Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/485

Rh all that the prison administration hoped to do was to make such changes in the system as would render it less objectionable to the Siberian people, and less burdensome to the commercial interests of an important colony. After my return to the United States the plan of reform that Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy had in hand was completed, and an outline of it was published repeatedly in the Russian and Siberian newspapers. Its provisions were, in brief, as follows:

First. To substitute imprisonment in European Russia for forced colonization in Siberia, and to retain the latter punishment only "for certain offenses," and "in certain exceptional cases." The meaning of this is, simply, that one class of exiles — namely, poseléntsi, or forced colonists — would thenceforth be shut up in European Russia, unless the Government, for reasons best known to itself, should see fit to send them to Siberia as usual. This reform — if the "certain offenses" and "exceptional cases" were not too numerous — would have affected, in the year 1885, 2841 exiles out of a total number of 10,230.

Second. To increase the severity of the punishment for vagrancy by sending all vagrants into hard labor on the island of Saghalín. This section was aimed at runaway convicts, thousands of whom spend every winter in prison and every summer in roaming about the colony.

Third. To deprive village communes of the right to banish peasants who return to their homes after serving out a term of imprisonment for crime. This would be a limitation of the exile system as it now exists, and in 1885 it would have affected 2651 exiles out of a total of 10,230.

Fourth. To retain communal exile, but to compel every commune to support, for a term of two years, the persons