In the summer of 1910 I fell sick. The doctor from Gorni Zerentúi was summoned, and he found that I suffered with appendicitis. My comrades began to send petition after petition to the chief of kátorga, asking him to do something for me, but received no reply. My condition seemed hopeless. I could not eat the coarse food, and a slow death from starvation threatened me. Just then the chief prison inspector, Semenkovski, came from St. Petersburg to inspect our prison. When he asked my comrades if they had any requests to make they all answered that the only thing they asked for was that I should be transferred to a hospital. Several days later the governor announced to us that Semenkovski had ordered to transfer me to Gorni Zerentúi. We could hardly believe it. During the three and one-half years of our stay in the Maltzev prison there were many cases of sickness, but we never succeeded in having the patients removed to a hospital.

Four soldiers came in, and laid me on a stretcher. My comrades stood around me in a circle, and each one of them tried to say a few words of encouragement. But their eyes and faces were sad, and told me something different. They bade me good-by, hardly able to restrain their tears.

The gate opened, and the soldiers carried me out. Yet for a long time I could see the group of comrades who stood in the prison yard and waved their handkerchiefs to me.

The soldiers walked briskly, and soon we came to Gorni Zerentúi. I was placed in a narrow, half-dark, solitary cell—this was the hospital. I lay there for several weeks. The prison doctor, who was drunk most of the time, could not help me. After a great deal of official correspondence the authorities at last summoned another doctor from Algatchí, and the two decided to perform an operation. For two days they cleaned some cell which was supposed to be the operating-room. Then the doctor went to the Nertchinsk Zavód to get the necessary instruments. But when everything was ready, and they were preparing to take me to the operating-room, our drunken doctor refused to operate upon me.

For two and one-half months I was kept in Gorni Zerentúi. I do not know what would have become of me if not for Comrade Sazonov.[33] He prevailed upon the governor to get for me permission to summon a private doctor from Chitá or Irkutsk. Money for this purpose he had received from his parents. When this request was telegraphed to the governor of Chitá he ordered to transfer me to the Irkutsk prison.

It was the beginning of October, and the cold weather had already set in. I was exhausted with constant fever and hunger. To travel to Irkutsk in my condition seemed altogether impossible. But I welcomed this decision of the higher authorities, considering it the best way out of my misery.

“Now the end will come sooner,” I thought to myself. “And it will not be so hard for my comrades when I shall be far away from them.”

On the 22d of October, early in the morning, I was carried out of my cell and put in a sleigh. Two soldiers, a matron, and a féldsher accompanied me. The farther I went from the prison the greater my desire to live grew. I breathed the clear, frosty air of the mountains, I enjoyed the sights of nature, and my strength gradually returned to me. I felt better every day. I passed ten happy days, and on the eleventh I came to Irkutsk, and the heavy gates of the prison again closed upon me. But without these gates there were neither the black forests of Akatúi nor the bare mountains of Maltzev: I heard the bustle of city life outside, and the possibility of escape from here gave me new hope.

For eight months I struggled with my illness. The prison hospital was filthy and had no facilities for an operation. The doctor could not perform it alone, and private physicians refused to operate under such unsatisfactory conditions. The authorities were already contemplating sending me back when a happy idea occurred to me. I wrote secretly to an Irkutsk doctor asking him to perform the operation. I told him in my letter that it would be easier for me to die at once than meet a slow and lingering death from starvation. He understood my position. He came with two of his colleagues, bringing instruments and everything else necessary. I went to the operation firmly believing that I would get well and escape.

Footnote 22:

Her sister Yekaterina shot at Admiral Tchukhnin at Sebastopol after his summary execution of soldiers and sailors of the Black Sea fleet and slightly wounded him. She was shot without trial immediately after the attempt, in the yard of Tchukhnin’s residence, and the admiral personally gave the command to fire.

Footnote 23:

She said at her trial: “General Sakharov suppressed the peasants and I suppressed him.”

Footnote 24:

So called after the military insurrection of December 1825.

Footnote 25:

One of the organizers of the “Fighting League.” He was accused of having planned the assassination of Minister Sipyagin, Governor Bogdanovitch of Ufá, and the attempt on Governor Obolenski of Kharkof, and sentenced to death, which was commuted to penal servitude for life. He was brought to Akatúi from the fortress of Shlússelburg, in 1906.

Footnote 26:

Penal colonies.

Footnote 27:

Karpovitch shot Minister Bogolyepov in 1897. He was brought to Akatúi from the fortress of Shlússelburg, in 1906. After completing his hard-labor term he was exiled to a little village in the Trans-Baikal, and escaped from there.

Footnote 28:

A male nurse.

Footnote 29:

Alexander Works.

Footnote 30:

A kind of soup.

Footnote 31:

Mehtus was sent to the Nertchinsk kátorga with the special mission to “discipline” the political prisoners. The régime which he established was beyond human endurance. For the least trifle they were beaten, put in chains, and kept in the kartzer for weeks. He was the first in recent years to order the flogging of politicals. Both he and Borodulin were later assassinated by the order of the Party. Mehtus was shot at a restaurant at Chitá by a woman whom the crowd hid from the police. Borodulin was shot near his house at Algatchí. After this the régime in the hard-labor prisons changed somewhat for the better, and continued so until 1910.

Footnote 32:

Hard-labor convicts, after completing their term, spend the rest of their life in Siberian exile.

Footnote 33:

When, several weeks later, the new prison governor Vysotzki issued an order to flog the political prisoners Sazonov committed suicide by drinking poison. Nine others failed in their attempt to end their lives.