THE thought that I would be exiled to Siberia did not frighten me in the least. The desire to escape from those odious walls was so great that I would have been glad to be led not only into exile, but even to the gallows. But day after day, month after month went by, and I still sat in the Odessa prison, whither my comrades and I were transferred several days after the trial, impatiently waiting to be transported to Siberia. To all my protests and insistent requests to send me there the prison authorities made one reply:

“We are awaiting special instructions from St. Petersburg with regard to you and your comrades.”

“What more can they do to me?” I frequently asked myself. A feeling of rage filled my heart more and more often as the months passed. I could no longer speak calmly with the authorities. At their very sight my blood began to boil.

“How much longer will you torture me within these walls?” I cried whenever the prison governor appeared.

Conflicting rumors about the war with Japan penetrated into our cells, but they could not hide from us that Russia was being defeated by the Japanese. With every Japanese victory the prison authorities relaxed the severe discipline more and more. This relaxation of the prison régime, bought at the price of thousands of Russian people slain in battle, made our life a little easier. The hope that the Japanese might help us free ourselves from the despotic government gave us new strength to bear and wait.

In July, 1904, the minister of the interior, Plehve, that pillar of reaction who had boasted that he would “wipe out the revolution in Russia,” was killed by a bomb thrown at his carriage by Yegor Sazonov, a member of the “Fighting League” of the Socialist-Revolutionists’ Party. This happy news was brought to us by the prison authorities themselves who were greatly elated at the death of their chief. Plehve was cordially hated not only by the people, but even by his own subordinates. The appointment of Prince Svyatopolk-Mirski as minister of the interior put an end, for a short time at least, to the sufferings and hardships, which political prisoners were forced to endure.

Soon after the assassination of Plehve, my comrades and I were unexpectedly included in a party of convicts who were being exiled to Eastern Siberia. Before leaving the prison we learned what it meant to be “deprived of all rights and exiled to Siberia for life.” We were summoned to the office and told to put on convict garb. The dress of a female convict consists of a coarse gray linen shirt, a skirt made of the same material, a pair of black _kotí_, or slippers, with square linen foot-wrappers in lieu of stockings, a long gray _khalát_[9] with a yellow diamond-shaped patch in the back between the shoulders, and a gray kerchief. This dress changes a person beyond recognition. When we were led back to our cells our comrades did not recognize us. I was frightened by my own reflection in the mirror when I saw myself in this garb for the first time. There is something terribly degrading in it.

“What have I done? what have I done?” I repeated in great agitation. I paced my cell, with difficulty dragging my feet dressed in enormous, ugly kotí. And the feeling of hatred toward my oppressors grew in my heart and I could not overcome it.

On the next morning my comrades and I were lined up with a party of convicts who were being transported to Siberia for robbery and murder. Our wrists were chained to theirs, and in this fashion we were marched four abreast, in the middle of the dusty road, to the railroad station.

For the last time I looked at the big city to which I had come in quest of knowledge and happiness.

“Oh God!” I thought to myself, “I left my father and mother, sisters and brothers; I left my native fields, and came to this great city to find the key to a better life: and _this_ is what I found!”

“Farewell, farewell, my native land ...” began the prisoners in a chorus when the train started. Their plaintive tones accompanied by the jingling of the chains made an indelible impression upon me.

The convict car was filthy and crowded to its utmost capacity. The prisoners were making themselves comfortable, and their familiarity with the surroundings suggested to me that they were not making this dreadful journey for the first time.

The _stárosta_, or head-man, elected by the convicts figured out with the help of the under-officer of the convoy the amount of _kormovíye_[10] for the party. Ten kopecks was the sum a convict received for his daily subsistence. For this money one could buy on the road one and one-half pounds of bread. But peasant women meet the trains, especially in Siberia, and give alms to the hungry, unfortunate convicts—bread, milk, pies, and other eatables.

After an agonizing ride which lasted about two days, we arrived in Kief. There we were placed in the forwarding prison. A forwarding prison differs from a regular one in that the former is, in most cases, wholly unfurnished, and the only article a cell contains is a large wooden tub called _parásha_. We slept on the dirty floor with nothing under us but our overcoats.

For two days we were kept there, and were not even let out for the daily walk. There were fifty people in our _kámera_,[11] twenty-five women and as many children. Some of the children became sick, and their unhappy parents lived in constant fear that they would die from lack of pure air. Mrs. Orloff begged the prison governor to permit her to take her sick child out in the yard for a few minutes, but his only answer to the distracted mother was:

“_Peresýlni_[12] are not supposed to be let out for a walk in the forwarding prison. To-morrow you will leave here.”

SIX POLITICAL PRISONERS AND THEIR GUARDS

Resting at the étape in their march to Akatúi. Miss Sukloff is second from the left ]

From Kief we were taken to Kursk, and after spending two days in the forwarding prison went on to Voronezh. And thus changing from the crowded convict car to the forwarding prison and from the forwarding prison to the convict car, and stopping in every large city, we finally crossed the Urals and reached the town of Tyumén, in Siberia, after three weeks’ travel. The Tyumén forwarding prison is located at a great distance from the city, and the muddy road over which we were marched came near becoming a grave-yard for some of us.

George Kennan, the well-known American writer, describes this prison in these words:[13]

“I looked around the cell. There was practically no ventilation whatever, and the air was so poisoned and foul that I could hardly force myself to breathe it. We visited successively in the yard six kámeras, or cells, essentially like the first, and found in every one of them three or four times the number of prisoners for which it was intended, and five or six times the number for which it had adequate air space. In most of the cells there was not room enough on the sleeping-platforms for all the convicts, and scores of men slept every night on the foul, muddy floors, under the _nari_,[14] and in the gangways between them and the walls....”

In these germ-infested barracks we were kept for three long months. Typhus fever and other epidemic diseases carried off two or three people every day, and we escaped death only through some miracle.

Winter had already set in when we started out again. In a blinding snow-storm we were lined up by the soldiers of the convoy, and began our journey to Krasnoyarsk. The convict car was even more filthy and crowded than in European Russia. The severe Siberian frosts did not add to our comforts. There were the usual stops for a day or two in a forwarding prison, and marching to and fro, in half-torn shoes, over roads covered with ice and snow.

Tormented with hunger and cold, exhausted by the hardships of Siberian travel in winter, and extremely fatigued we dragged ourselves into the forwarding prison at Krasnoyarsk after sixteen days of travel. Here at last we learned to which places we were to be banished.

One morning the prison governor brought in a bundle of official papers. These contained our several destinations. To my inexpressible terror I was to be sent _alone_ to the village of Aleksandrovskoye, in the province of Yeniseisk, about three thousand miles from my native province of Vilna. I stood before the governor, listened to his words, but could not believe that I was to be parted from my friends, taken to a remote, lonely village, and left there to pass my days alone.

“How is that? how is that?” I kept repeating the meaningless words, knowing perfectly well that the governor had nothing to do with designating the place of exile and could not change anything.

From Krasnoyarsk we were taken to Kansk. The Kansk forwarding prison, which was the last _étape_ of our memorable journey together, almost became the grave of the whole party. We came to the prison in the evening. The barrack in which we were placed had evidently not been heated for a long time, as ice and snow lay on the floor all along the walls. We asked the head-keeper for some wood, and made a fire in the stove. After the fire had burned out, we closed the chimney and went to sleep. At night a child began to cry. Some of us heard his cries, but could not move from our places. Attracted by the child’s cries, a keeper came and called to us, but seeing that we did not respond, opened the door. Then he understood the cause of our silence. The cell was filled with fumes of charcoal, and we all lay in a stupor. He immediately summoned a number of soldiers who carried us out on the snow and rendered first aid. As soon as we had fully recovered we were taken to our respective destinations. The Orloffs were sent to the village of Ribinskoye, in the province of Yeniseisk, about thirty miles from Aleksandrovskoye. They went first. Then two guards came and took me.

From Kansk we had to travel on foot. Before starting the exiles on their march the prison doctor examines them, and if any are found to be weak or infirm _telyégas_[15] are provided for them to ride in. To my great luck the doctor decided that I was too sick to walk, and I was allowed to ride in a cart.

MISS SUKLOFF READING IN HER CELL ]

Two guards escorted me to the first étape and delivered me under signature to the _uryádnik_.[16] The uryádnik summoned the head-man of the village and ordered him to procure a horse. After a long dispute the peasants found an old nag, and I, under the escort of the village constable, proceeded to Aleksandrovskoye. In every settlement which we passed on the way the peasants, and particularly the women, regarded me very curiously. On learning that I was an exile they fed me, and in one village the women even gave me a pair of high felt boots, as I suffered terribly from the extreme and continuous cold.

Finally we arrived at the _vólost_, or rural district, to which Aleksandrovskoye belonged. Here the uryádnik and the vólost scribe opened the papers which the constable had carried all the time in a sealed envelope.

“There are special instructions with reference to you,” said the scribe to me.

“What are those special instructions?” I asked.

“It is stated here that you are a political offender and must be guarded very closely,” he replied.

I slept that night at the scribe’s house, and on the next day he took me to the village of Aleksandrovskoye, which was about eighteen miles from the vólost. The village consisted of perhaps thirty huts, and was inhabited mostly by Russian colonists. At the house of the _stárosta_,[17] to which I was first taken by the scribe, women and peasants gathered and began to consider what should be done with me. The women, folding their arms on their breasts, stood shaking their heads compassionately and saying in melancholy tones:

“Poor girl, poor girl! Your parents must have shed bitter tears when you were taken from them in such tender years.”

Some of them offered to take me to their homes. One old peasant who stood thoughtfully stroking his long, white beard thus settled his doubts:

“It means, then, that she was sent to us for life and we may do with her whatever we want. Did I understand you rightly?” He turned to the scribe who was explaining to the peasants how to treat me.

At last, after a long discussion, it was decided that I would stay at the house of the church watchman. The uryádnik ordered the constable to come every morning to my house to see if I was still there. At parting he warned the peasants:

“Remember that you are all responsible for her.”

The peasants made the sign of the cross, and in a body led me to the house of the church watchman.

Yet for a long while the women continued their expressions of sympathy and shed tears, repeating, “You poor, unfortunate orphan,” before I was finally left alone. When they cried and called me “orphan” I really felt that I was alone, alone in this whole great world. I sat helplessly looking about myself, and a feeling of pity for myself filled my heart. But the immediate environment did not give these feelings a chance to grow. The people would not let me rest for a minute.

My host, an old man white as snow, soon came in and asked me:

“Can you read?”

After receiving an affirmative reply, he extracted a letter from his pocket. It was from his son, a soldier in the Manchurian army.

The news that I could read traveled fast. All the peasants gathered all printed and written matter they could find in the village and brought me to read to them. They surrounded me on all sides and listened to me with respectful attention. The desire to know about the war with Japan was not mere curiosity on the part of the illiterate peasants. They had a blood interest in it, as nearly every one of them had a son, a husband or a brother on the battlefield, from whom they had not received word for months, and despaired of ever hearing from them.

On the morrow the women came to me carrying bowls of milk, plates of butter, and various other gifts, and begged me to write to their sons and husbands. Listening to the tales of woe of these old mothers and young wives, who desperately clung to the last hope that their loved ones had not been killed, but only wounded and crippled for life; looking at the little orphans who already knew that they were to see their fathers no more, I forgot my own grief and thought only of what I should do to lighten their terrible burden. But to my great sorrow I had no means of being useful to them, and all I could do was to write letters to people whom I believed to be dead.

A few days after my arrival the village priest came to see me. He was a robust man of a very cheerful disposition and liked to drink a great deal. He spoke to me in a fatherly manner.

“Only do not get discouraged. There is nothing eternal in this world,” he said in answer to my statement that I had been sent there, not for a term of years, but for life. “My daughter is going to be married,” he continued, “and there is no one here to make dresses for her, so you had better come to live with us and help her with the sewing.”

I consented, as I was very glad to do something to earn my bread.