TALES FROM SIBERIA—WHEN THE PRISON DOORS OPENED

Journey Home of a Hundred Thousand Exiles Told by (name withheld), an Eye-Witness

I—"RUSSIA IS A REPUBLIC—YOU ARE FREE"

The exiles in the Irkutsk prisons were watching eight fellow prisoners who were being flogged. Suddenly, in the doorway, an official appeared. It was the Provincial State Attorney. There was a look of great tidings in his face.

"Russia is a republic," he cried. "You are free."

The news of the revolution had reached across the vast stretches of Siberia. It was a moment of tense excitement. Bewilderment and then jubilation beset the exiles. An hour later began one of the strangest spectacles in modern history—the exodus from Siberia. It is estimated that a hundred thousand political exiles began their race back to Russia.

Traveling from the most inaccessible mines and settlements, they journeyed by sledge or trudged on foot to the nearest point on the Trans-Siberian railway. It was a race against time. The Spring thaw was approaching. If the exiles did not reach the railroad within two weeks the roads would be impassable. The wilderness would become a sea of mud. Far in the north, in the coldest settlements of the lower Lena, it would be impossible to move forward until the ice breaks on the river two months later.

The first large party consisted of one hundred and fifty political convicts and administrative exiles, including twenty members of the Jewish revolutionary band. The exiles were traveling in special cars and had been on the road continuously from March 24, five days after they first heard of the revolution.

The cars were met by a vast crowd at the railroad-station, which cheered them tumultuously. The returning exiles returned the cheers, but they were in a deplorable physical condition—shaggy, uncouth, unwashed, and extremely emaciated.

Many were crippled with rheumatism, two had lost hands and feet from frostbites, and one, who attempted flight a week before the revolution, had been shot in the leg when he was recaptured. He was lying in a prison-hospital when he learned that he was a free man.

Five days after the triumph of the revolution 6,000 exiles entered Irkutsk, but the vast majority were unable to proceed west, owing to the lack of rolling-stock. These encamped about the town and along the railroad, and at least a month will be needed before they can be sent home.

The crowds at Tyumen cheered the famous terrorist, Nicolai Anuikhin, who shot and killed the chief of the Petrograd-Warsaw Railway in 1906. His victim, General Fuchloff, was about to kidnap 400 railroad strikers and send them to Siberia.

Anuikhin, who introduced himself as "a released jailbird," is a gigantic, broad-shouldered, elderly man, with a gray imperial and an excited manner of speech. He said:

"After one year in European convict prisons I spent ten years in the Alexandrovsk prison, fifty miles from Irkutsk. This is the biggest convict jail in Russia and contained 12,000 ordinary criminals and about 500 political prisoners, mostly sentenced to life katroga, the severest form of Russian punishment short of death.

"I spent the first five years in the so-called probation class, with hands and feet manacled and chained to a wheelbarrow which I had to take everywhere. In addition I was repeatedly flogged by order of the Governor. The Assistant Governor, during the absence of his chief, ordered daily floggings for his own satisfaction.

"The occupants of the different dormitories communicated by means of tappings and other systems of signaling. Although we also had means of communication with the outside world, we knew nothing of the revolution until the morning of our release.

"After our release we learned that the Assistant Governor, on getting the news of the revolution, declared that he would give a farewell flogging, 'in order to prepare my jailbirds for sweet liberty.'"

Among the political prisoners from Tobolsk was Alexander Popoff. He was sentenced to death for an alleged plot against the Emperor, a charge which he declares was a fabrication by the police. Popoff, who is a highly intelligent artizan, was chained by the wrists and ankles for four years. In describing his release, he says:

"A most remarkable feature of amnesty day in Tobolsk was the sudden demand for blacksmiths. The prison blacksmith, fearing the vengeance of the convicts, fled, and private blacksmiths, in the general orgy of revolutionary triumph, could not be found.

"In the meantime sixty chained men waited for their liberation. The newly formed committee of public safety, unable to find blacksmiths, drove the still chained convicts to the dismissed Governor's palace, where a banquet had been prepared, and we had our first free meal. Above the din of speeches and cheers for the Russian Republic could be heard the jangling of our shackles."

The news of the revolution reached the prisoners in Siberia by various channels, but in all cases the announcement was unexpected and dramatic. In several places the police were wise enough to tell the news themselves in order to escape the danger of suddenly finding themselves in the power of men they had abused with impunity for years. The exiles rarely rose against their jailers. Basil Muravin, once a social revolutionist, tells this story:

"When the revolution occurred I was in the small Udinsk transport-prison awaiting the arrival of other convicts for dispatch together to the east. I had long lost hope of pardon when I learned that I was free. The discovery came in a most dramatic way. I was at the time in chains as a newcomer of unknown character. I heard a sudden shouting and afterward a terrific rifle-firing. It sounded as if a million cartridges had exploded in quick succession.

"Next bullets began to fly over the prison-yard. Finally a bullet cut the halyard of the Russian flag which waved over the prison-building. The flag dropped on the roof and shortly afterward a crowd stormed the prison and hoisted there a revolutionary ensign. My last experience of the old régime was a visit by the former Governor of the jail, who, fearing retaliation, begged me to sign a statement acquitting him of ill-treatment. Though his treatment of the convicts had been bad, I agreed, not desiring to mar Russia's new freedom by acts of petty vengeance."

In another case the priests announced the revolution in the churches.

Fifty exiles, who were in the congregation, rushed out, determined on vengeance on the local police-captain, who was a wanton tyrant. They were met by the policeman's ten-year-old daughter, who stood before her father and exclaimed, "Kill me first!" The child's action saved the captain's life.

II—STORY OF THE HUSSAR WHO ESCAPED FROM SIBERIA

This is the tale of a Hussar who had escaped twice from Russian prisons, faced murder, come half-round the world, and ran the British blockade. He was a reserve officer in the Austrian Army, a Hungarian captain in a famous regiment of Hussars. He was stationed in the fortress at Peremysl when the Russians advanced into the Karpathians and took the city. Taken prisoner, he was marched off to a detention camp near the front where the officers were separated from the soldiers. The men disappeared, but the officers were taken to a military prison near Odessa.

The prison fare was not particularly bad, but the monotony of the place was dreadful. Shut up as they were without anything to think of, they began to have all kinds of imaginary grievances—principally against one another. "If half the challenges to deadly combat are carried out there will be a duel a minute after the war," he says. It got to be positively ludicrous. Pompous and sensitive enough in all conscience in ordinary circumstances, the German and Austrian officers, under the nervous conditions of prison life, lived under a hair-trigger. If you accidentally bumped into a man on your morning walk, or if you forgot to bow in the usual manner, you promptly had a challenge to a duel—to be fought after the war, as there was nothing to fight with in prison.

Having been brought up along the Galician borders, this Hungarian spoke Russian like a native. This fact encouraged him to make an attempt to escape.

For some remarkable reason the Russians had allowed the captured officers to retain all their money. He himself had several thousand dollars in his pockets. When it became whispered around that he intended to make a getaway, other officers asked him to carry money back to their families. The result was that when he slipped away he had nearly $30,000 in cash on his person.

He didn't tell me exactly how he managed to get away, but I inferred that it was through the bribery of some of the prison guards. At any rate he slipped out of the prison one night and turned eastward. His general plan was to make his way down through the passes of the Caucasus Mountains through Armenia, and thence to Turkey, where he would be safe.

Hiding by day and walking by night, he managed to get to a half-civilized little hamlet on the edge of the great mountains.

The wilderness of the journey before him left him rather appalled. He had intended to buy a horse and try to make his own way through, but he saw that this would be impossible. It inevitably meant losing his way and starving—if he were not killed by wandering bandits!

The town was full of wild-looking Kurdish mountaineers armed to the teeth. He decided to open negotiations with one of these to act as his guide. The first one approached readily agreed to act as his guard, guide, and escort on the long journey through the mountains. He said the fellow was as dirty as a pig and looked as tough as a Malay pirate, but his belt was filled like an arsenal.

Under his advice, the Hungarian officer bought a horse for about three times what it was worth. The arrangements were all made and they were to start the next morning when the wife of the Kurdish peasant at whose hut the Hungarian had taken lodging whispered him a word of warning.

"Don't go with him," she said. "As soon as you are one day out, he will kill you."

"Why should he kill me?" asked the Hussar.

The woman shrugged her shoulders. "Well, it is a long journey," she said, "why should he take all that trouble when he could get your money in some other way?"

Her logic was at least convincing if not reassuring. The Hungarian took a little walk through the one street of the town. In the light of her warning, he saw that all the men there would kill a baby to get a drink of milk. They looked vicious enough to commit any crime.

The Hussar sat down to think it over. If he tried to go on through the mountains alone he would probably be followed and killed, or assassinated for his rifle by the wandering Kurdish tribes in the mountains. If his luck was good enough to keep him from being shot, he would lose his way and starve. If he went out with his guide, it was simply a question of how long the man allowed him to live. There was only one thing left to do—he must get back to the prison from which he had escaped, where he would find food, shelter, and safety.

He got up in the middle of the night, slipped out of the hut, and took the trail again. Without a great deal of difficulty he found his way back to the prison. A day or two later the sentinel at the officers' prison was amazed to see a Hungarian Hussar come nonchalantly up the road and ask to be let into prison.

They led him before the Russian governor of the prison who was furious.

"Where have you been?" he demanded.

"Why," said the Hussar blindly, "I have always wanted to see these wonderful mountains, so I just went out for a day or two to see the scenery."

"What do you think this is, a summer resort?" roared the Russian colonel.

The Hussar was ordered for a time into solitary confinement. But the Russian commandant was a pretty good fellow. Besides, with his education and his knowledge of Russian, the Hungarian was very useful about the prison. So they restored him to favor very soon.

Meanwhile his uniform had worn out. They had to give him some kind of clothing, so they fitted him out with the clothes of a Russian peasant.

The loose, easy-going discipline of the prison, his pockets full of money, and these Russian clothes made escape the second time ridiculously easy.

He said it could scarcely be called escaping. He literally put on his hat and walked. He figured it out this time that the way to avoid detection was not to hide around dark corners; but to disarm suspicion by openly mixing with the crowds.

Wherefore he went openly down the streets to the railroad-depot, bought a ticket to Moscow in the ordinary way, and traveled just like any other passenger.

At Moscow he stopped for several weeks. His story became decidedly vague at this point.

He told me that he fell in with a woman who had the entrée to army circles in Russia and that she got him a card to a Russian officers' club where he hung around for two weeks, mingling with the officers without his nationality being suspected. The woman had in the meantime dressed him up in good clothes and had changed his Austrian money into Russian coinage.

The Hussar tried to give me the impression that the woman had fallen a victim to his manly charms and had thereby been induced to turn traitor to her country. I couldn't quite believe this, he didn't look the part.

From what we have since learned of Russian conditions, it seems very probable that, when the Hussar got to Moscow, he hunted up the circle of German spies who were operating there, reported for duty, and was taken care of.

"Well, what am I going to do—stay here for the rest of my life?" demanded the Hussar testily.

"Patience, my son," said the old man. "To-night there is another train—a scrubby little local train that runs back and forth across the border carrying the peasants and traders. No one pays any attention to that train. You will be on it when it goes out to-night."

When the local train left that night the Hussar was one of the passengers. The others were dirty, badly smelling Manchurian farmers.

But it carried him safely across the border and into China. Without further difficulty he made his way to America.

He was on his way to the Eastern coast and expected to take ship for Austria within a month. When his companion hinted that he would find it harder to get through the British blockade than to hoodwink the Russian officials, he winked. And sure enough, within three months the Westerner had received a card from him. He was back at his old table in the café of Peremysl, drinking cool concoctions from tall glasses.

(The foregoing stories are: (I) told in the New York Evening World; (II) told in the Los Angeles Times, and reprinted in the Literary Digest.)