Siberia Exile Attacked

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30542, 10 September 1964, Page 17

Siberia Exile Attacked

I (N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) LONDON, Sept. 9. The old Russian procedure of banishing people to Siberia has been attacked in a Moscow newspaper. After an on-the-spot study of the exile system—started by Peter the Great at the beginning of the eighteenth century—a special correspondent of “Literaturnaya Gazeta” concluded it was 1. Not a proper means of re-educating offenders. 2. Ineffective as a punishment. 3. No longer even a good

method of banishing persons dangerous to the welfare of society. The article showed that the development of Siberia and normal immigration into its distant localities had largely defeated the purpose of banishment. Police officials and residents interviewed in the area of Vasyugan, north of Novosibirsk, were almost unanimously critical of the deportation of undesirables to outlying areas. People resented their region being used as a kind of penal settlement. In addition to ordinary criminals who are sometimes sent to live in these areas on completion of part of their

sentences, “anti-social and parasitical elements” and persons living on unearned income can be banished there for periods up to five years. The “Literaturnaya Gazeta” article said this system of reeducation through exile was no longer worth the expense of . transporting the “parasites,” and required serious correction. “This is the unanimous opinion of all the people I spoke to,” the correspondent said. “This, I am sure, will be the opinion of .every unprejudiced person who studies the problem on the spot.” Moreover, there were the more serious offenders who merely continued their violent

and drunken way of life in a new environment, the article said. Instead of a desolate place where the tough conditions alone were a penalty, this was often now a populated region which was contaminated only by the flood of such rejects from other parts of the Soviet Union. The attitude of some of the authorities interviewed was that they were treated by other regions as a kind of rubbish dump for incorrigibles. A Communist Party representative suggested the deported people should be sent still farther north, to really difficult and desolate places.