Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/277

Rh worse. In March, 1888, Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy, chief of the Russian prison administration, issued the following order with regard to the treatment of political convicts of the hard-labor class.

Ministry of the Interior,

Chief Prison Administration. No. 2926.

St. Petersburg, March 1, 1888.

To the Governor of the Island of Saghalín.

Your High Excellency: On the steamer Nízhni Nóvgorod of the volunteer fleet, which is to sail from the port of Odéssa on the 20th of March, 1888, there is a party of 525 convicts banished to the island of Saghalín. Among these criminals condemned to penal servitude are the political offenders Vassílli Volnóf, Sergéi Kúzin, Iván Meísner, and Stánislaus Khrenófski. In notifying you of this fact the Chief Prison Administration has the honor respectfully to request that you make arrangements to confine these political offenders, not in a separate group by themselves, but in the cells of other [common criminal] convicts. In making such arrangements it is desirable not to put more than two politicals into any one cell containing common criminals. In making the arrangements for confining these politicals in prison and employing them in work, no distinction whatever must be made between them and other criminals, except in the matter of surveillance, which must be of the strictest possible character. Neither must any difference be made between them and other convicts in respect to punishments inflicted for violations of prison discipline. You will not fail to inform the Chief Prison Administration of the manner in which the above political offenders are distributed on the island of Saghalín, and to forward reports with regard to their behavior.

[Signed] M. Gálkine Wrásskoy,

Director of the Chief Prison Administration.

Up to the time when the above order was issued some difference had been made in Siberian convict prisons between the treatment of political offenders and the treatment of burglars, highway robbers, and murderers. Both classes were confined in the same prisons, received the same food, and wore the same dress and leg-fetters, but the politicals were isolated in cells specially set apart for them, and were