Hell on Earth

After walking almost 7000 km in chains through about 300 etápes and transition prisons, Anton Henrik Eklöf arrived to Nerchinsk zavod in 1855 under unlucky stars. The mining activity had been plagued by inefficiency, theft, corruption, hopeless sanitary conditions, and exhaustion of minerals. Scurvy and typhus killed prisoners by hundreds. In 1850 alone one thousand died in typhoid fever. Tuberculosis was common, as well as syphilis, typhoid fever or diphtheria. This all led to mass escapes and to constant complaints of local peasants who had to fear the runaway criminals, murderers and burglars. Catherine II the Great (1729-1796) had tried to improve the conditions e.g. by banning the ripping of nostrils of the convicts and letting them to be branded, instead. Branding, too, was forbidden some twenty years later by Alexander I. Catherine II also forbid grand knout when punishing women. This was a positive improvement, indeed, because only 25 lashes usually killed a man. An article in New York Times in April 14, 1872 highlights the effect of grand knout.

                                              

The authorities tried to stem escapes in many ways. They gave few carrots but more stick. A few days off work annually were introduced and more cossacks were called to duty. Finally, a mining engineer, Ivan Razgildejev was appointed as commandant of Nerchinsk in 1849. He held the office thirteen years and succeeded to transform the camps into a Hell on Earth. First, he returned branding. The cheeks and the forehead got the letters C, O and K, ssyl-o-katorzhnye, convict to katorga. He also took the practice of flogging with birch rods. 300 lashes were frequently applied as 200 were known to cause death. Even Razgildejev's superiors shook heads and stated him to be "very severe". Below branding irons.

Severity helped only little. Towards the end of the century some 50 000 convicts were estimated to roam around the tundra.

Source: Eva-Maria Stolberg (Ed), The Siberian Saga: A History of Russia's Wild East, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, pp. 73-85.