Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/484

468 had a long and interesting conversation with Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy with regard to the exile system and a plan of reform that he was then maturing. The view of the question taken by him at that time was precisely the view that I have indicated in the preceding paragraph. He did not expect to bring about the abolition of the exile system as a whole, nor did he intend to recommend such a step to the Tsar's ministers. All that he proposed to do was so to restrict and reform the system as to make it more tolerable to the Siberian people. This he expected to accomplish by somewhat limiting communal exile, by abolishing penal colonization, and by increasing the severity of the punishment for vagrancy. The reform was not intended to change the status of hard-labor convicts, nor of administrative exiles, nor of politicals; and Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy told me distinctly that, for political convicts, a new prison was then building at the famous and dreaded mine of Akatúi, in the most lonely and desolate part of the Trans-Baikál. Of this fact I was already aware, as I had visited the mine of Akatúi only a short time before, and had seen there the timber prepared for the building. It was the intention of the Government, Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy said, to pump out the abandoned Akatúi mine, which was then half full of water, and set the politicals at work in it.

At the time of our conversation the chief of the prison administration did not regard the complete abolition of the exile system as even possible, much less practicable. He estimated that it would cost at least ten million rúbles to build in European Russia the prisons that the abolition of the exile system would necessitate, and he did not think that, in the straitened condition of the Russian finances, it would be possible to appropriate such an amount for such a purpose. Furthermore, the complete abolition of the system would make it necessary to revise and remodel the whole penal code; and to this step objections would probably be raised by the Minister of Justice. Under such