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Katorga

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Katorga (Russian: ка́торга; IPA: [ˈkatərgə]; from medieval Greek: katergon,κάτεργον galley) was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Tsarist Russia.1 Prisoners were sent to remote camps in vast uninhabited areas of Siberia—where voluntary workers were never available in satisfactory numbers—and forced to perform hard labour.

Contents

Russian Empire

History

Prisoners at an Amur Cart Road camp

"Katorga" was within the normal judicial system of (Imperial) Russia. It had many of the features associated with concentration camps: confinement, simplified facilities (as opposed to prisons), and forced labor, usually connected with hard, unskilled or semi-skilled work.

Katorgas were established in the 17th century in underpopulated areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East, regions that had few towns or food sources. Nonetheless, a few prisoners successfully escaped back to populated areas. From these times, Siberia gained its fearful connotation of punishment, which was further enhanced by the Soviet Gulag, the development being influenced by the history of the Katorga camps.

Special distribution of hard labor in Russia to receive the second half of the 18th century, when Russia was completely abolished the death penalty (the case for the global practice of that time unique). And all future criminals, which in Europe and the U.S. would surely awaited execution (multiple murderers, rapists, robbers) give life, they are up to the early 20th century were sent to prison. There also went public and traitors (as Poles, who took the oath of the Empire, and then betray the oath during the uprisings of 1831 and 1863) - it should be noted that while in the Empire there was death penalty for treason and rebellion, often loop (out of kindness and gentleness of the Russian mentality) is replaced by katorga. So during the 1863 uprising were executed only 128 mutins, also sent to Siberia 12,500.

After the change in Russian penal law in 1847, exile and katorga became common punishment to participants of national uprisings within the Russian Empire. This led to increasing numbers of Poles being sent to Siberia for katorga, where they were known as Sybiraks. Some of them remained there, forming a Polish minority in Siberia.

Contrary to popular belief Russian hard labor was not lethal, even a person sentenced to transportation for life could have expected a few years later at easing mode and shortening. Urgent convicts eventually reclassified to correct, there is also a system of so-called offsets, such as 10 months without any problems counted for the year.

Unless the Empire nearest abolished corporal punishment in 1864, in prison they were banned only in 1903 - in the absence of the death penalty, it was the only way to somehow keep order in a prison environment.

The most common occupations in katorga camps were mining and timber work. A notable example was the construction of the Amur Cart Road (Амурская колесная дорога), praised as a success in the organisation of penal labor.

In 1891 Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer and playwright, visited the katorga settlements in Sakhalin island in the Russian Far East and wrote about the conditions there in his book Sakhalin Island. He criticized the shortsightedness and incompetence of the officials in charge that led to poor living standards, waste of government funds, and decreased productivity. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his book about the Soviet era labor camps, Gulag Archipelago, quoted Chekhov extensively to illustrate the enormous deterioration of living conditions for inmates in the Soviet era, compared to those of the katorga inmates of Chekhov's time.

Peter Kropotkin, while aide de camp to the governor of Transbaikalia, was appointed to inspect the state of the prison system in the area, and later described the findings in his book In Russian and French Prisons.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Russian penal system was taken over by the Bolsheviks, eventually transforming into the Gulag labor camps.

In 1943 the term "katorga works" (каторжные работы) was reintroduced. They were initially intended for Nazi collaborators, but other categories of political prisoners (for example, members of deported peoples who fled from exile) were also sentenced to "katorga works". Prisoners sentenced to "katorga works" were sent to Gulag prison camps with the most harsh regime and many of them died.2

Notable katorgas

Famous katorga convicts

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Russian

Polish

Soviet Union

In 1943, during World War II, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued the decree Presidium "О мерах наказания для немецко-фашистских злодеев, виновных в истязаниях советского гражданского населения и пленных красноармейцев, для шпионов, изменников родины из числа советских граждан и для их пособников", in which section 2 provided punishment with katorga works for 15 to 25 years. The abbreviation for the corresponding convicts was "з/к КТР" (z/k KTR).

References

  1. ^ Russian History, Bucknell University, 2008.
  2. ^ http://publicist.n1.by/articles/repressions/repressions_gulag1.html
  • P.Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons, London: Ward and Downey; 1887.

Further reading

  • Daly, Jonathan W. Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866-1905 (1998)

External links