Russian Prisons

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The History and Romance of Crime

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY

[Illustration]

THE GROLIER SOCIETY LONDON

[Illustration:

Young Girl Revolutionist Condemned to the Scaffold ]

So severe was the Russian government in the measures adopted to repress the revolutionists that mere school-girls were exiled, imprisoned or executed. Many well-born girls made it their chief aim to help the peasants, enduring the privations and hardships of the labouring classes. Madame Vera Phillipova, a young woman of great beauty, was long the most popular person in the revolutionary movement. She became identified with the conspiracy of “the Fourteen,” and was thrown into the Schlüsselburg for the term of her natural life.

~Russian Prisons~

ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL THE SCHLÜSSELBURG THE OSTROG AT OMSK THE STORY OF SIBERIAN EXILE TIUMEN, TOMSK, SAGHALIEN

by

MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS

Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain

Author of “The Mysteries of Police and Crime,” “Fifty Years of Public Service,” etc.

[Illustration]

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

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EDITION NATIONALE Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.

NUMBER 307.

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INTRODUCTION

The huge empire founded by the Czars of Russia in the latter half of the sixteenth century was based upon absolute autocracy. The Czar by virtue of his divine origin exercised absolute authority over the many diverse elements consolidated under his sovereign will. From the earliest times no idea of personal liberty was tolerated; the slightest expression of independence in thought and action was peremptorily forbidden. The attitude of the government has ever been uncompromisingly severe toward all malcontents, and Russian history for the last two centuries is one long record of conspiracy constantly afoot, and constantly repressed by savagely cruel coercion. Imprisonment, the absolute loss of physical freedom, has taken a wider meaning in Russia than in other countries, for it is the lot in one form or another of two classes of offenders: the ordinary criminal under a civil code, from which capital punishment is now excluded, and the political dissidents deemed criminal by the arbitrary government of the land and deserving of exemplary and vindictive punishment. Russian prisons are in some respects the worst and most horrible the world has seen, and they are more especially reprehensible in these latter days when humane considerations are allowed weight in the administration of penal institutions.