Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - The Terror in Russia (1909).djvu/40



HE ill-treatment of those who have been condemned to death—down to the very moment of the execution—and the terrible physical sufferings inflicted in the most barbarous way in the morning hours which precede the execution, and during the execution itself, have created quite an epidemic of suicides in the prisons of Russia.

As a part of the above-mentioned inquiry, I have now before me a list of those suicides in the prisons which have found their way to the daily Press in Russia. This list extends from January, 1906, to November 1, 1908, and contains 160 cases, out of which 30 took place in 1906, 70 in 1907, and 60 during the first ten months of 1908.

Here are some abstracts from that terrible list. They contain a few cases for 1906, and the whole list for 1908:—

1. In a political prison in Moscow, John Fedouloff, 23 years old, hanged himself.

2. In a political prison in St. Petersburg, a medical woman-student, M., shot herself.

3, 4. In Uman, in consequence of police outrages, there is a regular epidemic of suicides and cases of madness: a wine merchant, Gervitz, hanged himself; a man named Toulchiner was saved just in time from the rope; two others went mad.

5. In Odessa, a political prisoner, Leibovitch, poured kerosene on his bed, set it on fire, threw himself on the bed, and thus ended his life.

6. In Moscow, K. Schvetz hanged himself when under arrest.

7. In Orel, a peasant, E. Soboskin, being in solitary confinement, hanged himself.

8. In St. Petersburg, in the Cross prison, in a punishment cell a sailor, Arnold, hanged himself.

9. In Elisavetgrad, Larionoff, condemned to death, waited for the