IN A RUSSIAN PRISON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 935, 24 December 1910, Page 4

IN A RUSSIAN PRISON.

EXPERIENCES OF THE "FATHER OF THE REVOLUTION-” A simple but intensely human, story of his prison life is told by Nicholas Tchaykovsky, the “Father ot the Revolution,” in the November issue of the New York Outlook. Tchaykovsky was arrested for advocating political reform and the overthrow of despotic methods, but the charges against him failed, and he was acquitted in March last. "At the beginning ot my imprisonment in the Fortress of Peter a>d Paul—(he says)—l had hut ien minutes a day for recreatin'. , which included going to and from my cell. Later they allowed me twenty minutes.” There is a library in the fortress, but no periodicals less than a year oid are allowed, so that the prisoner, in the matters of public news and politics, lives a yeai behind the world. "Every second Saturday the prisoners are taken to the bath house by two guards who stay there while the prisoner is washing himself. The pockets of my clothes were searched while I was in the bath, and once an incident arose from such a search. I had given a list of books that I wanted to the governor of the prison, and he had returned it to me. I put it in my pocket, and when 1 wanted to prepare myself for my wife’s visit I noted on this sheet of paper a programme of the conversation I wished to hold with her ; so the sheet was covered with notes written across the original list. One day this piece of paper was handed to me by the guard, with a special message from the governor that I had belter destroy It otherwise it might be considered a secret manuscript and lead to trouble.” The fortress is a place for abso lutely solitary confinement, and prisoners are not even permitted to see one another in the corridors. "The guards are allowed to speak to the prisoners only on business. They never enter the cell or even come to the flap window in the door alone —always in pairs so that one may hear what the other says in speaking to the prisoner. Whenever the prisoner (wants anything he rings the electric bell, and the neatest guard waits till another one is available, in order to open the flap window. Above the flap window there is a small oblong spy-hole covered with glass, with a blind on the outside, which is used by the guards for watching the prisoners. It is arranged in such a way as to be opened without noise, but somehow the nerves of the prisoner are so acute that he feels almost instinctively that he is observed through this so-called ‘ Judus slit.’ ”

Mirrors are not allowed, but Tchaykovsky found that when the ventilator of the window in his cell was opened, by pulling himself up he could bring his face to the level ol the glass, and could see himself clearly in it. No paper of any kind is permitted to be brought into the cell. “Even the tinfoil in which chocolate is wrapped is confiscated immediately on delivery of the chocolate, because it was said, prisoners could manufacture lead pencils out of it.” Tchaykovsky made himself a set of chess men from pieces of the black rye bread, and used to play chess with himself for hours. He adds : "The narrow strip of sky which could be seen from the cell was the only connecting link between the prisoner and nature outside. A few stats, and very seldom the moon, with the ragged clouds ol a St. Petersburg leaden sky, from the company in which the prisoner finds himself in the night. The sun very seldom looks into these windows, especially in those parts of the fortress which face northeast and north-west.” The harsh treatment which he received led to a break-down in Tchaykovsky’s health. A suggestion was circulated through the press that he should be medically examined by outside doctors, and as a .result of that examination his period ot recreation was increased from twenty minutes to half an hour, He spend eleven months in prison awaiting trial.