Оглавление
Griffiths Arthur. Russian Prisons
Russian Prisons
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. GENERAL SURVEY
CHAPTER II. TWO FAMOUS FORTRESSES
CHAPTER III. THE EXILE SYSTEM
CHAPTER IV. THE OSTROG AT OMSK
CHAPTER V. LIFE IN THE OSTROG
CHAPTER VI. TIUMEN AND TOMSK
CHAPTER VII. VAGABONDAGE AND UNIONS
CHAPTER VIII. TREATMENT OF POLITICALS
CHAPTER IX. CHANGES IN SYSTEM
CHAPTER X. SAGHALIEN
Отрывок из книги
Arthur Griffiths
St. Peter and St. Paul; the Schlüsselburg; the Ostrog at Omsk; the story of Siberian exile; Tiumen, Tomsk, Saghalien
.....
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.”
.....
