A RUSSIAN PRISON.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10238, 30 August 1909, Page 1

A RUSSIAN PRISON.

Nicholas Tchaykovsky, the aged Russiun ijatriot, who was recently released from imprisonment in the Trubetskoi Bastion in St. Petersburg, contributes the first story of his prison experiences to the New York Independent. The release of the Russian champion of liberty was rjrincipally due to the demands of hundreds of thousands of men and women in England, United States, and France, and his bail of 50,000 roubles was raised largely in New York and London. In narrating the story of his arrest, Tchaykovsky says in part: "I arrived in St. .Petersburg in August, 1907, and decided to make a tour through the eastern and northeastern provinces, which were the least known to me, for the purpose of learning and observation. I knew only too well that my plans were bound to be frustrated by my arrest had I appeared at the frontier under my own name. Therefore I provided myself with an assumed name and a false Russian passport, and safely went through those provinces by rail, by boat, and horsechaise. I saw, heard, and learned what I wanted; all went well with me until the very eve of my departure from the capital for England. On that last day I had unfortunately caught what they call here "a tail," probably through merely the accidental coincidence' of having entered a house where someone else was being watched; consequently as soon as I entered the railway station the following noon I was signify cantlv touched on the shoulder and arrested by order. When asked for my name arid passport in the gendarmerie room of the railway station I produced mv false document, acknowledging that although I had been residing under that name it was not my own passport. I moreover declined to reveal my identity until a formal accusation and the reason of my arrest was declared. Then all mv papers, packets, and luggage were ransacked, catalogued (although not without omissions and disappearances), sealed, and together with me sent under a strong escort to a preliminary prison. There I had to live for three days in an empty and dirty room temporarily converted into a prison cell, at night sleeping without undressing on a bare and hard oil-cloth couch, using my fur coat as a pillow and my overcoat as a blanket. For the first eighteen hours in this dingy prison no food .was brought to him." He writes further of life in the Trubetskoi Bastion — "I found myself in a spacious vaulted cell with whitewashed walls and a yellow painted floor, scantily lighted by one narrow window far above my reach in the thick wall. Here I was ordered to strip by my guards while they stood in front of me eagerly scrutinising every motion. A prison garb had to be donned instead, rough linen, a thick loose, and long coat of woollen cloth, and a pair of loose leather slippers, rough pieces of the same linen for a handkerchief, a napkin and a towel completed my new wardrobe. This ceremony over, my own things were removed and I was left in the empty cell in the position of an unwilling Diogenes alone .with my thoughts. ">lv cell appeared to measure about 20 x 10 x 10 feet, and allowed at least a good walking space, ten paces one way and live the other. The entire furniture consisted of a rough iron table, bracketed to the wall, an iron bedstead close to the table, also fixed to the wall and floor and always open; an electric lamp covered with a convex glass over the table in the wall; a porcelain basin fixed to the wall under a water-tap in one of the corners, and, last, but not least, an ordinary watercloset without a lid or screen. • The bedstead had a thin mattress, so that the iron trellis underneath could be distinctly felt; a sheet, a blanket (or two if necessary) and a decent pillow; a small copy of the .New Testament in Russian and a quart mug on the table; such were my surroundings. Piercing the wall, 2-i- x 3 feet thick, was the window, about 2x3 feet, with double glass framed in iron and wired to prevent doves from outside visiting the cell through the ventilators. This window admitted a very limited amount of light, principally duo to another external wall of the fortress of the same height as the Trubetskoi Bastion itself, arising at a distance of ten to fifteen feet from the windows of the cells of' both' floors; consequently only a. very narrow strip of sky could be seen from the upper cell, and none at all from the lower ones, as I learned subsequently, being temporarily placed in one of these lower cells. The dark brick external wall reflecting very little sunlight through the windows, leaves them half-dark even on bright, sunny days. Moreover these lower cells are positively damp, and this, together with the darkness, must act terribly on the nerves and health of those who are unlucky enough to be incarcerated therein for any period over a year. (Solitary confinement in the fortress even for two years is not a rare occurrence.) Fortunately for me, I was placed on the upper floor, and in order to escape rheumatics asked the authorities at the very beginning to allow me the use of my' woollen underclothing, to which 1 had been accustomed for the last thirty years of my life in England. This request of mine was granted, I was informed, out of regard for my age. A few months later I was even transferred into what was said to be the-best and lightest cell in the whole bastion, where the external wall retreats from the window and leaves an open space for the south-west sun-rays. When I entered the Trubetskoi Bastion the food allowed by the prison consisted of hot water and black ryebread in the morning, two courses of meat for dinner at noon, and a pudding or stew of some kind with hot water for supper at six. All additions to thus, such as tea and sugar, milk, white bread, fruit, sweets, tobacco (I did not smoke), etc., had to be ordered once a week at the prisoner's expense from shops outside. I had no reason to complain of the diet, especially as I had monev and could buy all the extras that I wanted; materials were fresh and the supply sufficient, although the cooking was somewhat indifferent.