Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/47

Rh Tará, Tiukalínsk, Ishím, Yalútorfsk, Semipalátinsk, Kókchetav, Akmolínsk, Kurgán, Surgút, Ust Kámenogórsk, Omsk, Tomsk, and Berózof.

No rules for the government of these exiles were at that time in force. Banishment by administrative process was, in a certain sense, an extra-legal measure — a measure not defined and regulated by legislative enactment, but rather set in operation and directed by personal impulse. As a natural consequence it was pliant, changeable, and wholly subservient to the will of the higher authorities. By administrative process a man might be banished to Siberia for a year, for ten years, or for life; he might be sent to the hot sun-scorched plains of the Írtish, or to the snowy wilderness of Yakútsk; he might be treated like an infant ward, like a forced colonist, or like a hard-labor convict; and, as against the Minister of the Interior, he had not a single legally sanctioned and enforceable right. His situation was in many respects worse than that of a common felon. The latter knew at least how long and for what reason he had to suffer; his political status was definitely fixed by law, and to some extent he was protected by law from capricious ill-treatment at the hands of petty Siberian officials. The administrative exile, however, had no such protection. He stood wholly outside the pale of promulgated law; his term of banishment was not fixed, but could be indefinitely extended by the authorities at pleasure; he had no ascertainable rights, either as a citizen or as a criminal, and no means of knowing whether the local officials in dealing with him overstepped or did not overstep the limits of their rightful authority. The only checks upon their power, so far as he was concerned, were the "secret" letters of instruction that they received now and then from the Minister of the Interior. Even these checks were nominal rather than real, since the letters were often inconsistent one with another; they did not provide for half of the multifarious cases that arose; and the local authorities,