Dostoevsky's notes from a lunatic asylum. Notes from the House of the Dead

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

"Notes from the House of the Dead"

Part one

Introduction

I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov in a small Siberian town. Born in Russia as a nobleman, he became a second-class exile convict for the murder of his wife. After serving 10 years of hard labor, he lived out his life in the town of K. He was pale and skinny person about thirty-five years old, small and frail, unsociable and suspicious. Driving past his windows one night, I noticed a light in them and thought he was writing something.

Returning to the town about three months later, I learned that Alexander Petrovich had died. His mistress gave me his papers. Among them was a notebook describing the hard labor life of the deceased. These notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead," as he called them - struck me as curious. I'm choosing a few chapters to try.

I. Dead house

Ostrog stood at the ramparts. The large yard was surrounded by a fence of high pointed pillars. There were strong gates in the fence, guarded by sentries. Here was a special world, with its own laws, clothes, customs and customs.

Along the sides of the wide courtyard stretched two long one-story barracks for prisoners. In the depths of the yard there is a kitchen, cellars, barns, sheds. In the middle of the courtyard there is a flat platform for checking and roll calls. Between the buildings and the fence remained large space where some prisoners liked to be alone.

At night we were locked up in the barracks, a long and stuffy room lit by tallow candles. In winter they locked up early, and for four hours in the barracks there was a din, laughter, curses and the ringing of chains. There were about 250 people permanently in prison. Each strip of Russia had its representatives here.

Most of the prisoners are exile-convicts of the civil category, criminals deprived of any rights, with branded faces. They were sent for terms of 8 to 12 years, and then sent across Siberia to the settlement. Military-grade criminals were sent for short periods, and then returned to where they came from. Many of them returned to prison for repeated crimes. This category was called "always". Criminals were sent to the "special department" from all over Rus'. They did not know their term and worked more than the rest of the convicts.

On a December evening I entered this strange house. I had to get used to the fact that I would never be alone. The prisoners did not like to talk about the past. Most were able to read and write. The ranks were distinguished by colorful clothing and differently shaved heads. Most of the convicts were gloomy, envious, vain, boastful and touchy people. Most of all, the ability to be surprised at nothing was valued.

Endless gossip and intrigues were conducted around the barracks, but no one dared to rebel against the internal charters of the prison. There were outstanding characters who obeyed with difficulty. People came to prison who committed crimes out of vanity. Such newcomers quickly realized that there was no one to surprise here, and they fell into the general tone of special dignity that was adopted in prison. Cursing was raised to a science, which was developed by incessant quarrels. Strong people did not enter into quarrels, they were reasonable and obedient - it was beneficial.

They hated hard labor. Many in the prison had their own business, without which they could not survive. The prisoners were forbidden to have tools, but the authorities turned a blind eye to this. All sorts of crafts met here. Work orders were obtained from the city.

Money and tobacco saved from scurvy, and work saved from crime. Despite this, both work and money were forbidden. Searches were carried out at night, everything forbidden was taken away, so the money was immediately drunk away.

The one who did not know how, became a dealer or usurer. even government items were accepted on bail. Almost everyone had a chest with a lock, but this did not save them from theft. There were also kissers who sold wine. Former smugglers quickly put their skills to good use. There was another regular income, alms, which were always divided equally.

II. First Impressions

I soon realized that the severity of the hard labor of work was that it was forced and useless. In winter, government work was scarce. Everyone returned to prison, where only a third of the prisoners were engaged in their craft, the rest gossiped, drank and played cards.

It was stuffy in the barracks in the mornings. In each barracks there was a prisoner who was called a paratrooper and did not go to work. He had to wash the bunk beds and floors, take out the night tub and bring two buckets of fresh water - for washing and for drinking.

At first they looked at me askance. Former nobles in hard labor will never be recognized as their own. We were especially hit at work, for the fact that we had little strength, and we could not help them. The Polish gentry, of whom there were five people, were not loved even more. There were four Russian nobles. One is a spy and informer, the other is a parricide. The third was Akim Akimych, a tall, thin eccentric, honest, naive and accurate.

He served as an officer in the Caucasus. One neighboring prince, who was considered peaceful, attacked his fortress at night, but unsuccessfully. Akim Akimych shot this prince in front of his detachment. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted and exiled to Siberia for 12 years. The prisoners respected Akim Akimych for his accuracy and skill. There was no trade that he did not know.

While waiting in the workshop to change the shackles, I asked Akim Akimych about our major. He turned out to be a dishonorable and evil man. He looked upon the prisoners as if they were his enemies. In prison, they hated him, feared him like the plague, and even wanted to kill him.

Meanwhile, several kalashnits appeared in the workshop. Until adulthood, they sold kalachi baked by their mothers. Growing up, they sold very different services. This was fraught with great difficulties. It was necessary to choose a time, a place, make an appointment and bribe the escorts. But still, I sometimes managed to be a witness to love scenes.

The prisoners ate in shifts. During my first dinner among the prisoners, a conversation came up about some Gazin. The Pole, who was sitting next to him, said that Gazin was selling wine and wasting his earnings on drink. I asked why many prisoners look at me askance. He explained that they were angry with me for being a noble, many of them would like to humiliate me, and added that I would face more trouble and scolding.

III. First Impressions

Prisoners valued money as much as freedom, but it was difficult to keep it. Either the major took the money, or they stole their own. Subsequently, we gave the money for safekeeping to the old Old Believer, who came to us from the Starodubov settlements.

He was a small, gray-haired old man of sixty, calm and quiet, with clear, bright eyes, surrounded by small radiant wrinkles. The old man, along with other fanatics, set fire to the church of the same faith. As one of the instigators, he was exiled to hard labor. The old man was a wealthy tradesman, he left his family at home, but with firmness he went into exile, considering it "torment for the faith." The prisoners respected him and were sure that the old man could not steal.

It was sad in the prison. The prisoners were drawn to go on a spree for all their capital in order to forget their longing. Sometimes a person worked for several months only to spend all his earnings in one day. Many of them liked to make bright new clothes for themselves and go to the barracks on holidays.

The wine trade was a risky but rewarding business. For the first time, the kisser himself brought wine into the prison and sold it profitably. After the second and third time, he established a real trade and got agents and assistants who took risks in his place. The agents were usually squandered revelers.

During the first days of my imprisonment, I became interested in a young prisoner named Sirotkin. He was no more than 23 years old. He was considered one of the most dangerous war criminals. He ended up in jail for killing his company commander, who was always dissatisfied with him. Sirotkin was friends with Gazin.

Gazin was a Tatar, very strong, tall and powerful, with a disproportionately huge head. In prison they said that he was a fugitive military man from Nerchinsk, was exiled to Siberia more than once, and finally ended up in a special department. In prison, he behaved prudently, did not quarrel with anyone and was not sociable. It was obvious that he was not stupid and cunning.

All the brutality of Gazin's nature manifested itself when he got drunk. He flew into a terrible rage, grabbed a knife and rushed at people. The prisoners found a way to deal with it. About ten people rushed at him and started beating him until he lost consciousness. Then he was wrapped in a short fur coat and taken to the bunk. The next morning he got up healthy and went to work.

Bursting into the kitchen, Gazin began to find fault with me and my comrade. Seeing that we had decided to remain silent, he trembled with rage, grabbed a heavy bread tray and swung it. Despite the fact that the murder threatened trouble for the entire prison, everyone was quiet and waited - to such an extent was their hatred for the nobles. Just as he was about to lower the tray, someone called out that his wine had been stolen, and he rushed out of the kitchen.

All evening I was occupied with the thought of the inequality of punishment for the same crimes. Sometimes crimes cannot be compared. For example, one stabbed a man just like that, and the other killed, defending the honor of the bride, sister, daughter. Another difference is in the punished people. An educated person with a developed conscience will judge himself for his crime. The other does not even think about the murder he committed and considers himself right. There are also those who commit crimes in order to get into hard labor and get rid of a hard life in the wild.

IV. First Impressions

After the last verification from the authorities, an invalid remained in the barracks, observing order, and the eldest of the prisoners, appointed by the parade-major for good behavior. Akim Akimych turned out to be the eldest in our barracks. The prisoners paid no attention to the disabled person.

The prison authorities have always been wary of the prisoners. The prisoners were aware that they were afraid, and this gave them courage. The best leader for prisoners is the one who is not afraid of them, and the prisoners themselves are pleased with such trust.

In the evening, our barracks took on a homely look. A bunch of revelers sat around the rug for cards. Each barracks had a convict who rented out a rug, a candle, and greasy cards. All this was called "Maidan". The servant at the Maidan stood on guard all night and warned of the appearance of a parade-major or guards.

My seat was on the bunk by the door. Akim Akimych was placed next to me. On the left was a bunch of Caucasian highlanders convicted of robbery: three Dagestan Tatars, two Lezgins and one Chechen. Dagestan Tatars were siblings. The youngest, Alei, a handsome guy with big black eyes, was about 22 years old. They ended up in hard labor for robbing and slaughtering an Armenian merchant. The brothers loved Alei very much. Despite outward softness, Alei had a strong character. He was fair, smart and modest, avoiding quarrels, although he knew how to stand up for himself. Within a few months I taught him to speak Russian. Aley mastered several crafts, and the brothers were proud of him. With the help of the New Testament, I taught him to read and write in Russian, which earned him the gratitude of his brothers.

Poles in hard labor were a separate family. Some of them were educated. An educated person in penal servitude must get used to an environment alien to him. Often the same punishment for all becomes ten times more painful for him.

Of all the convicts, the Poles loved only the Jew Isaiah Fomich, a 50-year-old man who looked like a plucked chicken, small and weak. He came on a murder charge. It was easy for him to live in hard labor. As a jeweler, he was inundated with work from the city.

There were also four Old Believers in our barracks; several Little Russians; a young convict of 23 years of age who killed eight people; a bunch of counterfeiters and a few grim personalities. All this flashed before me on the first evening of my new life amid smoke and soot, with the ringing of shackles, amid curses and shameless laughter.

V. First month

Three days later I went to work. At that time, among the hostile faces, I could not discern a single benevolent one. Akim Akimych was the friendliest of all with me. Next to me was another person whom I got to know well only after many years. It was the prisoner Sushilov, who served me. I also had another servant, Osip, one of the four cooks chosen by the prisoners. The cooks did not go to work, and at any moment they could refuse this position. Osip was chosen for several years in a row. He was an honest and meek man, although he came for smuggling. Together with other chefs, he traded wine.

Osip cooked food for me. Sushilov himself began doing laundry for me, running around on various errands and mending my clothes. He could not serve anyone. Sushilov was a pitiful, unrequited and downtrodden man by nature. The conversation was given to him with great difficulty. He was of medium height and of undetermined appearance.

The prisoners laughed at Sushilov because he was replaced on the way to Siberia. To change means to exchange name and fate with someone. This is usually done by prisoners who have a long term of hard labor. They find fools like Sushilov and deceive them.

I looked at the penal servitude with greedy attention, I was struck by such phenomena as the meeting with the prisoner A-vym. He was from the nobility and reported to our parade-major about everything that was happening in the prison. Having quarreled with his relatives, A-ov left Moscow and arrived in St. Petersburg. To get money, he went on a vile denunciation. He was convicted and exiled to Siberia for ten years. Hard labor untied his hands. For the sake of satisfying his brutal instincts, he was ready for anything. It was a monster, cunning, smart, beautiful and educated.

VI. First month

I had several rubles hidden in the binding of the Gospel. This book with money was presented to me in Tobolsk by other exiles. There are people in Siberia who unselfishly help the exiles. In the city where our prison was located, there lived a widow, Nastasya Ivanovna. She could not do much because of poverty, but we felt that there, behind the prison, we had a friend.

During these first days I thought about how I would place myself in prison. I decided to do what my conscience dictates. On the fourth day I was sent to dismantle the old state-owned barges. This old material was worth nothing, and the prisoners were sent in order not to sit idly by, which the prisoners themselves well understood.

They set to work sluggishly, reluctantly, clumsily. An hour later, the conductor came and announced the lesson, after completing which it would be possible to go home. The prisoners quickly got down to business, and went home tired, but satisfied, although they won only some half an hour.

I interfered everywhere, I was almost driven away with abuse. When I stepped aside, they immediately shouted that I was a bad worker. They were glad to mock the former nobleman. Despite this, I decided to keep myself as simple and independent as possible, without being afraid of their threats and hatred.

According to their concepts, I had to behave like a white-handed nobleman. They would scold me for it, but would respect me inwardly. Such a role was not for me; I promised myself not to belittle before them either my education or my way of thinking. If I began to fawn and familiarize with them, they would think that I do it out of fear, and they would treat me with contempt. But I didn't want to close myself in front of them.

In the evening I wandered alone behind the barracks and suddenly saw Sharik, our cautious dog, quite large, black with white spots, with intelligent eyes and a fluffy tail. I petted her and gave her some bread. Now, returning from work, I hurried behind the barracks with Sharik squealing with joy, clasping his head, and a bittersweet feeling ached at my heart.

VII. New acquaintances. Petrov

I got used to it. I no longer wandered about the prison as if lost, the curious glances of the convicts did not stop at me so often. I was struck by the frivolity of convicts. A free man hopes, but he lives, acts. The hope of a prisoner is of a different kind. Even terrible criminals, chained to the wall, dream of walking around the prison yard.

For the love of work, the convicts mocked me, but I knew that the work would save me, and did not pay attention to them. The engineering authorities facilitated the work of the nobles, as weak and inept people. Three or four people were appointed to burn and crush the alabaster, headed by the master Almazov, a stern, swarthy and lean man in years, unsociable and grumpy. Another job I was sent to was to turn a grinding wheel in a workshop. If something big was carved, another nobleman was sent to help me. This work remained with us for several years.

Gradually, my circle of acquaintances began to expand. The first to visit me was the prisoner Petrov. He lived in a special section, in the most distant barracks from me. Petrov was not tall, of strong build, with a pleasing broad-cheeked face and a bold look. He was about 40 years old. He spoke to me at ease, behaved decently and delicately. This relationship continued between us for several years and never got closer.

Petrov was the most determined and fearless of all the convicts. His passions, like hot coals, were sprinkled with ashes and quietly smoldered. He rarely quarreled, but he was not friendly with anyone. He was interested in everything, but he remained indifferent to everything and wandered about the prison without doing anything. Such people show themselves sharply at critical moments. They are not the instigators of the case, but its main executors. They are the first to jump over the main obstacle, everyone rushes after them and blindly goes to the last line, where they lay their heads.

VIII. Decisive people. Luchka

There were few decisive people in hard labor. At first I avoided these people, but then I changed my views even on the most scary killers. It was difficult to form an opinion about some crimes, there was so much strange in them.

The prisoners liked to boast of their "exploits". Once I heard a story about how prisoner Luka Kuzmich killed a major for his own pleasure. This Luka Kuzmich was a small, thin, young Ukrainian prisoner. He was boastful, arrogant, proud, the convicts did not respect him and called him Luchka.

Luchka told his story to a dull and limited, but good guy, a bunk neighbor, prisoner Kobylin. Luchka spoke loudly: he wanted everyone to hear him. This happened during shipping. With him sat a man of 12 crests, tall, healthy, but meek. The food is bad, but the major twirls them, as his grace pleases. Luchka excited crests, they demanded a major, and he himself took a knife from a neighbor in the morning. The major ran in, drunk, screaming. "I am a king, I am a god!" Luchka crept closer, and stuck a knife in his stomach.

Unfortunately, such expressions as: "I am a king, I am a god" were used by many officers, especially those who came from the lower ranks. Before the authorities they are subservient, but for the subordinates they become unlimited masters. This is very annoying to the prisoners. Each prisoner, no matter how humiliated he may be, demands respect for himself. I saw what effect the noble and kind officers produced on these humiliated ones. They, like children, began to love.

For the murder of an officer, Luchka was given 105 lashes. Although Luchka killed six people, no one was afraid of him in prison, although in his heart he dreamed of being known as a terrible person.

IX. Isai Fomich. Bath. Baklushin's story

Four days before Christmas we were taken to the bathhouse. Isai Fomich Bumshtein rejoiced most of all. It seemed that he did not regret at all that he had ended up in hard labor. He did only jewelry work and lived richly. City Jews patronized him. On Saturdays, he went under escort to the city synagogue and waited for the end of his twelve-year term in order to get married. It was a mixture of naivety, stupidity, cunning, insolence, innocence, timidity, boastfulness and impudence. Isai Fomich served everyone for entertainment. He understood this and was proud of his importance.

There were only two public baths in the city. The first was paid, the other - dilapidated, dirty and cramped. They took us to this bath. The prisoners were glad that they would leave the fortress. In the bath, we were divided into two shifts, but despite this, it was crowded. Petrov helped me to undress - because of the shackles, this was a difficult task. The prisoners were given a small piece of state-owned soap, but right there, in the dressing room, in addition to soap, it was possible to buy sbiten, rolls and hot water.

The bath was like hell. A hundred people crowded into a small room. Petrov bought a place on a bench from some man, who immediately darted under the bench, where it was dark, dirty, and everything was occupied. All this screamed and cackled to the sound of chains dragging along the floor. Mud poured from all sides. Baklushin brought hot water, and Petrov washed me with such ceremonies, as if I were porcelain. When we got home, I treated him to a pigtail. I invited Baklushin to tea.

Everyone loved Baklushin. He was a tall guy, about 30 years old, with a dashing and ingenuous face. He was full of fire and life. Acquainted with me, Baklushin said that he was from the cantonists, served in the pioneers and was loved by some high-ranking persons. He even read books. Coming to tea with me, he announced to me that there would soon be a theatrical performance, which the prisoners staged in prison on holidays. Baklushin was one of the main instigators of the theatre.

Baklushin told me that he served as a non-commissioned officer in a garrison battalion. There he fell in love with a German woman, the washerwoman Louise, who lived with her aunt, and decided to marry her. Expressed a desire to marry Louise and her distant relative, a middle-aged and wealthy watchmaker, German Schulz. Louise was not against this marriage. A few days later it became known that Schultz had made Louise swear not to meet Baklushin, that the German was holding them with her aunt in a black body, and that the aunt would meet with Schultz on Sunday in his shop in order to finally agree on everything. On Sunday, Baklushin took a gun, went to the store and shot Schultz. For two weeks after that, he was happy with Louise, and then he was arrested.

X. Feast of the Nativity of Christ

Finally, the holiday came, from which everyone expected something. By evening, the invalids who went to the market brought a lot of provisions. Even the most thrifty prisoners wanted to celebrate Christmas with dignity. On this day, the prisoners were not sent to work, there were three such days a year.

Akim Akimych had no family memories - he grew up as an orphan in a strange house and from the age of fifteen he went into hard service. He was not especially religious, so he prepared to celebrate Christmas not with dreary memories, but with quiet good manners. He did not like to think and lived by the rules established forever. Only once in his life did he try to live with his mind - and ended up in hard labor. He made a rule from this - never reason.

In the military barracks, where bunks stood only along the walls, the priest held a Christmas service and consecrated all the barracks. Immediately after that, the parade-major and the commandant arrived, whom we loved and even respected. They walked around all the barracks and congratulated everyone.

Gradually, the people walked around, but there were much more sober ones, and there was someone to look after the drunk. Gazin was sober. He intended to walk at the end of the holiday, having collected all the money from the prisoner's pockets. Songs were heard throughout the barracks. Many walked around with their own balalaikas, in a special department even a choir of eight people was formed.

Meanwhile, dusk was beginning. Among the drunkenness, sadness and longing peeped through. The people wanted to have fun great holiday— and what a heavy and sad day that was for almost everyone. In the barracks it became unbearable and disgusting. I felt sad and sorry for all of them.

XI. Performance

On the third day of the holiday, a performance took place in our theater. We did not know whether our parade-major knew about the theatre. For such a person as a parade-major, it was necessary to take away something, deprive someone of the right. The senior non-commissioned officer did not contradict the prisoners, taking their word that everything would be quiet. The poster was written by Baklushin for the gentlemen of the officers and noble visitors who honored our theater with their visit.

The first play was called "Filatka and Miroshka Rivals", in which Baklushin played Filatka, and Sirotkin - Filatka's bride. The second play was called "Kedril the Glutton". In conclusion, a "pantomime to the music" was presented.

The theater was staged in a military barracks. Half of the room was given to the audience, the other half was the stage. The curtain stretched across the barracks was painted with oil paint and sewn from canvas. In front of the curtain there were two benches and several chairs for officers and outsiders, which were not moved during the whole holiday. Behind the benches were the prisoners, and there was incredible crowding.

The crowd of spectators, squeezed from all sides, with blissful faces, was waiting for the start of the performance. A gleam of childish joy shone on the branded faces. The prisoners were delighted. They were allowed to have fun, forget about the shackles and long years of imprisonment.

Part two

I. Hospital

After the holidays, I fell ill and went to our military hospital, in the main building of which there were 2 prison wards. Sick prisoners announced their illness to a non-commissioned officer. They were recorded in a book and sent with an escort to the battalion infirmary, where the doctor recorded the really sick in the hospital.

The appointment of drugs and the distribution of portions was carried out by the intern, who was in charge of the prison wards. We were dressed in hospital linen, I walked along a clean corridor and found myself in a long, narrow room, where there were 22 wooden beds.

There were few seriously ill patients. To my right lay a counterfeiter, a former clerk, the illegitimate son of a retired captain. He was a stocky guy of about 28, not stupid, cheeky, confident in his innocence. He told me in detail about the order in the hospital.

Following him, a patient from the correctional company approached me. It was already a gray-haired soldier named Chekunov. He began to serve me, which caused several poisonous ridicule from a consumptive patient named Ustyantsev, who, frightened of punishment, drank a mug of wine infused with tobacco and poisoned himself. I felt that his anger was directed more at me than at Chekunov.

All diseases were collected here, even venereal ones. There were also a few who came just to “relax”. The doctors let them in out of compassion. Externally, the ward was relatively clean, but we did not show off the internal cleanliness. Patients got used to it and even believed that it was necessary. Those punished by gauntlets were met with us very seriously and silently looked after the unfortunate. The paramedics knew that they were handing over the beaten man to experienced hands.

After an evening visit to the doctor, the ward was locked, bringing into it a night tub. At night, the prisoners were not allowed out of the wards. This useless cruelty was explained by the fact that the prisoner would go out to the toilet at night and run away, despite the fact that there was a window with an iron grate, and an armed sentry accompanied the prisoner to the toilet. And where to run in winter in hospital clothes. From the shackles of a convict, no disease saves. For the sick, the shackles are too heavy, and this heaviness aggravates their suffering.

II. Continuation

The doctors went around the wards in the morning. Before them, our resident, a young but knowledgeable doctor, visited the ward. Many doctors in Rus' enjoy the love and respect of the common people, despite the general distrust of medicine. When the intern noticed that the prisoner came to rest from work, he wrote down a non-existent illness for him and left him to lie. The senior doctor was much more severe than the intern, and for this we respected him.

Some patients asked to be discharged with their backs not healed from the first sticks, in order to get out of court as soon as possible. For some, habit helped to endure punishment. The prisoners spoke with unusual good nature about how they were beaten and about those who beat them.

However, not all stories were cold-blooded and indifferent. They talked about Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov with indignation. He was a man in his 30s, tall, fat, with ruddy cheeks, white teeth, and a booming laugh. He loved to whip and punish with sticks. The lieutenant was a refined gourmet in the executive business: he invented various unnatural things in order to pleasantly tickle his fat-swollen soul.

Lieutenant Smekalov, who was the commander at our prison, was remembered with joy and pleasure. The Russian people are ready to forget any torment for one kind word, but Lieutenant Smekalov has gained particular popularity. He was a simple man, even kind in his own way, and we recognized him as our own.

III. Continuation

In the hospital, I got a visual representation of all kinds of punishments. All those punished with gauntlets were reduced to our chambers. I wanted to know all the degrees of sentences, I tried to imagine the psychological state of those going to be executed.

If the prisoner could not withstand the prescribed number of blows, then, according to the doctor's sentence, this number was divided into several parts. The prisoners endured the execution itself courageously. I noticed that the rods in large quantities are the heaviest punishment. With five hundred rods, a person can be whipped to death, and five hundred sticks can be carried without danger to life.

Almost every person has the properties of an executioner, but they develop unevenly. Executioners are of two types: voluntary and forced. To the forced executioner, the people experience an unaccountable, mystical fear.

A forced executioner is an exiled prisoner who has been apprenticed to another executioner and left forever in prison, where he has his own household and is under guard. The executioners have money, they eat well, they drink wine. The executioner cannot punish weakly; but for a bribe, he promises the victim that he will not beat her very painfully. If his proposal is not agreed, he punishes barbarously.

Being in the hospital was boring. The arrival of a newcomer has always produced a revival. They even rejoiced at the madmen who were brought to trial. The defendants pretended to be crazy in order to get rid of punishment. Some of them, after playing tricks for two or three days, subsided and asked to be discharged. The real lunatics were the punishment for the whole ward.

The seriously ill loved to be treated. Bloodletting was accepted with pleasure. Our banks were of a special kind. The machine that cuts the skin, the paramedic lost or ruined, and had to make 12 cuts for each jar with a lancet.

Most sad time came late in the evening. It became stuffy, vivid pictures of a past life were recalled. One night I heard a story that seemed to me like a feverish dream.

IV. Akulkin's husband

I woke up late at night and heard two people whispering to each other not far from me. The narrator Shishkov was still young, about 30 years old, a civilian prisoner, an empty, eccentric and cowardly man of small stature, thin, with restless or stupidly thoughtful eyes.

It was about the father of Shishkov's wife, Ankudim Trofimych. He was a wealthy and respected old man of 70 years old, had auctions and a large loan, kept three workers. Ankudim Trofimych was married a second time, had two sons and an older daughter, Akulina. Shishkov's friend Filka Morozov was considered her lover. At that time, Filka's parents died, and he was going to skip the inheritance and join the soldiers. He did not want to marry Akulka. Shishkov then also buried his father, and his mother worked for Ankudim - she baked gingerbread for sale.

One day, Filka persuaded Shishkov to smear Akulka's gate with tar - Filka did not want her to marry an old rich man who had wooed her. He heard that there were rumors about Akulka, and backtracked. Mother advised Shishkov to marry Akulka - now no one took her in marriage, and they gave her a good dowry.

Until the very wedding, Shishkov drank without waking up. Filka Morozov threatened to break all his ribs, and to sleep with his wife every night. Ankudim shed tears at the wedding, he knew that his daughter was being tortured. And Shishkov had a whip with him before the wedding, and decided to make fun of Akulka so that she would know how to get married by dishonorable deceit.

After the wedding, they left them with Akulka in a cage. She sits white, not a blood in her face from fear. Shishkov prepared a whip and laid it by the bed, but Akulka turned out to be innocent. He then knelt before her, asked for forgiveness, and vowed to take revenge on Filka Morozov for the shame.

Some time later, Filka offered Shishkov to sell his wife to him. To force Shishkov, Filka started a rumor that he did not sleep with his wife, because he was always drunk, and at that time his wife accepted others. It was a shame to Shishkov, and since then he began to beat his wife from morning to evening. Old Ankudim came to intercede, and then retreated. Shishkov did not allow his mother to interfere, he threatened to kill her.

Filka, meanwhile, completely drank himself and went as a mercenary to a tradesman, for his eldest son. Filka lived with the tradesman for his own pleasure, drank, slept with his daughters, dragged the owner by the beard. The tradesman endured - Filka had to go to the soldiers for his eldest son. When Filka was being taken to the soldiers to surrender, he saw Akulka along the way, stopped, bowed to her in the ground and asked for forgiveness for his meanness. Shark forgave him, a&n

This story does not have a strictly outlined plot and is a sketch from the life of convicts presented in chronological order. In this work, Dostoevsky describes personal impressions of being in exile, tells stories from the lives of other prisoners, and also creates psychological sketches and expresses philosophical reflections.

Alexander Goryanchikov, a hereditary nobleman, receives 10 years of hard labor for the murder of his wife. Alexander Petrovich killed his wife out of jealousy, which he himself admitted to the investigation, after hard labor he cuts off all contacts with relatives and friends and remains to live in the Siberian town of K., in which he leads a secluded life, earning his living by tutoring.

The nobleman Goryanchikov is having a hard time with his imprisonment, as he is not used to being among ordinary peasants. Many prisoners take him for a sissy, despise him for his noble clumsiness in everyday affairs, deliberate disgust, but respect his high origin. At first, Alexander Petrovich is shocked by being in a difficult peasant atmosphere, but this impression soon passes and Goryanchikov begins to study the Ostroh prisoners with genuine interest, discovering the essence of the common people, their vices and nobility.

Alexander Petrovich falls into the second category of Siberian penal servitude - a fortress, the first category in this system was directly hard labor, the third - factories. The convicts believed that the severity of hard labor decreases from hard labor to the factory, however, slaves of the second category were under the constant supervision of the military and often dreamed of moving to the first category, then to the third. Along with ordinary prisoners, in the fortress where Goryanchikov was serving his sentence, there was a specific department of prisoners convicted of especially serious crimes.

Alexander Petrovich gets acquainted with many prisoners. Akim Akimych, a former nobleman with whom Goryanchikov made friends, was sentenced to 12 years in hard labor for the massacre of a Caucasian prince. Akim is an extremely pedantic and well-behaved person. Another nobleman, A-v, was sentenced to ten years in hard labor for a false denunciation on which he wanted to make a fortune. Hard work in hard labor did not lead A-v to repentance, but, on the contrary, corrupted him, turning the nobleman into an informer and a scoundrel. A-v is a symbol of the complete moral decay of a person.

Terrible kisser Gazin, the strongest convict in the fortress, convicted of killing small children. It was rumored that Gazin enjoyed the fear and torment of innocent children. The smuggler Osip, who raised smuggling to the level of an art, brought wine and forbidden foods into the fortress, worked as a cook in the prison and cooked decent food for the prisoners.

A nobleman lives among the common people and learns such worldly wisdom as how to earn money in hard labor, how to carry wine into prison. He learns about what kind of work prisoners are involved in, how they relate to the authorities and to hard labor itself. What do convicts dream about, what is allowed and what is forbidden, what will the prison authorities turn a blind eye to, and what will convicts receive severe punishment for.

Part one

Introduction

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, one occasionally comes across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in a cemetery - cities that look more like a good suburban village than in the city. They are usually very adequately equipped with police officers, assessors and all the rest of the subaltern rank. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm to serve. People live simple, illiberal; orders are old, strong, consecrated for centuries. Officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, hardened Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the salary that is not set off, double runs and tempting hopes in the future. Of these, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. Subsequently, they bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, a frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon get bored with Siberia and ask themselves with anguish: why did they come to it? They impatiently serve their legal term of service, three years, and after it has expired, they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at her. They are wrong: not only from official, but even from many points of view, one can be blessed in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; many extremely sufficient foreigners. Young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter itself. Champagne is drunk unnaturally much. Caviar is amazing. Harvest happens in other places fifteen times ... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia, they know how to use it.

In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, who later became a second-class exile for the murder of his wife, and, after the expiration of a ten-year term of hard labor determined for him by law, he humbly and inaudibly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He was actually assigned to one suburban volost; but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to get at least some livelihood in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often comes across teachers from exiled settlers; they are not shy. They teach mainly the French language, which is so necessary in the field of life and which without them in the remote regions of Siberia would have no idea. For the first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters of different years who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance intrigued me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European way. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listened to your every word with strict courtesy, as if pondering it, as if you had asked him a task with your question or wanted to extort some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer to such an extent that you suddenly felt awkward for some reason, and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally, and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters, but that he is terribly unsociable, hiding from everyone, extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little. and that in general it is quite difficult to talk to him. Others claimed that he was positively insane, although they found that in essence this was not such an important shortcoming, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to show kindness to Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests and so on. It was believed that he should have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all communication with them - in a word, he harmed himself. In addition, everyone here knew his story, they knew that he had killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed him out of jealousy and himself denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). The same crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, in spite of all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in public only to give lessons.

I didn't pay much attention to him at first; but, I don't know why, he gradually began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was no way to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with an air as if he considered this his first duty; but after his answers I somehow found it hard to question him longer; and on his face after such conversations there was always some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember I was walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. It suddenly occurred to me to invite him over for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words, and suddenly, looking angrily at me, rushed to run in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, when meeting with me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I did not let up; something drew me to him, and a month later, for no apparent reason, I myself went to Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lodged on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a sick, consumptive daughter, and that illegitimate daughter, a child of ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I went in to see him. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him in some kind of crime. He was completely at a loss, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely followed my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: “Will you leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, current news; he remained silent and smiled maliciously; it turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; they were in my hands, fresh from the post office, I offered them to him not yet cut. He gave them a greedy look, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, responding with lack of time. Finally, I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to molest a person who sets his main task - to hide as far as possible from the whole world. But the deed was done. I remember that I hardly noticed his books at all, and, therefore, it was unfairly said about him that he reads a lot. However, driving twice, very late at night, past his windows, I noticed a light in them. What did he do, sitting up until dawn? Did he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home already in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the autumn, died in seclusion and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately got acquainted with the mistress of the deceased, intending to find out from her: what was her tenant especially doing and did he write anything? For two kopecks, she brought me a whole basket of papers left over from the deceased. The old woman confessed that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She could tell me nothing particularly new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months did not open a book and did not take a pen in his hands; but whole nights he paced up and down the room and kept thinking something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he was very fond of and very fond of her granddaughter, Katya, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Catherine's day every time he went to someone to serve a memorial service. Guests could not stand; he went out from the yard only to teach children; he even looked askance at her, the old woman, when she, once a week, came at least a little to tidy up his room, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. So, this man could at least make someone love him.

I took his papers away and sorted through them all day. Three-quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant shreds or student exercises from copybooks. But then there was one notebook, rather voluminous, poorly written and incomplete, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. It was a description, albeit incoherent, of a ten-year hard labor life, endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I re-read these passages several times and almost convinced myself that they were written in madness. But the penitentiary notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead," as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the perished people carried me away, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. On trial I choose first two or three chapters; Let the public judge...

I. Dead house

Our prison stood on the edge of the fortress, at the very ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence at the light of day: would you see at least something? - and only you will see that the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart overgrown with weeds, and sentries are walking back and forth along the rampart day and night, and you will immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will just go to look through the cracks of the fence and you will see the same rampart, the same sentries, and the same little edge of the sky, not the sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine large yard, steps of two hundred lengths and steps of one and a half hundred widths, all surrounded by a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, with a high back, that is, a fence of high pillars (fal), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse planks and pointed above: this is the outer fence of the prison. In one of the sides of the fence there are strong gates, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked on demand, for release to work. Behind these gates was a bright, free world, people lived, like everyone else. But on this side of the fence, that world was imagined as some kind of unrealizable fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else; it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own manners and customs, and a dead house alive, life like nowhere else, and special people. It is this particular corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard stretch two long one-story log cabins. These are the barracks. Here live prisoners, placed by category. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is still the same log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is a building where cellars, barns, sheds are placed under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and makes up a flat, fairly large area. Prisoners line up here, check and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes even several times a day, judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. Around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, on the backs of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and gloomy in character, like to walk around after hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thought. Meeting them during these walks, I liked to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in his free time was counting pali. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in his account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; every day he counted one finger, and thus, by the remaining number of fingers not counted, he could clearly see how many days he still had to stay in prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely glad when he finished any side of the hexagon. He had to wait for many more years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw a convict say goodbye to his comrades, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he went around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the image and then bowed low, to the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to commemorate him dashingly. I also remember how once a prisoner, formerly a prosperous Siberian peasant, was once called to the gate towards evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife was married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for about two minutes, both burst into tears and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, one could learn patience in this place.

When it got dark, we were all taken to the barracks, where we were locked up for the whole night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low, stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. I do not understand now how I survived in it for ten years. On the bunk I had three boards: that was my whole place. On the same bunk, about thirty people were accommodated in one of our rooms. In winter they locked up early; I had to wait four hours for everyone to fall asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamated ... yes, a tenacious person! Man is a creature that gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.

There were only two hundred and fifty of us in prison - the figure is almost constant. Some came, others finished their sentences and left, others died. And what people were not here! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles, even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crimes, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no such crime that would not have had its representative here. The main basis of the entire prison population was the exile-hard labor ranks of the civil ( strongly hard labor, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). They were criminals, completely deprived of any rights of state, cut off chunks from society, with a branded face for eternal evidence of their rejection. They were sent to work for terms of eight to twelve years and then sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts to be settlers. There were criminals and a military category, not deprived of the rights of the state, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for short periods; at the end of them, they turned back to the same place they came from, into soldiers, into Siberian linear battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "permanent ones" were still not completely deprived of all the rights of the state. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mainly military ones, quite numerous. It was called "special department". Criminals were sent here from all over Rus'. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the term of their work. They were required by law to double and triple their work lessons. They were kept at the prison until the opening of the most difficult hard labor in Siberia. “You have a term, and we are long in hard labor,” they said to other prisoners. I heard later that this category was destroyed. In addition, civil order was also destroyed at our fortress, and one general military prisoner company was opened. Of course, with this, the leadership also changed. I am describing, therefore, antiquity, things long past and past ...

It was a long time ago; I dream of all this now, as in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening, in the month of December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; prepared to be trusted. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened the doors to this strange house in which I had to stay for so many years, to endure so many such sensations, about which, without actually experiencing them, I could not even have an approximate idea. For example, I could never imagine: what is terrible and painful in the fact that in all ten years of my penal servitude I will never, not for a single minute be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, never once! However, I still had to get used to this!

There were casual killers and killers by trade, robbers and chieftains of robbers. There were just Mazuriks and vagrants-industrialists on found money or in the Stolevskaya part. There were also those about whom it was difficult to decide: for what, it seems, they could come here? Meanwhile, everyone had his own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes from yesterday's hops. In general, they spoke little about their past, did not like to talk about it, and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers so cheerful, so never thinking that it was possible to bet on a bet, that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also gloomy faces, almost always silent. In general, few people told about their lives, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in the custom, not accepted. So unless, occasionally, someone will talk from idleness, while the other listens coolly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. “We are a literate people!” they often said with a sort of strange self-satisfaction. I remember how once one robber, drunk (it was sometimes possible to get drunk in hard labor), began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy, how he first deceived him with a toy, led him somewhere into an empty barn, and stabbed him there. The whole barracks, hitherto laughing at his jokes, screamed as one man, and the robber was forced to be silent; the barracks screamed not from indignation, but because didn't have to talk about it speak; because talking about it not accepted. By the way, I note that these people were really literate and not even figuratively, but literally. Probably more than half of them could read and write. In what other place, where the Russian people gather in large masses, will you separate from them a bunch of two hundred and fifty people, of which half would be literate? I heard later that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance in the people. But this is by no means a disadvantage. All the ranks differed in dress: some of them had half of the jacket dark brown and the other gray, as well as on pantaloons - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalashny girl who approached the prisoners looked at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ugh, how nice! she shouted, “and the gray cloth was missing, and the black cloth was missing!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of one gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: in some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, in others across.

At first glance, one could notice a certain sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the sharpest, most original personalities who reigned over others involuntarily, and they tried to get into the general tone of the whole prison. In general, I will say that all this people, with a few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this, were a gloomy, envious, terribly vain people, boastful, touchy and extremely formalist. The ability to be surprised at nothing was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to behave outwardly. But often the most arrogant look with the speed of lightning was replaced by the most cowardly. There were some truly strong people; those were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real, strong people, there were several vain to the last extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity, appearance were in the foreground. Most were corrupted and terribly mean. Gossip and gossip were incessant: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal charters and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that stood out sharply, obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but nevertheless obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too presumptuous, too jumped out of the measure in the wild, so that in the end they committed their crimes as if not of their own accord, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a daze; often out of vanity excited to the highest degree. But in our country they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that some, before arriving in prison, were the horror of entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he had landed in the wrong place, that there was no longer anyone to surprise, and imperceptibly humbled himself, and fell into the general tone. This general tone was made up from the outside of some special, personal dignity, which was imbued with almost every inhabitant of the prison. As if, in fact, the title of convict, decided, was some kind of rank, and even an honorary one. No sign of shame or remorse! However, there was also some kind of outward humility, so to speak official, some kind of calm reasoning: “We are a lost people,” they said, “we didn’t know how to live in freedom, now break the green light, check the ranks.” - "You did not obey your father and mother, now obey the drum skin." “I didn’t want to sew with gold, now beat the stones with a hammer.” All this was often said, both in the form of moralizing and in the form of ordinary sayings and sayings, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that at least one of them confessed inwardly his lawlessness. Try someone who is not a convict to reproach a prisoner for his crime, scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal) - there will be no end to curses. And what were they all masters of swearing! They swore subtly, artistically. Cursing was elevated to a science among them; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word as with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels between them further developed this science. All this people worked under duress, consequently they were idle, consequently corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, then they were corrupted in penal servitude. They all gathered here not of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.

“The devil took down three bast shoes before he gathered us together!” they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, strife, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman was able to be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, there were strong people among them, characters who were accustomed all their lives to break and command, hardened, fearless. These were somehow involuntarily respected; for their part, although they were often very jealous of their glory, they generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not enter into empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not from the principle of obedience , not from the consciousness of duties, but as if under some kind of contract, realizing mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and resolute man, known to the authorities for his bestial inclinations, was called once for punishment for some crime. The day was summer, it's time for non-working. The staff officer, the nearest and immediate chief of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was at our very gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners, he brought them to the point that they trembled at him. He was insanely strict, "rushed at people," as the convicts used to say. What they feared most in him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be concealed. He saw without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was happening at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was wrong. He only embittered already embittered people with his furious, evil deeds, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and reasonable man, who sometimes moderated his wild antics, he would have caused great trouble with his administration. I don't understand how he could end well; he retired alive and well, although, however, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when he was called. As a rule, he silently and resolutely lay down under the rods, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment, as if disheveled, calmly and philosophically looking at the misfortune that had happened. However, he was always treated with caution. But this time he thought he was right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to stick a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp tools were terribly forbidden in prison. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he decided to hide something especially, and since knives and tools were a constant necessity in prison, then, despite the searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately started. All hard labor rushed to the fence and with a sinking heart looked through the cracks of the fingers. Everyone knew that Petrov would not want to go under the rod this time, and that the major had come to an end. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into the droshky and left, entrusting the execution of the execution to another officer. "God himself saved!" the prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger passed with the departure of the major. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; But there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious than these strange outbursts of impatience and obstinacy. Often a person endures for several years, humbles himself, endures the most severe punishments and suddenly breaks through on some little thing, on some trifle, almost for nothing. On another view, one might even call him crazy; yes they do.

I have already said that for several years I did not see any slightest sign repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them inwardly consider themselves completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, youthfulness, false shame are largely the cause of this. On the other hand, who can say that he has tracked down the depths of these lost hearts and read in them what is hidden from the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at such a young age, to notice at least something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some trait that would testify to inner longing, to suffering. But it wasn't, it wasn't positive. Yes, crime, it seems, cannot be comprehended from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than it is believed. Of course, prisons and a system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and ensure society from further attempts by the villain on his peace. In the criminal, prison and the most intensified hard labor develop only hatred, a thirst for forbidden pleasures, and terrible frivolity. But I am firmly convinced that the famous cell system achieves only a false, deceptive, external goal. It sucks the life juice out of a person, energizes his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then a morally withered mummy, she presents a half-mad man as a model of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. In addition, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, getting even. Finally, one can judge from such points of view that it will almost be necessary to justify the criminal himself. But, in spite of various points of view, everyone will agree that there are such crimes that always and everywhere, according to various laws, have been considered indisputable crimes since the beginning of the world and will be considered such as long as man remains a man. Only in prison have I heard stories of the most terrible, most unnatural deeds, of the most monstrous murders, told with the most uncontrollable, most childlike laughter. I especially remember one parricide. He was from the nobility, served and was with his sixty-year-old father something like a prodigal son. His behavior was completely dissolute, he got into debt. His father limited him, persuaded him; but the father had a house, there was a farm, money was suspected, and - the son killed him, thirsting for an inheritance. The crime was found only a month later. The killer himself filed an announcement with the police that his father had disappeared to no one knows where. He spent the whole month in the most depraved way. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for the drain of sewage, covered with boards. The body lay in this groove. It was dressed and removed, the gray-haired head was cut off, attached to the body, and the killer placed a pillow under the head. He did not confess; was deprived of the nobility, rank and exiled to work for twenty years. All the time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful frame of mind. He was an eccentric, frivolous, unreasonable person in the highest degree, although not a fool at all. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for a crime that was not even mentioned, but for stupidity, for not knowing how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes recalled his father. Once, speaking to me about a healthy constitution, hereditary in their family, he added: “Here my parent

. ... break the green street, check the ranks. - The expression has a meaning: to pass through the formation of soldiers with gauntlets, receiving a number of blows on the bare back determined by the court.

Headquarters officer, closest and immediate chief of the prison... - It is known that the prototype of this officer was V. G. Krivtsov, the parade-major of the Omsk prison. In a letter to his brother dated February 22, 1854, Dostoevsky wrote: “Platz Major Krivtsov is a scoundrel, of which there are few, a petty barbarian, a quarrel, a drunkard, everything that can only be imagined disgusting.” Krivtsov was dismissed, and then put on trial for abuse.

. ... commandant, a noble and reasonable man ... - The commandant of the Omsk fortress was Colonel A. F. de Grave, according to the memoirs of the senior adjutant of the Omsk corps headquarters N. T. Cherevin, "the kindest and most worthy person."

Petrov. - In the documents of the Omsk prison there is a record that the prisoner Andrey Shalomentsev was punished "for resisting the parade-major Krivtsov while punishing him with rods and uttering the words that he would certainly do something to himself or slaughter Krivtsov." This prisoner, perhaps, was the prototype of Petrov, he came to hard labor "for breaking the epaulette from the company commander."

. ... the famous cell system ... - The system of solitary confinement. The question of organizing solitary prisons in Russia on the model of the London prison was put forward by Nicholas I himself.

. ... one parricide ... - The prototype of the nobleman-“paricide” was D.N. Ilyinsky, about whom seven volumes of his court case have come down to us. Outwardly, in terms of events and plot, this imaginary "parricide" is the prototype of Mitya Karamazov in Dostoevsky's last novel.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" can rightly be called the book of the century. If Dostoevsky had left behind only one Notes from the House of the Dead, he would have entered the history of Russian and world literature as its original celebrity. It is no coincidence that critics assigned him, while still alive, a metonymic "second name" - "the author of Notes from the House of the Dead" and used it instead of the writer's surname. This book of Dostoevsky's books caused, as he accurately anticipated back in 1859, i.e. at the beginning of work on it, the interest was "the most capital" and became a sensational literary and social event of the era.
The reader was shocked by the pictures from the hitherto unknown world of the Siberian “military penal servitude” (military was harder than civilian), honestly and courageously written out by the hand of its prisoner - the master psychological prose. "Notes from the House of the Dead" made a strong (albeit not the same) impression on A.I. Herzen, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, N.G. Chernyshevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, and others. To the triumphant, but behind the prescription of years, as if already half-forgotten glory of the author of "Poor Folk", a mighty refreshing addition was added the glory of the newly appeared - the great martyr and Dante of the House of the Dead at the same time. The book not only restored, but raised Dostoevsky's literary and civic popularity to new heights.
However, the existence of "Notes from the House of the Dead" in Russian literature cannot be called idyllic. They were stupidly and absurdly censored. Their "mixed" newspaper and magazine first publication (the Russkiy Mir weekly and the Vremya magazine) stretched out for more than two years. The enthusiastic reception of the reader did not mean the understanding that Dostoevsky counted on. How upsetting he regarded the results of literary-critical evaluations of his book: "In criticism" 3<аписки>from Mert<вого>Houses "mean that Dostoevsky denounced the prison, but now it is outdated. So they said in the book<ых>shops<нах>, offering a different, more immediate exposure of prisons" (Notebooks 1876-1877). Criticism downplayed and lost the meaning of Notes from the House of the Dead. Such one-sided and opportunistic approaches to "Notes from the House of the Dead" only as a "denunciation" of the penitentiary-hard labor system and - figuratively and symbolically - in general, the "house of the Romanovs" (V.I. Lenin's assessment), the institution of state power, have not been completely overcome until so far. The writer, meanwhile, did not focus on "accusatory" goals, and they did not go beyond the bounds of immanent literary and artistic necessity. That is why politically biased interpretations of the book are essentially fruitless. As always, Dostoevsky here, as a heart specialist, is immersed in the element of personality. modern man, develops his concept of the characterological motives of people's behavior in conditions of extreme social evil and violence.
The catastrophe that occurred in 1849 had grave consequences for the Petrashevsky Dostoevsky. Prominent connoisseur and historian of the royal prison M.N. Gernet terribly, but not exaggerating, comments on Dostoevsky’s stay in the Omsk prison: “One must be amazed how the writer did not die here” ( Gernet M.N. History of the royal prison. M., 1961. T. 2. S. 232). However, Dostoevsky took full advantage of the unique opportunity to comprehend up close and from within, in all details inaccessible in the wild, the life of the common people, constrained by hellish circumstances, and to lay the foundations of his own writer's national knowledge. “You are not worthy to talk about the people, you understand nothing about them. You did not live with him, but I lived with him,” he wrote to his opponents a quarter of a century later (Notebooks 1875-1876). "Notes from the House of the Dead" is a book worthy of the people (peoples) of Russia, based entirely on the writer's painful personal experience.
The creative history of "Notes from the House of the Dead" begins with hidden entries in "my notebook of hard labor<ую>”, which Dostoevsky, violating the establishment of the law, led in the Omsk jail; from Semipalatinsk sketches "from the memoirs<...>stay in hard labor ”(letter to A.N. Maikov dated January 18, 1856) and letters of 1854-1859. (M.M. and A.M. Dostoevsky, A.N. Maikov, N.D. Fonvizina and others), as well as with oral stories in the circle of people close to him. The book was hatched and created for many years and surpassed in the duration of the creative time given to it. Hence, in particular, its genre-stylistic finishing, unusual for Dostoevsky in terms of thoroughness (not a shadow of the style of "Poor People" or), the elegant simplicity of the narration is entirely the peak and perfection of form.
The problem of defining the genre of Notes from the House of the Dead has puzzled researchers. In the set of definitions proposed for the Notes... there are almost all types of literary prose: memoirs, a book, a novel, an essay, a study... And yet, not one of them converges in the totality of features with the original. The aesthetic phenomenon of this original work consists in the inter-genre boundary, hybridity. Only the author of Notes from the House of the Dead was subject to the combination of document and targeting with the poetry of complex artistic and psychological writing that determined the stamped originality of the book.
The elementary position of the recollector was initially rejected by Dostoevsky (see the indication: "My personality will disappear" - in a letter to his brother Mikhail dated October 9, 1859) as unacceptable for a number of reasons. The fact of his condemnation to hard labor, well-known in itself, did not represent a plot forbidden in the censorship-political sense (with the accession of Alexander II, censorship indulgences were outlined). The figure of an invented man who was imprisoned for the murder of his wife could not mislead anyone either. In essence, it was an understandable mask of Dostoevsky the convict. In other words, the autobiographical (and therefore valuable and captivating) narrative about the Omsk penal servitude and its inhabitants in 1850-1854, although it was overshadowed by a certain look back at censorship, was written according to the laws artistic text, free from the self-sufficing and stubborn in the everyday personality of the recollector of memoir empiricism.
So far, no satisfactory explanation has been offered of how the writer managed to achieve harmonious conjugation in a single creative process chronicle writing (factography) with a personal confession, knowledge of the people - with self-knowledge, analytic thought, philosophical meditation - with epic imagery, meticulously microscopic analysis of psychological reality - with entertaining and concisely artless fiction, Pushkin's type of storytelling. Moreover, "Notes from the House of the Dead" was an encyclopedia of Siberian penal servitude in the middle of the century before last. The external and internal life of its population is covered - with the laconicism of the story - to the maximum, with unsurpassed fullness. Dostoevsky did not disregard a single undertaking of convict consciousness. Scenes from the life of the prison, chosen by the author for scrupulous consideration and unhurried reflection, were recognized as stunning: “Bath”, “Performance”, “Hospital”, “Claim”, “Exit from hard labor”. Their large, panoramic plan does not obscure the mass of details and details that are all-encompassing in their totality, no less poignant and necessary in their ideological and artistic significance in the general humanistic composition of the work (a penny alms given by a girl to Goryanchikov; etc.)
The visual philosophy of Notes from the House of the Dead proves that a “realist in the highest sense,” as Dostoevsky would later call himself, did not allow his most humane (by no means “cruel”!) talent to deviate one iota from the truth of life, no matter how hard-hitting and tragic it might be. neither was. With the book about the House of the Dead, he courageously challenged the literature of half-truths about man. Goryanchikov the narrator (behind whom Dostoevsky himself visibly and tangibly stands), observing a sense of proportion and tact, looks into all corners of the human soul, not avoiding the most distant and gloomy. Thus, not only the savagely sadistic antics of prison mates (Gazin, Akulkin's husband) and ex officio executioners (lieutenants Zherebyatnikov, Smekalov) fell into his field of vision. The anatomy of the ugly and vicious knows no bounds. "Brothers in misfortune" steal and drink the Bible, tell "about the most unnatural deeds, with the most childlike laughter", get drunk and fight on holy days, rave in their sleep with knives and "Raskolnikov's" axes, go crazy, engage in sodomy (scabrous "partnership" to which Sirotkin and Sushilov belong) get used to every kind of abomination. One after another, from private observations of the current life of hard labor people, generalizing aphoristic judgments-maxims follow: “Man is a being who gets used to everything, and, I think, this is his best definition”; "There are people like tigers, thirsty to lick blood"; “It is hard to imagine how much human nature can be distorted,” etc. - then they will join the artistic philosophical and anthropological fund of the “Great Pentateuch” and “The Writer's Diary”. Scientists are right who believe not Notes from the Underground, but Notes from the House of the Dead, to be the beginning of many beginnings in the poetics and ideology of Dostoevsky, a novelist and publicist. It is in this work that the origins of the main literary ideological, thematic and compositional complexes and decisions of Dostoevsky the artist: crime and punishment; voluptuous tyrants and their victims; freedom and money; suffering and love; shackled "our extraordinary people" and nobles - "iron noses" and "fly-hounds"; the narrator-chronicler and the people and events he describes in the spirit of a confessional diary. In "Notes from the House of the Dead" the writer found a blessing for his further creative path.
With all the transparency of the artistic-autobiographical relationship between Dostoevsky (author; prototype; imaginary publisher) and Goryanchikov (narrator; character; imaginary memoirist), there is no reason to simplify them. A complex poetic and psychological mechanism is hidden and hidden here. It is rightly noted: "Dostoevsky typified his cautious fate" (Zakharov). This allowed him to remain in "Notes ..." himself, unconditional Dostoevsky, and at the same time, in principle, following the model of Pushkin's Belkin, not to be him. The advantage of such a creative "double-world" lies in the freedom of artistic thought, which comes, however, from actually documented, historically confirmed sources.
The ideological and artistic significance of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" seems immeasurable, the questions raised in them are innumerable. This is - without exaggeration - a kind of poetic universe of Dostoevsky, a brief edition of his full confession about man. Here, the colossal spiritual experience of a genius who lived for four years “in a heap” with people from the people, robbers, murderers, vagabonds, is summed up directly, when in him, without getting a proper creative outlet, “inner work was in full swing”, and rare, from case to case, fragmentary entries in the "Siberian Notebook" only kindled a passion for full-blooded literary pursuits.
Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov thinks on the scale of all geographically and nationally great Russia. There is a paradox of the image of space. Behind the prison fence (“burnings”) of the House of the Dead, the outlines of an immense power appear dotted: the Danube, Taganrog, Starodubye, Chernigov, Poltava, Riga, St. Petersburg, Moscow, “a village near Moscow”, Kursk, Dagestan, the Caucasus, Perm, Siberia, Tyumen, Tobolsk , Irtysh, Omsk, the Kyrgyz “free Steppe” (in the Dostoevsky dictionary this word is written with a capital letter), Ust-Kamenogorsk, Eastern Siberia, Nerchinsk, Petropavlovsk port. Accordingly, for sovereign thinking, America, the Red (Red) Sea, Mount Vesuvius, the island of Sumatra and, indirectly, France and Germany are mentioned. The living contact of the narrator with the East is emphasized (oriental motifs of the "Steppe", Muslim countries). This is consonant with the character multi-ethnicity and multi-confessionalism of "Notes ...". The arresting artel is made up of Great Russians (including Siberians), Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Kalmyks, Tatars, "Circassians" - Lezgins, Chechens. Baklushin's story depicts the Russian-Baltic Germans. The Kirghiz (Kazakhs), “Muslims”, a Chukhonka, an Armenian, Turks, Gypsies, a Frenchman, a Frenchwoman are named and act to one degree or another in the “Notes from the House of the Dead”. In the poetically conditioned dispersion and interlocking of topoi and ethnic groups, there is its own, already "novel" expressive logic. Not only the House of the Dead is a part of Russia, but Russia is also a part of the House of the Dead.
The main spiritual conflict between Dostoevsky and Goryanchikov is connected with the theme of Russia: bewilderment and pain before the fact of the class alienation of the people from the noble intelligentsia, its best part. In the chapter "Claim" - the key to understanding what happened to the narrator-character and the author of the tragedy. Their attempt to take the side of the rebels in solidarity was rejected with deadly categoricalness: they are - under no circumstances and never - "comrades" for their people. The way out of penal servitude solved the most painful problem for all prisoners: de jure and de facto, prison captivity was put an end to. The ending of Notes from the House of the Dead is bright and uplifting: “Freedom, new life, resurrection from the dead ... What a glorious moment! But the problem of separation from the people, which was not envisaged by any of the Russian lawmakers, but which pierced Dostoevsky’s heart forever (“the robber taught me a lot” - Notebook of 1875-1876), remained. Gradually, in the writer's desire to solve it, at least for himself, it democratized the direction of Dostoevsky's creative development and eventually led him to a kind of soil populism.
A modern researcher aptly calls Notes from the House of the Dead "a book about the people" (Tunimanov). Russian literature before Dostoevsky knew nothing of the kind. centering position folk theme in the conceptual basis of the book forces one to reckon with it in the first place. "Notes ..." testified to Dostoevsky's tremendous success in understanding the personality of the people. The content of Notes from the House of the Dead is by no means limited to what Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov personally saw and personally experienced. The other, no less significant half is what came to the Notes ... from the environment that tightly surrounded the author-narrator, by oral, "voiced" way (and what the corpus of records of the Siberian Notebook reminds of).
Folk storytellers, jokers, wits, Petrovich's Conversations and other Chrysostoms played an invaluable "co-author's" role in the artistic conception and implementation of "Notes from the House of the Dead". Without what they heard and directly adopted from them, the book - in the form in which it is - would not have taken place. Prisoner's stories, or "chatter" (an expression neutralizing censorship by Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov) recreate the lively - as if according to the dictionary of a certain cautious Vladimir Dal - the charm of folk colloquial speech of the middle of the century before last. A masterpiece inside Notes from the House of the Dead, the story "Akulkin's Husband", no matter how stylized we may recognize it, is based on everyday life. folk prose of the highest artistic and psychological merit. In fact, this ingenious interpretation of an oral folk tale is akin to Pushkin's Tales and Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. The same can be said about Baklushin's fairy tale romance story-confession. Of exceptional importance for the book are the constant narrative references to rumors, gossip, gossip, visits - grains of everyday folklore life. With appropriate reservations, “Notes from the House of the Dead” should be considered a book, to a certain extent told by the people, “brothers in misfortune,” so great is the proportion of colloquial tradition, legends, stories, momentary living words in it.
Dostoevsky, one of the first in our literature, outlined the types and varieties of folk narrators, cited stylized (and improved by him) samples of their oral art. The Dead House, which, among other things, was also the “house of folklore”, taught the writer to distinguish between storytellers: “realists” (Baklushin, Shishkov, Sirotkin), “comedians” and “buffoons” (Skuratov), ​​“psychologists” and “jokes” ( Shapkin), whipping "veils" (Luchka). Dostoevsky as a novelist could not have been more useful than the analytical study of the convict "Conversations of the Petrovichs", the lexicon-characterological experience that was concentrated and poetically processed in "Notes from the House of the Dead" came in handy and further nourished his narrative skill (Chroniker, biographer of the Karamazovs, writer in the diary, etc.).
Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov equally listens to his collaborators - "good" and "bad", "near" and "far", "famous" and "ordinary", "alive" and "dead". In his "estate" soul there are no hostile, "lordly" or squeamish feelings towards a commoner fellow prisoner. On the contrary, he reveals a Christian-sympathetic, truly "comradely" and "fraternal" attention to the masses of the people under arrest. Attention, unusual in its ideological and psychological predestination and ultimate goals - through the prism of the people to explain himself, and the person in general, and the principles of his life arrangement. It was caught by Ap. A. Grigoriev immediately after the release of "Notes from the House of the Dead" in the light: their author, the critic noted, "reached through a passive psychological process to the point that in the "Dead House" he completely merged with the people ... "( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. M., 1967. S. 483).
Dostoevsky wrote not a dispassionately objectified chronicle of penal servitude, but a confession-epic and, moreover, "Christian" and "edifying" narrative about "the most gifted, strongest people of our entire people", about its "mighty forces", which in the House of the Dead "died in vain ". In the poetic folk philology of Notes from the House of the Dead, samples of most of the main characters of the late Dostoevsky the artist were expressed: “soft-hearted”, “kind”, “persistent”, “sympathetic” and “heartfelt” (Alei); native Great Russian, "most sweet" and "full of fire and life" (Baklushin); “Kazan orphan”, “quiet and meek”, but capable of rebellion in extremes (Sirotkin); "the most resolute, most fearless of all convicts", heroic in potency (Petrov); stoically suffering "for the faith", "meek and meek as a child" schismatic rebel ("grandfather"); "spider" (Gazin); artistic (Potseikin); "superman" of penal servitude (Orlov) - the entire socio-psychological collection human types, revealed in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" cannot be listed. In the end, one thing remains important: the characterological studies of the Russian prison opened to the writer a horizonless spiritual world man from the people. On these empirical grounds, Dostoevsky's novelistic and journalistic thought was updated and affirmed. Internal creative rapprochement with the folk element, which began in the era of the House of the Dead, led her to the writer's formulation in 1871. " law turn to nationality.

The historical merits of the author of "Notes from the House of the Dead" to the national ethnological culture will be infringed if you do not pay focused attention to some other aspects of folk life, which found their discoverer and first interpreter in Dostoevsky.
The chapters "Performance" and "Convict Animals" are assigned a special ideological and aesthetic status in the "Notes ...". They depict the life and customs of the prisoners in an environment close to the natural, primordial, i.e. unscrupulous folk activity. The essay on the "folk theater" (the term was invented by Dostoevsky and entered the circulation of folklore and theater studies), which formed the core of the illustrious eleventh chapter of Notes from the House of the Dead, is priceless. This is the only one in Russian literature and ethnography that is so complete (“reporting-reporting”) and competent description of the phenomenon of the folk theater of the 19th century. - an indispensable and classic source on the history of Russia theatrical.
The drawing of the composition of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is similar to a hard labor chain. Shackles are the heavy, melancholy emblem of the House of the Dead. But the chain arrangement of links-chapters in the book is asymmetrical. The chain, consisting of 21 links, is divided in half just by the middle (unpaired) eleventh chapter. In the main weak-plot architectonics of Notes from the House of the Dead, chapter eleven is out of the ordinary, compositionally, highlighted. Dostoevsky poetically endowed her with an enormous life-affirming power. This is the pre-programmed climax of the story. With all the measure of talent, the writer here pays tribute to the spiritual power and beauty of the people. In a joyful impulse towards the bright and eternal, the soul of Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov, rejoicing, merges with the soul of the people (actors and spectators). The principle of human freedom and the inalienable right to it triumphs. Folk art is set as a model, which the highest authorities of Russia can verify: “This is Kamarinskaya in all its scope, and it would be right if Glinka at least accidentally heard it in our prison.”
Behind the guarded palisade, its own, so to speak, "dungeon-convict" civilization has developed - a direct reflection, first of all, of the traditional culture of the Russian peasant. Usually the chapter on animals is viewed from a stereotypical angle: our smaller brothers share the fate of slaves with the prisoners, figuratively and symbolically supplement, duplicate and shade it. This is undeniably true. The animalistic pages really correspond with the bestial principles in people from the House of the Dead and outside it. But Dostoevsky is alien to the idea of ​​outward resemblance between the human and the animal. Both in the bestiary plots of Notes from the House of the Dead are connected by ties of natural-historical kinship. The narrator does not follow Christian traditions, which prescribe to see chimerical semblances of the divine or the devil behind the real properties of creatures. He is entirely in the grip of healthy, this-worldly folk-peasant ideas about animals that are close to people every day and about unity with them. The poetry of the chapter "Convict Animals" is in the chaste simplicity of the story about a man from the people, taken in his eternal relationship with animals (horses, dogs, goats and eagles); relations, respectively: loving-household, utilitarian-skuroderskih, amusing-carnival and merciful-respectful. The head-bestiary is involved in a single "passive psychological process” and completes the picture of the tragedy of life in the space of the House of the Dead.
Many books have been written about the Russian prison. From the "Life of Archpriest Avvakum" to the grandiose paintings of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and camp stories by V.T. Shalamova. But the Notes from the House of the Dead remained and will remain comprehensively fundamental in this literary series. They are like an immortal parable or a providential mythologeme, a kind of all-significant archetype from Russian literature and history. What could be more unfair than to look for in them during the time of the so-called. "lie of Dostoevism" (Kirpotin)!
A book about Dostoevsky's great, albeit "unexpected" closeness to the people, about a kind, intercessory and infinitely sympathetic attitude towards him - "Notes from the House of the Dead" is primordially imbued with a "Christian human-folk" look ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. P. 503) on an unsettled world. This is the secret of their perfection and charm.

Vladimirtsev V.P. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. St. Petersburg: Pushkin House, 2008, pp. 70-74.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" is the pinnacle of Dostoevsky's mature non-novel work. The essay novel "Notes from the House of the Dead", based on the life material of which is based on the impressions of the writer's four-year hard labor in Omsk, occupies a special place both in the work of Dostoevsky and in Russian literature of the mid-19th century.
Being dramatic and woeful in terms of problems and vital material, "Notes from the House of the Dead" is one of the most harmonious, perfect, "Pushkin" works of Dostoevsky. The innovative nature of "Notes from the House of the Dead" was realized in the synthetic and multi-genre form of the essay story, approaching the organization of the whole to the Book (Bible). The way the story is told, the nature of the narration from the inside overcome the tragedy of the eventful outline of the “notes” and leads the reader to the light of the “truly Christian”, according to L.N. Tolstoy, a view of the world, the fate of Russia and the biography of the main narrator, which is indirectly related to the biography of Dostoevsky himself. "Notes from the House of the Dead" is a book about the fate of Russia in the unity of specific historical and metahistorical aspects, about Goryanchikov's spiritual journey, like Dante's wanderer in the Divine Comedy, overcoming the "dead" beginnings of Russian life with the power of creativity and love and gaining a spiritual fatherland ( House). Unfortunately, the acute historical and social relevance of the problems of "Notes from the House of the Dead" obscured its artistic perfection, the innovation of this type of prose, and the moral and philosophical uniqueness of both contemporaries and researchers of the 20th century. Modern literary criticism, despite the huge number of private empirical works on the problems and understanding of the socio-historical material of the book, is only taking the first steps towards studying the unique nature of the artistic integrity of "Notes from the House of the Dead", poetics, and innovation. author's position and the nature of intertextuality.
This article gives a modern interpretation of "Notes from the House of the Dead" through the analysis of the narrative, understood as a process of implementation of the author's holistic activity. The author of Notes from the House of the Dead, as a kind of dynamic integrating principle, exercises his position in constant fluctuations between two opposite (and never fully realized) possibilities - to enter the world he created, striving to interact with the characters as if they were living people (this technique is called “getting used to”), and at the same time to distance himself as much as possible from the work he created, emphasizing the fictitiousness, “composing” of characters and situations (a technique called by M.M. Bakhtin “alienation”).
Historical and literary situation in the early 1860s. with its active diffusion of genres, which gives rise to the need for hybrid, mixed forms, made it possible to implement in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" an epic of folk life, which, with some degree of convention, can be called an "essay story". As in any story, the movement of artistic meaning in Notes from the House of the Dead is realized not in the plot, but in the interaction of different narrative planes (the speech of the main narrator, oral convict narrators, the publisher, rumors).
The very name "Notes from the House of the Dead" does not belong to the person who wrote them (Goryanchikov calls his work "Scenes from the House of the Dead"), but to the publisher. The title seemed to meet two voices, two points of view (Goryanchikov and the publisher), even two semantic principles (specific chronicle: "Notes from the House of the Dead" - as an indication of the genre nature - and the symbolic-conceptual oxymoron formula "Dead House" ).
The figurative formula "Dead House" appears as a kind of moment of concentration of the semantic energy of the narrative and at the same time, in the most general form, outlines the intertextual channel in which the author's value activity will unfold (from the symbolic name Russian Empire Necropolis near P.Ya. Chaadaev to allusions to the novel by V.F. Odoevsky "Dead man's mockery", "Ball", "The Living Dead" and more - the topic is dead spiritless reality in the prose of Russian romanticism and, finally, to the internal controversy with the title of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls"), the oxymoronism of such a title is, as it were, repeated by Dostoevsky on a different semantic level.
The bitter paradox of Gogol's title (the immortal soul is declared dead) is contrasted with the internal tension of the opposing principles in the definition of "Dead House": "Dead" due to stagnation, lack of freedom, isolation from big world, and most of all from the unconscious spontaneity of life, but still "home" - not only as housing, warmth of the hearth, shelter, sphere of existence, but also as a family, clan, community of people ("strange family"), belonging to one national integrity .
The depth and semantic capacity of the artistic prose of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is especially clearly revealed in the introduction about Siberia that opens the introduction. Here the result of spiritual communication between the provincial publisher and the author of the notes is given: at the level of the plot-event, understanding, it would seem, did not take place, however, the structure of the narrative reveals the interaction and gradual penetration of Goryanchikov's worldview into the style of the publisher.
The publisher, who is also the first reader of Notes from the House of the Dead, comprehending the life of the House of the Dead, is simultaneously looking for a clue to Goryanchikov, moving towards an ever greater understanding of him not through the facts and circumstances of life in hard labor, but rather through the process of familiarization with the worldview of the narrator. And the measure of this communion and understanding is recorded in chapter VII of part two, in the publisher's report on the further fate of the prisoner - an imaginary parricide.
But Goryanchikov himself is looking for the key to the people's soul through painfully difficult familiarization with the unity of people's life. Through different types consciousness refracts the reality of the House of the Dead: publisher, A.P. Goryanchikov, Shishkov, telling the story of a ruined girl (chapter "Akulkin's husband"); all these ways of world perception look at each other, interact, are corrected by one another, on the border of them a new universal vision of the world is born.
The introduction provides an outside view of Notes from the House of the Dead; it ends with a description of the publisher's first impression of reading them. It is important that both principles are present in the mind of the publisher, which determine the internal tension of the narration: it is an interest in both the object and the subject of the story.
“Notes from the House of the Dead” is a story of life not in a biographical sense, but rather in an existential sense, it is not a story of survival, but of life in the conditions of the House of the Dead. Two interrelated processes determine the nature of the narrative of "Notes from the House of the Dead": it is the story of the formation and growth of Goryanchikov's living soul, which takes place as he comprehends the living fruitful foundations of folk life, revealed in the life of the House of the Dead. The spiritual self-knowledge of the narrator and his comprehension of the folk element takes place simultaneously. Compositional construction"Notes from the House of the Dead" is mainly determined by the change in the narrator's view - both by the laws of the psychological reflection of reality in his mind, and by the focus of his attention on the phenomena of life.
“Notes from the House of the Dead”, in terms of external and internal type of compositional organization, reproduces the annual circle, the circle of life in hard labor, comprehended as a circle of being. Of the twenty-two chapters of the book, the first and last are open outside the prison, in the introduction it is given Short story Goryanchikov's life after hard labor. The remaining twenty chapters of the book are built not as a simple description of hard labor, but as a skillful translation of the reader's vision, perception from the external to the internal, from the mundane to the invisible, essential. The first chapter implements the final symbolic formula "House of the Dead", the following three chapters are called "First Impressions", which emphasizes the personality of the narrator's holistic experience. Then two chapters are called "The First Month", which continues the chronicle-dynamic inertia of the reader's perception. Further, three chapters contain a multi-component indication of "new acquaintances", unusual situations, and colorful characters of the prison. Two chapters are culminating - X and XI ("The Feast of the Nativity of Christ" and "Performance"), and in the X chapter the deceived expectations of convicts about the failed internal holiday are given, and in the chapter "Performance" the law of the need for personal spiritual and creative participation is revealed, so that the real the holiday took place. The second part contains the four most tragic chapters with impressions about the hospital, human suffering, executioners, victims. This part of the book ends with the overheard story "Akulkin's Husband", where the narrator, yesterday's executioner, turned out to be today's victim, but did not see the meaning of what happened to him. The next five concluding chapters give a picture of spontaneous impulses, delusions, external action without understanding inner meaning characters from the people. The final tenth chapter, Exit from Hard Labor, marks not just the physical acquisition of freedom, but also gives Goryanchikov's inner transformation with the light of sympathy and understanding of the tragedy of people's life from the inside.
Based on all of the above, the following conclusions can be drawn: the narration in "Notes from the House of the Dead" develops a new type of relationship with the reader, in the essay story the author's activity is aimed at shaping the reader's worldview and is realized through the interaction of the consciousnesses of the publisher, narrator and oral narrators from the people, inhabitants Dead house. The publisher acts as a reader of Notes from the House of the Dead and is both the subject and the object of a change in worldview.
The word of the narrator, on the one hand, lives in constant correlation with the opinion of everyone, in other words, with the truth of public life; on the other hand, it is actively addressed to the reader, organizing the integrity of his perception.
The dialogical nature of Goryanchikov's interaction with the horizons of other narrators is not aimed at their self-determination, as in the novel, but at revealing their position in relation to common life, therefore, in many cases, the narrator's word interacts with non-personalized voices that help form his way of seeing.
The acquisition of a truly epic perspective becomes a form of spiritual overcoming of disunity in the conditions of the House of the Dead, which the narrator shares with the readers; this epic event determines both the dynamics of the narrative and the genre nature of Notes from the House of the Dead as an essay novel.
The dynamics of the storyteller's narrative is entirely determined by the genre nature of the work, subject to the implementation of the aesthetic task of the genre: from a generalized view from afar, "from a bird's eye view" to the development of a specific phenomenon, which is carried out by comparing different points of view and identifying their commonality based on popular perception; Further, these developed measures of the people's consciousness become the property of the reader's inner spiritual experience. Thus, the point of view acquired in the process of familiarization with the elements of folk life acts in the event of the work as both a means and an end.
The nature of the author's activity in "Notes from the House of the Dead" is determined by the dialectical unity of the personal and non-personal principles, which organizes the whole narrative world.
Thus, the introduction from the publisher gives an orientation to the genre, removes the figure of the main narrator, Goryanchikov, and makes it possible to show him both from the inside and from the outside, as the subject and object of the story at the same time. The movement of the narrative within the "Notes from the House of the Dead" is determined by two interrelated processes: the spiritual development of Goryanchikov and the self-development of folk life, to the extent that this is revealed as the hero-narrator comprehends it.
The internal tension of the interaction of individual and collective worldview is realized in the alternation of the concrete momentary point of view of the eyewitness narrator and his own final point of view, distanced into the future as the time of the creation of "Notes from the House of the Dead", as well as the point of view of common life, which appears then in its concrete -everyday version of mass psychology, then in the essential being of the universal folk whole.

Akelkina E.A. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb., 2008. S. 74-77.

Lifetime publications (editions):

1860—1861 — Russian world. The newspaper is political, social and literary. Edited by A.S. Hieroglyphic. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky. Year two. 1860. September 1st. No. 67. P. 1-8. Year three. 1861. January 4th. No. 1, pp. 1-14 (I. Dead house. II. First impressions). January 11th. No. 3, pp. 49-54 (III. First Impressions). The 25th of January. No. 7, pp. 129-135 (IV. First Impressions).

1861—1862 — . SPb.: Type. E Praza.
1861: April. pp. 1-68. September. pp. 243-272. October. pp. 461-496. November. pp. 325-360.
1862: January. pp. 321-336. February. pp. 565-597. March. pp. 313-351. May. pp. 291-326. December. pp. 235-249.

1862 — Part one. SPb.: Type. E. Pratsa, 1862. 167 p.

1862 — Second edition. SPb.: Ed. A.F. Bazunov. Type. I. Ogrizko, 1862. Part one. 269 ​​p. Part two. 198 p.

1863 - St. Petersburg: Type. O.I. Bakst, 1863. - S. 108-124.

1864 — For upper middle classes educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Second edition, corrected and enlarged. Volume one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I. Ogrizko, 1864. - S. 686-700.

1864 -: nach dem Tagebuche eines nach Sibirien Verbannten: nach dem Russischen bearbeitet / herausgegeben von Th. M. Dostojewski. Leipzig: Wolfgang Gerhard, 1864. B. I. 251 s. B. II. 191s.

1865 — Revisited and updated by the author himself. Edition and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. T. I. S. 70-194.

1865 — In two parts. Third edition, revised and updated with a new chapter. Edition and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. 415 p.

1868 — Issue the first [and only]. [B.m.], 1868. - Notes from the House of the Dead. Akulkin husband. pp. 80-92.

1869 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Third edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. F.S. Sushchinsky, 1869. - Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 665-679.

1871 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fourth edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1871. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 655-670.

1875 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fifth edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1875. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 611-624.

1875 — Fourth edition. SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 s.

SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 s.

1880 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Sixth edition (printed from the third edition). Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1879 (in the region - 1880). — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 609-623.

Posthumous edition prepared for printing by A.G. Dostoevskaya:

1881 — Fifth edition. SPb.: [Ed. A.G. Dostoevskaya]. Type. Brother. Panteleev, 1881. Part 1. 217 p. Part 2. 160 p.

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in a cemetery - cities that look more like a good suburban village than in the city. They are usually very adequately equipped with police officers, assessors and all the rest of the subaltern rank. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm to serve. People live simple, illiberal; orders are old, strong, consecrated for centuries. Officials who rightly play the part of the Siberian nobility are either natives, hardened Siberians, or strangers from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the salary that is not set off, double runs and tempting hopes in the future. Of these, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. Subsequently, they bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, a frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon get bored with Siberia and ask themselves with anguish: why did they come to it? They impatiently serve their legal term of service, three years, and after it has expired, they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at her. They are wrong: not only from official, but even from many points of view, one can be blessed in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; many extremely sufficient foreigners. Young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter itself. Champagne is drunk unnaturally much. Caviar is amazing. Harvest happens in other places by itself-fifteen ... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia, they know how to use it.

In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, who later became a second-class exile convict for the murder of his wife and, after the expiration of a ten-year term of hard labor determined for him by law, he humbly and inaudibly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He, in fact, was assigned to one suburban volost, but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to get at least some kind of livelihood in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often comes across teachers from exiled settlers; they are not shy. They teach mainly the French language, which is so necessary in the field of life and which without them in the remote regions of Siberia would have no idea. For the first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters, of different years, who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance intrigued me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European way. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listening with strict politeness to your every word, as if pondering it, as if you had asked him a task with your question or wanted to extort some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer to such an extent that you suddenly felt awkward for some reason, and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally, and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters; but that he is terribly unsociable, hiding from everyone, extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little, and that in general it is quite difficult to get into conversation with him. Others claimed that he was positively insane, although they found that, in fact, this was not such an important shortcoming, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to show kindness to Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests and so on. It was believed that he must have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even the last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he hurt himself. In addition, everyone here knew his story, they knew that he had killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed him out of jealousy and himself denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). The same crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, in spite of all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in public only to give lessons.

At first I did not pay much attention to him, but, I do not know why, he gradually began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was no way to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with an air as if he considered this his first duty; but after his answers I somehow found it hard to question him longer; and on his face, after such conversations, one could always see some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. It suddenly occurred to me to invite him over for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words, and suddenly, looking angrily at me, rushed to run in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, when meeting with me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I did not let up; something drew me to him, and a month later, for no apparent reason, I myself went to Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lodged on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a sick, consumptive daughter, and that illegitimate daughter, a child of ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I went in to see him. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him in some kind of crime. He was completely at a loss, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely followed my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: "Will you be leaving here soon?" I talked to him about our town, current news; he remained silent and smiled maliciously; it turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, fresh from the post office, and I offered them uncut to him. He gave them a greedy look, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, responding with lack of time. Finally I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a man who sets his main task - to hide as far as possible from the whole world. But the deed was done. I remember that I hardly noticed his books at all, and, therefore, it was unfairly said about him that he reads a lot. However, driving twice, very late at night, past his windows, I noticed a light in them. What did he do, sitting up until dawn? Did he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home already in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the autumn, died in seclusion and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately made the acquaintance of the mistress of the dead man, intending to find out from her; What was her lodger particularly busy with, and did he write anything? For two kopecks, she brought me a whole basket of papers left over from the deceased. The old woman confessed that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She had nothing new to tell me about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months did not open a book and did not take a pen in his hands; but whole nights he paced up and down the room and kept thinking something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he was very fond of and very fond of her granddaughter, Katya, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Catherine's day every time he went to someone to serve a memorial service. Guests could not stand; he went out from the yard only to teach children; he even looked askance at her, the old woman, when she, once a week, came at least a little to tidy up his room, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. So, this man could at least make someone love him.

I took his papers away and sorted through them all day. Three-quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant shreds or student exercises from copybooks. But then there was one notebook, rather voluminous, poorly written and incomplete, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. It was a description, albeit incoherent, of a ten-year hard labor life, endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I re-read these passages several times and almost convinced myself that they were written in madness. But the hard labor notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead", as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the perished people carried me away, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. On trial I choose first two or three chapters; Let the public judge...

DEAD HOUSE

Our prison stood on the edge of the fortress, at the very ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence at the light of day: would you see at least something? - and only you will see that the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and back and forth along the rampart, day and night, sentries pace; and you will immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will come up in the same way to look through the cracks of the fence and see the same rampart, the same sentries and the same small edge of the sky, not the sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large courtyard, two hundred paces long and one and a half hundred paces wide, all surrounded by a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, with a high back, that is, a fence of high pillars (palms), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse strips and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the prison. In one of the sides of the fence there are strong gates, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked on demand, for release to work. Behind these gates was a bright, free world, people lived, like everyone else. But on this side of the fence, that world was imagined as some kind of unrealizable fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else, it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own manners and customs, and a dead house alive, life like nowhere else, and special people. It is this particular corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard stretch two long one-story log cabins. These are the barracks. Here live prisoners, placed by category. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is still the same log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is a building where cellars, barns, sheds are placed under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and makes up a flat, fairly large area. Prisoners line up here, check and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes even several times a day, judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. Around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, on the backs of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and gloomy in character, like to walk around after hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thought. Meeting them during these walks, I liked to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in his free time was counting pali. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in his account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; every day he counted one finger, and thus, by the remaining number of fingers not counted, he could clearly see how many days he still had to stay in prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely glad when he finished any side of the hexagon. He had to wait for many more years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw a convict saying goodbye to his comrades, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he went around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the image and then bowed low, to the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to commemorate him dashingly. I also remember how once a prisoner, formerly a prosperous Siberian peasant, was once called to the gate towards evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife was married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for about two minutes, both burst into tears and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, one could learn patience in this place.

When it got dark, we were all taken to the barracks, where we were locked up for the whole night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low, stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. I do not understand now how I survived in it for ten years. On the bunk I had three boards: that was my whole place. On the same bunk, about thirty people were accommodated in one of our rooms. In winter they locked up early; I had to wait four hours for everyone to fall asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamated ... yes, a tenacious person! Man is a being who gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.

There were only two hundred and fifty of us in prison - the figure is almost constant. Some came, others finished their sentences and left, others died. And what people were not here! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles, even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crimes, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no such crime that would not have had its representative here. The main foundation of the entire prison population was the exile-convict ranks of the civil (hard-labor, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). They were criminals, completely deprived of any rights of state, cut off chunks from society, with a branded face for eternal evidence of their rejection. They were sent to work for terms of eight to twelve years and then sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts to be settlers. There were criminals and a military category, not deprived of the rights of the state, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for short periods; at the end of them, they turned back to the same place they came from, into soldiers, into Siberian linear battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "permanent ones" were still not completely stripped of all status rights. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mainly military ones, quite numerous. It was called "special department". Criminals were sent here from all over Rus'. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the term of their work. They were required by law to double and triple their work lessons. They were kept at the prison until the opening of the most difficult hard labor in Siberia. "You've got a term, and we'll get along with hard labor," they said to other prisoners. I heard that this category has been destroyed. In addition, civil order was also destroyed at our fortress, and one general military prisoner company was opened. Of course, with this, the leadership also changed. I am describing, therefore, antiquity, things long past and past ...

It was a long time ago; I dream of all this now, as in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening, in the month of December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; prepared to be trusted. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened for me the doors to this strange house, in which I had to stay for so many years, endure so many such sensations, about which, without actually experiencing them, I could not even have an approximate idea. For example, I could never imagine: what is terrible and painful in the fact that in all ten years of my penal servitude I will never, not for a single minute be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, not once - alone! However, I still had to get used to this!

There were casual killers and killers by trade, robbers and chieftains of robbers. There were just Mazuriks and vagrants-industrialists on found money or in the Stolevskaya part. There were also those about whom it is difficult to decide: for what, it seems, they could come here? Meanwhile, everyone had his own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes from yesterday's hops. In general, they spoke little about their past, did not like to talk about it, and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers so cheerful, so never thinking that it was possible to bet on a bet, that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also dark days, almost always silent. In general, few people told about their lives, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in the custom, not accepted. So perhaps, occasionally, someone will talk from idleness, while the other listens coolly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. "We are a literate people!" - they often said, with some strange self-satisfaction. I remember how once one robber, drunk (it was sometimes possible to get drunk in hard labor), began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy, how he first deceived him with a toy, led him somewhere into an empty shed and stabbed him there. The whole barracks, hitherto laughing at his jokes, screamed as one man, and the robber was forced to be silent; the barracks did not cry out of indignation, but like this, because it was not necessary to talk about it, because it is not customary to talk about it. By the way, I note that these people were really literate and not even figuratively, but literally. Probably more than half of them could read and write. In what other place, where the Russian people gather in large places, will you separate from them a bunch of two hundred and fifty people, of which half would be literate? I heard later that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance in the people. But this is by no means a disadvantage. All the ranks differed in dress: some had half of the jacket dark brown and the other gray, as well as on pantaloons - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalashny girl who approached the prisoners looked at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Fu, how nice it is!” she shouted, “and there was not enough gray cloth, and there was not enough black cloth!” There were also those in whom the whole jacket was of one gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: in some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, in others across.

At first glance, one could notice a certain sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the sharpest, most original personalities who reigned over others involuntarily, and they tried to get into the general tone of the whole prison. In general, I will say that all this people - with a few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this - were a gloomy, envious, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and formalist people in the highest degree. The ability to be surprised at nothing was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to behave outwardly. But often the most arrogant look with the speed of lightning was replaced by the most cowardly. There were some truly strong people; those were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real strong people there were several vain to the last extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity, appearance were in the foreground. Most were corrupted and terribly mean. Gossip and gossip were incessant: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal charters and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that stood out sharply, obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but nevertheless obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too presumptuous, too jumped out of the measure in the wild, so that in the end they committed their crimes as if not of their own accord, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a daze; often out of vanity excited to the highest degree. But here they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that some, before arriving in prison, were the horror of entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he had landed in the wrong place, that there was no longer anyone to surprise, and he noticeably humbled himself and fell into the general tone. This general tone was composed from the outside out of some special dignity with which almost every inhabitant of the prison was imbued. As if, in fact, the title of convict, decided, was some kind of rank, and even an honorary one. No sign of shame or remorse! However, there was also some outward humility, so to speak official, some kind of calm reasoning: "We are a lost people," they said, "we did not know how to live in freedom, now break the green light, check the ranks." - "You did not obey your father and mother, now obey the drum skin." - "I did not want to sew with gold, now beat the stones with a hammer." All this was said often, both in the form of moralizing and in the form of ordinary sayings and sayings, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that at least one of them confessed inwardly his lawlessness. Try someone who is not a hard laborer to reproach a prisoner for his crime, scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal) - there will be no end to curses. And what were they all masters of swearing! They swore subtly, artistically. Cursing was elevated to a science among them; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word as with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels between them further developed this science. All this people worked under duress, - consequently, they were idle, consequently, they became corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, then they were corrupted in hard labor. They all gathered here not of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.

"The devil took off three bast shoes before he gathered us in one heap!" - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, strife, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman was able to be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, there were strong people among them, characters who were accustomed all their lives to break and command, hardened, fearless. These were somehow involuntarily respected; for their part, although they were often very jealous of their glory, they generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not enter into empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not out of principle obedience, not out of a state of duty, but as if under some kind of contract, recognizing mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and resolute man, known to the authorities for his bestial inclinations, was called once for punishment for some crime. The day was summer, it's time for non-working. The staff officer, the nearest and immediate chief of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was at our very gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners; he brought them to the point that they trembled him. He was insanely strict, "rushed at people," as the convicts used to say. What they feared most in him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be concealed. He saw without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was happening at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was wrong. He only embittered already embittered people with his furious, evil deeds, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and reasonable man, who sometimes moderated his wild antics, he would have caused great trouble with his administration. I don't understand how he could end well; he retired alive and well, although, however, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when he was called. As a rule, he silently and resolutely lay down under the rods, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment as disheveled, calmly and philosophically looking at the misfortune that had happened. However, he was always treated with caution. But this time he thought he was right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to stick a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp tools were terribly forbidden in prisons. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find it with a thief when he decides to hide something especially, and since knives and tools were a constant necessity in prison, they were not transferred despite the searches. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately started. All hard labor rushed to the fence and with a sinking heart looked through the cracks of the fingers. Everyone knew that Petrov would not want to go under the rod this time, and that the major had come to an end. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into the droshky and left, entrusting the execution of the execution to another officer. “God himself saved!” the prisoners later said. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger passed with the departure of the major. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; But there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious than these strange outbursts of impatience and obstinacy. Often a person endures for several years, humbles himself, endures the most severe punishments, and suddenly breaks through on some little thing, on some trifle, almost for nothing. On another view, one might even call him crazy; yes they do.

I have already said that for several years I did not see among these people the slightest sign of repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them inwardly consider themselves completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, youthfulness, false shame are largely the cause of this. On the other hand, who can say that he has tracked down the depths of these lost hearts and read in them what is hidden from the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at such a young age, to notice at least something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some trait that would testify to inner longing, to suffering. But it wasn't, it wasn't positive. Yes, crime seems to be incomprehensible from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than it is believed. Of course, prisons and a system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and ensure society from further attempts by the villain on his peace. In the criminal, prison and the most intensified hard labor develop only hatred, a thirst for forbidden pleasures, and terrible frivolity. But I am firmly convinced that the famous cell system also achieves only a false, deceptive, external goal. It sucks the life juice out of a person, energizes his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then a morally withered mummy, she presents a half-mad man as a model of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. In addition, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, getting even. Finally, one can judge from such points of view that it will almost be necessary to justify the criminal himself. But, in spite of various points of view, everyone will agree that there are such crimes that always and everywhere, according to various laws, have been considered indisputable crimes since the beginning of the world and will be considered such as long as man remains a man. Only in prison have I heard stories of the most terrible, most unnatural deeds, of the most monstrous murders, told with the most uncontrollable, most childlike laughter. I especially remember one parricide. He was from the nobility, served and was with his sixty-year-old father something like a prodigal son. His behavior was completely dissolute, he got into debt. His father limited him, persuaded him; but the father had a house, there was a farm, money was suspected, and - the son killed him, thirsting for an inheritance. The crime was found only a month later. The killer himself filed a statement with the police that his father had disappeared to no one knows where. He spent the whole month in the most depraved way. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for the drain of sewage, covered with boards. The body lay in this groove. It was dressed and removed, the gray-haired head was cut off, attached to the body, and the killer placed a pillow under the head. He did not confess; was deprived of the nobility, rank and exiled to work for twenty years. All the time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful frame of mind. He was an eccentric, frivolous, unreasonable person in the highest degree, although not a fool at all. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for a crime that was not even mentioned, but for stupidity, for not knowing how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes recalled his father. Once, speaking to me about a healthy constitution, hereditary in their family, he added: "Here is my parent, so he did not complain of any illness until his death." Such brutal insensitivity is, of course, impossible. This is a phenomenon; there is some lack of constitution, some bodily and moral deformity, not yet known to science, and not just a crime. Of course, I did not believe this crime. But people from his city, who should have known all the details of his history, told me all his business. The facts were so clear that it was impossible not to believe.

The prisoners heard him shouting one night in his sleep: "Hold him, hold him! Chop off his head, head, head! .. "

The prisoners almost all talked at night and raved. Curses, thieves' words, knives, axes most often came to their delirium on the tongue. "We are a beaten people," they said, "our insides are broken, that's why we scream at night."

State hard labor serf labor was not an occupation, but a duty: the prisoner worked out his lesson or served his legal hours of work and went to jail. Work was viewed with hatred. Without his special, his own occupation, to which he would be devoted with all his mind, with all his calculation, a person in prison could not live. And in what way could all this people, developed, well-advanced and desiring to live, forcibly brought here into one heap, forcibly torn off from society and from normal life, could get along here normally and correctly, by their own will and desire? From mere idleness here such criminal qualities would have developed in him, of which he had not previously had the slightest idea. Without labor and without legitimate, normal property, a person cannot live, he becomes corrupted, turns into a beast. And therefore everyone in prison, due to natural need and some sense of self-preservation, had his own skill and occupation. The long summer day was almost entirely filled with government work; in the short night there was hardly time to sleep. But in winter, the prisoner, according to the situation, as soon as it gets dark, should already be locked up in prison. What to do during long, boring hours winter evening? And therefore, almost every barracks, despite the ban, turned into a huge workshop. Actually work, occupation was not prohibited; but it was strictly forbidden to have tools with you in prison, and without this work was impossible. But they worked quietly, and it seems that in other cases the authorities did not look at it very closely. Many of the prisoners came to prison without knowing anything, but learned from others and then went free as good artisans. There were shoemakers, and shoemakers, and tailors, and carpenters, and locksmiths, and carvers, and gilders. There was one Jew, Isai Bumshtein, a jeweler, who is also a usurer. They all worked and got a penny. Work orders were obtained from the city. Money is minted freedom, and therefore for a person completely deprived of freedom, it is ten times more expensive. If they only jingle in his pocket, he is already half comforted, even though he could not spend them. But money can always and everywhere be spent, especially since the forbidden fruit is twice as sweet. And in hard labor one could even have wine. Pipes were strictly forbidden, but everyone smoked them. Money and tobacco saved from scurvy and other diseases. Work also saved from crime: without work, the prisoners would eat each other like spiders in a flask. Even though both work and money were forbidden. Often, sudden searches were made at night, everything forbidden was taken away, and no matter how the money was hidden, the detectives still sometimes came across. This is partly why they did not take care, but soon got drunk; that is why wine was also planted in prison. After each search, the culprit, in addition to losing his entire fortune, was usually punished painfully. But, after each search, shortcomings were immediately replenished, new things were immediately started, and everything went on in the old way. And the authorities knew about this, and the prisoners did not grumble at the punishment, although such a life was similar to the life of those who settled on Mount Vesuvius.

Who did not have skill, hunted in a different way. There were ways quite original. Others made a living, for example, by outbidding, and sometimes such things were sold that it would not have occurred to someone outside the walls of the prison not only to buy and sell them, but even to consider them things. But hard labor was very poor and extremely industrial. The last rag was valuable and was used in some business. Due to poverty, money in prison had a completely different price than in freedom. For a large and complex work paid pennies. Some were successful in usury. The prisoner, wound up and ruined, took his last belongings to the usurer and received from him some copper money for terrible interest. If he did not redeem these things on time, then they were immediately and ruthlessly sold; usury prospered to such an extent that even state inspection things were accepted on bail, such as: state underwear, shoe goods, etc. - things that every prisoner needs at any moment. But with such pledges, another turn of affairs happened, which, however, was not entirely unexpected: the one who pledged and received the money immediately, without long conversations, went to the senior non-commissioned officer, the nearest head of the prison, reported on the pawn of viewing things, and they were immediately taken from moneylender back, even without a report to the higher authorities. It is curious that sometimes there was not even a quarrel: the usurer silently and gloomily returned what was due, and even seemed to himself expecting it to be so. Perhaps he could not but admit to himself that in the place of the pawnbroker he would have done the same. And therefore, if he cursed sometimes later, then without any malice, but only to clear his conscience.

In general, everyone stole from each other terribly. Almost everyone had their own chest with a lock for storing government items. It was allowed; but the chests did not save. I think you can imagine what skillful thieves were there. I have one prisoner, a person sincerely devoted to me (I say this without any exaggeration), stole the Bible, the only book that was allowed to have in hard labor; he himself confessed this to me the same day, not out of repentance, but pitying me, because I had been looking for her for a long time. There were kissers who sold wine and quickly enriched themselves. About this sale I will say someday especially; she's pretty amazing. There were many people in the prison who came for smuggling, and therefore it is not surprising how, with such inspections and convoys, wine was brought to the prison. By the way: smuggling, by its nature, is some kind of special crime. Is it possible, for example, to imagine that money, profit, for a smuggler play a secondary role, stand in the background? In the meantime, this is exactly what happens. The smuggler works out of passion, by vocation. It's partly a poet. He risks everything, goes into terrible danger, cunning, inventing, extricating himself; sometimes even acts on some kind of inspiration. It is a passion as strong as a card game. I knew a prisoner in the prison, who was colossal in appearance, but so meek, quiet, humble that it was impossible to imagine how he ended up in the prison. He was so mild-mannered and accommodating that he did not quarrel with anyone throughout his stay in prison. But he was from the western border, he came for smuggling and, of course, could not resist and set off to carry wine. How many times he was punished for this, and how he was afraid of the rod! Yes, and the very carrying of wine brought him the most insignificant income. Only one entrepreneur enriched himself from wine. The eccentric loved art for art's sake. He was whiny like a woman, and how many times, after punishment, he swore and swore not to wear contraband. With courage, he sometimes overcame himself for a whole month, but in the end he still could not stand it ... Thanks to these personalities, the wine did not become scarce in prison.

Finally, there was another income, although it did not enrich the prisoners, but it was constant and beneficial. This is an alms. The upper class of our society has no idea how merchants, philistines and all our people take care of the "unfortunate". Alms are almost uninterrupted and almost always in bread, rolls and rolls, much less often in money. Without these alms, in many places, it would be too difficult for the prisoners, especially the defendants, who are kept much stricter than the Reshons. Alms are religiously divided by the prisoners equally. If there is not enough for everyone, then the rolls are cut equally, sometimes even into six parts, and each prisoner will certainly get his own piece. I remember the first time I received money alms. This was soon after my arrival in prison. I was returning from morning work alone, with an escort. A mother and daughter walked towards me, a girl of about ten, as pretty as an angel. I've already seen them once. Mother was a soldier, a widow. Her husband, a young soldier, was on trial and died in the hospital, in the prison ward, at the same time that I was lying there sick. His wife and daughter came to say goodbye to him; both were crying terribly. Seeing me, the girl blushed and whispered something to her mother; she immediately stopped, found a quarter of a kopeck in the bundle, and gave it to the girl. She rushed to run after me ... "Here," unfortunate ", take Christ for the sake of a penny!" she shouted, running ahead of me and thrusting a coin into my hands. I took her kopeck, and the girl returned to her mother completely satisfied. I kept this penny for a long time.

Part one
Introduction
Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a nobleman, was born in Russia, for the murder of his wife he became a second-class exile. After 10 years of hard labor, he lived in the town of K. He was a thin and poor man of about thirty-five, small and frail, wild and suspicious.
Alexander Petrovich died three months later. His mistress gave me his papers. Among these papers was a notebook in which Goryanchikov's hard labor life was described. These notes were scenes from the House of the Dead, as Alexander Petrovich called them.
I. Dead house
There was a prison near the ramparts. In general, with its own laws and clothes, customs and mores, it was a special world. There were 250 people permanently in prison. There were many people of different nationalities here. Most of the prisoners were civilian exiles, criminals, convicted and deprived of any rights. They were sent for terms of 8 to 12 years, and then sent to the settlement of all Siberia. There were also military-grade criminals, but they were sent for short periods, and then they were returned back. Many of the prisoners returned to prison for repeated crimes. This category was called permanent. There was also a special department, criminals from all over Russia were sent here. Usually they did not know their term and always worked the most.
I entered this strange house in December. The prisoners did not like to talk about their past lives. All ranks were distinguished by multi-colored clothes, differently shaved heads. Many of them were envious, sullen, conceited, touchy and boastful people.
Inside this world, there were intrigues and gossip, but no one dared to rebel against the internal laws of the prison. Cursing was raised to a science that developed through incessant quarrels.
Everyone hated hard labor. Many had their own business, without which they could not survive. The prisoners were not allowed to have tools, but the authorities turned a blind eye to this. There were all kinds of crafts. Orders for such work were fished out of the city.
Tobacco and money saved from scurvy, and work from crime. But it was forbidden to work here. Searches were carried out at night, and everything forbidden was taken away.
There was another regular income, this was alms, which was always divided equally.
II. First Impressions
There was little government work in the winter. Everyone returned to the prison, someone was engaged in his craft, someone gossiped, drank and played cards.
At first, everyone looked askance at me, since the former nobleman will never be recognized as his own. They did not like the Polish gentry even more. There were four noblemen: one was an informer and a spy, the second was a parricide, the third was Akim Akimych. He was a tall, thin, honest, naive and neat man.
In the Caucasus, he served as an officer. One neighboring prince attacked his fortress at night, and Akim Akimych shot him in front of his detachment. And they sentenced him to death, but then the sentence was commuted and exiled for 12 years to Siberia. Akim Akimych was respected by the prisoners. I asked Akim Akimych about our major. He turned out to be an evil and dishonorable person. The prisoners were his enemies. He was hated, feared and wanted to kill.
Several kalashnits often came to the workshop. To meet with them, it was necessary to choose a place, time, and bribe the escorts. But sometimes I managed to see love scenes.
During dinner, I asked why everyone was looking askance at me. And the Pole told me that because I was a nobleman, many would like to humiliate me.
III. First Impressions
For the prisoners, money was like freedom, but it was difficult to keep it. Either they were stolen, or the major took them away. Then the money began to be given to the old Old Believer.
It was a small and gray-haired old man, lying down in his sixties, quite calm and quiet. Old man, served time for setting fire to a church. He was a wealthy tradesman, he had a family at home. Everyone respected him and were sure that he could not steal.
It was very sad in prison. And many worked for a whole month in order to spend everything in one day. The wine trade was very profitable.
In the very first days of my imprisonment, one young prisoner, Sirotkin, became interested in me. He was about 23 years old. He was a very dangerous war criminal. He was sent to prison for killing his company commander, who was always dissatisfied with him. Sirotkin was friends with Gazin.
Gazin was a Tatar, very strong, tall and powerful. He is also a military prisoner and exiled to Siberia more than once and ended up in a special department. He was quite cunning and not a stupid person. When he got drunk, he was angry and even attacked people with a knife. For this he was beaten until he lost consciousness. But in the morning he went to work like a healthy one.
Gazin fell into the kitchen, and began to get my friend and me. But we decided not to answer, then in a rage he grabbed a heavy tray and swung it. Everyone silently watched what would happen next. But someone shouted that his wine had been stolen and he ran out of the kitchen like a bullet.
I was occupied with one thought, that the punishment for the same crimes is always unequal .. For example, one killed a person just like that, and the other killed, defending the honor of his daughter, bride, sister.
IV. First Impressions
After checking in the barracks from the authorities, there remained the person observing order, the disabled person, and the eldest of the prisoners. In our barracks, Akim Akimych was appointed senior. The convict authorities were always wary of the prisoners, which gave them courage. For prisoners, the best boss is the one who is not afraid of them.
In the evening everyone looked at home. Many sat down to play cards around the table, it was called maidan. At the Maidan there was a servant, he stood guard all night and warned of the appearance of guards or a parade-major.
The bunk by the door was my place. Akim Akimych was seated next to me. On the left are several Caucasian highlanders who were convicted of robbery. Dagestan Tatars were siblings. The youngest, Alei, was about 22 years old. For the robbery and murder of an Armenian merchant, they were exiled to hard labor. The brothers loved Alei. His character combined softness and strength. He was fair, intelligent and modest, always avoiding quarrels, but he also knew how to stand up for himself. I taught him to speak Russian, he also mastered several crafts. I taught him to write and read, for which his brothers thanked me very much.
Poles in hard labor were a separate family. Many of them were educated. They loved only the Jew Isaiah Fomich, he was about 50 years old, he was a small and weak man. He went to hard labor due to murder. It was easy enough for him to live, since he was a jeweler, he had a lot of work from the city
In our barracks there were several other Little Russians and four Old Believers, a young convict of about 23 years old, who killed eight people; a few counterfeiters and a few other dark personalities. I saw all this on the first day of my penal servitude.
V. The first month.
I went to work three days later. Akim Akimych treated me well. Next to me was another person whom I got to know well only after a few years. This is prisoner Sushilov, he served me. I also had one servant, Osip, he was one of the four cooks chosen by the prisoners. Cooks did not go to work, but they could refuse this position at any time. He was an honest and meek man. He came here for smuggling. He traded wine along with other chefs.
Osip cooked food for me. Sushilov himself began to go to me on various assignments, wash and sew up my clothes. He was a pathetic, unrequited and downtrodden man. It was with great difficulty that he spoke to anyone.
They laughed at him, because on the way to Siberia he changed, that is, he changed his fate and name with someone. So do prisoners who have a long term of hard labor. They deceive such fools as Sushilov.
I watched the hard labor with great attention. I was struck by the meeting with the prisoner A-vym. He was a nobleman and knocked on the parade-major about everything that was going on in the prison. He was exiled to Siberia for 10 years for a vile denunciation. Hard labor untied his hands. He was ready to do anything to satisfy his bestial instincts.
VI. Month one.
In Tobolsk, they gave me the Gospels, where several rubles were hidden. There are people who help disinterested exiles. A widow, Nastasya Ivanovna, lived in the city. Because of poverty, she could not do much for us, but we felt that she was our friend.
I decided in prison that I would do everything according to my conscience. I was sent to dismantle old barges, they did not pay money for them, we were forced to dismantle them, just so that we would not sit idle.
The conductor came and said the task that needed to be done and then rest. We completed this task very quickly.
I interfered everywhere, they drove me away, but when I walked away they shouted that I didn’t work at all. They were pleased to mock the nobleman.
They thought that I would behave like a white-handed nobleman. I decided for myself that I would not show them my education, or thoughts, or fawn over, but I did not want to kowtow to them either.
In the evening I went alone behind the barracks and saw Sharik, our dog. I fed her bread. I fell in love with him, now after work I went behind the barracks to see Sharik.
VII. New acquaintances. Petrov
I have already begun to get used to this special world. I loved to work, for this love the prisoners laughed at me, but I knew that work would help me.
The authorities made the work of the nobles easier, as we were read as inept and weak. Usually we were sent to crush and burn alabaster, to turn a grinding wheel in the workshop. For several years, this work remained with the nobles.
I began to get acquainted with other prisoners. The first to visit me was the convict Petrov. He lived from me in the most remote barracks. He was 40 years old. With me he spoke freely, behaved delicately and decently. We kept a distance from him and did not get closer.
He was the most fearless and determined of all the convicts. He rarely quarreled, but he had no friends. He wandered about the prison without work.
VIII. Decisive person. Luchka
There were few decisive prisoners in prison. At first I avoided the most terrible killers, but then I changed my attitude towards them. The convicts liked to brag about their exploits. I heard a story about how the convict Luka Kuzmich killed a major for his own pleasure. He was a Khokhl, a small and thin man. He was very boastful, proud, he was not respected in prison. His nickname was Luchka.
Luchka told his story to a stupid but kind neighbor in the bunk, convict Kobylin. Luchka spoke very loudly so that everyone could hear. This happened during shipping. Next to him sat 12 crests. The food was disgusting and the major commanded them. Luchka provoked the crests, and they called the major, and Luchka took a knife from a neighbor. A drunken major comes running, and Luchka came closer and stuck a knife in his stomach.
Many officers treated the convicts like pigs, and this irritated the prisoners very much. The good officers treated the prisoners with respect and loved them for it. Luchka was given 105 lashes for killing an officer. Luchka wanted to be a terrible person, to be feared, but they did not pay attention to him.
IX. Isai Fomich. Bath. Baklushin's story
There were four days left before Christmas and we were taken to the bathhouse. Isai Fomich Bumshtein was very happy about this. There was a feeling that he liked hard labor. He lived richly and did jewelry work. The Jews protected him. He was waiting for the end of the term, then to marry. He was a naive, cunning, impudent, simple-hearted, timid, boastful person. Isai Fomich served everyone for entertainment.
All the prisoners were glad that there was an opportunity to get out of prison. The bathhouse was cramped and it was difficult to undress because of the shackles. Baklushin and Petrov helped me wash up. For this, I treated Petrov with a check, and invited Baklushin to my place for tea.
Everyone loved Baklushin. It was a guy, about 30 years old, he was full of life and fire. Having got acquainted with me, Baklushin was a soldier's son, he served in the pioneers and some high-ranking persons loved him. He told me that soon there would be a theatrical performance which the convicts put on in prison on holidays. Baklushin was the main instigator of the theatre.
He also served in the garrison battalion as a non-commissioned officer. There he fell in love with a German woman, the washerwoman Louise, whom he wanted to marry. Also, a distant relative, the German Schultz, wanted to marry her. Louise agreed to this marriage. Schultz forbade Louise to meet with Baklushin. And then one Sunday Baklushin shot Schultz in the store. After that, with Louise, he was happy for two weeks, and then he was arrested.
X. Feast of the Nativity of Christ
The long-awaited holiday has come. On such days, convicts were not sent to work; there were only three such days in a year.
Akim Akimych had no family memories, since at the age of fifteen he went to hard service. He was a religious man and gave this holiday with impatience. He always lived according to the established rules and did not like to live with his mind, since once he lived with his mind and ended up in hard labor.
In the morning, all the prisoners were congratulated on the holiday by the guard non-commissioned officer. Alms were brought to the prison from all over the city.
In the military barracks, the priest held a Christmas service and consecrated all the barracks. Then the commandant and parade-major arrived, they also congratulated everyone on the holiday. People walked, but there were many sober ones. Gazin was sober. He only wanted to go out at the end of the day. Evening came. Drunk people had longing and sadness in their eyes.
XI. Performance
The performance of the theater took place on the third day of the holiday. Officers and some other visitors came to the theatrical performance, even a Poster was written for them.
The first performance was called "Filatka and Miroshka Rivals", where Baklushin played Filatka, and Sirotkin - the bride Filatkina. The second performance was called "Kedril the Glutton". At the end of the theatrical performance, a pantomime was made to the music.
The theater was held in a military barracks. Everyone was waiting for the performance to begin. The convicts were delighted, they were allowed to have fun and forget about the long years of imprisonment.
Part two
I. Hospital
I fell ill after the holidays and was sent to our hospital. Medicines were prescribed by an intern, who was the manager of the prison wards. I was changed into hospital linen and I went to the ward for 22 people.
Few were seriously ill. To my right lay the illegitimate son of a retired captain, a former clerk, a counterfeiter. It was a young man of 28 years old, not stupid and impudent and confident in his innocence. He then told me about the order in the hospital.
Then a patient from the correctional company approached me. It was Chekunov, he was a soldier. He began to serve me, because of which Ustyantsev laughed at him, he was ill with tuberculosis. I felt that for some reason he was angry with me.
All sick prisoners lay here, even those with venereal diseases. There were also a few people who came to rest. The doctors, out of compassion, let me in. The punished rods were looked after very seriously.
In the evening, after visiting the doctor, they put a bucket in the ward and locked it. Even here we walked with shackles, and this further increases their suffering.
II. Continuation
In the morning the doctor came again, but our intern came before him, and if he saw that the prisoner had come here to rest, he wrote down his illness. Which is not. For this he was greatly respected.
There were even patients who asked to be discharged with a back that had not yet healed. Many convicts kindly spoke about who beat them and how.
But they talked about Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov with indignation. he was a man of 30 years old. He liked to punish with sticks and flog.
But the commander at the prison, Lieutenant Smekalov, was remembered with pleasure and joy. He was a very kind person and they considered him theirs.
III. Continuation
In the hospital, I saw the consequences of all kinds of punishments. I asked everyone, because I wanted to know all the stages of the sentences. I imagined the psychological state of people going to be executed.
If the prisoner did not withstand the appointed number of blows, then this number was divided for him several times. But the convicts endured the execution courageously. I realized that the punishment with rods is the most severe. Five hundred sticks can be carried without danger to life, but five hundred rods can kill.
Each person has the properties of an executioner, but they develop unevenly.
It was boring to be in the hospital. When did you come new person everyone revived. The arrival of a new one always produced a revival. Many pretended to be crazy in order to get rid of the punishment.
The seriously ill loved to be treated. It got worse in the evening when the past was remembered. One story I heard at night.
IV. Husband Akulkin.
One night I woke up and heard two prisoners whispering to each other not far from me. The story was told by Shishkov. He was 30 years old, a civil prisoner, an eccentric and cowardly person.
The conversation was about the father of Shishkov's wife, Ankudim Trofimych. He was a rich and respected old man of about 70 years old, had a trade and a large farm, and had three employees. Ankudim Trofimych was married twice, he had two sons and the eldest daughter Akulina. She had a lover, Filka Morozov, a friend of Shishkov. Filka was left an orphan and wanted to squander all the money received as an inheritance and become a soldier. But he did not want to marry Akulina. Once Filka persuaded Shishkov to smear the gates of Akulka with tar, as he did not want her to marry the old rich man. The rich man heard that there were rumors about Akulka and did not marry her. Shishkov's mother advised him to marry Akulka, since now no one would marry her, and she had a good dowry.
Shishkov drank until the wedding. Filka Morozov threatened that he would break all his ribs, and that he would sleep with his wife every night. At the wedding, Ankudim roared, because he knew that his daughter would suffer when she was married. Shishkov had prepared a whip in advance so that Akulinka would depart, since she had married with deceit.
After the wedding, Shishkov and Akulka were left in a closet. Akulka turned out to be innocent, and then he knelt down and asked for forgiveness, and swore to avenge the shame of Filka Morozov.
Then Filka offered to sell his wife to Shishkov. And in order for Shishkov to succumb to this persuasion, he started a rumor that Shishkov and his wife do not sleep, as they are always drunk, and she walks from him. Shishkov was furious and began to beat his wife every day. Ankudim came to intercede for his daughter, but then backed down. Shishkov did not allow his mother to interfere either.
Filka completely drank himself and went to work as a mercenary for a tradesman. With the tradesman Filka he lived for his own pleasure, slept with his daughters, drank, and even dragged the owner by the beard. The tradesman endured all this, since Filka had to go to the soldiers, for his eldest son. When they took Filka to surrender to the soldiers, on the way he saw Akulka, and stopping, began to ask her forgiveness for his meanness. She forgave him, and then told Shishkov that she loved Filka more than death.
And then Shishkov decided to kill Akulka. He took his wife to the forest and there he cut her throat. And in the evening they found Akulka dead and Shishkov in the bathhouse. He's been serving hard labor for four years now.
V. Summer.
It was soon to be Easter. Summer work has begun. The coming spring gave birth to longing and desires in every prisoner.
At this time, one prisoner wants to escape, and the rest only dream about it. Since many, having served two or three years in prison, preferred to serve their term to the end and go to the settlement, than to decide on death in case of failure.
Every day I became more restless and sad. It also poisoned my life and the fact that many people hated me, but that I was a nobleman. The festivities were the same as at Christmas, only you could still walk around.
Summer work has always been harder than winter work. The convicts dug the earth, built, laid bricks, did carpentry, plumbing, or painting work. From work, I only became stronger, because I wanted to live even after hard labor.
In the evenings, the prisoners walked around the yard in crowds. We also learned that an important general was coming from St. Petersburg with an audit of Siberia. Also at this time, one incident happens in the prison. In a fight, one prisoner poked another in the chest with an awl.
The convict who committed the crime was called Lomov, he was from wealthy peasants, and the victim was Gavrilka, he was a vagabond. The Lomovs always lived as a family, and, in addition to legal affairs, they were also involved in harboring vagrants and stolen goods. They decided that there was no justice for them, and began to participate in various lawless deeds. Not far from the village they had their own large farm, where six Kirghiz robbers lived. They were all slaughtered at night, and the Lomovs were accused of killing their workers. Their fortune was taken away, and their uncle and nephew were convicted and sent to hard labor.
And then Gavrilka, a rogue and a vagabond, was brought to the prison, who took the blame for the death of the Kirghiz. The Lomovs tried not to quarrel with Gavrilka. Uncle Lomov, because of the girl, stabbed Gavrilka with an awl. The Lomovs in prison were rich. The term for the offender was added.
The inspector arrived at the prison. He silently walked around all the barracks, visited the kitchen. He was told that I was a nobleman. He looked at me and left. All the prisoners are puzzled.
VI. Convict animals
Buying a horse for the prisoners was entertainment. In prison there was supposed to be a horse for household needs. One day she died. And the purchase of a horse was entrusted to convicts. The purchased horse became a favorite for the whole prison.
The prisoners were very fond of animals, but they were not allowed to breed a lot of them. In addition to Sharik, there were two more dogs in the prison: Kultyapka and Belka.
The geese spawned by chance. The geese went to work with the convicts. But then they were all slaughtered. There was also Vaska the goat. He was also a favorite. But one day a major saw him and ordered him to be killed.
There was also an eagle. He was brought to prison exhausted and wounded. He lived with us for three months, never leaving his corner. In order for the eagle to die in the wild, the convicts threw it into the steppe from the shaft.
VII. Claim
A year later, I resigned myself to life in prison. The prisoners loved to dream, but they did not like to tell their hopes.
All prisoners were divided into evil and kind, bright and gloomy. There were more of the latter. There were also those who were desperate, but they were very few. Not one prisoner can live without a goal, and the goal was freedom for everyone.
One summer day there was an uprising because of food. The prisoners very rarely rise all together. There were several instigators. One of them was Martynov, a former hussar, he was a very hot, restless and suspicious person; and the other was Vasily Antonov, he was very smart and cold-blooded, both of them were honest and truthful.
Our non-commissioned officer was frightened. Everyone lined up and I also went out, I thought it was a test. Then Kulikov disabled me. I went to the kitchen.
There I met the nobleman T-vsky. It was he who told me that if we were there, they would accuse us of rebellion and bring us to court. Isai Fomich and Akim Akimych also did not take part in this excitement.
The major came angry, followed by the clerk Dyatlov, who ran the prison and had a great influence on the major. He was a good person. Three of the prisoners went to the guard. Dyatlov came to the kitchen to us. They said they have no complaints. He reported this to the major, who told him to rewrite everyone, but separately from the dissatisfied. he threatened that he would prosecute all those who were dissatisfied, and everyone was immediately satisfied with everything.
The food got better, but it didn't last long. The prisoners could not calm down for a long time.
I asked Petrov if the convicts were angry with the nobles because they did not go out with everyone else. He didn't understand what I wanted. I realized that I would never be their comrade.
VIII. Comrades
Of the three nobles, I only communicated with Akim Akimych. He was a kind person, and always helped me with advice and some favors.
There were also eight Poles. Only three were educated: M-ki, B-sky, and old man Zh-ki.
Many of them had to serve in hard labor for 10-12 years.
The criminal nobles were treated differently by the higher authorities than the rest of the exiles. I was in the second category of hard labor, it was harder than the other two categories. Nobles were not punished as often as other convicts.
We had relief in work only once, for three months we went to the technical office in the person of clerks.
We copied the papers, but suddenly we were transferred back. Then for two years we went with Bm to work in the workshop.
M-cuy every year became more and more gloomy and sadder. He perked up, remembering his mother. She begged for forgiveness for him. He stayed in a settlement in our city.
Two young people stayed with us for short periods, but were simple and honest. The third, A-chukovsky, was a simple man, but the fourth, B-m, did not make a good impression on us. He was a painter, he was often called to work in the city.
Bm painted a house for the parade-major, who after that began to respect the nobles. Soon the parade-major was put on trial, and he resigned. When he retired, he became poor.
IX. The escape
After the change of the parade-major, hard labor was liquidated and a military prison company was made instead. A special department also remained, dangerous war criminals were sent here.
Everything was the same, only now the bosses have changed. The most important thing was that there was no old major. Now only the guilty were punished. Non-commissioned officers were decent people.
Many years have been erased from my memory. The desire to live remained in me, and this gave me hope and strength. I judged myself past life. I promised myself that I would not make the same mistakes in the future.
Sometimes there were escapes. Two escaped with me. After the resignation of the major, he was left without protection. spy A-B. He and Kulikov agreed to run away.
It was impossible to escape without a guard. Kulikov chose the Pole Koller. Having agreed, they appointed a day.
This happened in June. The fugitives made it so that they, together with the convict Shilkin, were sent to empty barracks to plaster the walls. Koller and another recruit were escorts. An hour later, A-V and Kulikov, having told Shilkin that they had gone for wine, fled. Then Shilkin realized that his comrades had fled, and told the sergeant everything.
The Cossacks were sent in pursuit of them. Also, their orientations were sent to all counties. Now the prisoners were sent to work under reinforced escort, and they were counted several times in the evenings.
Been looking for them for a week. Eight days later they were on their trail. The fugitives were brought to prison, and then put on trial. Everyone was waiting for the court to decide.
A-v was awarded five hundred sticks, Kulikov was assigned as much as fifteen hundred. Koller was given two thousand and sent somewhere as a prisoner. A-va said that he was ready for everything now. And Kulikov, upon returning to the prison, behaved as if he had never left it.
X. Exit from hard labor
All these latest incidents took place during the last year of my penal servitude. I had many acquaintances both in prison and outside its perimeter. I could freely receive books and write to my homeland.
The closer the term of hard labor approached, the more patient I became.
On the day of liberation, I said goodbye to everyone. They said goodbye to me in different ways, someone was happy for me, someone was angry.
After everyone left for work, I left the prison and never returned to it. The shackles were removed from me in the forge. And here it is freedom and a new happy life.

Please note that this is only a summary of the literary work "Notes from the House of the Dead". This summary omits many important points and quotations.