Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/474

458 the eastern provinces of European Russia, such as Perm, Orenburg, and Kazán, join in the protest, on the ground that their towns and villages are overrun by criminals who have made their escape from Siberia, and that the aggregate of crime within their limits is, in consequence, enormously increased. They say to the Government, "You collect criminals from all parts of Russia proper, transport them across the Siberian boundary-line, and then turn them loose only a few hundred miles from our eastern frontier. A large proportion of them make their escape, and, straggling back in a destitute condition, they quarter themselves upon us. We are as much entitled to protection as the central, southern, and western provinces, from which these criminals were originally taken. If you insist upon sending thieves and burglars to Siberia, instead of shutting them up in penitentiaries, we beg you to send them far enough to the eastward so that they cannot straggle back across the frontier to prey upon us."

The number of criminals now sent to Siberia annually, not including innocent wives and children, varies from 10,000 to 13,000. These criminals may be divided, for my present purpose, into five great classes, viz: first, hard-labor convicts; secondly, compulsory colonists; thirdly, communal exiles [persons banished on account of their generally bad character by the village communes to which they belong]; fourthly, vagrants; and, fifthly, political and religious exiles. The proportion which each of these classes bears to the whole may be shown in tabular form as follows, the figures being taken from the report of the Tiumén Prikáz o Sílnikh for the year 1885.