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270 Amúr, are unqualified falsehoods." The denial was doubtless inspired by the chief of the prison administration or the Minister of the Interior, but it was none the less futile and ill-advised, because the salient facts of the case were at that time known, and known through official statements and admissions, to at least half the population of Eastern Siberia. Only a month later the chief of the prison administration himself admitted the flogging, but pleaded justification. He declared that "Kennan and others etherealized Nihilist women out of all recognition," that the political exiles and convicts "brought troubles upon themselves by being excitable and intractable" and that "an example was necessary."

In June, 1891, a gentleman living in a European city wrote to the editor of The Century Magazine, apparently for publication, a letter upon this subject, in which he gave what seemed to be an officially inspired version of the facts; and, as I have not been able to find any other defense of the action of the East-Siberian