Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/103

Rh whom the mir will not thus readmit are exiled to Siberia by administrative process.

The political offenders that are exiled to Siberia do not constitute a separate penal class or grade, but are distributed among all of the classes above enumerated. I was not able to obtain full and trustworthy statistics with regard to them from any source of information open to me. A fragmentary record of them has been kept recently by the inspectors of exile transportation, but this record covers only a few years, and includes only "administratives," or persons banished by executive order for political "untrustworthiness." All the rest are classed, both in the reports of the inspectors and in the books of the prikáz, as either hard-labor convicts or penal colonists, and in these classes there is no means of distinguishing state criminals from common felons. There can be no doubt, however, that the number of political offenders is much smaller than it is generally supposed to be. From the annual reports of Colonel Vinokúrof, inspector of exile transportation for Western Siberia, it appears that the number of politicals banished by administrative process from 1879 to 1884 is as follows:

This is at an average rate of 125 per annum. If twenty-five more per annum be added for politicals sent to Siberia as hard-labor convicts and penal colonists, and not included in the above table, the whole number deported will make a little less than one per cent. of the total number of exiles; which is probably an approximation to the truth. This