**Hard Labor Rules and Hard Labor Sentence**
Source: PSS vol. 5

Yet another set of "temporary rules"!

This time, however, the matter concerns not students guilty of insubordination, but peasants guilty of the fact that they are starving.

On the 15th of September, there were approved by highest authority – and immediately thereafter published – "Temporary Rules on the Participation of the Population of Localities Affected by Crop Failure in Works Carried Out by Order of the Departments of Communications and Agriculture and State Properties." Having become acquainted with these rules (of course, not through newspaper publications, but from his own experience), the Russian peasant will see a new confirmation of that truth which centuries of enslavement to landowners and officials have drummed into him: when the authorities solemnly declare that the peasant is "afforded the opportunity to participate" in some great or small enterprise, in the redemption of landowner's land or in public works on account of famine – one must expect some new plague of Egypt.

In fact, the temporary rules of the 15th of September, in all their content, produce the impression of a new punitive law, supplementary rules to the criminal code. First and foremost, the very organization and conduct of the works is surrounded by such extreme "caution" and red tape, as if the matter concerned dealings with some sort of rebels or convicts, not with the starving. It would seem that organizing works should be the simplest matter: zemstvo and other institutions receive funds and hire workers to build roads, clear forests, and so forth. Ordinarily works of this kind are carried out in just this way. But now there is created a special order: the zemstvo chief points out the works, the governor draws up his own conclusion, which is sent to St. Petersburg to a special "conference on food supply matters," presided over by the assistant minister of internal affairs and consisting of representatives from various ministries. Moreover, overall supervision is vested in the minister, who can appoint special plenipotentiaries. The St. Petersburg conference will even establish maximum limits for workers' compensation – that is, it must monitor to ensure that the peasant is not "corrupted" by excessively high wages! It is clear that the temporary rules of the 15th of September are intended to hinder the broad application of public works, just as Sipyagin's circular of the 17th of August hindered the distribution of relief to the starving.

But even far more important and far more harmful are the special provisions concerning the procedure for hiring peasants for work.

If the works are conducted "outside their regions of residence" (which will naturally occur in the vast majority of cases), then the workers form special communes under the supervision of the zemstvo chief, who approves even the elder for oversight of order. The starving peasants themselves dare not choose their elder, as workers ordinarily do. They are placed under the command of an armed-with-a-rod "zemstvo" official! A special list is compiled for commune members, which replaces for them the forms of residence established by law… Instead of individual passports, there will be, consequently, commune lists. What is the purpose of this substitution? To restrain the peasant, who with an individual passport could more freely arrange himself as he pleased in new territory, could more easily leave the work in case of dissatisfaction.

Furthermore. "Care for the preservation of proper order during travel and the transfer of delivered parties of workers to those in charge of the works is entrusted to officials specially detailed by the ministry of internal affairs." Free workers are given travel advances; serfs – are "delivered" "in parties" by list and "transferred" to special officials. Are the peasants not right when they regard "public" and state works as a new form of serfdom?

And indeed, the law of the 15th of September brings starving peasants closer to serfs not only in that it deprives them of freedom of movement. The law gives officials the right to withhold part of the wages for remittance to the families of workers if this seems necessary to "the provincial authorities of the localities where the families remained." The earned money will be disposed of without the consent of the workers themselves! The peasant is stupid: he will not be able to look after his own family. The authorities will do all this far better: who has not heard, in fact, how well they looked after peasant families in the military settlements?{101}

There is one problem: peasants are perhaps not quite so obedient now as in the days of military settlements. They might indeed demand that they be issued ordinary passports, that the authorities not dare, without their consent, withhold earned money. For such cases, one must increase strictness, and the law decrees in a special article that "supervision over the preservation of proper order by workers at the sites of work production is vested, by order of the minister of internal affairs, in local zemstvo chiefs, officers of the separate corps of gendarmes, police officials, or persons specially appointed for this purpose." Upon starving peasants the government clearly regards in advance as "rebels," establishing, besides general supervision by all Russian police over all Russian workers, yet special and most stringent supervision. The peasant has been decided in advance to be taken in iron hands for daring to "exaggerate" the famine and for displaying (as Sipyagin expressed it in his circular) "unjustified demands upon the government."

And in order not to have to bother with courts in case of any worker dissatisfaction, the temporary rules give officials the right to subject workers to arrest for up to three days without special judicial proceedings for breach of the peace, negligence in work, failure to obey orders!! A free worker must be brought before a local magistrate, before whom he can defend himself and lodge appeals against decisions – but the starving peasant can be thrown into the lock-up without any trial! A free worker who refuses to work can only be dismissed – but the new law prescribes that the starving peasant, for "persistent refusal to work," be sent under escort back to his homeland, along with thieves and robbers!

The new temporary rules are genuine hard labor rules for the starving, rules for putting them to work with deprivation of rights for daring to trouble the authorities with requests for aid. The government has not limited itself to depriving the zemstvo of supervision of food supply matters, forbidding private individuals from organizing, without police permission, dining halls, ordering that the actual extent of need be reduced fivefold – it has also declared peasants to be without full rights and commanded that they be dealt with without trial. To the permanent hard labor of eternally hungry life and unbearable toil is now added the threat of hard labor on state works.

Such are the government's measures toward peasants. As for workers, the treatment of them is most vividly characterized by the "Indictment" printed in the previous issue of our newspaper concerning the May disturbances at the Obukhov works. *Iskra* has already written about the event itself in the June and July issues. Concerning the trial, our legal press was silent, evidently mindful of how even the most well-intentioned *Novoe Vremya* "suffered" for attempting to write on these subjects. A couple of lines made it into the newspapers saying that the trial took place at the end of September, and then in one of the southern newspapers, by chance, the verdict was reported: two – hard labor, eight acquitted, the rest – prison and correctional labor wards for terms from 2 to 3½ years.

Thus, in the article "A New Massacre" (No. 5 of *Iskra*)[138] we did not sufficiently appreciate the vengefullness of the Russian government. We thought that it had resorted to military reprisal as a last resort in the struggle, fearing to appeal to the courts. It turns out they succeeded in combining both: after beating the crowd and murdering three workers, they singled out 37 people from among several thousand and sentenced them to Draconian punishments.

How they singled them out and how they tried them – of this the indictment gives some indication. At the head of the instigators were placed An. Iv. Ermakov, Efr. Step. Dakhin and An. Iv. Gavrilov. The indictment indicates that Ermakov had proclamations at his quarters (according to the words of the assistant at a state wine shop, Mikhailova, who was not called to trial as a witness), that he spoke of the struggle for political freedom and went on the 22nd of April to the Nevsky, carrying a red flag. Furthermore, it is emphasized that Gavrilov also had and distributed proclamations calling for demonstration on the 22nd of April. Concerning the defendant Yakovleva, it is also stated that she participated in some sort of secret gatherings. It is thus clear that the prosecutor endeavored to present as instigators precisely those people whom the secret police suspected of being political activists. The political character of the case is evident also from the fact that the crowd cried out: "We need freedom!", is evident from the connection with the first of May. In parentheses be it said, the dismissal of 26 people for "absence" on the first of May kindled the entire conflagration, but the prosecutor, of course, did not utter a word about the illegality of such a dismissal!

The matter is clear. For trial they singled out those they suspected of being political enemies. The secret police presented lists. And the police, of course, "confirmed" that these persons were in the crowd and threw stones and stood out from others.

The trial was used to cover up a second act of political revenge (after the massacre). And they covered it up basely: they mentioned politics for the purpose of aggravating the guilt, but did not permit the political context of the entire occurrence to be explained. They tried them as common criminals under Article 263 of the Criminal Code, that is, for "manifest rebellion against the authorities established by the government," and moreover rebellion carried out by armed people (?). The accusation was rigged: the police ordered judges to consider only one side of the case.

Note that under Articles 263-265 of the Criminal Code one can be sent to hard labor for any sort of manifestation: "manifest rebellion with the intention of preventing the execution of measures and orders prescribed by the government," even if the "rebels" were not armed and did not even commit overt acts of violence! Russian laws are generous with hard labor! And it is time for us to ensure that every such trial is transformed into a political trial by the defendants themselves, so that the government dare not cover its political revenge with the comedy of criminal procedure!

And what "progress" in the very course of justice in comparison, for instance, with 1885! Then the Morozov weavers were tried by jury, the newspapers carried full reports, at trial workers as witnesses uncovered all the abuses of the factory owner. But now – trial by officials with voiceless estate representatives, closed courtroom doors, mute silence of the press, rigged witnesses: factory management, factory guards, police who beat the people, soldiers who shot at workers. What vile comedy!

Compare this "progress" of reprisal against workers in 1885 and 1901 with the "progress" of struggle against the starving in 1891 and 1901 – and you will gain some notion of how rapidly indignation grows both deep and broad among the people and in society, how furiously the government begins to thrash about, "tightening" both private philanthropists and peasants, attempting to intimidate workers with hard labor sentences. No, hard labor will not intimidate workers, whose leaders were not afraid to die in direct street combat with the tsar's oprichniks. The memory of the killed and tortured heroes-comrades in prisons will increase tenfold the strength of new fighters and will attract to their aid thousands of helpers, who, like eighteen-year-old Martha Yakovleva, will say openly: "We stand for our brothers!" The government intends, besides police and military reprisal against demonstrators, to try them also for rebellion; – we will answer this by uniting all revolutionary forces, drawing to our side all the oppressed by tsarist arbitrariness, and by systematic preparation of a general popular uprising!

*Iskra* No. 10, November 1901

Printed according to the text of the newspaper *Iskra*