those executions carried out. Do you think that 's a pleasant thing? I have n't much hair left [stroking the top of his head], but all that I have has stood on end at the sights I have been forced to witness at those accursed mines. To see what one must see there one ought to have nerves of iron wire."[1]
The reader must not suppose that these extraordinary statements were made to me quietly and confidentially in a corner. We were walking back and forth in the crowded lobby of a theater with three or four other officers, and Colonel Nóvikof talked excitedly and loudly enough to be heard not only by them, but by any one who cared to listen. It may seem strange that a Cossack officer of Colonel Nóvikof's prominence should make, voluntarily, to a stranger and foreigner, such damaging admissions with regard to the working of the Russian penal system; but this was not the only time that I was surprised and puzzled by such frankness. At a later hour that same evening another officer came to me between the acts, introduced himself, and began to question me about our experience at the mines of Kará. In less than five minutes he made the same inquiry that Colonel Nóvikof had made, viz: whether we had seen the solitary-confinement cells in the Middle Kará prison. I replied as before in the negative, whereupon he gave me the same information with regard to their dimensions that I had already received, and added that these horrible cells
- ↑ I think I quote Colonel Nóvikof's words with almost perfect accuracy. They made upon me, of course, a very deep impression, and I wrote them down in my note-book as soon as I returned from the theater. Some allowance must be made, however, for personal animus on the part of the speaker. His relations with other officers at the mines, and particularly with Major Pótulof, had evidently been unpleasant, if not hostile, and he may have exaggerated, or thrown into undue prominence, evils for which they were responsible. The remarks that I have quoted are, nevertheless, interesting and significant as coming from an officer of high rank who had the best possible means of knowing the truth, and I give them for what they may be worth. Colonel Nóvikof is the same officer who told me that he would punish political offenders with the shpitzruten — a barbarous running of the gantlet, in the course of which the sufferer receives from two thousand to seven thousand blows from light rods.
