servitude in general and to Sakhalin in particular. This will happen when they begin to send twice as many women to the colony, or when free immigration commences with the completion of the Trans-Siberian railroad. Second, figures pertaining to a penal servitude island with its peculiar living conditions cannot be compared to figures relating to normal conditions in the Cherepovets or Moscow districts. So we find that the very small percentage of old people on Sakhalin does not indicate that there are any unusually grave conditions bring- ing about a high mortality, but merely that in most cases the convicts serve their sentences and leave for the main- land before reaching old age.

At present the age groups with the highest percentage are those between 25 to 35 (24.3 percent) and 35 to 45 (24.1 percent).¹ The ages between 20 and 55, which Dr. Gryaznov calls the work-producing ages, constitute 64.6 percent of the colony, which is one and a half times as much as in Russia generally.²

Alas, the high percentage and the surplus of able-bodied persons do not serve as an index of economic prosperity. They only indicate a labor-force surplus, and with their help cities and wonderful roads arc being built on Sakhalin notwithstanding the enormous number of starving, idle and incapable people. The costly building program when set beside the poverty of the working-age groups reminds you of the ancient days when temples and circuses were being built, and there was an artificial labor surplus, while people of working age were starving.

Children up to fifteen years of age are prominent in the statistics: they comprise 24.9 percent of the population. In comparison with similar statistics in Russia,³ this per- centage is small, but it is large for a penal servitude colony, where family life exists under such unfavorable conditions. As the reader will be able to observe, the fecundity of the Sakhalin women and the low mortalif of children will raise the percentage of children still further, pcrhaps as high as the Russian norm. This is all to the g^^ because, notwithstanding all the consequences of colonization, the proximity of children serves as a moral support to the exiles, and more than anything else reminds them of their native Russian villages. Looking after their children saves the exiled women from idleness. There is also a harmful aspect, because the unproductive ages demand large ex- penditures by the population and contribute nothing ma- terially to their lives, and so increase the economic pressure. They intensify the poverty, and so the colony is placed in an even more unfavorable circumstance than a Russian village. When the Sakhalin children become adolescents or reach maturity, they leave for the mainland, and thus the expenses borne by the colony are not reimbursed.