Dostoevsky notes from the dead house. “Notes of a Dead Man” is Kazan rock inspired by karate. VII. New acquaintances. Petrov

The impression of the realities of prison or convict life is a fairly common theme in Russian literature, both in poetry and prose. Literary masterpieces, which embody pictures of the life of prisoners, belong to the pen of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Anton Chekhov and other great Russian writers. One of the first to reveal to the reader pictures of another, unknown ordinary people the world of the prison, with its laws and rules, specific speech, its social hierarchy, the master dared psychological realism- Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

Although the work relates to early creativity the great writer, when he was still honing his prose skills, in the story one can already feel attempts at a psychological analysis of the state of a person who is in critical conditions of life. Dostoevsky not only recreates the realities of prison reality; the author uses the method of analytical mapping to explore people’s impressions of being in prison, their physical and psychological condition, the influence of hard labor on the individual assessment and self-control of the heroes.

Analysis of the work

The genre of the work is interesting. In academic criticism, the genre is defined as a story in two parts. However, the author himself called it notes, that is, a genre close to memoir-epistolary. The author's memoirs are not reflections on his fate or events from own life. "Notes from House of the Dead"is a documentary recreation of pictures of prison reality, which were the result of understanding what was seen and heard over the four years spent by F.M. Dostoevsky at hard labor in Omsk.

Story style

Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead is a narrative within a narrative. In the introduction, the speech is conducted on behalf of the nameless author, who talks about a certain person - nobleman Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov.

From the words of the author, the reader becomes aware that Goryanchikov, a man of about 35, is living out his life in the small Siberian town of K. For the murder of his own wife, Alexander was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor, after which he lives in a settlement in Siberia.

One day, the narrator, driving past Alexander’s house, saw the light and realized that the former prisoner was writing something. Somewhat later, the narrator learned about his death, and the owner of the apartment gave him the papers of the deceased, among which was a notebook describing prison memories. Goryanchikov called his creation “Scenes from the House of the Dead.” Further elements of the composition of the work are represented by 10 chapters that reveal the realities camp life, the narrative in which is conducted on behalf of Alexander Petrovich.

The system of characters in the work is quite diverse. However, it cannot be called a “system” in the true meaning of the term. Characters appear and disappear outside the plot structure and narrative logic. The heroes of the work are all those who surround the prisoner Goryanchikov: neighbors in the barracks, other prisoners, infirmary workers, guards, military men, city residents. Little by little, the narrator introduces the reader to some of the prisoners or camp staff, as if casually telling about them. There is evidence of the real existence of some characters whose names were slightly changed by Dostoevsky.

The main character of the artistic and documentary work is Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, on whose behalf the story is told. Through his eyes the reader sees pictures of camp life. The characters of the surrounding convicts are perceived through the prism of his relationship, and at the end of his term of imprisonment the story ends. From the narrative we learn more about others than about Alexander Petrovich. After all, in essence, what does the reader know about him? Goryanchikov was convicted of murdering his wife out of jealousy and sentenced to hard labor for 10 years. At the beginning of the story the hero is 35 years old. Three months later he dies. Dostoevsky does not focus maximum attention on the image of Alexander Petrovich, since in the story there are two deeper and more important images that can hardly be called heroes.

The work is based on the image of a Russian convict camp. The author describes in detail the life and outskirts of the camp, its charter and the routine of life in it. The narrator speculates about how and why people end up there. Someone deliberately commits a crime in order to escape worldly life. Many of the prisoners are real criminals: thieves, swindlers, murderers. And someone commits a crime defending their dignity or the honor of their loved ones, for example, a daughter or sister. There are some undesirables among the prisoners contemporary author elements of power, that is, political prisoners. Alexander Petrovich does not understand how they can be united all together and punished almost equally.

Dostoevsky gives the name of the image of the camp through the mouth of Goryanchikov - House of the Dead. This allegorical image reveals the author’s attitude towards one of the main images. A dead house is a place where people do not live, but exist in anticipation of life. Somewhere deep in their souls, hiding from the ridicule of other prisoners, they cherish the hope of a free, full life. And some are even deprived of it.

The main focus of the work, without a doubt, is the Russian people, in all its diversity. The author shows various layers of Russian people by nationality, as well as Poles, Ukrainians, Tatars, Chechens, who were united by one fate in the House of the Dead.

The main idea of ​​the story

Places of deprivation of liberty, especially on domestic grounds, represent a special world, closed and unknown to other people. Living an ordinary worldly life, few people think about what this place is like for holding criminals, whose imprisonment is accompanied by inhuman physical stress. Perhaps only those who have visited the House of the Dead have an idea about this place. Dostoevsky was in prison from 1954 to 1954. The writer set himself the goal of showing everything features of Dead at home through the eyes of a prisoner, which became the main idea of ​​the documentary story.

At first, Dostoevsky was horrified by the thought of what contingent he was among. But his penchant for psychological analysis of personality led him to observations of people, their condition, reactions, and actions. In his first letter after leaving prison, Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote to his brother that he had not wasted the four years spent among real criminals and innocently convicted people. He may not have gotten to know Russia, but he got to know the Russian people well. As well as perhaps no one recognized him. Another idea of ​​the work is to reflect the state of the prisoner.

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, you occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in the cemetery - towns that look more like good village near Moscow than the city. They are usually quite sufficiently equipped with police officers, assessors and all other subaltern ranks. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm. People live simple, illiberal lives; the order is old, strong, sanctified for centuries. The officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, inveterate Siberians, or newcomers from Russia, for the most part from the capitals, seduced by the non-credited salaries, double runs and tempting hopes for the future. Among them, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. They subsequently bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon become bored with Siberia and ask themselves with longing: why did they come to it? They eagerly serve out their legal term of service, three years, and at the end of it they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at it. They are wrong: not only from an official point of view, but even from many points of view, one can be blissful in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; there are many extremely wealthy foreigners. The young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter. An unnatural amount of champagne is drunk. The caviar is amazing. The harvest happens in other places as early as 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, then became a second-class exile and convict for the murder of his wife. and, after the expiration of the ten-year term of hard labor prescribed for him by law, he humbly and quietly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He, in fact, was assigned to one suburban volost, but lived in the city, having the opportunity to earn at least some food in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often encounters teachers from exiled settlers; they are not disdained. They teach mainly French, so necessary in the field of life and about which without them in the remote regions of Siberia they would have no idea. The first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters, different years who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks per lesson. His appearance interested 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 style. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listening to every word of yours with strict politeness, as if he were pondering it, as if you asked him a task with your question or wanted to extract some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer so much 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 a terrible unsociable person, hides from everyone, is extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little, and that in general it is quite difficult to get into conversation with him. Others argued that he was positively crazy, although they found that, in essence, this was not such an important flaw, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to favor Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests, etc. They 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 was harming himself. In addition, we all knew his story, we knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). Such crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, despite all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in people only to give lessons.

At first I didn’t pay much attention to him, but, I don’t know why, little by little he began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was not the slightest opportunity to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with such an air as if he considered this his primary duty; but after his answers I somehow felt burdened to question him longer; and on his face, after such conversations, some kind of suffering and fatigue was always visible. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. Suddenly I took it into my head to invite him to my place for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror that was expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words and suddenly, looking angrily at me, he started running in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, whenever he met me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I didn’t calm down; I was drawn to him by something, and a month later, out of the blue, I went to see Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lived on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a daughter who was sick with consumption, and that daughter had an illegitimate daughter, a child of about ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I came into his room. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him committing some crime. He was completely confused, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely watched 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: “Are you going to leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, about current news; he remained silent and smiled evilly; 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 to him, still uncut. He cast a greedy glance at them, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, citing 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 person who precisely supplies his the main task- hide as far away from the whole world as possible. But the job was done. I remember that I noticed almost no books on him, and, therefore, it was unfair to say about him that he reads a lot. However, driving past his windows twice, very late at night, I noticed a light in them. What did he do while he sat until dawn? Didn't he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the fall, died in solitude and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately met the owner of the deceased, intending to find out from her; What exactly was her tenant doing and did he write anything? For two kopecks she brought me a whole basket of papers left behind by the deceased. The old woman admitted 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 couldn’t tell me anything special new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months at a time did not open a book or pick up a pen; but whole nights he walked back and forth across the room and kept thinking about something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he loved and caressed her granddaughter, Katya, very much, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Katerina’s day every time he went to serve a memorial service for someone. He could not tolerate guests; he only came out of the yard to teach the children; he even glanced sideways at her, the old woman, when she came, once a week, to tidy up his room at least a little, 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. Therefore, this man could at least force someone to love him.

There were many undesirable people in the Soviet Union musical groups, - they tried to discredit them or ban them, but they, of course, continued to appear. One of these was the group “Notes dead person", formed in Kazan in the mid-80s by martial arts lover Vitaly Kartsev and physicist with honors Vladimir Guskov.

Vitaly became a vocalist and was responsible for all the lyrics, Vladimir became a guitarist and took on backing vocals. Around the same time, a rock club was born in the Kazan Youth Center and it was there that the friends found the rest of the band members. They were joined by drummer, and later by PR manager Andrei Anikin, amazed by the energy of Vitaly’s self-expression and his poems “on the topic of the day.” In the same club they met Vladimir Burmistrov, also a drummer, but in the group he successfully played the role of a “percussionist”. And the fifth member of ZMCH was Vitaly’s old friend – bassist Viktor Shurgin. So, having completed the lineup, ZMCH set out on the path of a rebellious rock band. It was hard work - they had no permanent place for rehearsals, no smart instruments, no connections in the musical community. However, in the field, in one day, the first album of the ZMCH group “Incubator of Fools” was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder in the utility room in 1986.

Before the appearance of ZMCh, Vitaly Kartsev had been involved in martial arts and martial arts for years - Eastern philosophy in general had a very strong influence on him. And his personality and worldview were transferred to the group’s work - the very name “Notes of a Dead Man” was inspired by the poems of the Japanese poet and Zen master Shido Bunan: “Living like a dead man,” and the music developed in a certain integral direction with elements of post-punk, rock and psychedelics. Vitaly’s passion for Eastern teachings is clearly felt in all component groups - abstract texts about search life value mixed with a painful, sometimes mournful sound, they are associatively reminiscent of the esotericism of Asia.

Notes of a Dead Man, 1989

In the same 1986, they performed at a rock festival in the House of Pioneers of the Soviet District, where they were noticed by TV presenter Shamil Fattakhov and invited to participate in the “versus” of those times - the musical television program “Duel”. Having appeared on the big screen, ZMCH no longer went unnoticed with their political hints in their songs. According to Kartsev, an order was given from above to merge the group, and in the second part of the program, ZMCH lost and dropped out of the show. Recalling that period, he talked about the judges sent: “The first thing we played on this program was “HamMillioniya” - with a hint of our society. And the second - “The Powerless Contemplator” - was about the fact that one person is powerless to change anything in this world mired in dirty political games. The performance was noticed, and Shamil received an order from above: make another pass to crush us. On the second program, letters began to be read out on air: supposedly people from the districts wrote that this was unacceptable and they did not like this kind of music. And there were also the same dispatched experts.”

ZMCH were amazingly prolific - in 1988 alone they recorded two albums. The first is “Children of Communism”, and the second “Exhumation” was recorded in one night in Moscow, at the Ostankino television studio. Such efficiency surprised both fellow musicians and fans, who did not have time to evaluate the previous album before the new one was released. But Kartsev does not dare take responsibility for the quality of music: “Everyone was surprised: how? And so, our musicians were first-class - they took everything on the fly. Nowadays bands are written for big money in good studios, sit for months, and the output is often still crap. Of course, we may also have shit, but at least we did it quickly“, he recalls more than 20 years later. The album “Exhumation” is distinguished by its strong politicization, rebellious spirit and protest against officials and the political system that reigned in the last years of the USSR, but at the same time, there are also moments of despair in the lyrics, when the author talks about the lost hopes placed on Soviet society in vain.

ZMCH regularly went on small tours around the regions and continued to write music, despite the fact that all members of the group had a life outside the group - Vitaly, for example, studied at the Faculty of Law of Kazan University and continued to engage in martial arts. All ZMCh performances in small towns were accompanied by discontent from local officials and Komsomol members, but they continued anyway. Having gained sufficient popularity for the Kazan group, their music became interesting to directors and radio stations - their compositions were used as soundtracks in the short films “Wanderer in the Bulgars” and “Afghanistan”, and the song “Children of Communism” was heard on BBC radio. Of course, now, in the realities of the 21st century, it’s hard to call this a great success, but the young group from Kazan, who made music for music’s sake, didn’t need more.

In 1987, they changed the composition, replacing the guitarist and drummer: two brothers joined the group - Alexander (guitar and vocals) and Evgeniy (bass guitar and backing vocals) Gasilov, and Vladimir Burmistrov as a drummer. And former drummer Andrei Anikin began to perform those tasks that are now considered the sphere of PR management - he organized performances, negotiated the inclusion of the group in the program of various festivals, established contacts with the owners of recording studios and did other things necessary for musical group, affairs. And he did a great job - ZMCH performed at festivals in different cities (Moscow “Rock for Democracy”, Leningrad “Aurora”, Barnaul “Rock Asia”, Samara “The Worst”), on television programs and in the Moscow House of Culture, recording along the way album after album.

Their complete discography is impressive - over the 10 years of their existence they have released 10 albums, literally one every year. At the same time, there are compositions that were never included in any of the works. Many of the albums were recorded in the shortest possible time - they recorded “The Science of Celebrating Death” in 1990 in Andrei Tropillo’s St. Petersburg studio in three or four days. The 1992 album “Prayer (Empty Heart)” became an important element in the life of the group - it was with it that ZMCH became the first Kazan group to sound at the Melodiya company, releasing the album on vinyl. Now the record is considered a rarity and is found only in the private collections of the most ardent fans, who, however, can sometimes sell any item for a fairly large amount.

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In the last years of the group's existence, Kartsev combined music studies and academic activities, whether studying at the university or teaching. Until 1994, in between tours in Russia, he went to Europe, where he taught qigong and bagua, returned to Russia and went on tour again.

Their texts often display the theme of mysticism, the dead, graves and other components of the cemetery: “I’m very brave today, I played the trumpet, all my grave neighbors applauded me.”– in the song “Brave Dead” Vitaly appears as an example of a deceased person, and in “Master of Silence” he states that "There is no friend more reliable than death". But in addition to thinking about the abstract, ZMCH often turn to politics and the social order that surrounds them, for which they turned out to be disliked by the ruling party. For example, in the song "Incubator of Fools", they sing about a system that "breeds turkeys so that they can be used by each otherinterruptedfaces, otherwise there will be no work for those who guard peace and success - the main cooks, the main parasites" clearly referring the listener to the realities of Soviet reality. But the general message of ZMCH’s work almost always leaves the listener with a feeling of hopelessness and despair. In one of the lines of “Trouble,” Vitaly summarizes that “Today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow, too, from a new line, the meager games of existence and the thrill of life in a dead center.” And this line is typical for all of ZMCH’s lyrics, and discussions about the poverty of life and mental death haunt all of the group’s work.

When listening to the ZMCH archive, a modern listener will find not a single flaw, but given all the conditions of the group’s existence, this is easy to forgive. It is impossible not to note their fertility and efficiency: 10 albums, and the compositions reach 10 minutes in length and are filled with completely different sounds and instruments, creating the overall impression of either a religious ceremony or a funeral procession.

The ZMCH project was closed not because of loss of interest, not because of quarrels between participants and not because of changes in the country, as some believe, but because of death younger brother Vitaly Kartsev, which he doesn’t like to talk about and talk about. Even during the existence of the group, he did not give up martial arts, and after the dissolution of the group he delved deeper into teaching, while the other participants remained in the musical field, just in other positions. Looking back, we can say that ZMCH left their mark on the Kazan rock movement and entered the galaxy of the best representatives of the Kazan wave of the 80s and early 90s.

Part one

Introduction

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, you occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in the cemetery - towns that look more like good village near Moscow than the city. They are usually quite sufficiently equipped with police officers, assessors and all other subaltern ranks. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm. People live simple, illiberal lives; the order is old, strong, sanctified for centuries. The officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, inveterate Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the non-credited salaries, double runs and tempting hopes for the future. Among them, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. They subsequently bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon become bored with Siberia and ask themselves with longing: why did they come to it? They eagerly serve out their legal term of service, three years, and at the end of it they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at it. They are wrong: not only from an official point of view, but even from many points of view, one can be blissful in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; there are many extremely wealthy foreigners. The young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter. An unnatural amount of champagne is drunk. The caviar is amazing. The harvest happens in other places as early as 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, then became a second-class exile for the murder of his wife, and, after the expiration of the ten-year term of hard labor prescribed for him by law, he humbly and quietly 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 earn at least some food in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often encounters teachers from exiled settlers; they are not disdained. 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 they would have no idea. The first time I met Alexander Petrovich was in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters of different ages who showed wonderful hopes. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks per lesson. His appearance interested 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 style. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listened to every word of yours with strict politeness, as if he were pondering it, as if you asked him a task with your question or wanted to extract some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer so much 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 a terrible unsociable, hides from everyone, is extremely learned, reads a lot, but says very little and that in general it is quite difficult to talk to him. Others argued that he was positively crazy, although they found that in essence this was not such an important flaw, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to favor Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests, etc. They 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 was harming himself. In addition, we all knew his story, we knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). Such crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, despite all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in people only to give lessons.

At first I didn't pay much attention to him; but, I don’t know why, little by little he began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was not the slightest opportunity to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with such an air as if he considered this his primary duty; but after his answers I somehow felt burdened to question him longer; and after such conversations, his face always showed some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. Suddenly I took it into my head to invite him to my place for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror that was expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words and suddenly, looking angrily at me, he started running in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, whenever he met me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I didn’t calm down; I was drawn to him by something, and a month later, out of the blue, I went to see Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lived on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a daughter who was sick with consumption, and that daughter had an illegitimate daughter, a child of about ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I came into his room. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him committing some crime. He was completely confused, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely watched 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: “Are you going to leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, about current news; he remained silent and smiled evilly; 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 to him, not yet cut. He cast a greedy glance at them, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, citing 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 person whose main goal was to hide as far away from the whole world as possible. But the job was done. I remember that I noticed almost no books on him, and, therefore, it was unfair to say about him that he reads a lot. However, driving past his windows twice, very late at night, I noticed a light in them. What did he do while he sat until dawn? Didn't he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the fall, died in solitude and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately met the owner 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 behind by the deceased. The old woman admitted 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 couldn’t tell me anything particularly new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months at a time did not open a book or pick up a pen; but whole nights he walked back and forth across the room and kept thinking about something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he loved and caressed her granddaughter, Katya, very much, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Katerina’s day every time he went to serve a memorial service for someone. He could not tolerate guests; he only came out of the yard to teach the children; he even glanced sideways at her, the old woman, when she came, once a week, to tidy up his room at least a little, 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. Therefore, this man could at least force someone to love him.

I took his papers and sorted through them all day. Three quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant scraps or student exercises from copybooks. But there was also one notebook, quite voluminous, finely written and unfinished, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. This was a description, albeit incoherent, of the ten years of hard labor 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 was almost convinced that they were written in madness. But the convict notes - “Scenes from the House of the Dead,” as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. Absolutely new world, still unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the lost people fascinated me, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. I first select two or three chapters for testing; let the public judge...

I. House of the Dead

Our fort stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of God: wouldn’t you see at least something? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart day and night, and you will immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will go in the same way to look through the cracks of the fence and you will 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 steps in length and one and a half hundred steps in width, all surrounded in a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, by a high fence, that is, a fence of high pillars (pals), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse planks and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the fort. In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world, people lived like everyone else. But on this side of the fence they imagined that world as some kind of impossible fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else; it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own morals and customs, and a living dead house, life - like nowhere else, and special people. It is this special corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard there are two long one-story log houses. These are barracks. Prisoners housed by category live here. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is another similar log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is another building where cellars, barns, and sheds are located under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and is flat, quite large area. Here the prisoners are lined up, verification and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes several more times a day - judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. All around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite large space. Here, at the back of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and darker in character, like to go to non-working hours, closed from all eyes, and think your little thoughts. Meeting them during these walks, I loved to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking about. 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 pala and thus, from the remaining number of uncounted pali, he could clearly see how many days he still had left to stay in the prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely happy when he finished some side of the hexagon. He still had to wait for many years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw how a prisoner, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released, said goodbye to his comrades. 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 as a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he walked around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the icon and then bowed low, at the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to remember him unkindly. I also remember how one day a prisoner, formerly a wealthy Siberian peasant, was called to the gate one evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife had gotten married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for two minutes, both cried and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, in this place one could learn patience.

When it got dark, we were all taken into 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 and stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. Now I don’t understand how I survived in it for ten years. I had three boards on the bunk: that was all my space. About thirty people were accommodated on these same bunks in one of our rooms. In winter they locked it early; We had to wait four hours until everyone fell asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamed... yes, a tenacious man! 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 the prison - the number was almost constant. Some came, others completed their terms and left, others died. And what kind of 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 Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crime, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no crime that did not have its representative here. The main basis of the entire prison population were exiled convicts of the civil category ( strongly convicts, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). These were criminals, completely deprived of all the rights of fortune, cut off in chunks from society, with their faces branded as an eternal testimony of their rejection. They were sent to work for periods of eight to twelve years and then were sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts as settlers. There were also criminals of the military category, who were not deprived of their status rights, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for a short period of time; upon completion, they turned back to where they came from, to become soldiers, to the Siberian line battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned back to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "always" 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 the “special department”. Criminals were sent here from all over Rus'. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the duration of their work. By law, they had to double and triple their work hours. They were kept in prison until the most severe hard labor was opened in Siberia. “You get a prison term, but we get penal servitude along the way,” they said to other prisoners. I heard later that this discharge was destroyed. In addition, it was destroyed at our fortress and civil order, and one general military prison company has been established. Of course, along with this, the management also changed. I am describing, therefore, the old days, things that are long past and past...

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

There were casual killers and professional killers, robbers and atamans of robbers. There were simply mazuriks and industrialist vagabonds for found money or for the Stolevo part. There were also those about whom it was difficult to decide: why, it seems, could they come here? Meanwhile, everyone had their own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes of yesterday’s intoxication. In general, they talked little about their past, did not like to talk and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers who were so cheerful, so never thinking, that you could bet that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also gloomy faces, almost always silent. In general, rarely did anyone tell their life, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in custom, not accepted. So is it possible that occasionally someone will start talking out of idleness, while someone else listens calmly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. “We are a literate people!” - they often said with some strange complacency. I remember how one day a drunken robber (you could sometimes get drunk in penal servitude) began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy to death, how he first deceived him with a toy, took him somewhere into an empty barn, and stabbed him there. The entire barracks, which had hitherto laughed at his jokes, screamed as one person, and the robber was forced to remain silent; The barracks screamed not out of indignation, but because there was no need to talk about this speak; because talk about it not accepted. By the way, I note that these people were truly 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 group of two hundred and fifty people, half of whom 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 among the people. But this is not a drawback at all. All categories differed in dress: some had half their jackets dark brown and the other gray, and the same on their trousers - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalash-wielding girl approached the prisoners, peered at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ugh, how nice isn’t it! - she shouted, “there was not enough gray cloth, and there was not enough black cloth!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of the same gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: for some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, for others across.

At first glance one could notice some sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the harshest, most original personalities, who reigned over others involuntarily, tried to fall into the general tone of the entire prison. In general, I will say that all this people, with a few few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this, were a gloomy, envious people, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and extremely formalist. The ability not to be surprised by anything was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to present themselves. But often the most arrogant look was replaced with lightning speed by the most cowardly one. It was somewhat true strong people ; they were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real, strong people, several were vain to the extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity and appearance were in the foreground. The majority were corrupted and terribly sneaky. Gossip and gossip were continuous: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal regulations and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that were sharply outstanding, who obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but still obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too high-handed, too out of step with the standards of freedom, 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 state of confusion; often out of vanity, excited to the highest degree. But with us they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that others, before arriving at the prison, terrorized entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he was in the wrong place, that there was no one left to surprise here, and he quietly humbled himself and fell into the general tone. This general tone was composed from the outside out of some special, personal dignity, which imbued almost every inhabitant of the prison. As if, in fact, the title of a convict, a decided one, constituted some kind of rank, and an honorable one at that. No signs 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 street, check the ranks.” - “I didn’t listen to my father and mother, now listen to the drum skin.” - “I didn’t want to sew with gold, now hit the stones with a hammer.” All this was said often, both in the form of moral teaching and in the form of ordinary sayings and proverbs, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that any of them internally admitted their lawlessness. If someone who is not a convict tries to reproach a prisoner for his crime, to scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal), there will be no end to the curses. And what masters they were all at swearing! They swore subtly and artistically. They elevated swearing to a science; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word, but with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels further developed this science between them. All these people worked under pressure, as a result they were idle, and as a result they became corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, they became corrupted in hard labor. All of them did not gather here of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.

“The devil took three bast shoes before he gathered us into one heap!” - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, quarrel, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman could be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, among them there were people of strong character, accustomed to breaking and commanding their entire lives, seasoned, fearless. These people were somehow involuntarily respected; they, for their part, although they were often very jealous of their fame, generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not engage in empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not out of the principle of obedience , not out of consciousness of responsibilities, 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 decisive man, known to his superiors for his brutal inclinations, was called to punishment for some crime. It was a summer day, time off from work. The staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was right next to our 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, “throwing himself at people,” as the convicts said. What they feared most about him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be hidden. He somehow 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 false. He only embittered already embittered people with his frenzied, evil actions, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and sensible man, who sometimes moderated his wild antics, then he would have caused great troubles with his management. I don’t understand how he could have ended safely; he retired alive and well, although, however, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when they called him. Usually 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 failure that had happened. However, they always dealt with him carefully. But this time he considered himself to be right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to put a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp instruments were terribly prohibited in the prison. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he has decided to hide something special, and since knives and tools were an ever-present necessity in prison, despite searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately created. The whole convict rushed to the fence and looked through the cracks of their fingers with bated breath. Everyone knew that Petrov this time would not want to lie under the rod and that the end had come for the major. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into a droshky and drove away, entrusting the execution to another officer. “God himself saved!” – the prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger subsided with the major's departure. 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 for some small thing, for some trifle, for almost nothing. At another glance, one might even call him crazy; Yes, that's what they do.

I have already said that for several years I have not seen among these people the slightest sign of repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them internally consider themselves completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, youthfulness, false shame are largely the reason for this. On the other hand, who can say that he has traced the depth of these lost hearts and read in them the secrets of the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at so many years, to at least notice something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some feature that would indicate inner melancholy, about suffering. But this was not the case, positively not the case. Yes, crime, it seems, cannot be understood from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than is believed. Of course, prisons and the system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and protect society from further attacks by the villain on his peace of mind. In the criminal, prison and the most intensive hard labor develop only hatred, 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, enervates his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then presents a morally withered mummy, a half-crazed man, as an example of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. Moreover, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, even. One can finally judge from such points of view that one almost has to acquit the criminal himself. But, despite all kinds of points of view, everyone will agree that there are crimes that always and everywhere, according to all kinds of laws, from the beginning of the world are considered indisputable crimes and will be considered such as long as a person remains a person. Only in prison did I hear stories about the most terrible, the most unnatural acts, the most monstrous murders, told with the most uncontrollable, most childishly cheerful laughter. One parricide in particular never escapes my memory. He was from the nobility, served and was something of a prodigal son to his sixty-year-old father. He was completely dissolute in behavior and got into debt. His father limited him and 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 discovered only a month later. The killer himself filed an announcement with the police that his father had disappeared to an unknown location. He spent this entire month in the most depraved manner. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for sewage drainage, covered with boards. The body lay in this ditch. It was dressed and put away, the gray head was cut off, put to the body, and the killer put a pillow under the head. He didn't confess; was deprived of nobility and rank and exiled to work for twenty years. The entire time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful mood. He was an eccentric, frivolous, extremely unreasonable person, although not at all a fool. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for the crime, of which there was no mention, but for his stupidity, for the fact that he did not know how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes remembered his father. Once, speaking to me about the healthy build that was hereditary in their family, he added: “Here my parent

. ... break the green street, check the rows. – The expression has the meaning: to go through a line of soldiers with spitzrutens, receiving a court-determined number of blows on the bare back.

Staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison... - It is known that the prototype of this officer was the parade ground major of the Omsk prison V. G. Krivtsov. 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 troublemaker, a drunkard, everything disgusting you can imagine.” Krivtsov was dismissed and then put on trial for abuses.

. ... the commandant, a noble and sensible 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 man.”

Petrov. - In the documents of the Omsk prison there is a record that the prisoner Andrei Shalomentsev was punished “for resisting the parade-ground major Krivtsov while punishing him with rods and uttering words that he would certainly do something to himself or kill Krivtsov.” This prisoner may have been the prototype of Petrov; he came to hard labor “for tearing the epaulette off the company commander.”

. ...the famous cell system... - Solitary confinement system. The question of establishing 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-"parricide" was D.N. Ilyinsky, about whom seven volumes of his court case have reached us. Outwardly, in terms of events and plot, this imaginary “parricide” is the prototype of Mitya Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s last novel.

Part one

I. House of the Dead

Our fort stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of God: wouldn’t you see at least something? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart, day and night; and you will immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will come up to look through the cracks of the fence in the same way and see the same rampart, the same sentries and the same small edge of the sky, not the same sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large courtyard, two hundred steps in length and one and a half hundred steps in width, all surrounded in a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, by a high fence, that is, a fence of high pillars (pals), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse planks and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the fort. In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world, people lived like everyone else. But on this side of the fence they imagined that world as some kind of impossible fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else, it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own morals and customs, and a living dead house, life - like nowhere else, and special people. It is this special corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard there are two long one-story log houses. These are barracks. Prisoners housed by category live here. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is another similar log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is another building where cellars, barns, and sheds are located under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and forms a flat, fairly large area. Here the prisoners are lined up, verification and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes several more times a day - judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. All around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, at the back of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and darker in character, like to walk around during non-working hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thoughts. Meeting them during these walks, I loved to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking about. 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 pala and thus, from the remaining number of uncounted pali, he could clearly see how many days he still had left to stay in the prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely happy when he finished some side of the hexagon. He still had to wait for many years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw how a prisoner, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released, said goodbye to his comrades. 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 as a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he walked around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the icon and then bowed low, at the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to remember him unkindly. I also remember how one day a prisoner, formerly a wealthy Siberian peasant, was called to the gate one evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife had gotten married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for two minutes, both cried and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, in this place one could learn patience.

When it got dark, we were all taken into 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 and stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. Now I don’t understand how I survived in it for ten years. I had three boards on the bunk: that was all my space. About thirty people were accommodated on these same bunks in one of our rooms. In winter they locked it early; We had to wait four hours until everyone fell asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamed... yes, a tenacious man! 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 the prison - the number was almost constant. Some came, others completed their terms and left, others died. And what kind of 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 crime, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no crime that did not have its representative here. The main basis of the entire prison population were exiled convicts of the civilian category (strong convicts, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). These were criminals, completely deprived of all the rights of fortune, cut off in chunks from society, with their faces branded as an eternal testimony of their rejection. They were sent to work for periods of eight to twelve years and then were sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts as settlers. There were also criminals of the military category, who were not deprived of their status rights, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for a short period of time; upon completion, they turned back to where they came from, to become soldiers, to the Siberian line battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned back to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "always" 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 the “special department”. Criminals were sent here from all over Rus'. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the duration of their work. By law, they had to double and triple their work hours. They were kept in prison until the most severe hard labor was opened in Siberia. “You get a prison sentence, but we get penal servitude along the way,” they said to other prisoners. I heard that this category was destroyed. In addition, civil order at our fortress was destroyed, and one general military prison company was established. Of course, along with this, the management also changed. I am describing, therefore, the old days, things that are long past and past...

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

There were casual killers and professional killers, robbers and atamans of robbers. There were simply mazuriks and industrialist vagabonds for found money or for the Stolevo part. There were also those about whom it is difficult to decide: why, it seems, could they come here? Meanwhile, everyone had their own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes of yesterday’s intoxication. In general, they talked little about their past, did not like to talk and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers who were so cheerful, so never thinking, that you could bet that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also dark days, almost always silent. In general, rarely did anyone tell their life, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in custom, not accepted. So, perhaps, occasionally, someone will start talking out of idleness, while another listens coolly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. “We are a literate people!” they often said, with some strange complacency. I remember how one day a drunken robber (you could sometimes get drunk in penal servitude) began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy to death, how he first deceived him with a toy, took him somewhere into an empty barn and stabbed him there. The entire barracks, which had hitherto laughed at his jokes, screamed as one person, and the robber was forced to remain silent; The barracks screamed not out of indignation, but because there was no need to talk about it, because it’s not customary to talk about it. Let me note, by the way, that these people were truly 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 group of two hundred and fifty people, half of whom 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 among the people. But this is not a drawback at all. All categories differed in their dress: some had half their jackets dark brown and the other gray, and the same on their trousers - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalash-wielding girl approached the prisoners, peered at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ugh, how not nice!” she cried, “there wasn’t enough gray cloth, and there wasn’t enough black cloth!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of the same gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: for some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, for others across.

At first glance one could notice some sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the harshest, most original personalities, who reigned over others involuntarily, tried to fall into the general tone of the entire prison. In general, I will say that all these people - with a few few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this - were a gloomy, envious people, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and extremely formalist. The ability not to be surprised by anything was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to behave outwardly. But often the most arrogant look was replaced with lightning speed by the most cowardly one. There were some truly strong people; they were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these truly strong people, several were vain to the extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity and appearance were in the foreground. The majority were corrupted and terribly sneaky. Gossip and gossip were continuous: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal regulations and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that were sharply outstanding, who obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but still obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too high-handed, too out of step with the standards of freedom, 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 state of confusion; often out of vanity, excited to the highest degree. But with us they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that others, before arriving at the prison, terrorized entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he was in the wrong place, that there was no one left to surprise here, and he visibly humbled himself and fell into the general tone. This general tone was composed from the outside out of some special personal dignity, which imbued almost every inhabitant of the prison. As if, in fact, the title of a convict, a decided one, constituted some kind of rank, and an honorable one at that. No signs 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 street, check the ranks.” - “I didn’t listen to my father and mother, now listen to the drum skin.” - “I didn’t want to sew with gold, now hit the stones with a hammer.” All this was said often, both in the form of moral teaching and in the form of ordinary sayings and proverbs, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that any of them internally admitted their lawlessness. If someone who is not a convict tries to reproach a prisoner for his crime, to scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal), there will be no end to the curses. And what masters they were all at swearing! They swore subtly and artistically. They elevated swearing to a science; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word, but with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels further developed this science between them. All these people worked under pressure - consequently, they were idle, and consequently, they became corrupted: if they were not corrupted before, then they became corrupted in hard labor. All of them did not gather here of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.

“The devil took three bast shoes before he gathered us into one heap!” - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, quarrel, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman could be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, among them there were people of strong character, accustomed to breaking and commanding their entire lives, seasoned, fearless. These people were somehow involuntarily respected; they, for their part, although they were often very jealous of their fame, generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not engage in empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not out of principle obedience, not from a state of duty, 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 decisive man, known to his superiors for his brutal inclinations, was called to punishment for some crime. It was a summer day, time off from work. The staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was right next to our gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners; he brought them to the point where they trembled at him. He was insanely strict, “throwing himself at people,” as the convicts said. What they feared most about him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be hidden. He somehow 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 false. He only embittered already embittered people with his frenzied, evil actions, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and sensible man, who sometimes moderated his wild antics, then he would have caused great troubles with his management. I don’t understand how he could have ended safely; he retired alive and well, although, however, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when they called him. Usually 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 failure that had happened. However, they always dealt with him carefully. But this time he considered himself to be right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to put a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp instruments were terribly prohibited in prison. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he decides to hide something in particular, and since knives and tools were an ever-present necessity in prison, despite searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately created. The whole convict rushed to the fence and looked through the cracks of their fingers with bated breath. Everyone knew that Petrov this time would not want to lie under the rod and that the end had come for the major. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into a droshky and drove away, entrusting the execution to another officer. “God himself saved!” the prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger subsided with the major's departure. 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 for some small thing, for some trifle, for almost nothing. From another point of view, one might even call him crazy; Yes, that's what they do.

I have already said that for several years I have not seen among these people the slightest sign of repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them internally consider themselves completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, valor, false shame are largely the reason for this. On the other hand, who can say that he has traced the depths of these lost hearts and read in them the secrets of the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at so many years, to at least notice something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some feature that would indicate inner melancholy, about suffering. But this was not the case, positively not the case. 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 the system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and protect society from further attacks by the villain on his peace of mind. In the criminal, prison and the most intensive hard labor develop only hatred, 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, enervates his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then presents a morally withered mummy, a half-crazed man, as an example of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. Moreover, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, even. One can finally judge from such points of view that one almost has to acquit the criminal himself. But, despite all kinds of points of view, everyone will agree that there are crimes that always and everywhere, according to all kinds of laws, from the beginning of the world are considered indisputable crimes and will be considered such as long as a person remains a person. Only in prison did I hear stories about the most terrible, the most unnatural acts, the most monstrous murders, told with the most uncontrollable, most childishly cheerful laughter. One parricide in particular never escapes my memory. He was from the nobility, served and was something of a prodigal son to his sixty-year-old father. He was completely dissolute in behavior and got into debt. His father limited him and 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 discovered only a month later. The killer himself filed a statement with the police that his father had disappeared to an unknown location. He spent this entire month in the most depraved manner. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for sewage drainage, covered with boards. The body lay in this ditch. It was dressed and put away, the gray head was cut off, put to the body, and the killer put a pillow under the head. He didn't confess; was deprived of nobility and rank and exiled to work for twenty years. The whole time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful mood. He was an eccentric, frivolous, extremely unreasonable person, although not at all a fool. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for the crime, of which there was no mention, but for his stupidity, for the fact that he did not know how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes remembered his father. Once, speaking to me about the healthy build that was hereditary in their family, he added: “My parent, until his very death, he did not complain about any illness.” Such brutal insensitivity is, of course, impossible. This is a phenomenon; there is some lack of constitution, some physical and moral deformity, not yet known to science, 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 his whole affair. The facts were so clear that it was impossible not to believe.

The prisoners heard him shout one night in his sleep: “Hold him, hold him! Cut off his head, head, head!..”

The prisoners almost all spoke at night and were delirious. Curses, thieves' words, knives, axes most often came to their tongues in delirium. “We are a beaten people,” they said, “our insides are broken, that’s why we scream at night.”

State convict 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 prison. They looked at the work with hatred. Without his special, personal occupation, to which he would be devoted with all his mind, with all his calculations, a man in prison could not live. And how did all this people, developed, who had lived greatly and wanted to live, be forcibly brought here into one heap, forcibly torn away from society and from normal life, could you get along here normally and correctly, of your own will and desire? Just idleness here would have developed in him such criminal qualities that he had no idea about before. Without labor and without legal, normal property, a person cannot live, he becomes corrupted, and 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 official work; V short night there was barely time to sleep. But in winter, according to the situation, as soon as it got dark, the prisoner 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 and occupation were not prohibited; but it was strictly forbidden to have tools with you in the prison, and without this work was impossible. But they worked quietly, and it seems that the authorities in other cases did not look at it very closely. Many of the prisoners came to prison knowing nothing, but they learned from others and then were released into freedom as good craftsmen. There were shoemakers, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, metalworkers, carvers, and gilders. There was one Jew, Isai Bumstein, a jeweler, who was also a moneylender. They all worked and earned a penny. Work orders were received from the city. Money is minted freedom, and therefore for a person completely deprived of freedom, it is ten times more valuable. If they only jingle in his pocket, he is already half consoled, even if 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 you could even have wine. Pipes were strictly prohibited, but everyone smoked them. Money and tobacco saved people from scurvy and other diseases. Work saved from crime: without work, prisoners would eat each other like spiders in a bottle. Despite the fact that both work and money were prohibited. Often sudden searches were made at night, everything forbidden was taken away, and - no matter how much money was hidden, the detectives still sometimes came across it. This is partly why they did not take care, but quickly got drunk; That’s why wine was also produced in the prison. After each search, the guilty person, in addition to losing his entire fortune, was usually severely punished. But, after each search, the shortcomings were immediately replenished, new things were immediately introduced, and everything went on as before. And the authorities knew about this, and the prisoners did not complain about the punishment, although such a life was similar to the life of those who settled on Mount Vesuvius.

Those who did not have skill made a living in a different way. There were quite original methods. Others lived, for example, only by buying and selling, and sometimes such things were sold that it would never have occurred to anyone outside the walls of the prison not only to buy and sell them, but even to consider them as things. But penal servitude was very poor and extremely industrial. The last rag was valuable and was used for some purpose. Due to poverty, money in prison had a completely different price than in the wild. Large and complex work was paid in pennies. Some were successful in usury. The prisoner, exhausted and broke, carried the last of his belongings to the moneylender and received from him some copper money at terrible interest. If he did not buy these things back on time, they were immediately and mercilessly sold; usury flourished to such an extent that even government inspection items were accepted as collateral, such as government linen, shoe goods, etc. - things necessary for every prisoner at any time. But with such pledges, another turn of the matter also happened, not entirely unexpected, however: the one who pledged and received the money immediately, without further conversations, went to the senior non-commissioned officer, the nearest commander of the prison, reported about the pledge of the inspection items, and they were immediately taken away from him. the moneylender back, even without reporting to higher authorities. It is curious that sometimes there was not even a quarrel: the moneylender silently and sullenly returned what was due and even seemed to expect this to happen. Perhaps he could not help but admit to himself that if he were the pawnbroker, he would have done the same. And therefore, if he sometimes cursed later, it was 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. This was allowed; but the chests were not saved. I think you can imagine what skilled thieves there were. One of my prisoners, a sincerely devoted person to me (I say this without any exaggeration), stole the Bible, the only book that was allowed to be had in penal servitude; He himself confessed this to me that 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 became rich. I will speak especially about this sale someday; she's pretty wonderful. There were many people who came to the prison for smuggling, and therefore there is nothing to be surprised at how, during such inspections and convoys, wine was brought into 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, are at play with another smuggler? minor role, stand in the background? And yet this is exactly what happens. A smuggler works out of passion, out of calling. This is partly a poet. He risks everything, goes into terrible danger, cunning, inventing, getting out of his own way; sometimes he even acts out of some kind of inspiration. It's a passion as strong as playing cards. I knew one prisoner in the prison, colossal in appearance, but so meek, quiet, humble that it was impossible to imagine how he ended up in prison. He was so gentle and easy-going that during his entire stay in prison he did not quarrel with anyone. But he was from the western border, came for smuggling and, of course, could not resist and began to smuggle wine. How many times was he punished for this, and how afraid he was of the rods! And even the very act of carrying wine brought him the most insignificant income. Only one entrepreneur got rich from wine. The eccentric loved art for art's sake. He was as whiny as a woman and how many times, after punishment, he swore and swore not to carry contraband. With courage, he sometimes overcame himself for a whole month, but finally still could not stand it... Thanks to these individuals, the wine did not become scarce in the prison.

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