Russia's Penal Colony in the Far East: A Translation of Vlas Doroshevich's "Sakhalin"

by Vlas Doroshevich, Andrew A. Gentes (Translator), Andrew A. Gentes (Introduction)

Overview

‘Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East: A Translation of Vlas Doroshevich’s “Sakhalin”’ is the first English language translation of the Russian journalist Vlas Doroshevich’s 1903 account of his visit to tsarist Russia’s largest penal colony, Sakhalin, in the north Pacific. This translation introduces English-language readers to an important writer and original stylist who defined journalistic practice during the years leading up to the1917 Revolution, by way of a book which helps explain the causes for that revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857283917
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	07/01/2011
Series:	Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
Pages:	514
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Andrew A. Gentes is Lecturer in History at the University of Queensland.

Read an Excerpt

Russia's Penal Colony in the Far East

A Translation of Vlas Doroshevich's "Sakhalin"

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By Andrew A. Gentes

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2011 Andrew A. Gentes
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85728-391-7

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CHAPTER 1

PORTRAITS OF SAKHALIN

It was 16 April. The piercing northwest wind was cold and gusty as the steamer lolled from side to side. I stood on the top deck and watched as the bleak, inhospitable rocky shoreline, still covered in snow, came into view. This first impression was gloomy, heavy and oppressive. The island stretched out like some kind of monster, dead and awaiting disposal, with ridges covering its back.

"This is where the Kostroma went down," the captain told me.

I descended to the lower deck. Prisoners' faces crowded the deck's portholes as they gazed intently at the shoreline of the island where their lives would end. They gloomily muttered: "Sakalin!"

"It's still winter!"

"Let me see!"

"There's nothing to see. Everything's covered in snow."

The steamer began to rock more violently. We were entering the La Perouse Straits. To the left was the Krilovsky lighthouse; to the right the roiling and frothing boulders of the submerged "Calamity Rock." Straight ahead and drawing near, an ice floe. More ice floes obscured the horizon.

Here indeed was some bitter mockery: to transport people nearly around the globe, to show them a small corner of earthly paradise (magnificent blooming Ceylon), to give them "but a glance" of Singapore, that luxurious, divine, fantastic blooming garden a degree-and-a-half from the equator, to allow — near the entrance to Nagasaki — just a glimpse of Japan's magical and picturesque coast (a coastline you cannot tear your eyes away from), only to deliver them, after all this, to bleak rocky shores still covered in snow as of mid-April, to this land of blizzards, storms, fogs and ice floes — and then to say: "Thrive!"

Sakhalin ...

"Water all around, but in the middle — misfortune! Sea all around, but in the middle — woe!" So the penal laborers name it.

"Island of despair. Island without freedom. A dead island!" So it is called by Sakhalin officials.

The island is a prison.

If you look at a map of Asia you'll see in the upper right, stretching lengthwise along the coast, something truly resembling a monster that has opened its mouth and appears ready to gobble up Matsmai, lying opposite. Its steep coal-lined cliffs, their zigzagged and broken lines revealing layers of shale, proclaim that some great event has taken place here. The monster's back is ribbed, mottled by gigantic breakers running from northeast to southwest. Not for nothing do Sakhalin's mountains actually resemble enormous, frozen breakers; and the valleys — or "notches" as they say in Siberia — seem like abysses that open between waves during a hurricane. But the hurricane is over. The monster has calmed and shudders here and there only occasionally.

This is an inhospitable island separated from the mainland by the Tatar Straits, the most tempestuous, violent, capricious and spiteful straits in the world. During a winter blizzard it is pitch dark in these straits; and in summer the storms give way to fog so thick a steamer's top-mast can hardly be seen amid the white shroud. A navigator has to travel through these straits fully dressed, snatching just fifteen minutes of sleep at a time, for calm waters can turn into violent storms in a matter of five or ten minutes. At first it's completely calm. Suddenly the rigging begins to whistle and you raise the flags, cut the anchor, and head out to sea if you don't want to be smashed to pieces on the rocks.

The sea here is a traitor. Yet the coast is not a sailor's friend but his enemy. One must fear both land and sea here, for Sakhalin repels and its severe, steep, rocky shores are a foil. Along the entire western shore there isn't a single road in which to harbor: the bottom is smooth and flat flagstone to which no anchor will hold you during a storm. Many steamers are buried in these straits!

Sakhalin is a severe and cold island. Since time immemorial frigid northern currents have forced their way through the Tatar Straits to lap its rocky coast. Winter here is cruel and fierce: a blizzard lasts weeks, churns up huge waterspouts, buries a house up to its roof. Here, the joyless spring resembles autumn; summer is short, cold and foggy; only the autumn is familiar. On 20 May I arrived in Onor, a distant settlement in the very center of the island, and on the 21st I awakened to a bright, fresh, beautiful winter's morning. Snow had fallen that night and a shroud 14 inches deep covered everything — roofs and ground, prison and settlement. The snow stuck around for two days, finally melting on 23 May. And that's what they call the "weather" on Sakhalin.

The monster's sinuous back is covered by thick coniferous taiga, like quills standing on end. The coast's tall, perpendicular, unscalable cliffs are zigzagged by yellow layers of clay, either smoke-colored (from bituminous shale) or white (from sandstone). In places there is the rust of iron ore. Beyond the cliffs is the taiga. Spruce and pine, exposed and completely lacking branches on their windward sides, sprout on one side only. The pine trees have lost their tops to the wind like smoke from a steamer's funnel, and like smoke these great trees, missing arms, flee this terrible shore, this severe, cold, brutal sea and wind.

You clamber into the depths. There is a deathly silence. Only the crunching of wind-fallen branches underfoot. Stop, and there's no sound. No bird sings, not a peep ... One is awestruck, as if in an empty church. The silence of the Sakhalin taiga — it is the stillness of a desolate abandoned cathedral beneath whose arches no whispered prayers are heard.

Deeper into this land of eternal silence. Here, there's no light; darkness surrounds you. It's as if a huge baobab were standing atop a dozen tree trunks: winds have pushed the pine-tops together, pinned boughs and needles to each other to form a single enormous carapace, a sturdy roof on which it seems you could walk! It is oppressive here. It is difficult here. Difficult even for the trees. Here, even these giants are ill, their trunks distorted by enormous diseased excrescences.

This is your picture of nature in northern Sakhalin.

Twenty-seven years ago there roamed here both bears and Giliaks — pathetic, unfortunate savages whose intelligence and morals were little better than those of their taiga compatriots. Not without reason do Giliaks believe the bear possesses the same spirit as the Giliak, that following death the bear's spirit goes to its "master," the god of the taiga, to complain to him about the Giliaks, but that the master judges both equally. They even believe the bear has "married a Giliak"! For these pathetic savages, this signifies the spiritual equality between them and bears. Bears and Giliaks are now scattered thinly across this land.

Sakhalin's typical settlement is a pitiful sight. Houses built "per-the-law" so as to earn the right to join the peasantry are abandoned, ruined or half-destroyed. No sound here as well. Just eternal silence.

"Anyone living here?" Two or three houses turn out to be inhabited, the rest abandoned. "Well, how's life?"

"What a life! We suffer."

"What do you plant, what do you sow?"

"What grows here! A single potato, and barely just that."

They live in silence, each morose and shut up within himself, miserably hanging on until his term of settlement ends and he can join the peasantry and leave for the mainland, far, far from this gloomy land.

Neighing and crashing into each other, our trio of small, sturdy, swift Sakhalin horses leads us from hill to hill, dale to dale south through the island. The coachman shows you "this is where they killed Kazeev (one of the Artsimoviches' murderers) ... Here, during a blizzard, the snow buried a woman and her child ... I brought the doctor here the other day — they took an exile-settler down from a tree ... Hanged himself ... Exile-settler Lavrov was murdered here last year ..."

A typical Sakhalin travel route.

The natural picture changes. The sad, northern Sakhalin pine and spruce give way to cheerful, cordial larches, themselves soon surpassed by soft, delicate, aromatic branches of conifer. Birch groves whiten some areas. The birch have yet to blossom, but after the pine forest's gloomy dark-green, the dressing of their white trunks appears so cheerful, elegant and clean. A willow, lithe and weeping, leans over a brook as if peering into its swift currents. Snow still lies in the gullies; but on hillocks warmed by sunlight the burdock is already growing luxuriantly.

The mountains become steeper, the notches broader. There are no more gorges, no gigantic clefts between the mountains but rather spacious plains. The settlements you encounter gradually improve. Trading villages are the larger, and to the question "How's life?" comes the answer: "We get by somehow or other. Only, summers are pretty short." Along the way there are oxen harnessed to a plow. In every settlement you find two, three or more prosperous householders. This is Tymovsk District, in central Sakhalin.

Further on begins the tundra or "trunda," as Sakhalinites call it. The wheels sink and barely turn in the peaty mass. The coachman dismounts and walks alongside so the horses can pull more easily. We're hardly moving; steam pours off the horses.

There's the smell of heather. An asphyxiating, heavy fragrance like the smell of cypress, it gives me a headache. The whole tundra is absolutely covered by its red bushes. Like clotted blood.

The tundra and the taiga. And still not a sound. Only a woodpecker pecks and a cuckoo coos in the distance.

Melancholy — aching, pinching, piercing the soul. Something sad hovers around me. You cannot believe that somewhere in the world there is an Italy, blue sky, warm sun, that there are songs and laughter in the world ... Everything ever seen up to now seems so distant, as if on some other planet, as if it were dreamt, unreal, unfeasible.

An ocean of tundra and taiga. And in this ocean tiny little islands, pieces of solid land. Settlements were stuck on these little islands. People tried to live, to struggle, were unable to, and left. Doleful abandoned settlements from here to Onor; and further on nothing but swamps and bogs where dogsleds are needed to travel in winter and you can't get through in summer ...

In this region Korsakovsk District begins, in southern Sakhalin. There's a variety of deciduous flora; the climate is comparatively mild. Living and breathing are easier here. If you look at a detailed map, all southern Sakhalin is covered in black dots — these are all settlements. You can at least stand on solid ground here. Labor is difficult but gives some reward.

Here, it is already early spring. Handsome swans stretch in a line flying north. A white border of fish eggs runs like a milky river along the coast up to a mile out to sea, mixing with the seaweed and spawning herring. Birds whistle and call one another in the taiga.

Here, at last, is life, sun and brightness.

These are your pictures of Sakhalin.

Here, the air is filled with heavy sighs. Here, a birdcall at night sounds like a moan. Here, much blood has been shed by wretches who kill each other over a penny. Here, every spot holds terrible memories. Here, everyone exhales suffering. Here, there's been much crime and trouble. Here, you have to fight for everything. Sakhalin's soil yields nothing without sweat and tears being poured into it.

Many riches hide in Sakhalin's depths. Potent strata of coal; there's oil, probably iron. It's even said there's gold. But Sakhalin jealously guards its riches, strongly grips and holds them. It blocks your way through the impenetrable taiga, buries you in its tundra bogs. A man has to make his way here with iron and fire and then, spice the soil with blood and tears and devote half his life to it so the other half might be somewhat tolerable.

This is what this island-prison is like. Nature created it in a moment of spite when what was wanted here was a prison and nothing else. It would be difficult to build better prison walls than the Tatar and La Perouse straits. True, prisoners escape across both. But is there really a prison wall in the world that cannot be over-stepped by a person with a strong enough will?

Yet nature was too cruel when it built this island prison. In clear weather walk along the repellent island's coast and see clearly across the straits the opposite shore that teases and beckons, its blue lines stretching in the distance. Realize that it's so close yet so unattainable. What torment the very weather creates!

CHAPTER 2

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

A first impression is always the strongest, and so I'll never forget the moment when, early in the morning and unsteady from the steamer's side-to-side rocking, I walked along the jetty at Korsakovsk Post. People were schooling along the shoreline: several more steps and I would be diving into that sea, so terrifying, yet which I so excruciatingly wanted to know.

A sea of what?

From the three and a half months I spent among penal conditions two impressions are strangely impossible to forget. Two impressions that weighed down, oppressed and sat like lead on my soul. They weigh down and oppress it still.

One was the journey itself to Sakhalin. I've been unable to shut out this comparison: our steamer delivering penal laborers from Odessa seemed a huge scow, like those typically used by coastal cities to ferry garbage out to sea. And Sakhalin's posts and settlements, appearing gray along the shoreline, seemed nothing more than colossal garbage heaps. Knowing there was in the hold beneath your feet a humanity that, in the end, will rot just like you yet nonetheless remain as this "garbage," was heavy on the soul.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Russia's Penal Colony in the Far East by Andrew A. Gentes. Copyright © 2011 Andrew A. Gentes. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations; Introduction: On First Impressions and Lasting Choices, by Andrew A. Gentes; Glossary; Katorga: A Reporter’s Visit to the Sakhalin Penal Colony; Book One; Book Two; Recommended Readings

Editorial Reviews

'Offers a grim picture of the underworld of czarist Russia. Recommended.' —D. Balmuth, Skidmore College, ‘Choice’

'Andrew Gentes has done a masterful job of translating the “journalese” in which Doroshevich described the unique culture that prisoners created in the process of forging an existence from so baleful an environment. […]Doroshevich launched a career that made him the most influential journalist in pre-Revolutionary Russia from these vignettes, and Gentes’s translation makes evident why.' —‘The Russian Review’

‘Andrew Gentes has here produced the first annotated English translation of Doroshevich’s Sakhalin articles, collated and published in Russia in bookform first in 1903 and, as such, it is a useful contribution to the anglophone literature on Siberia as a whole.’ —Alan Wood, Lancaster University, ‘Slavonic and East European Review’

‘Andrew Gentes has produced a largely fluent and readable translation. […] This is an important addition to the field, and not only the translator, but also the publisher, Anthem Press, deserve credit for bring it to an English language audience for the first time.’ —Sarah J. Young, ‘Slavonica’

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