My Escape from Siberia ... Translated ... by E. S. With a portrait and map

Preface

. The incidents related in the following work were originally written before 1850, whilst Nicholas of Eussia was still the most redoubtable monarch in Christendom. It is necessary to bear this in mind, or many remarks founded on the peculiar political circumstances of the time will justly appear out of place. Since the escape of Beniowski and his companions in 1771, no record exists of any political prisoner condemned to Siberia having ever sueceeded in defeating the vigilance of the Eussian authorities. How many have attempted this, and perished miserably on the steppes, or been retaken to suffer the nameless horrors of Eussian vengeance, can never be known. The reader will readily appreciate the difficulty in which M. Fiotrowski was placed when he approached the description of his preparations for flight.

It was impossible for a man of honour to give any details which might compromise others. In his own words, in one of his letters to me on the subject, he says : ' Le Gouvernement russe ne demande pas mieux que de savoir tout ce que se passe chez lui.' It was necessary, therefore, to leave this part of his narrative purposely obscure ; if, indeed, for no other reason, at least for the sake of those who might in future have the opportunity of following his example. It is with feelings of the most sincere pleasure that I offer to the VI

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. English reader a translation, which, though somewhat abridged from M. Eiotrowski's original work, has yet received his full sanction and approval ; and f am convinced that not one of my countrymen or women wiU rise from the perusal without as complete a belief in his truthfulness, freedom from prejudice, and generous recognition of all that is excellent in the Eussian character, as in his indomitable courage, energy, and manly piety. The picture he has given of Imperialism, though drawn well nigh fifteen years ago, is unhappily as true of the Eussian system to-day as when it was first traced. The Emperor Nicholas has been gathered to his fathers, and on the throne of the Eomanofs sits his son Alexander, the ' well-in tentioned.' Alas that the Spanish proverb, ' El Infierno esta empedrado de buenas intenciones,' should be as applicable to kings and kaisers as to lesser men !

Western Europe was filled with respectful admiration at the proposed emancipation of the serfs; but this idea originated with Nicholas, who thought by depriving the nobles of one great, and unhappily most unjust, source of power, to bend them more completely beneath the Imperial rod. The nobles in Eussia represent, with rare exceptions, the inteUigence and education ofthe country. They alone, up to this time, have at all adopted the better influences of Western civilisation. It was therefore the policy of the Crown to impoverish .the boyards, and transform them, if possible, into obsequious mandarins, whose sole ambition should be to win a smile from their master, and grace their Tehin caps with some more imposing official button. The communes of crown peasants in Eussia are founded on a communistic basis ; the land each man cultivates is liable, after a certain number of years, to be reapportioned, when he receives a greater or lesser share, according as the population has increased or diminished in the interval.

The children of a prodigal father inherit their portion as securely as those of the most industrious. The rural pea sants are thus preserved from pauperism, but, at the same time, are deprived of one of the main incentives to exertion. Could the Czar extend this peculiar institution over the whole

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. VII of the rural population, they would doubtless be for the time incalculably better offthan under the corvee, but a basis would be laid for a more complete despotism than that exercised by the most absolute of his predecessors. The Imperial system does not change, though the whole empire is changing in despite of it. The serfs will be emancipated, but not they alone, Eussia as well as Foland grows weary of government by terrorism and corruption.* Though the kibitzka still carries the victims of tyranny to the fortresses and mines, though month after month the convoys stiU toil onward to Siberia, the country no longer bows in silent awe to the behests of the Czar. It at last feels the wrong, and must ere long resist it. The question of serf emancipation, which now absorbs nearly every other in Eussia, had been one of the chief objects proposed by the famous Folish Constitution of May, 1691 — that constitution which was the last great act achieved by Poland before her fall.

It should have been the Magna Charta of a free country, but it was the immediate cause of her ruin. The neighbouring Fowers could ill brook that a free state should exist in their midst. So long as Foland had been occupied by wars against the Turks, or distracted by the feuds inseparable from an elective monarchy, her rivals had less feared her political influence than profited by her courage ; but Poland, under an hereditary monarch, with a free pea santry, a chivalry the bravest in Europe, with the strength given by the combined action of a courageous people, bound into unity through a representative government — Foland, en lightened not only by her own best thinkers, but profiting by the literature of the West, which her free press would have made her own — Poland, taught by adversity, at last gratefully acknowledging the truth of the great axiom pronounced three hundred years before by her Lucas Gornicki in his ' Eoad * The Emperor Nicholas was so well aware of the universal corruption throughout the empire, that when a German savan remarked to his Majesty how great a service he would do his country by putting down the abuse, he replied, ' Why, to get such a project into action, I must begin by bribing my prime minister.'

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. to Perfect Freedom,' — ' That no state could be great and en during where one alone rules, or where all rule, or where a single class rules ; only where monarch, senate, and the representatives of the people unite to make the laws and watch over their execution' — Poland, so constituted, was not more distasteful to the heirs of Peter the Great than to the ' great ' Frederick. Though the latter had declared that the ' Eussians were barbarians employed in the destruction of humanity,' he was willing enough they should so carry out their mission as that he might share the spoils. Catherine sat on the throne of Eussia, and well had the Princess of Anhalt Zerbst grasped the spirit of Peter's famous will. She had already carried out its preli minary instructions regarding Poland.* The first dismember ment had taken place in 1772 ; the second in 1773 ; but the kingdom in 1795 might still, perhaps, have defied its enemies had it but been united ; and Eosciusko would have lived in history as the saviour, not as the martyr, of the cause he so nobly defended.

Each elective king (taken in nearly every instance from some foreign royal house) had left a new swarm of courtiers and needy nobles behind him, whose only interest in the country was the treasure they could extract from it, or the means it gave them of selling their interest to the highest bidder. The constitution of May was scarcely completed when the infamous Targowiec confederacy was formed by the dissentient nobles. Eussia, watching the opportunity, at once came to their assistance. The king lost heart and resigned. Eosciusko was defeated after a desperate struggle, and the third dismemberment followed in 1795, Prussia, Austria, and Eussia dividing the kingdom among them. When Maria Therese of Austria was persuaded by her minister Kannitz, and flattered by the pious suggestion of the Pope to consent to the first partition in 1772, she had silenced her conscience by * 'Divide Poland by fomenting continual feuds and jealousies ; influence the Diets ; corrupt them, so that the royal elections may be secured.

Appoint your partizans ; protect them ; introduce Moscovite troops, and keep them there until an opportunity occurs of fixing them in the country for ever.'

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. IX affixing a protest to the deed which has dishonoured her reign — a protest the justice of which has been witnessed by the suffering and resistance of a nation for well-nigh a hundred years — whilst Eussia, which hoped by the wrong to force its way to a higher place in the world's hierarchy, unknowingly riveted the chains which have since made the Brandenburghs her servile tools. In politics the half is often more than the whole. Had the Czarina* seized all Poland, the two great German Powers must have flown to arms in the cause of right ; but she in terested them in the spoliation, and bound them irrevocably to her by the fast ties of fellowship in iniquity. Then followed the Napoleonic wars, with their momentary promise of in dependence for Poland. The great emperor, however, learned too late the mistake he had committed in not realizing that promise.

The famous treaties of Vienna succeeded ; and Poland, like the rest of Europe, was provided for in the most complete and . final manner possible. Alexander I. promised, in the name of himself and all future Czars, that a national army should be maintained in Poland ; that full liberty ofthe press should be permitted ; that a constitutional government with an upper and lower house of representatives should be established ; that all offices in the state should be filled by Poles ; that no person should be kept under arrest beyond three days without public trial ; that the Czar should be crowned in Warsaw as Eing of Poland ; and that in his absence the kingdom should be governed by a viceroy. Alexander, like his grandmother Catherine, liked well enough to talk liberalism with smirking savans, diplomatists, and political theorists ; but in the ungracious realities of actual life, it had a very different savour in the Czarine nostrils.

Poland, disheartened by so many misfortunes, gave him little trouble for several years, and, if not resigned, was at least silent. The Grand Duke Constantine, as general in chief of * Peter had further directed in his will ; ' Contrive that the German Powers shall demand the assistance of Russia, and thus establish a kind of Protectorate which may prepare the way for future dominion.' X

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. the army, ruled absolutely under the nominal supremacy of a servile viceroy. Eoads and canals were made ; — hundreds ot the serf workmen employed died of the starvation and hard ships to which they were exposed ; but .this did not much matter ; — palaces arose, commerce flourished, even literature, if sufficiently discreet, received the smiles of authority. The sepulchre was whitened as white as Imperial science could make it. The Grand Duke affected Eepublican simplicity, munched black bread with the soldiers, worked at the pumps, or carried buckets of water when the frequent fires broke out in the city, and would stop to gossip with idlers in the streets. Order was firmly established in Warsaw, and maintained by eight thousand secret police agents constantly employed in the city alone.

A word or a glance, thought to be suspect, but one of the eight thousand, immediately consigned the offender to the dungeons beneath the Grand Duke's palace, where he would be kept without drink, and receive no other food than salt herring, until in the madness of thirst the desired confession had been wrung from him. Eepresentative institutions, freedom of the press, and the various blessings promised by the Vienna treaty, grew very intangible under correction of midnight arrests and death by torture. The philosophic emperor, Alexander L, died, and his brother Nicholas ascended the throne. Pestal's rebellion broke out in Eussia ; many Poles joined it, but the distrust between the two nations, the fruit of the Government policy, prevented its receiving the hearty cooperation of the conquered people.

It failed, and the scaffold and the mine received so many victims the more. Disaffection grew rapidly in Poland under the increased severities of the new reign, and when Nicholas had prepared to restore legitimacy in France by sending his Cossacks to overthrow the Constitutional monarchy of 1830, the Poles felt the moment for resistance could no longer be deferred. Con stantine, with strange shortsightedness, had founded many excellent military schools, which were eagerly attended by the youth of the kingdom, who could thus acquire the technical

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. XI knowledge each felt would be needed in that struggle for which the country impatiently waited.* With endless labour and devotion the Grand Duke had drilled the army, until the men who survived the hardships and brutality to which he subjected them were excelled in discipline by no troops in Europe. All the junior officers were supplied by the military schools, and soon acquired the full confidence and affection of the soldiers, who were thus secured to the national cause. Few of the superior officers were intrusted with the secret of the coming insurrection ; their long experience of Eussian barbarity, even when it had not damped their affection for their country, had too much weak ened their belief of successful resistance. The artisans of the towns were, without exception, devoted to the patriotic cause ; and the four universities, still spared by Eussia, sent forth from their walls the noblest and best of the intellect and hope of the land.

The Eevolution began triumphantly ; Europe was saved from war, but the liberation of Poland was still deferred. Eivalry and dissension broke out among those who should have forgotten their private animosities in the common cause. England and France held aloof. Austria and Prussia were well pleased that at the expense of a few thousands massacred and tortured, their own spoliations might be secured in the triumph of the Mosklial. ' Order was restored,' and thousands left Poland rather than accept a peace when there could be no peace. Mochnacki has justly said : — ' Under a merciful foreign rule the Poles must revolt, because they have the opportunity ; under a tyrannical one, because it is their duty to resist.' Then commenced the fearful story of Eussian retaliation. In 1832 f the Emperor Nicholas appointed a special criminal tribunal to try, or rather to condemn a priori, the leaders of the Eevolution and the members of the Eevolutionary Parliament.

The tribunal sat during two years, and in 1834 passed sentence * See Mieroslowski's ' History of the Polish Rebellion,' vol. i. t The following details are taken from the work by M. Louis Lubliner (Avocat de la Cour d'Appel a Bruxelles), entitled ' Les Confiscations des Biens des Polonais, etc'

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. of condemnation upon all the accused. Unhappily, twenty-two were in the hands of the Eussians. Of these, four were sentenced to death, three to irons, and fifteen to the ranks of the disciplinary regiments. Two hundred and sixty-five, who had happily escaped, were condemned in default — nine of the number to death by the sword,* seven to irons from ten to twenty years, and two hundred and forty-nine to be hung.f In the westernguberniums, such as Wilna, Podolia, Minsk, &c, &c, 2,889 landed proprietors were condemned, some to death, some to perpetual banishment or hard labour, and in every instance with total loss of all property, real and personal. In the 535 cases where the property thus confiscated was valued, it brought 180,006 male serfs (the women not being reckoned) and 5,654,659/. to the Imperial budget.

The remaining 2,534 forfeitures were never officially appraised in the Government papers.J A further ukase ofthe 16th Febru ary, 1832, suppressed all the Eoman Catholic monasteries throughout the western guberniums, thus furnishing an annual income of 141,461 silver roubles to the Imperial exchequer. From the so-caEed kingdom of Poland 2,625 persons were condemned, between 1834 and 1835, to death or Siberia, and loss of all their property. Between 1835 and 1856, § 551 were added to the number, for connection with the revolt of 1831. At the outbreak ofthe Eevolution, Nicholas had decreed that all real or personal property, within the western guberniums, belonging to persons absent in the kingdom of Poland, should be immediately sequestrated ; that aU contracts or liabilities with reference to such property, if entered into after the out- * Of these was Prince Adam Czartoriski. t The famous savan Lelewel was included in these last.

I Of course there were numberless confiscations decreed for which no statistics can be given. Only those are here stated the particulars of which were published in the Government journals of St. Petersburg, etc. § ' Nous n'avons pas sous les yeux les journaux polonais depuis '57, et par consequent il nous est impossible de reproduire les confiscations decretes depuis '57 jusqu'a '60.'

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. XIII break ofthe revolt, should be null and void ; and when any doubt of the date occurred, the decision of the Imperial authorities was to decide the question. The person placed in charge of sequestrated estates was prohibited, under the severest penal ties, from forwarding assistance, either in money or kind, to the proprietor. By another ukase, published in 1831, Nicholas commanded, that if the sons of a landed proprietor should leave the western guberniums for the ' kingdom of Poland,' the whole of the father's estate should be forfeited to the crown ; or when any of them remained at home, then so much should be confiscated as would amount to the share of those who had fled. "When the proprietor himself had lest for the rebellious pro vinces, then the whole of his possession should be sequestrated, though his children and next of kin had remained in Eussia.

No provision being made for the widows and orphan children thus reduced to beggary, the condition of persons involved in sequestration of even part of their property, was harassing beyond description ; they were completely at the mercy of the tchenownicks (receivers) appointed by the Government, and whose rapacity was only equalled by that of the master they served. Sometimes a freak of clemency occurs to the Imperial mind, and the sentence of banishment or hard labour is re mitted, with even restitution of rank and civil rights ; but the property seized by the Government is never restored to the owner or his heirs, at least where the Poles are concerned, in defiance of a law enacted in 1807, which decreed that the possessions of all persons condemned to forfeiture of civil rights should immediately pass to the next heir.

Any property or legacy which may have fallen due to a person under sentence, though its existence should be discovered after he has been amnestied, lapses to the Government. Since the amnesty, so pompously proclaimed by Alexander II. in 1856, the Government has continued to decree confiscations in the kingdom of Poland for acts committed previously to that date. We may cite the names of Mierzezewski, Wien chowski, Borowski, Breyte, Krajenski, Standke, as among the victims. In October 1856, the Council of Administration for

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. Poland pronounced sentence of confiscation against four Polish emigrants, for connection with the revolution of 1830 — their names had escaped the lists for twenty-five years. They had unfortunately written to entreat the favour of the late amnesty, and thus exposed themselves to the rapacity of the Govern ment. Mieroslowski has well said, ' The history of a nation struggling against oppression must be a continual campaign, conspiracy and the propaganda holding the same place in its insurrectional annals as science and strategy in the story of the battles and sieges of open war.' The history of Poland since 1831 is an unvaried recital of continual, though almost hopeless resistance on the one side, and of brutal oppression on the other. The thousands who left the country when the Eevolution of 1831 was crushed, left it in the fuE persuasion of a speedy return, under the auspices of the Eberal governments of Europe, to win back the victory for which they had sacrificed so much.

AE hope of foreign assistance, howrever, soon proved Elusory, and no means were lest to keep the good cause stUl alive in the hearts of the people ; but continual conspiracy, ending — how often — in wide spread misery, and stiU heavier oppression, no less than faith, whether religious or political, could only be served with human sacrifices. The first efforts of the emissaries were directed to Posen, where the propaganda was enthusiasticaUy welcomed alike by the nobles and people. In Galicia they met with less success, the peasants being sunk in aE the moral degradation of serfdom, through the policy of the Aus trian Government,* though the more enlightened of the nobles * The Russian Government, in like manner, set its face against all amelioration of the condition of the lower classes at the hands of the nobility.

Intemperance is the great curse of the peasantry in Poland, as in Russia, and many of the landed proprietors endeavoured to establish Temperance Societies, and various associations of a like harmless character ; but the Government immediately declared such projects a tyrannical, immoral, and unjust interference with individual liberty. When Count Chreptowicz asked permission to found schools on his estate, Prince Dolgorouki deigned to give no other reply than ' Monsieur le Comte will soon be ready for Siberia.'

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. XV had pressed on its attention the necessity of emancipation, whilst some of them had in vain attempted to obtain permission to establish village schools.* The emissaries — and among them were men of the highest character in the Emigration — naturally directed their main efforts to Eussian Poland, though there torture and death awaited discovery. How many of these devoted men perished miserably in the forests, hunted from village to village by the underlings of tyranny ! How many met a far more terrible doom whilst awaiting their capture ! The chiefs of the Polish Democratic Society disputed the honours of martyrdom, and went forth on each successive mission, content to brave its perils and sink into an unknown grave, so that the cause they represented might be the more firmly cemented by their blood.

In Prussian and Austrian Poland, notwithstanding the cen sure, the hopes and opinions of the Emigration still made their way through the press ; but in Eussian Poland the pos session of a work not under Imperial sanction might involve scores of people in ruin, or send its possessor to the scaffold. Only at night, in some secure hiding-place, with scouts set to give warning of danger, and under a solemn oath of secrecy, could the youth of Poland meet to study the works of those whom all Europe honours as her best teachers. The book, bought at a fearful risk, at well nigh, perhaps, its weight in gold, would be perused again and again, until the words were imprinted in the memory of the listeners — then consigned to the flames. With every precaution discovery sometimes en sued. Leviton, whose sufferings and death are recounted by M. Piotrowski, fell a sacrifice to having read some stanzas by the great ' Nameless Poet ' of Poland.

He would not confess the names of those who had committed the same deadly sin — and he died. To sink the nobEity in enervating idleness, and the people in blind dependence — such was the policy of Nicholas. But the Emigration had not left home to fall into enervating self-commiseration. Again and again the leaders of * Schuselka, ' Deutschland, Polen, und Eussland.'

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. the forlorn hope mounted the breach, and among them the famous Eonarski, whose name the reader will find mentioned in the following pages. He was a Lithuanian by birth, had been proscribed with so many others after the revolution, and sought safety in France. He became one of the chiefs of the Democratic Society, and shortly left to use all his eloquence in convincing the higher classes among his countrymen that the success of the common cause could alone be ensured by the moral elevation of the great masses of the population. His experiences in GaUcia had almost disheartened him from further efforts, when the famous ex-minister and liberal, M. Schon of Berlin, again inspired him w'ith fresh courage. He made his way into Eussian territory, and from a cellar in Wilna issued pamphlet after pamphlet in support of the ideas he represented.* Unhappily, he had admitted a Jewish merchant into his confidence, and was betrayed by him in consideration of 20,000 silver roubles, and a patent of nobility.

Eonarski was thrown into prison, tortured with pincers, bound over a burning brazier, half strangled, and then brought back to life to be half starved, and allowed no sleep. In fact, all the choicest means adopted by Nicholas were employed to wring the names of Eonarski's accomplices from his agony. It was in vain ; and ' sEent as Eonarski ' has become a proverb throughout the empire. His heroism won the hearts of the very men who were made his gaolers. One night his cell door was opened, and a young Eussian, Eorowayef, a cavalry officer, entered, to entreat some token of his confidence that would be recognised by the other prisoners, for whom, though numbering nearly a thousand, he should yet be able to provide horses in the barrack stables, by the help of his comrades, who had sworn to liberate the Lithuanians.

Eonarski signed a paper with his chained hands, ' and the generous Eussian left. Unhappily, he next proceeded to the cell of a prisoner who had been seized only on suspicion. This man at once snatched away the paper, and replied, ' Now, at last, they shall see I am no traitor.' It was in vain Eoroh * See 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' 1818, vol.

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. XVII wayef entreated him to have mercy on the thousand Lithu anians he thus condemned to death. His prayers and tears were aE in vain ; and he himself, overwhelmed by the miserable failure, that he never attempted to secure even his own safety, was seized on the following morning, and suffered with his accompEces the full rigour of Eussian law. Eonarski was shortly afterwards executed. For a banished man or woman to return or remain in the territories of the Czar, without permission, is a crime only to be expiated with death. Among those who could not resign themselves to leave the country they had loved so well, and for which they had suffered so much, was the noble Amelia Platen, whose courage and virtues will be remembered as long as the heroic struggle of 1831 has its place in the martyrology of na tions.

For years she had lived in the hut of one of her peasants, disguised as a peasant woman, and patiently fulfiEing aE day long the rude tasks such a position imposed. At night only, when the poor door was closed, could the good people, whose roof gave her shelter, dare show her the respect they felt, and ask her pardon for the harsh words which, for her safety, it was too often necessary to use. Eussian authority knows no mercy, no compunction. A poor boy was seized on one occasion — he had sung a forbidden song, spoken of some friend in the ' Emigration,' or committed a like grievous crime. He was thrown into prison, and aE the winter through his blind mother sat crouched by the wall, hoping to hear some sound that might teE her her child still Eved. She did not wait quite in vain ; she heard at last his cries, as he expired under the lash.* The Czar had many ways of breaking the spirit of his rebel lious subjects.

He not only condemned them to tortures worthy of the ingenuity of the Neros and CaEgulas, but even grudged them their honour they so dearly preserved. Eiyn kowski, a devoted feEow-labourer of Eonarski's, a canon of Wilna Cathedral, an eloquent preacher, a humble Christian, * See ' La Revue des Deux Mondes,' 1848, vol. ii. ; article, La Propagande Democratique en Pologne. a ,

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. but a devoted patriot, was arrested, thrown into prison on suspicion, and hundreds of those who had once Estened with gratitude to his eloquence, sought the desolate temple to entreat God's protection for the captive. Presently, strange reports were whispered of his confessions in prison. His countrymen indignantly refused belief; but in a Ettle time the stories became more outspoken and damnatory, until finally a long list of confessions was exhibited by the officials, signed by the canon's own hand ! Doubt was no longer possible ; and the name which never yet had been uttered but with reverence and affection, became a mark of scorn and abhorrence. Two years passed, and one day Krynskowski appeared in the streets of Wilna ; some who had known him approached to learn the cause of his sudden Eberation ; he could only answer them with the vacant stare of insanity.

He had gone mad the very day following his incarceration, and his torturers had then made him sign the paper that had called down the curses of his nation upon his head. Lisanity was often enough the consequence of the Czar's penal system. Grezozewski died a maniac ; Dobriczki, betrothed, only lest her dungeon for a mad-house ! The Poles of the kingdom reproached their brethren of Posen, in 1846, for complaining of their long examinations and unwholesome ceEs : — ' You are not unhappy ; you can acknowledge your country before an open court of justice, before judges who have not ceased to be men. Our Antoine Peprowski was a better patriot than you ; when stretched over a slow fire, alone in his dungeon with his pitEess torturer, he stiE spoke with the same enthusiasm of the sacredness of his hopes.' Thus has this weary tale of suffering been renewed year after year, time bringing no mercy to the oppressor nor re signation to the oppressed, though it has steeled the latter to still greater endurance, or taught them in exile many lessons of poEtical wisdom and moderation, which, in the narrow in tellectual horizon visible under the Imperial system, they could never have learned.