How prisoners were convoyed in tsarist Russia and the USSR, and why it was part of the punishment

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Delivery of a prisoner to the place of punishment, or, more simply, transferring, has always been a difficult task both for the state and for the prisoners themselves. This was an additional test for those who were ahead of them to spend several years in prison, since few people worried about their comfort, quite the contrary. Staging as a separate phenomenon has become firmly established not only in prison folklore, but also familiar to ordinary people. How did the principle of delivering prisoners to the place of punishment change, and was it true that it was more difficult than the imprisonment itself?

The development of Siberia by Russia was largely due to the exiles and convicts, who worked hard in adverse weather conditions. It was possible to calculate that over 20 years of the 18th century, more than 50 thousand people were sent into exile in the Siberian regions! Until the 19th century, no more than two thousand people a year were sent under the convoy. The entry of Siberia into the state in the 16th century opened not only endless opportunities for the fur business, but also for the so-called natural prison. Extreme conditions for prisoners were provided by nature itself. Unsurprisingly, the exiles set out in this direction immediately after the pioneers.

The first exiles went beyond the Urals at the end of the 16th century. These were 50 residents of Uglich, who were accused of the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry. Over the next 50 years, one and a half thousand people were exiled in the same direction. For the level of those years, this is an extremely high figure.

At the beginning of the 18th century, 25 thousand people lived in Siberia, exiled there for crimes. The link in those days did not have a statute of limitations, they simply did not return from it. And this was not due to cruelty or a desire to punish heavily; the road beyond the Urals was too difficult and even impossible task to repeat. Only nobles, officials could come back from Siberia, and many of them could not afford it. The exiles began to explore Transbaikalia by the end of the 17th century.

What is escorting and how it was organized in tsarist Russia

In the 17-19th century, the sending of exiles for the Urals, or, as it was customary, to say "for the Ural stone", was carried out sporadically. That is, sending to exile was made after a sufficient number of prisoners had been recruited. The archers of the Siberian order were to accompany them. The event itself was risky and not all prisoners made it to their destination.

A large number of people had to walk thousands of kilometers, overcome several climatic zones, this could take months or even years. On the other hand, do not forget that we are talking about prisoners, which means that they constantly had to be watched. This required a great deal of organization both from the overseers and the receiving party - the authorities of the territories through which the convicts passed.

The escorts were supposed to be responsible for the fugitives, and for this the overseers themselves could be exiled along the same route. However, running away with shackles and a prototype of handcuffs was still a daunting task. Those who represented a social danger were also tied by the neck. At the end of the 18th century, convicts were branded and their nostrils were torn out as a sign of punishment and in the form of an identification mark.

Peter the Great decided to send prisoners to build canals and as rowers to the Baltic fleet. But the first Siberian prison for the transported was built at that time. That is, this prison was a kind of point where the escorts were kept until escorts from other cities came for them.

The prisoners were not fed. And during this time they were not entitled to any provisions. They could take food with them, they could beg for alms. Simply put, it was entirely their problem. Despite the fact that the convicts were still given alms, this was not at all a way out of the situation, since most of the way passed through deserted places. It was not on the central city streets to carry convicts in shackles and chains. It is not surprising that many died during the transfer, never reaching their destination.

Transfer routes

By the 18th century, the main transportation routes had been identified. Those who were prepared to be sent to Siberia were brought to Samara or Kaluga, there they waited for the summer and only then went to their destination. At first, their path ran along the Oka and Volga rivers of Kazan, from there along the Kama river to Perm. The further path ran on foot, it was necessary to go to the Verkhotursky prison, and from there along the rivers to Tobolsk, and then to Irkutsk and Nerchinsk.

If up to this point everything boiled down to a worsening of the situation of the exiles, then in 1754 the first step took place towards a relative improvement in their situation. Elizabeth ordered not to cut out women's nostrils, not to stigmatize them. Moreover, she argued this by the fact that this practice was used so that the captives did not flee, and women in such regions could not flee, and therefore there was no point in this enterprise.

At different times, attempts were made to systematize the stages for the delivery of prisoners, but it took almost a century to create a working scheme. Mikhail Speransky became the author of a system of stages that are considered to be "classical". The reforms began to be carried out due to the fact that there was no one to accompany the criminals through the stages. This work was extremely difficult and dangerous, so there were not many who wanted to take on it, to put it mildly.

At first, they tried to shift this responsibility to the indigenous inhabitants of the Urals - the Bashkirs. However, three years later, the Cossacks began to be engaged in escorting. And only after the First World War, when the soldiers were able to begin domestic tasks, a command was created in stages, at the same time the decree on inflicting bodily harm on exiles was canceled.

Speransky at that time was the governor of Siberia, at the same time he developed the "Charter of the exiles", this is the first document in the history of the country, which divided huge territories from Moscow to Siberia into stages. At the same time, the term "stage" was introduced. This word is borrowed from French and means "step". The charter determined the work of state bodies, in addition, the Tobolsk order, the state body responsible for convoying, began to work. The order had branches at all stages of the process.

Prisons began to be actively built along the entire route, where prisoners and their escorts had to stop. Moreover, they were built at such a distance that the escorts could pass in one day. Typically 15-30 km.

19th century and changes in the transfer system

The prisoners were collected in the Tobolsk order and there they waited for the next stage, but the bureaucratic system was much less perfect, so they had to wait for several months. Because of this, the jails were overcrowded, and finding in them was extremely difficult.

It was at that time that the expression "places not so distant" entered the vocabulary. If Siberia was a remote place, then the forts, in which the prisoners languished, were in not so remote places.

Until the beginning of the 19th century, the method of shackling was not systematized in any way. The escorts, often at their own discretion and for their own convenience, fastened all those arrested with one chain, sometimes it was several dozen people. And of different sex. Sometimes men and women spent several weeks in such a chained state to each other. Later, shackles on their legs began to be put on only for men, and for women only on their hands. Moreover, it was necessary to use those that are sheathed with leather and wash hands and feet in blood. However, in the same period, they began to use a special rod, at the ends of which handcuffs were fastened, that is, the guard led all convicts on such a rod.

After they stopped pulling out their nostrils and stigmatizing, the prisoners began to shave off half of their heads, and this was done every month so that the identification sign would not overgrow. But even these oddities were nothing compared to the norms that were in force earlier. After all, now they were fed and in prison were divided into cells by gender, which reduced the number of rapes.

However, one should not forget that the case took place in Russia and, despite the allocated funds, the construction of the forts, entrusted to the local authorities, went very badly. Often there were no stoves in them, or they quickly collapsed due to poor laying, the roof was leaking, due to the fact that undried wood was used during its construction, the rafters were bent.

However, the fact that the case took place in Russia also led to the fact that corruption flourished at all stages of the process. For money, it was possible to agree that they did not fasten to the rod. The escorts rarely had money, so they could be deducted from those that relied on his food. If the prisoner had money, then they could find a drink for him, and allow him to play cards and spend the night in a women's cell. However, in prisons, smaller women were often placed in the same room with the soldiers.

Time for liberal change

Alexander II, among other things, reformed this area too. He banned corporal punishment, not to mention plucking out nostrils and shaving the head, and began to import the possibility of transporting prisoners in carts. They began to stage in the winter as well, since the toboggan track made it possible to transport a fairly large number of people with minimal costs. During the spring and autumn off-road transportations stopped for half a month. Usually several carts, which followed one after another, were called the "prison train".

The prisoners were shackled to the wagon by the leg. The chain was rather short - about 70 cm. If someone was brawling or was initially socially dangerous, then they could have fastened by the hands. From the beginning to the end, the prisoners were accompanied by one officer (he had the keys to the chains), and the soldiers changed at each stage.

From the next stage, the train left early in the morning and drove all day, every two hours the carts stopped for a break. 10 kopecks per day were allocated for one person per day. That is, if the prisoner was a peasant, one and a half times more was allowed for the representatives of the upper classes. This amount was spent on a pound of bread, a quarter of a kilogram of meat or fish. Thus, in order to take one prisoner from Nizhny Novgorod to Tyumen, it was necessary to spend 18 rubles.

After the railway service appeared, the prison train became a train in fact. The train for transporting prisoners began to be used quite quickly, almost immediately after the massive development of railway communication. The prisoners rode in special trains with eight carriages, each of them had 60 people. Nizhny Novgorod became a transshipment point, and the need for small stages and half stages almost completely disappeared.

During the reign of Alexander III, Nizhny Novgorod became practically the criminal capital of the country. Criminals from other provinces were brought here (and to Moscow); there were already nine prisons in Nizhny, where the convoys were waiting for their train. Those who were involved in the escort earned quite decently. The command received about 20 rubles of salary.

Pedestrian transportation was canceled already under Nicholas II, this should have been done only by rail. The Tobolsk order was eliminated as unnecessary. but the main prison administration appeared.

At the beginning of the 20th century, its own railway system for transporting prisoners appeared. A new type of carriage was developed, one was designed for 72 seats, the other for 48. People called it "Stolypin". The car was divided into a place for prisoners and guards. There was a place for cooking and tea in the carriage. The territory of the guards and prisoners was separated by a wall with a small window with a lattice, the guards themselves sat on benches that were screwed to the floor, there were several small barred windows in the carriage, and then almost at the very ceiling. There was no other lighting.

During the revolution, the soldiers-escorts were not at all distinguished by their loyalty to the authorities, rather the opposite. It is noteworthy that the head of this service, General Nikolai Lukyanov, remained in this position after the revolution.

Land of advice and repression

The collectivization of the 30s, dispossession of kulaks, "clearing" of borders and other "measures" on a national scale did not allow the Stolypin wagons to be empty, which were only being transported purely. The commandant's offices were included in the system, dozens of them were created. The number of camps in the country of the Soviets has increased many times over, if the transfer did take place, it was not as large as before, but the level of comfort, in comparison with the times of Nicholas II, has decreased. Huge camp complexes were created throughout the country, some of them held up to a million people, the number of prisoners often exceeded the number of the local population, diametrically changing the way of life of the entire settlement.

The USSR was divided into 8 zones of territorial administrations of the prison system, each of them had its own centralized administration, prisons, stages and temporary detention centers. Today it is known that there were more than two thousand objects in the country related to the GULAG system.

Now the prisoners were transported in wagons with bunks, they often violated all permissible transport standards, people were simply transported like cattle. There were windows in the carriage, but somewhere under the ceiling they were most often filled with iron or closed with a thick grate. There was no lighting, no water in the car, and a small hole in the floor served as a sewer.

Now prison trains were not composed of eight cars. Their number reached two dozen, and many did not travel according to the schedule, but in excess of the norm. Of course, the millionth army of prisoners still needed to be transported to their places. And what awaited them on the ground is a completely different story and completely different tests.