A RUSSIAN BASTILLE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 24 October 1891, Page 511

A RUSSIAN BASTILLE.

Some fifty miles from St. Petersburg, upon the Lake of Ladoga, there is a small granite island entirely occupied by a fortress. It is Schlusselburg, the dreadful prison of State, worse than the French Bastille, worse than the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, with its Troubetzkoi and Aleneevsky ravelins and its underground cells. The most resolute of the revolutionists, men and women, who have taken part in actual conspiracies, whom it is not considered safe to keep in the fortress of Peter and Paul, are sent there. The absence of any inhabitants except those employed in the service renders it possible to isolate the prisoners to a degree unattainable anywhere else. No one is allowed to land upon the island ; sentinels have orders to shoot anyone who approaches. If the near relatives of a prisoner inquire concerning him at the Police Department in St. Petersburg, they are sometimes told ‘ alive ’or ‘ dead ’ ; sometimes no answer is given. The soldiers and guards are themselves prisoners, who mingle only with each other, and are carefully watched on the rare occasions when they are allowed to make a visit to the mainland.

It was possible to establish secret communications with even the most jealously guarded ravelins of the St. Petersburg fortress. But the fortress of Schlusselburg remained dumb, like the grave it is. Though some of the best-known men of the revolution party, in whom the greatest interest was felt among the whole body of revolutionists, were kept there, we rarely could even tell whether they were alive or dead. A few months ago, however, our friends in Russia received some news from this place of endless misery. It is very brief, only such as can be conveyed upon a bit of paper smuggled with the greatest danger through some friendly hand. It merely tells which of the prisoners are dead and which are still alive, but even this summary is eloquent enough. We learn from it that out of the fiftytwo prisoners sent there in the course of the last eight years, twenty, or about forty per cent., are already dead. Several of those who survive should be added to the list of the dead. They are insane, and have lost what is as precious, if not more precious, to a man than life.— Free Russia.

Luxuries Cost —Plain Father : * It didn’t use to cost me a tenth part as much to live when I was at your age.’ Son : * I know, father ; but you didn’t have the advantages then of associating with an extremely fashionable young man like me.'