Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1917 — PRISON LIFE in SIBERIA [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PRISON LIFE in SIBERIA

Horrors that the Russian revolution has ended described by a girl who belonged to a terrorist band and was sent to the “far country”

TORD? ' f Among the political prisoners released from the Hertchinsk prison in Siberia was Maria Spiridonova. Upon her arrival at Chita she was recognized and carried through the streets on the shoulders of the crowd. She is the daughter of a Russian general. She shot and killed Chief of Police Luzhenoffsky of Tambov in 1906 and was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment. While in Jail she was terribly tortured by two police officers who for eleven hours kicked her back and forth across the cell, tore her hair, and burned her flesh with lighted cigarettes. Both of her torturers were afterward murdered.

HE downfall of the czar of Russia means liberty and a chance of happiness for thousands of men and women in It is the dawn of a new day,

for which they have worked and hoped with pathetic eagerness for many years, always believing it was just ahead, just within sight. Many a political prisoner, sentenced to Siberia for life, kept hope alive by the belief that the revolution would cut short his sentence. The story of Marie Sukloff, a Jewish girl sentenced to Siberia, is not an un- — usual one, though it is fraught with horrors calculated to make the Western mind reel. Three years ago the story of Miss SuklofTs experiences was published in America by the Century company under the title, “The Life Story of a Russian Exile.” Marie Sukloff was born of peasant people in a tiny village. Till she was fourteen years old she could not read or write. Then the daughter of a rabbi, a child of seventeen, began to read revolutionary pamphlets to her, and Marie learned to read that she might know more of this strange new learning. She and the rabbi’s daughter and a few’ other children held secret meet- . Ings, sometimes in the woods, to iej»d together and talk over the wrongs and sufferings of the working people. It all had to be done secretly, for their parents feared what such activities would lead to. Once the two girls slipped away to a nearby town and helped stir up a strike among stocking makers of that town. They made speeches, urging revolt, and came near falling into the hands of the police. Marie’s father sent her to Odessa, to get her away from her revolutionary friends. She ran away from the uncle to whose home she was sent and went to work in a candy factory; her real business in life was revolutionary propaganda.

“There were six of us living in a sort of commune —Zhenia, a factory girl of twenty-two, who was a most ardent' agitator and strike organizer; David, a clerk; Grigory, a bookbinder ■who had already been in prison for distributing prohibited literature; Nicholai. a painter who became a socialist and joined our circle after his release from prison, where he was put for preaching Tolstoyism; Ivan and myself. It seldom happened that we all had work; sometimes the whole circle lived on the earnings of one or two." Thus she speaks of her fellows. Secret printing offices were established and thousands of proclamations printed and distributed; educational •work was done among the factory people. “Of course,” Miss Sukloff says, “each one of them knew that prison, solitary confinement and exile were their inevitable lot, but this did not deter them in the least, Although they awaited arrest a.t any' hour of the day or night, they spent their spare time as merrily as if nothing special were going to happen to.them.” This went on for two years ; Zhenia and Ivan went to prison, Grigory to Siberia and Nicholai was sent to serve an the army. _ Marie Sukloff went to the neighboring-city of Kishinev to establish a printing office. She was arrested and taken to prison. She was lher were taken the two innocent old people in whose house she was staying. They kept her in prison for more than a year, before her trial. “I began to buffer with insomnia. The twenty mlnjutes’ daily walk in the prison yard be-

came a torture lu me. The sun shone so brightly without- the prison walls, and here I was shut up. The church bells which tolled so solemnly and joyfully outside, here in the prison sounded like the ringing of bells at a funeral.” She was seventeen years old when she was sentenced to be exiled to eastern Siberia, for .Ijfe. Down the dusty road to the railroad station the political prisoners were marched, fettered wrist to wrist with murderers and robbers. In the “forwarding prisons,” where they stopped along the route, onThe filthy floors with no covering save the gray overcoats with a yellow diamond athwart the shoulders, which marks the Russian convict. After sixteen days of travel they reached the Siberian city from which they were to be distributed in exile. Marie Sukloff was to go alone to a tiny village. It was a village of thirty huts. She was to stay in the house of the church watchman, and every day the village constable should call to see that she was still there. The women came out and wept over her. ~ “So young! So young! How your mother must have wept!” Her white-haired host found out that she could read. He brought out a letter from his son, a soldier in the war against Japan, to have her read it to him. Soon the news spread through the village—here was one who could read! The simple people brought her everything they had to read —she must read, -aloud to them, —They, treated her with great reverence.

“I was no longer in prison. I saw no more the prison walls, but I did not feel myself free. The purposeless life in a remote Siberian village seemed to me worse than a prison. The peasants, together with the priest, drank for two or three days during the week. They spent all their money at the government liquor shop, and when they had no ready cash they pawned, any-_ thing they could conveniently carry out of the house. It seemed that only the vodka gave them the possibility of forgetting the miseries of the wretched existence. In those drunken days I hid myself In some corner that no one might see me, and sat looking at the heaps of snow which separated me from the rest of the living. ‘You must escape, you must escape from here.’ an inner voice grew more and more insistent.” - She-did escape. A forged passport was procured, and money from revolutionists, exiles in Siberia. She set out on foot through the snow to a village 28 miles away. A peasant in a sleigh helped her on her way. In this village were a man and his wife and a child with whom she had come into exile. Marie Sukloff took the child with her, because no one would be looking for a woman with a £hild. They went by sleigh—on and on through the endless snow and cold. Everywhere the child proved a protection ; no heed was paid to Vie pair. They reached Vilna; the child was delivered to its grandparents and Marie Sukloff saw her parents once more. Her father tried to press upon ner money he had borrowed, that she might go abroad and live in safety, but she would not. “‘Father, I cannot do that. The thing which was done to me and thousandsof others cannot go unpunished. I cannot let it go!* I replied.” she says. “My--Tffther took my head in his hands and looked with his soft eyes straight at mine. ~ “‘Oh. God! What have they made of you? You do not even cry, and there is so much hatred in your eyes, even at the sight of your old parents.’ ” She went to Geneva and became a terrorist. They sent her back to Russia to slay. Nicholai, the painter.

turned socialist, w.as her companion. As peddler and flower girl they haunted the streets of Kiev, seeking a chance to kill the governor general. That failed; they went to Tchernigoff to kill the governor there. They studied his dally routine; when he got up, w’ljen lie went to sleep, when he received and whom. For a week this man did not leave his house. Marie Sukloff read and re-read the Story of his crimes, of the innocent blood he had shed. She would look at the bomb reposing on a shelf in her room. New Year's day was set as the day for the killing. A little group of children came to her door that morning to wish her Happy New Year. She4et them in. “An uncontrolable desire to remain a little longer with these innocent children seized me, and I begged them to take off their masks and have tea with me. I made tea and seated, the children around the table. They were becoming bolder and bolder and soon they were chatting carelessly and curiously regarding me and everything in the house. The samovar was steaming merily on the table, the Children were laughing noisily, the sun shone biightly in my window. For a minute I forgot what was going to happen in a few hours. Suddenly a Cossack galloped past, followed by a carriage. I recognized the carriage. •* ‘Go ! Go, children ! It is time 1 I exclaimed.”

She met her accomplice, Nicholai. The street still remained deserted. Suddenly-a mounted. Cossack appeared and behind him a carriage. Comrade Nicholai immediately stepped down from the curb. At that moment the carriage approached him. pe raised “his Tnuid and threw the bomb under the carriage. The bomb fell softly on the snow and did not explode. A police officer who was riding behind the governor sprang at Nicholai and I heard the report of a pistol. The carriage stopped, for an—Lnstarrtrbut evtdentiy taking in the situation, the coachman began to whip the horses and drove at full gallop straight in my direction. I stepped into the middle of the road and with all my might hurled the bomb against the carriage window. A terrific force instantly

stunned me.” 4 The governor was killed and Marie and Nicholai. were sentenced to be hanged. They took het- to prison; she waited one, two days, a week, in a curious state of exaltation. Nothing seemed real now that death was so near. “On the seventh day there came a knock on the wall. My heart began to beat joyfully; so I had a neighbor. ‘“Who are you?’ 1 knocked immediately, and there came an answer clear and unmistakable, ‘Shueizman’ (Nicholai). “ ‘Oh, God!’ I exclaimed, ‘how is that? He is here and they did not hang him yet!’ “Soon we were deeply ingrossed in conversation. “ ‘This is the last day,’ he knocked. “ ‘Yes, 1 am sure,’ 1 answered. “We hastened to share all our thoughts'and feelings, all that we had lived through in the years of our friendship, unbroken by prison and exile. “ ‘I don’t want you to die,’ Nicholai knocked, and the feelings which had been hidden deep in his heart were at this hour of death freely expressed in words. I went to Siberia.’ Four years she stayed in prison there. Then she was taken to the Siberian city of Irkutsk to be operated on for appendicitis, and ten days after the operation managed to escape. She was smuggled from house to house; many people were willing to help her. even though they must needs risk evervthing to do so. A colonel of the army helped her to leave Russia.