MY new life so graciously granted to me by the czar soon began. I was summoned to the office, and the governor asked me to sign a paper which stated that my death sentence had been commuted to penal servitude for life. Then he announced to me that I should be put in fetters. The solemn face with which he made this announcement appeared ridiculous to me. What meaning could fetters have to me now?

The doctor, for form’s sake, examined me and said that I was “well fit.” Nearly all the handcuffs and leg-fetters there could be found in the enormous prison were brought into the office and tried on me, but all proved too large and fell off. They were made for men, and feminine wrists and ankles did not measure up to their standard. Finally the governor found a way out of this exasperating difficulty. A blacksmith was called, my wrists and ankles were measured, and on the following morning new fetters were ready. Whether by mistake or intentionally, I don’t know, but they were made so tight that on the second day my hands began to swell. This caused me excruciating pain. I tried my best to conceal this circumstance from the governor, as I was sure that the fetters had been put on me at his personal wish, and my suffering would only gladden him.

On January 27th I was taken to the railroad station and put on a train for Moscow. On the road the soldiers of the convoy—there were four of them—risking their own liberty, took off my handcuffs. In the same car, in a separate compartment, sat the officer in charge: he could come in any minute and see that my handcuffs were off. I asked the soldiers to put them back on me, but they would not hear of it. And only a short distance from Moscow they handcuffed me again.

When I was brought into the office of the Moscow forwarding prison, _Butírki_, the governor was greatly surprised to see me in fetters. He exchanged significant glances with the secretary, and whispered something to him. He ordered to place me in a solitary cell. Three days later the fetters were taken off, after seventeen days of pain and humiliation.

Soon after my arrival there were brought to Butírki five other young women revolutionists: Aleksandra Izmailovitch, the daughter of a general who had not yet returned from the battlefields of Manchuria. She had attempted the life of the Minsk chief of police during the Jewish pogróm in that city. For this she was sentenced to death, which was commuted to a life term at hard labor.[22] Anastasia Bitzenko, a school teacher, who shot General Sakharov at Saratov, one of the five generals personally sent by the czar to suppress the peasant revolt. She was sentenced to death, which was commuted to a life term at hard labor.[23] Lydia Yezerskaya, the wife of the Mayor of the city of Mohilev, who attempted the life of the Mohilev Governor Klingenberg for his active part in the Jewish pogróm in that city. She was sentenced to thirteen years at hard labor. Revecca Fialka, a dressmaker, who was arrested at Odessa in charge of a bomb factory and sentenced to ten years at hard labor. And lastly Marie Spiridonova, a school teacher, who shot Governor Luzhenovski of Tambov when he was returning with his Cossacks from a punitive expedition to the villages. She was sentenced to death, which was commuted to a life-term at hard labor.

The forwarding prison was terribly congested. In cells which were built for twenty-five were seventy-five and even a hundred people. Every day 200 or 300 politicals were sent away to different parts of Siberia, but as many, if not more, were daily brought to Butírki. It seemed as if all Russia were being exiled. But notwithstanding that the revolution was crushed, the prisoners so deeply believed in the speedy liberation of Russia that they went to hard labor and exile with a light heart.

“You may laugh at your life sentence,” comrades shouted to us through the window bars. “You will not have stayed there long when a _free_ nation will carry you in their arms back to _free_ Russia.”

In the middle of June, at night, the governor of the prison came into my cell and told me to get ready for the journey. A few minutes later I learned, through the window, that all the six of us women hard-labor convicts were to be transported somewhere. About twelve o’clock we were led to the office and told that we should be sent to Akatúi. There, in this office, I first met Marie Spiridonova. She looked so young and frail,—she was only twenty—and her beautiful face was so pale that I thought she would not live long. She tried to smile to us, but her eyes remained sad.

All the six of us were conveyed to the railroad station in a closed carriage, and put in a separate car attached to the Siberian express. Accompanied by twelve soldiers and an officer, we left Moscow for the distant prison of Akatúi.