Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/416

394 One of the most important functions of the exile artél is the enforcement of agreements entered into by its members, and particularly agreements to exchange names and identities. Every exile party is made up of two great classes, namely: A—criminals sentenced to hard labor with imprisonment; and B—criminals sentenced merely to forced colonization without imprisonment. Every convict in class "A" strives to escape the hard labor and the imprisonment by exchanging his name and identity for the name and identity of some convict in class "B." It would seem, at first thought, as if the difficulties in the way of such a transaction would be virtually insuperable. It is not only strictly forbidden by law, but it is a transaction in which one of the parties, apparently, gets all the benefit. Why should convoy officers allow such exchanges of names, and why should the colonist be willing to go to the mines in the place of the hard-labor convict, even if permitted to do so? The difficulties are only apparent, and the questions are easily answered. The convicts in every marching party that leaves Tomsk for Eastern Siberia number about 400, and they change convoy every third day. It is utterly impossible for a convoy officer to so familiarize himself, in three days, with the faces of 400 convicts, that he can tell one from another. If Iván Pávlof answers to the name of Mikháiel Ivánof at the roll-call of the party, he virtually becomes Mikháiel Ivánof. The convoy officer does not know either of them by sight, and even if he called the roll himself, and looked attentively at every man, he would not notice the substitution. So far as the authorities are concerned, therefore, names and identities can be exchanged without the least difficulty or danger. The willingness of the colonist to exchange names with the hard-labor convict and go into penal servitude in the latter's stead may be explained almost as easily.

In every exile party there are a few reckless, improvident, hard-drinking peasants who have been condemned to forced