There is no resident priest at the local church. When needed, he comes from Marinsky. Good weather is as rare here as it is in Nikolayevsk. I have been told that this spring, while a surveying expedition was working in the area, there were only three days of sun in all of May. Just try to work without sunlight!
Two naval ships, the Bobr and the Tungus, and two torpedo boats were at anchor. I remember another detaiclass="underline" we had just dropped anchor, when the sky turned black, storm clouds piled up, and the sea turned a strange bright-green.
The days were beautiful, with clear skies and a transparency reminiscent of fall weather in Russia. Evenings were spectacular: I remember the horizon in the west flaming up, the dark-blue sea, and a stark, white moon rising from behind the mountains. On evenings such as these, I used to love driving through the valley between the post and the village of Novo Mikhaylovsk; the road ran smooth and even along the tracks of the tiny rail cars and the telegraph lines. Beyond Aleksandrovsk, the valley narrowed, the shadows grew thick, and the gigantic burdocks looked like exotic tropical plants. Dark mountains pressed in from all sides. Flames from burning coal rose into the sky, and beyond them, one could see the glow of distant forest fires. The moon was rising. Suddenly a fantastic apparition caught my eye: along the rails a small platform came gliding toward me, and on it, leaning on a pole, stood the figure of a convict dressed in white. I was gripped by anxiety.
Structure the Chapters
After telling the story of the journey itself, treat each topic separately, relegating each to its own chapter.
In the following chapters I will describe the posts and settlements and the various types of convict labor and the prisons as best I can, given the limitations of my short visit. Convict labor on Sakhalin takes the most varied of forms: it is not specialized within a single area such as gold or coal extraction, but covers all elements of life and encompasses all the settled areas of the island. Forest clearing, construction, marshland draining, fishing, mowing, loading and unloading of cargo—all these varieties of convict labor have merged so seamlessly with the life of the colony that they can be treated as something independent of the island only if viewed from a very rigid perspective, such as penal mining and factory operations.
I will begin with the Aleksandrovsk valley, with the settlements situated along the Duyka River. This valley was chosen for the first settlement on northern Sakhalin not because it had been most thoroughly explored or was thought to best meet the goals of colonization, but at random because it happened to be closest to Duй, where the penal colony was first situated.
Having completed my survey of the settled areas of Sakhalin, I will now turn to the details of life—some important and others less so—that characterize the colony.
being objective Identify Your Sources
Indicate information that comes from secondary sources or from firsthand experience. Footnote sources; give references to further readings in specialized areas; provide biographical data for individuals mentioned in the text; include anecdotes or details that enhance your credibility; give your critical evaluation of secondary sources.
There are six tiny settlements on the western shore, right above the mouth of the Arkay River. I did not visit any of them, so my information comes from an inventory of homesteads and the baptismal registry.
Until 1875, the Korsakov Post sentry and the military guardhouse occupied the prison compound, which was located in a dark hovel. "Perhaps this sort of crowding is permissible as a punitive measure for convicts," writes Dr. Sintsovsky, "but a military guard is another matter altogether and there is no known reason why he should be obliged to undergo the same punishment."1
From a purely hunting point of view, vertebrates are abundant on Sakhalin. From a commercial point of view, sable, fox, and bear are the most valuable among the fur- bearing animals that are found here in the greatest numbers.2
The second village is Mitsul'ka, named in honor of M. S. Mitsul'.3
In addition, here I made the acquaintance of Major Sh., the Korsakov prison warden, who had formerly served in the St. Petersburg police force under General Gresser. Sh. was a tall, fleshy man with the solid, imposing carriage that I have observed to be characteristic of local and regional police officers. When he was telling me about all the famous writers of St. Petersburg with whom he was on friendly terms, the major referred to them simply as Misha, Vanya, etc. And when he invited me to lunch and dinner, he twice—entirely without leave—addressed me with the familiar "you" form.4
Ascertain Reliability
Understand the premises and biases of the source material.
The statistics on non-Russian, indigenous peoples are compiled by bureaucrats who not only lack the necessary educational or professional credentials, but also are not given any instructions or guidelines on how to carry on their work. When they set about collecting data locally—in the Ghiliak settlements, for instance—they are heavy-handed and rude and impatient in their dealings with the gracious Ghiliaks, whose notion of courtesy does not include arrogance and force, and whose abhorrence of surveys and registrations of any kind calls for exceptional skill and tact and tact on the part of the interviewer.
Before entering the service, the overwhelming majority of bureaucrats who were put in charge of the agricultural colony were neither landowners nor peasants, and were utterly ignorant in matters pertaining to agriculture. In compiling their reports, they invariably fell back on data collected by their inspectors. For their part, local agronomists either lacked training and did nothing; or produced outrageously biased reports; or, straight from the classroom, limited their research to purely theoretical and formal aspects of the problem; or, finally, used the data that was compiled by junior clerks for the use of other offices. One would think it would be possible to obtain solid information from the very people who did the plowing and sowing, but even this source turned out to be unreliable. Afraid of losing their subsidies or of jeopardizing their ability to buy seed grain on credit or of being sentenced to spending the rest of their lives on Sakhalin, the exiles usually underreported their harvests and the amount of land under cultivation.
Make Comparisons
Juxtapose material from the most diverse sources, including your own experiences.
The agricultural inspector's report includes a table on harvest yields for the past five years that is based on data the island commandant considers "sheer fabrication." The figures suggest that the median grain yield is three to one per unit of tilled land. This may be corroborated by another figure: in 1889, the grain yield averaged some 440 pounds per adult, which would represent a threefold yield on planted grain.