Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/59

Rh they could suffer no longer. There is a limit to human endurance, and that limit the Surgút exiles had reached. All that I know of their fate, and of the result of their protest, I learn from a brief paragraph in the Siberian Gazette, which announces that "nineteen audaciously impudent political exiles" in the town of Surgút "have been removed"; and that the isprávnik of Surgút and the chief of police of Tobólsk have been officially "thanked" by the provincial governor, Mr. Troínítski, for the distinguished services rendered by them on the occasion of this "removal." To what lonely and far-away corner of Siberia these nineteen unfortunate politicals have been sent for their "audaciously impudent" attempt to touch the heart and awaken the sympathies of Count Dmítri Tolstói, the Minister of the Interior, I do not know. There are only a few "places of domiciliation" worse than Surgút. One of them is Berózof, near the mouth of the river Ob, 2700 miles from St. Petersburg; another is Turukhánsk, a "town" of 32 houses and 181 inhabitants situated near the arctic circle, 4100 miles from St. Petersburg; and the third is the dreaded province of Yakútsk.

The administrative exile who, upon reaching his place of banishment, finds himself within the jurisdiction of a governor like Mr. Troinítski is probably forced by imperious necessity to petition the Minister of the Interior for relief. He is without pecuniary means of his own; he cannot live on the allowance of three dollars a month made to him by the state; and the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" are enforced by the governor with such pitiless severity that a man who is subject to them cannot possibly earn his daily bread and at the same time keep out of jail. Under such circumstances the banished political offender, who perhaps is a physician, writes to the Minister of the Interior a