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[Illustration: _Leo. Deutsch._]




                        SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIBERIA

                         SOME EXPERIENCES OF A
                         RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONIST




               FIRST EDITION            _October,  1903_
               Reprinted                _December, 1903_
               Reprinted                _February, 1904_




                        SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIBERIA
                         SOME EXPERIENCES OF A
                         RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONIST

                             BY LEO DEUTSCH

                      TRANSLATED BY HELEN CHISHOLM


                           WITH ILLUSTRATIONS








                            THIRD IMPRESSION








                                NEW YORK
                           E. P. DUTTON & CO.
                                  1904




                       _Printed in Great Britain_




                          TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE


The author of the following narrative is a leader in the Russian
revolutionary movement. The German transliteration of his name is given
here as being the form he himself uses in Western Europe; but he is
called “Deuc” in the English version of Stepniak’s _Underground Russia_,
which was translated from the Italian, retaining the Italian
transliteration of names. A more exact rendering of the Russian would be
Deitch, the “ei” pronounced somewhat as in the English word “rein.”

George Kennan’s valuable work, _Siberia and the Exile System_, the fruit
of investigations carried on under circumstances of much difficulty and
even danger, has made its many English and American readers acquainted
with the true conditions of life among Russian political prisoners and
exiles. The story given in the present volume of the painful and tragic
events that took place in the political prisons at Kara after Mr. Kennan
had left the Russian Empire was written to him by, among others, a
friend resident in Kara at the time, whose letter he published in his
book. In it are also to be found additional particulars concerning the
earlier or later history of many persons whose names occur in the
following pages; and it thus throws an interesting light on Mr.
Deutsch’s story, which is told so quietly, with such an absence of
sensationalism, that it is sometimes necessary to read between the lines
in order to grasp fully the terrible realities of the situation.

It may, perhaps, be useful to readers unfamiliar with the history of the
Russian revolutionary movement if I give here a rough sketch of its
development, and of its position at the present time.

From the first consolidation of the Empire under the Tsars in the latter
half of the sixteenth century, Russian despotism has consistently
regarded with apprehension and disfavour all manifestation of
independent thought among its subjects. There has never been a time when
those bold enough to indulge in it, even in what English people would
consider a very mild form, were not liable to persecution, and this
traditional attitude of repression and coercion had the inevitable
result. Even early in the eighteenth century secret societies had come
into being, but these were mostly of the various religious sects or of
the Freemasons. When they began to assume a political character they
were at first confined entirely to the upper classes, and took the form
of revolts organised among the military, the last and most important
being that of the Decabrists (or Decembrists), who attempted to
overthrow the monarchy on the occasion of Nicholas I.’s accession in
1825.

Liberal views were to a certain extent fostered by Alexander I.
(1801-1825), who at one time openly talked of granting a Constitution.
Russians who visited Western Europe, officers in the Napoleonic
campaigns, and others, had “brought France into Russia,” had made the
French language fashionable, and thus had opened a way for the
importation of new philosophical, scientific, and political literature,
eagerly appreciated by the developing acuteness of the Russian mind.
Literary influence, even the purely romantic, has throughout ranged
itself on the side of liberty, Pushkin heading the poets and Gogol the
novelists. Indeed, one may safely say that up to the present day nearly
every Russian author of any note has been implicated—some to a greater,
some to a less degree--in the revolutionary movement, and has suffered
for the cause.

Alexander I. in his later years, and his successor Nicholas I., fell
back on a reactionary policy. Even Freemasonry was prohibited, mere
literary societies of the early forties were considered seditious, and
their members were punished with imprisonment and death. There now
sprang up political secret societies, whose dream was of a federal
republic, or at least of a constitutional monarchy.

The accession of Alexander II. in 1855 strengthened the hopes of the
reformers. The study of political and social questions became the
fashion; while professors, students, and the “intellectuals” of the
upper and middle classes warmly engaged in the “underground” movement.
With this period are associated such names as those of Herzen, Bakounin,
and Tchernishevsky, whose writings were the inspiration of the party,
and even influenced for a time the Tsar himself. But the emancipation of
the serfs, on February 19th, 1861, bitterly disappointed those who had
hoped great things of the new monarch, and who saw from the way in which
this and other liberal measures were emasculated by officials, to whom
the drafting of them was entrusted by the Tsar, how futile it was to
expect any effective reform as a grace from an autocrat. The reform
movement, now definitely socialistic, speedily took on a revolutionary
character, and culminated in the active sympathy and support given to
the Polish revolt of 1863.

Alexander II. resorted to the old coercive methods; all attempts to
voice the aspirations and needs of the people, or even the academic
discussion of political questions, were met with the savage punishments
of martial law, imprisonment, exile, death. In face of a new enactment,
which had professed to give fair trial to all accused persons, special
courts were set up to try political offenders; and the practice of
banishment by “administrative methods” (_i.e._ without any trial at all)
was instituted.

A time of enforced quiet followed, when the leaders of the movement were
either dead, imprisoned, or had fled into voluntary exile abroad; but it
served as a time of self-education and study for the younger generation,
at home or in foreign Universities, and in the early seventies the
revival came. Our author here takes up the story with his account of the
Propagandist movement, which was peaceful, except in so far as it aimed
at stirring up the peasants to demand reform; for, in the absence of any
constitutional methods for expressing their desires, this could only be
effected by organised uprisings. He describes how this movement
developed into terrorism under the system of “white terror” exercised by
the Government, and how, after the assassination of Alexander II., the
strong hand of despotism succeeded in checking, until a few years ago,
the passionate struggle for liberty.

A new monarch and a new century have altered little the essential
features of the situation, so far as relations between government and
governed are concerned. Every day we have examples of the time-honoured
policy, in the dragooning of Russia proper; the attempted Russification
of Finland; and the deliberate fostering by the Government of
anti-Semitism, with the covert design of counteracting the revolutionary
activity of Jewish Socialists, discrediting their labour movement in the
eyes of the Russian proletariat, and also distracting the latter from
organisation on their own account.

But a significant change is at work to-day among the people. The
peasants and working-classes in town and country, formerly the despair