But there was a weak point in the plot. It was quite unusual for officers of rank to travel without escort, and Myshkin had not had sufficient funds to take with him confederates disguised as soldiers or gensdarmes. The ispravnik grew suspicious, the more so as the exile Chernyshevski was an important political offender, and he hesitated to surrender him without seeing his way more clearly. He told Myshkin that he must have the authority of the governor to set his exile free. Myshkin, unabashed, offered to go in person to seek the governor’s consent, and he set off for Yakutsk, attended by a complimentary escort of Cossacks. The ispravnik astutely sent another Cossack to pass them on the road with a letter of advice for the governor. The messenger caught up with the first party and made no secret of his mission.
The game was up, and Myshkin, in despair, made a bolt for the woods. The Cossacks promptly gave chase, but Myshkin drew his revolver, beat off his pursuers and succeeded in getting away. He wandered through the forests for a week, and was at last captured, half dead from cold and privation. He was lodged first in the prison of Irkutsk and then brought to St. Petersburg, where he was thrown into the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and he lay there for three years in a solitary cell awaiting trial. He was kept in the Trubetzkoi Bastion, near a prisoner whom Mr. Kennan afterward met in Siberia and who described his neighbour’s sufferings feelingly. “Myshkin,” he said, “was often delirious from fever, excitement or the maddening effect of long solitary confinement, and I frequently heard his cries when he was put into a strait-jacket or strapped to his bed by the fortress guard.”
Myshkin’s trial caused a great sensation. The government had refused to allow the proceedings to be taken down in shorthand, and the prisoner declined to make any defence; he made a fiery speech, however, denouncing the secrecy of the trial and declaring that the public ought to hear the whole case through the press. He was ordered out of court, and being removed by force, his last words, half stifled, were: “This court is worse than a house of ill-fame; there they sell only bodies, but here you prostitute honour, justice and law.” This insult aggravated the original offence, and the court increased his sentence to ten years’ penal servitude with forfeiture of all civil rights.
Myshkin was a born orator, but by his own admission he lived to regret his eloquence. When on his long journey to Eastern Siberia, one of his comrades died at Irkutsk, and he was moved to make a brief oration at the funeral. He spoke out in church, eulogising the high moral character of the deceased, and declaring that “out of the ashes of this heroic man and others like him will grow the tree of liberty for Russia.” Here the police interfered; Myshkin was dragged out of church and sentenced later to an additional fifteen years’ penal servitude. So it was said of him that he never made but two speeches in his life, one of which cost him ten and the other fifteen years of imprisonment. Myshkin regretted the second speech, which, he said, would do no good, as the world could not hear; it was the mere gratification of a personal impulse, and it added so many years to his detention, that, even if he lived to emerge from exile, he would be too aged to work effectively in the cause of Russian freedom.
Myshkin afterward escaped from Kara, when a more rigorous régime had been introduced by Count Loris Melikov, and permission to work in the open air had been withdrawn. One prisoner, Semyonovski, driven to desperation, committed suicide, and several condemned to long terms made up their minds to break prison. Myshkin and a comrade were the first to go; a second and a third pair followed; a fourth couple were caught in the act, and the authorities, spurred on to extreme activity by the presence at Kara of the head of the prison department, recaptured six of the fugitives. Myshkin succeeded in reaching Vladivostok, and was on the point of embarking on board a foreign ship when he was recognised and retaken.
Myshkin and thirteen others who were deemed dangerous were sent back to St. Petersburg in 1883, where they were lodged at first in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul and then in the “stone bags” of the fortress of Schlüsselburg. The dread of insanity from a new term of solitary confinement drove Myshkin to repeat the same tactics as at Kharkov. He struck one of the officers, and found more prompt retaliation this time, for he was tried by court-martial and shot.
Another striking incident occurred at the Kharkov prison. Two prisoners on their way there were nearly rescued by an attack on the prison van. One of the guards was shot, and the release would have been effected had not the horses taken fright and stampeded, which led to their recapture. The attack was made by a number of mounted men, armed, and one of these, Alexei Medvediev, also called Fomin, was afterward caught in Kharkov station. He was committed to the gaol, but managed to escape with a party of ordinary criminals by burrowing under a wall. They did not get farther than a wood near-by when they were recaptured. Medvediev’s friends arranged a plan to set him free again. Two of them, disguised as gensdarmes, brought a forged order to the prison gate calling for the prisoner, who was to be escorted, they said, to the gendarmerie office for examination. The false gensdarmes were detected and taken into custody, sent for trial and condemned to death. The sentence was afterward commuted to penal servitude for life, and they were sent to Kara. Medvediev was treated after the same fashion, but he was detained in various prisons of Western Siberia, closely guarded, and was at last returned to the Alexis Ravelin in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul for five or six years. He is described by a comrade—Leo Deutsch—as “a man of consummate bravery who literally despised danger, and was always ready to embark on the most terrible adventure. He had been a postilion and had received only a scanty education at an elementary school, but by his own exertions he had gained a respectable amount of knowledge. … At Kara he became an adept in various handicrafts; he was an excellent tailor, shoemaker, engraver and sculptor, and afterward, when he was living as a free exile, he became a watchmaker and goldsmith. Unfortunately, soon after he left the prison he fell a victim to alcoholism, to which he had an inherited predisposition; all attempts at reclaiming him were vain, and in a few years he was beyond hope.”
CHAPTER II
TWO FAMOUS FORTRESSES
The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul—Political prisoners confined within its walls from an early date—Used by Peter the Great—The imprisonment of the author, Chernyshevski—Dmitri Pisarev—The Trubetzkoi Bastion—Kropotkin’s account of the prison—Leo Deutsch’s experiences there—The sad case of Netchaiev—Probability that he was flogged to death—Severity of the régime of the Alexis Ravelin—The fate of prisoners confined in Schlüsselburg unknown—The prison of Kiev—Leo Deutsch confined there—Succeeds in making his escape—Other escapes—Prison of Moscow—General depot for exiles about to embark for Siberia—Account of the journey to Siberia by train—Kindliness shown by the peasants—Food and gifts of clothing brought to the train for the exiles—The Red Cross League—The exiles’ begging song—Treatment of the “politicals”—Dastievich and the governor—Women revolutionists.
The government of the Czar was not slow to avail itself of the coercive means afforded by cellular confinement, and to use them especially against political offenders. At first these prisoners were distributed among the common criminal prisons such as that of Kharkov, and located, where the accommodation existed, in “secret” or solitary confinement cells. According to George Kennan, the secret cells in Siberian prisons were intended for persons accused of murder and other capital crimes. They had neither beds nor sleeping platforms and contained no furniture. Their occupants slept without pillows or bed clothing on the cold cement or stone floor, and during the day they had either to sit or lie on this floor, or to stand.
The politicals at Kara in Eastern Siberia lived under “dungeon conditions,” absolutely apart, breathing foul air continually, starving on bad and insufficient food and completely deprived of exercise. The need for separate prisons nearer home led