When our conversation touched on this subject, Mr. Kamorsky, the Prison Inspector of the Amur region, confirmed that the administration has no right to keep an exile in settler status for any longer than ten years, or to make the granting of peasant status contingent upon any conditions whatsoever. Nevertheless, on Sakhalin I had occasion to meet old men who had spent considerably more than ten years living in the settlements and had not yet received peasant standing. However, I was not able to verify their claims against the official records and so cannot vouch for their accuracy.
In 1872, Sinel'nikov, the Governor-General of eastern Siberia, banned the use of criminals as servants. Nevertheless, even though it still has the force of law, this ban is circumvented in the most flagrant manner. The Collegiate Registrar assigns half a dozen convicts to work as his personal servants, and when he organizes a picnic, he sends an advance party of ten convicts with all the provisions. General Gintse and General Kononovich, island commandants, did fight against these kinds of abuses, but not energetically enough. I found only three orders—at the very most— bearing on the question of servants, and even these were written in such a way that anyone especially keen on it could easily interpret them in his favor.„.At any rate, when I was on Sakhalin in 1890, all officials—even those with no connection with the prison administration (for instance, the director of the post and telegraph office)—flagrantly exploited convict labor for their private use. Furthermore, the salaries and the cost of feeding these convict servants were paid out of the government treasury.
If one were to go by the settlement supervisor's figures for the list of homesteads, one might be tempted to conclude that all three Arkovo [settlements] have made tremendous
strides in agriculture in the brief period of their existence
In point of fact, however, this is not the case. All three Arkovos are among the poorest settlements in northern Sakhalin. They might have arable land; they might have cattle; but they have yet to produce a harvest.
Explain Discrepancies Between Questions and Answers
Sometimes the most interesting answers can be those that are incorrect or approximate, or even not answers at all.
To the question "What are you?" the settler usually answers, "A free man." After a decade or, given the right circum- stances—as defined by legislation pertaining to exile—after six years, the settler's status changes to "peasant, former exile." To the same question, the peasant answers with dignity—as if he should not be lumped together with any others but is distinctive in some way—"I am a peasant." However, he does not add the qualification "former exile.". Except for soldiers, none [of the former exiles]—be they petty bourgeois, shopkeepers, or clergy—volunteer their most recent status, as if this were already forgotten; instead, they identify their former status in a single word: "free." Asked about their past, they usually preface their answer with the phrase "When I was free."...Occasionally, when asked his name, a 100 percent Russian Orthodox peasant will answer, in all seriousness, "Karl." He might turn out to be a vagrant who had traded names with a German he might have met on the road. I jotted down two such cases: Karl Langer and Karl Karlov. . Women over forty have a hard time giving their age and have to think hard before answering. Armenians from Yerevan province never know their age. One said to me, "Thirty, maybe, or maybe even fifty by now." In cases like these, I had to estimate the age by appearance and then verify it against the record. Youngsters fifteen or older usually say they are younger. A young woman who's already engaged or who has been working as a prostitute for quite some time, will nevertheless give her age as thirteen or fourteen. The reason for this is that poor families receive government rations for children and adolescents below the age of fifteen, and so self-interest prompts
them to lie Line eight: "In what year did you arrive on
Sakhalin?" The answer rarely came without much deliberation. The year of one's arrival on Sakhalin was always a year of terrible misfortune; and there is always the possibility that they may not know the year or may have forgotten it. Ask an old convict woman when she came to Sakhalin and she will answer apathetically, without even thinking, "Who knows? Must have been in '83." Her husband or lover interrupts. "What are you blathering? You came in '85." "So, all right, maybe it was '85," she sighs. We start to calculate, and it turns out the man was right. The men are not as apathetic as the women, but they take a long time in coming up with an answer. They ponder and consult with each other.
"What year were you brought to Sakhalin?" I ask a settler.
"I was in the same convoy as Gladky," he answers, unsure of himself and looking over at his pals.
Gladky came with the first convoy, and the first convoy, that is, the first Dobrovolets,5 came to Sakhalin in 1879. I write down that date. Alternatively, the answer will go as follows: "I spent six years in forced labor, now I'm in my third year as settler. so, you figure it out."
"In other words, you've been on Sakhalin for nine years?"
"No way. I spent two years in the central prison before I came to Sakhalin."
And so it goes. Or here's another answer: "I came the same year Derbin was killed." Or, "That was when Mitsul' died.". "How are we supposed to know? What do you take us for, scholars?" And only after being pressed will they finally admit, "Well, I used to be able to make out print, but now, you know, I forgot how to do it. We're a bunch of ignoramuses, peasants." The blind or nearly blind also call themselves illiterate.
Cite Documents
By way of example, transcribe or reproduce written documents.
A guard, usually an illiterate, low-ranking member of the local command, is posted in each settlement. He reports to visiting officials that everything is in order, keeps an eye onthe settlers, and makes sure that they do not leave without permission or fall behind in their agricultural work. He is the settlement's nearest thing to an official, often the only judge, and his reports to the administration provide crucial documentation that is used in evaluating the settler's conduct as homesteader and settler. Here is an example of a guard's report:
List of Inhabitants of the Village of Upper Armudan Reported for Misconduct:
Surnames and given names Note why in particular
Izdugin, Anany
Kiselev, Pyotr Vasil'ev
Glybin, Ivan
Galynsky, Semyon
Kazankin, Ivan
Do Not Preach
Tell things as they are; report the facts so readers may form their own opinions and reach their own conclusions.
Thief Ditto Ditto
Negligent of home and
obstinate Ditto
According to the island commandant, ".investigations are undertaken on insufficient grounds, conducted in a desultory and incompetent manner, and the suspects in question are detained without cause." The suspect or the accused is taken under guard and jailed. When a settler was murdered in Goly Mys, four men were arrested and detained in dark,cold cells.6 Several days later three of them were released, and one was retained in custody. He was put in shackles and was given a hot meal only once every three days. Then, in response to a guard's complaint, he was given one hundred strokes of the lash, and was kept in the dark, intimidated, and deprived of food until he confessed. During this time a free woman, Garanina by name, was also in prison under suspicion of having murdered her husband. She too was locked up in a dark cell and a hot meal every third day. When one of the officials was interrogating her in my presence, she complained that she had been sick for a long time but that for some reason she had not been permitted to see a physician. When the official asked the guard in charge of the cells why he had not bothered to call in a doctor, this was his reply, verbatim, "I did report this to the honorable warden, but he said, 'Just let her croak.'"