Another important source of police power was the right granted it by a decree of 12 March 1882 to declare any citizen subject to overt surveillance. An individual in this category, known as pod.nadz.omyi, had to surrender his personal documents in exchange for special police papers. He was not allowed to move without police authorization and his quarters were liable to be searched at any time of day or night. He could not hold any government job or any public post, belong to private associations, or teach, deliver lectures, operate typographies, photographic laboratories or libraries, or deal in spirits; he could practise medicine, midwifery and pharmacology only under licence from the Ministry of the Interior. The same ministry decided whether or not he was to receive mail and telegrams.2 7 Russians under overt surveillance constituted a special category of sub-citizens excluded from the operations of law and the regular administration and living under direct police rule.
The security measures outlined above were reinforced by criminal laws which tended to weigh Russian jurisprudence overwhelmingly in favour of the state. Kennan made the following observations, all of them readily verifiable, concerning the Criminal Code of 1885:
In order to appreciate the extraordinary severity of [the] laws for the protection of the Sacred Person, the Dignity, and the Supreme Authority of the Tsar it is only necessary to compare them with the laws contained in Title X. for the protection of the personal rights and honor of private citizens. From such a comparison it appears that to injure a portrait, statue, bust, or other representation of the Tsar set up in a public place is a more grievous crime than to so assault and injure a private citizen as to deprive him of eyes, tongue, an arm, a leg, or the sense of hearing. [Compare Section 246 with Section 1477.] To organise or take part in a society which has for its object the overthrow of the Government or a change in the form of the Government, even although such society does not contemplate a resort to violence nor immediate action, is a crime of greater gravity than to so beat, maltreat, or torture a human being as partly to deprive him of his mental faculties. [Compare Section 250 with Section 1490.] The making of a speech or the writing of a book which disputes or throws doubt upon the inviolability of the rights or privileges of the Supreme Authority is as serious an offense as the
308
outraging of a woman. [Compare Section 252 with Section 1525.] The mere concealment of a person who has formed an evil design affecting the life, welfare, or honor of the Tsar, or the affording of refuge to a person who intends to bring about a restriction of the rights or privileges of the Supreme Authority, is a more serious matter than the premeditated murder of one's own mother. [Compare Section 243 with Section 1449.] Finally, in the estimation of the penal code, the private citizen who makes or circulates a caricature of the Sacred Person of the Tsar, for the purpose of creating disrespect for his personal characteristics or for his management of the empire, commits a more heinous crime than the jailer who outrages in a cell until she dies an imprisoned, helpless, and defenseless girl fifteen years of age. [Compare Section 245 with Sections 1525, 1526, and 1527.]28
The system of political repression included exile. This could be imposed either by a court sentence or by administrative decision, and could take one of several forms ranging widely in severity. The mildest form was to be sent out of the country or into the provinces for a specified length of time to live under overt police surveillance. More severe was a sentence of exile for settlement to Siberia (western Siberia was considered a much milder place of punishment than eastern). Such 'settled exiles' (ssylnoposelentsy) were essentially free men allowed to work gainfully and have their families with them. If they had money to supplement the small government allowance, they could live in considerable comfort. The harshest form of exile was hard labour {katorga, from the Greek katergon, meaning galley). This type of penal servitude had been introduced by Peter the Great who used criminals to build ships, work mines, help construct St Petersburg and furnish free labour wherever else it was necessary. Hard labour convicts lived in prison barracks and performed menial work under guard. Dostoevsky, who spent time doing katorga, left an unforgettable picture of it in his Notes from the House of the Dead. After 1886, the exploitation of forced labour (including prison labour) was governed by special regulations designed to assure that the government made money on it. In 1887, for instance, it brought the Ministry of the Interior a gross income of 538,820 rubles out of which, after expenses, there remained a net profit of 166,440 rubles 82 kopeks.28
Because so many different officials had the power to impose sentences of exile, statistics on this type of punishment are hard to come by. According to the best available official statistics, there were in 1898 in all Siberia nearly 300,000 exiles of all sorts, as well as 10,688 prisoners serving sentences of hard labour.'"However, as had been the case in the first half of the century (p. 295), only a small fraction of these exiles were committed for political crimes. Zaionchkovskii, who had access to the pertinent archives, cites official reports to the effect that in 1880 there were in the whole Russian empire only about 1,200 people under sentences of exile for political crimes; of these, 230 resided in Siberia and the rest in European Russia; a mere 60 served terms of hard labour. (These figures do not include over 4,000 Poles exiled for participation in the 1863 uprising.) In 1901, the total number of political exiles of all sorts, both those sentenced by courts and administrative procedures, increased to 4,113, of which 3,838 were under overt police surveillance, and 180 on hard labour.31