Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/481

Rh has expressly asked that no more forced colonists be sent there, since the territory is full of them already; Vice- admiral Possiót and four Siberian governors-general [Kaz- nakóf, Anúchin, Ignátief, and Korf] have urged that the exile system be radically modified or abolished; the Sibe- rian newspapers have been hammering away at the subject for almost a quarter of a century; three or four specially appointed commissions have condemned penal colonization and have suggested other methods of dealing with crimi- nals — and yet, nothing whatever has been done. Every plan of reform that has been submitted to the Tsar's min- isters and to the Council of the Empire has been found to be "impracticable," "inexpedient," or in some way objec- tionable, and has finally been put, as the Russians say, "under the tablecloth." The principal reason assigned for the failure of the Government to reform its penal system is lack of money; but it has been conclusively shown by Yádrintsef and by Professor Foinítski that the existing penal system is not only wholly unsatisfactory from every point of view, but is actually more expensive and wasteful than almost any other that can be imagined. Yádrintsef, for example, in computing the expense of the exile system to the Government, estimates that it costs, on an average, 300 rúbles, or $150, merely to transport one criminal from European Russia to Siberia; "a sum," he says, "which would maintain that same criminal for a term of at least four years in the most expensive prison in European Russia. In view of the fact," he continues, "that a large number of serious offenders make their escape and are sent back from

1 General Kaznakóf, governor-gen- eral of Western Siberia from 1884 to 1879, was strongly opposed to the ex- ile system, and not only urged its abo- lition but made a most comprehensive, detailed, and exhaustive study of its results, in order to have a foundation upon which to base reforms. In a pro- test that he once made against the

forced colonization in his territory of a large number of fierce and lawless Circassian mountaineers he said, in- dignantly, to the viceroy of the Cau- casus, that anybody could govern a country if he had the privilege of sending out of it all the people that he could n't manage.