Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/48

32 when in doubt, acted upon their own judgment, and when irritated or excited disregarded the letters of instruction altogether. The natural results of such a state of affairs were confusion, disorder, and constant abuse of power. In one place the administrative exiles were required to appear every day at the police-station, sign their names in a book, and report personally to the isprávnik; in another place they were subjected to a constant and humiliating surveillance, which did not respect even the privacy of young women's bedrooms. One isprávnik would allow them to earn a little money by teaching or practising medicine, while another would throw them into prison for merely giving a music lesson or prescribing a single dose of quinine. An exile in Ust Kámenogórsk might go three or four miles from his place of banishment without receiving so much as a reprimand, while another exile, in Íshim, might be sent to an ulús in the province of Yakútsk for merely walking two hundred yards into the woods to pick berries. Everywhere there were irregularities, inconsistencies, and misunderstandings which brought the administrative exiles almost daily into collision with the local authorities.

This state of things continued until the year 1882, when the present Tsar approved a code of rules for the government of all persons living at home or in exile under police surveillance. I purpose to review briefly this Code, and then to illustrate, by means of selected cases, its bearing upon the life of administrative exiles in Siberia. The Code comprises forty sections and fills five closely printed octavo pages; and it is a somewhat singular fact that, although its provisions relate almost wholly to persons who have been administratively banished, they do not contain anywhere the word "exile," nor the word "banishment," nor the word "Siberia." The author of the Code seems to have been ashamed to let it clearly and definitely appear that these