Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/45



N order that I may set forth in a connected and intelligible form the results of my investigation of the Russian exile system, I find myself compelled, at this point, to break the continuity of my narrative, and to bring together, in a single chapter, a quantity of material relating to only one branch of my subject, but gathered piecemeal, at different times and in many widely separated parts of Siberia. To present a large number of closely related facts in the chronological order in which they were obtained would be to scatter them through half a dozen chapters, and thus deprive them of much of their cumulative force and significance. It seems best, therefore, to group such facts in a single chapter dealing exclusively with that particular feature of the subject to which they all relate. In a previous chapter, entitled "Exiled by Administrative Process," I grouped a number of related facts to show the working of what is known in Russia as the "administrative" banishment of political offenders. I purpose, in the present chapter, to group in a similar way a few facts with regard to the life of political offenders under police surveillance in the places to which they have been administratively banished.

The forcible deportation of "politically untrustworthy" citizens by executive order and without trial first became common in the later years of the reign of Alexander II. Administrative banishment had been resorted to, as I have said, before that time as a means of getting rid of obnoxious