Sakhalin Island
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The island of Sakhalin ( Russian Остров Сахалин , Ostrow Sakhalin) is a travelogue of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared from October 1893 to July 1894 in the Moscow monthly magazine Russkaya Mysl . The text was published as a book in 1895. A translation into German by Alexander von der Ley appeared in Munich in 1931 ( Sakhalin, Russia's Dread Island ) and into French by Lily Denis in Paris in 1971 ( L'île de Sakhaline. Notes de voyage ).
During the three-month stay on Sakhalin for information in the summer of 1890, Anton Chekhov gained access to the prison facilities. He was allowed to visit prisons, speak to prisoners, observe a punishment and view archive material. The author recognized the contradicting settlement concept of Sakhalin by the Russians: “The prison is the implacable opponent of the colony; both interests are diametrically opposed. "
After the sensational publication, the Russian government sent Mikhail Galkin- Vraskoi to the island of exile to check the sometimes outrageous facts communicated by the author . The penal colony existed until 1905 - the year Russia had to cede South Sakhalin to Japan .
overview
Anton Chekhov visited Sakhalin from July 10th to October 13th, 1890.
On April 21, 1890, he had boarded the train to Yaroslavl in Moscow , had traveled by water to Perm and had taken the train again via Yekaterinburg to Tyumen . Because the Trans-Siberian Railway did not yet exist at the time , the traveler had covered a good four thousand kilometers through Siberia on horse-drawn vehicles, used the Amur waterway and reached Nikolayevsk on July 5th .
On December 9, 1890, Anton Chekhov returned to Moscow. He had chosen the sea route from Korsakov across the Sea of Japan , the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal to Odessa . On the way the traveler got impressions of Vladivostok , Hong Kong , Singapore , Colombo , Aden , Port Said and Constantinople .
Gerhard Dick writes that the text “is a peculiar mixture of documentary report and fiction elements.” Details on demography , geography, ethnology , the history of the settlement by the Russians and short comments on prospecting by the Japanese alternate with passages that are well-read and narrative.
The traveler is doing well on the island. He writes: “During my journey through Sakhalin I did not need to go hungry and suffer no need of any kind whatsoever.” In the conversation, the prisoners address the bourgeois visitor as “Your Highly Born ” and have to go fifty paces before they meet on the street free man taking off his cap. In addition to free Russians and prisoners, Anton Chekhov meets locals. They are Giljaken and Ainu .
A prisoner who is sent to the katorga , i.e. the penitentiary, can become a penal colonist and then a deportation builder if he is well managed. In any case, he will not be allowed to return to European Russia. But moving to the Siberian mainland is possible as a deportation builder in almost all areas. Typical jobs for the convicts are clearing , building houses, draining , fishing , harvesting hay, growing potatoes and loading and unloading ships. The flogging of Labor objectors on the agenda. The katorga was originally set up as a penal institution for farmers. The punishment does not distinguish between rich and poor. A wealthy former Petersburg businessman, convicted as an arsonist, is punished for allegedly refusing to work. The prisoners come - in addition to the dominant peasant class - from all possible social classes in European Russia. Also convicted of arson - - In the godforsaken little village Sakhalin Derbinskoje a sewn milliner pretty clothes for convicted Miss. The latter then walk in this new cloakroom in one of the Derbinskoye gardens like an angel. Some condemned nobles do not put their hands in their laps in exile. In Derbinskoye, the convicts mock a baroness , the so-called "working lady". The majority of the former townspeople have to become arable farmers in the struggle for survival . If a Russian woman practices a trade in southern Sakhalin, it is - irrespective of whether she is free or imprisoned - that of prostitution . Anton Chekhov sees the free women on Sakhalin as “tragic figures” who wanted to organize the lives of their condemned husbands “and lost their own”. The convicted women are mostly "victims of love ... because they were drawn into the crime by their lovers."
The passing through Anton Chekhov encounters the misery at every turn. He writes: "The workers in the mines eat ... their tallow candles" and in southern Sakhalin a number of desperate exiles choose suicide; poison themselves with monkshood .
Chekhov also writes about the unenviable opposing side: "When the soldiers chased the refugees in the taiga , they tore their clothes ... in such a way that once in South Sakhalin they were mistaken for refugees themselves and were shot at."
Despite the untenable conditions on Sakhalin in 1890, Chekhov sums it up with a hopeful outlook for the future: "Today one no longer rolls convicts in barrels ... without the local society being set in motion ... Every disgusting act sooner or later finds its way out ..."
content
That July 10, 1890, when Anton Chekhov lands on Sakhalin in the Tatar Sound at the Duika estuary in Fort Alexandrowsk , does not begin very promisingly. An officer who was traveling with him denied him the right to enter the prisoner island. Only civil servants are allowed to do this. Anton Chekhov doesn't care.
In the neat little town of Fort Alexandrowsk, around three thousand inhabitants all live in wooden houses. Even the sidewalks are wooden. Contrary to the opinion of the mentioned, apparently incompetent officer, Anton Chekhov is warmly received by the island commander, General Vladimir Osipovich Kononovich. Before the Sakhalin command, the general commanded the Katorga Kara for eighteen years. He gives his full support to his visit.
Quite a few prisoners are running around free in Alexandrowsk because they are employed as coachmen, guards, cooks or nannies. Russian women do not mind if their children are looked after by women who have been sentenced to life imprisonment. There are two thousand convicts in Alexandrowsk - around nine hundred of them are imprisoned.
In the house of General Kononovich Anton Chekhov witnessed the visit of Baron Andrei Nikolajewitsch Korff , governor general of the Amur region . In a half-hour conversation, the governor affirmed that he had nothing to hide from the visitor. That is why he allows the author to do everything except for dealing with “the political”. Then Anton Chekhov set to work. When questioning the prisoners, he checks his curiosity by claiming that it is about a census . As a single person on an almost one thousand kilometers long island, he cannot do this in three months, but he struggles and begins his conversations in the Duika Valley, an area with permafrost . Grain cannot ripen there. He meets the 71-year-old convict Nikita Trofimov from the Ryazan governorate . Nikita deserted in 1855 and was therefore deported to Transbaikalia . For his escape in Siberia he received ninety lashes and got to know the Kara (see above). He has been on Sakhalin for 22 years because he fled here again.
There are five to ten years of katorga for a manslaughter in a fight. Usually the convicts flee. Such recidivists are behind bars in Katorga Prison in Alexandrovsk. Anton Chekhov meets Sofja Bljuwstein, known as Goldhandchen. This prematurely aged woman escaped from custody within the Siberian mainland, was caught and sentenced to three years in katorga. The golden hand is anything but a blank slate. She was arrested at home in Smolensk and then fled with a guard. In Alexandrowsk she was probably involved in the manslaughter of the grocer Nikitin.
Anton Chekhov speaks to the murderer Yegor from the Parachino area. Yegor works as a lumberjack on the island.
In Korsakovka, Anton Chekhov speaks to a clergyman who allegedly does not know why he was exiled to Sakhalin. In another hut in Korsakovka, a young convict is more talkative. She quarrels with her housemate, who is also a young convict: "If I hadn't killed my husband and you hadn't started a fire, we'd be free now ..." While walking through the Korsakovka peasant huts, the traveler is accompanied by the military clerk Kisljakow from Petersburg . This person killed his wife with a hammer on Nikolayevskaya and then reported himself.
The journey continues through northern Sakhalin. Up the Duika, Anton Chekhov arrives at the Novo-Michailowka settlement founded in 1872 and starts talking to two penal colonists. The farmer Potjomkin, a wealthy, elderly Raskolnik , assures the visitor that one can live on Sakhalin. Some years even melons ripened. Unfortunately, the population is too lazy. Chekhov learns from the former executioner Tersky how he had physically dealt with his colleague Komelev. For some offense, one of them had taken turns whipping the other.
Then Anton Chekhov's exploration trip takes him to the little village of Krasny Yar, which was only established in 1889. The small, feeble soldier Ubijennych lives with his housemate in the friendly, newly built community center. The tall, corpulent penal colonist presented the supervisor Ubijennych, who receives the salary of a supervisor, with a crowd of children. The census taker Anton Chekhov registers countless such wild marriages on Sakhalin across the extensive text . Women have a much harder time on the island than men. If they have voluntarily followed their husbands into exile, the only economic emergency that the convict family falls into more quickly than expected is prostitution as a last resort before starvation. The dependence of women on men naturally also affects female forced laborers in Sakhalin. For example, when the Catholic Pavlovskaya in Pervoye Arkowo - who became a “widow” in a wild marriage through the death of her housemate - Anton Chekhov asks “Appoint a gentleman for me!” It is an eloquent expression of this fact.
Not only Russians were banished to Sakhalin from European Russia, but also Finns , Grusinians , Ukrainians , Tatars , Jews , Kyrgyz and Gypsies . In Duë, for example, a Polish carpenter lives with his housemate, who became a mother at the age of twelve after being abused by a prisoner on the transport. Serious criminals are being held in the Voivodsk prison near Duë. In the coal mine there, they have to meet their mining target of thirteen carts per shift - some of them chained to the cart. In Voivodsk prison, Anton Chekhov finds eight men tied to a cart. All are recidivists; seven of them murderers. The eighth, a former sailor in the Navy , attacked his superior twice - once on the ship, his officer and then on Sakhalin, the prison inspector.
Duë is the bad place “where one punishes with whips and rods”. In addition to the coal mine, an agricultural colony is operated in Duë. There is a lack of space in the accommodations. Family members who have voluntarily followed exiles to Sakhalin are left behind in the environment. 16-year-old girls are forced to sleep next to prison inmates. Anton Chekhov speaks to the mass murderer Terekhov in the Duë Katorga prison. This almost 65-year-old, gray-haired man is said to have killed around sixty people. Terechow usually persuaded wealthy comers to flee and murdered them on the way. The day before the visitor's arrival, the inmate was flogged. Terechow shows Anton Chekhov his buttocks with the fresh welts. Some prisoners in Duë can get away with their stubborn head. A certain Schkandyba walks through the town singing. He has survived all the punishments for refusal to work and the authorities leave him alone.
Along the banks of the Tym, the traveler reaches the aforementioned village of Derbinskoye via Tymovsk. Anton Chekhov says that the village, which was founded in 1880, was named after the prison inspector Derbin, who was killed there for inspecting only with a baton. The prisoners - so it goes - are said to have collected sixty rubles for the murderer.
In the neighboring village of Palewo, a Sakhalin stronghold of thieves, Anton Chekhov gets into conversation with Karp Erofejitsch Mikryukov, the oldest living overseer on Sakhalin. The pensioner from the Vyatsk Governorate was there as early as 1860. The over 70-year-old has six young children in his second marriage to a young woman, the daughter of a penal colonist. Karp tells stories well into the dead of night - about the irascible inspector Selivanov, who was eventually killed by the prisoners. Karp can still remember the writer Fet .
Finally, from September 12, 1890, southern Sakhalin will be visited. In Mauka , the Russian women - without exception convicts - live in wild marriage. In Korsakow people are beaten for what it takes; sometimes "fifty men in one fell swoop". In Korsakow, Anton Chekhov meets two convicts. The first is Pistchikov. This clerk in the police administration dresses like a free man and is very polite. Out of jealousy, Pistschikov had beaten his heavily pregnant wife to death with a strap whip during abuse for no less than six hours. The second, Karp Nikolayevich Shakomini, a former captain on the Black Sea, was charged with murder in 1878 in Nikolayev with his wife and son. The wife and son are now free again. Only Karp is still a convict. The couple run a small, very clean shop. The mother cannot get over the death of their daughter. The girl who voluntarily followed her parents to the katorga had died of exhaustion en route in Siberia.
In the hamlet of Wtoraja Pad Anton Chekhov meets Uljana. The old woman was charged with infanticide sentenced to twenty years. She had buried the little body. Now she repents and has almost lost her mind.
Anton Chekhov writes: "I saw how to whip [on August 13, 1890] in Duë." This is followed by the most disturbing document in the travelogue.
Giljaks
Anton Chekhov writes about the locals: "The Giljaks never wash themselves ... the laundry is not washed ... The Giljaks themselves give off a heavy, bitter smell ..." One Giljak suspects that the visitor is a "political" because he is constantly handling papers. When Chekhov says no, the Gilyake states: "So you are writing-writing [writer]."
The Giljaks are polygamous. The woman has no rights. Terms like “older” and “younger” are unknown. A Giljake does not recognize any authority. Nonetheless, if a Giljake is used as a guard or catcher of fugitives, the Russians armed them with a revolver. But when a Giljake shot a convict while exercising his duty, the authorities began to ponder.
Anton Chekhov has heard of the Sakhalin Oroken , but has not met them.
Quote
"There has never been a case in Sakhalin where a criminal courageously went to execution."
Portraits
The figures of the people are arranged according to their mention in this article.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) in the previous year of his trip to Siberia
Document from Anton Chekhov's travel report
Mikhail Galkin-Wraskoi (1832-1916)
Baron Andrei N. Korff (1831-1893)
Sofja Bljuwstein (1846–1902)
Sofja Bljuwstein
Repin : Afanassi A. Fet (1820-1892)
Michail S. Korsakow (1826–1871)
Gleb I. Uspenski (1843–1902)
Honor
- In 1947 the village of Noda-chō in Sakhalin Oblast was renamed Chekhov .
reception
- August 22, 1980, “ Die Zeit ”: Anton Čechov: Stories . The “Report on the Russian Prison System 1890” impressed with “freshness and sober precision”.
- 1982, Helmut Graßhoff accepts a political reason for Chekhov's arduous trip in a historical context. After Alexander II fell victim to an assassination attempt by the people's will in 1881 , the Russian government did not save with repression in the years up to 1890. With his report, Chekhov wanted to draw attention to the criminal prosecution practices of the Russian monarchy.
- March 1, 2010, “ Die Welt ”: Chekhov's characters, trapped in the insane asylum . In the "painfully sober report", "the outrageous inhuman conditions" of the prison system on Sakhalin in 1890 are discussed.
- January 31, 2012, Christine von Brühl in “ Spiegel ”: Millions of people are rotting . The writer Anton Chekhov traveled to the prison island Sakhalin in 1890 and wrote a harrowing report.
German-language editions
- Sakhalin Island . 413 pages. Winkler, Munich 1971 (Winkler thin printing)
- Sakhalin Island. Translated from Russian by a collective of translators led by Gerhard Dick. Wilhelm Plackmeyer translated the footnotes. With an afterword by Helmut Graßhoff . With 16 photographs . 510 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1982 (1st edition)
- Sakhalin Island. Translated from the Russian by Gerhard Dick. Edited and annotated by Peter Urban . 467 pages. Diogenes, Zurich 1987 (licensee: Winkler, Munich), ISBN 978-3-257-20270-0
Used edition
- Sakhalin Island. Travel notes. Translated from Russian by a collective of translators led by Gerhard Dick. P. 49–429 in Gerhard Dick (ed.): Anton Chekhov: The island of Sakhalin. Travel reports, feature pages, literary notebooks. 604 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1969 (1st edition)
literature
- György Dalos : The trip to Sakhalin. In the footsteps of Anton Chekhov. Editing of the German edition by Elsbeth Zylla. Photos, text and material research by Andrea Dunai. 285 pages. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-434-50503-7
Web links
- The text
- Chekhov Bibliography, Documentary Entry No. 2 (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian entry at fantlab.ru
- ↑ WorldCat entry edition Munich 1931
- ↑ WorldCat entry, edition Paris 1971
- ↑ Follow-up comment in the edition used, p. 582, 16. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 266, 17. Zvo
- ↑ postscript in the used edition, p 583, 12th ACR
- ^ Dick in the follow-up to the edition used, p. 582, 7. Zvo
- ^ Post-comment in the edition used, p. 582
- ^ Graßhoff in the afterword of the 1982 edition, p. 493, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Map sketch ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. top right in the chronicle of the trip at bibl.ngonb.ru (Russian)
- ↑ postscript in the used edition, p 583, 11. ZVO
- ↑ Edition used, p. 89, 8. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 96, 5. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 319, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Дербинское
- ↑ Edition used, p. 223, 4th Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 287, 9. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 288, 6. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 344, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 359, 16. Zvo
- ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 380, 10. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 370, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Russian Дуйка, see also 5th and 9th picture in Chekhov's Sakhalin
- ↑ Russian Александровск, see also 1st image in Chekhov's Sakhalin
- ↑ Russian Кононович
- ↑ Russian Katorga Kara
- ↑ Edition used, p. 112, 10. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Никита Трофимов
- ↑ Russian Софья Блювштейн, eng. Sonja, the golden hand
- ↑ Russian Парахино
- ↑ Edition used, p. 118, middle
- ↑ Russian Корсаковка
- ↑ Edition used, p. 135, 2nd Zvu
- ↑ Russian Кисляков
- ↑ Russian today Nikolajewskaja
- ↑ Russian Ново-Михайловка, see also 6th picture vo in Chekhov's Sakhalin (Russian)
- ↑ Russian Потемкин
- ↑ Russian Терский
- ↑ Russian Комелев
- ↑ Russian Красный Яр, see also 7th and 8th picture from Chekhov's Sakhalin
- ↑ Russian Убьенных (roughly: the defeated)
- ↑ Russian Первое Арково
- ↑ Edition used, p. 144, 7. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Duë
- ↑ Voivodsk Prison, Russian Воеводская тюрьма
- ↑ Russian 12. Photo vo in Сахалин - каторжная колония России (for example: The Russian convict colony Sakhalin)
- ↑ Edition used, p. 152, 8th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 155, 12. Zvu
- ↑ Russian Терехов
- ↑ Russian Шкандыбa
- ↑ Russian tym
- ↑ Russian Palewo
- ↑ Russian Карп Ерофеич Микрюков
- ↑ Russian Селиванов
- ↑ Russian Маука
- ↑ named after the former governor general of Eastern Siberia Mikhail Semjonowitsch Korsakow, (Russian Корсаков, Михаил Семёнович )
- ↑ Edition used, p. 383, 8. Zvu to p. 386
- ↑ Edition used, p. 221, 17. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Пищиков
- ↑ Edition used, p. 223, middle
- ↑ Russian Жакомини
- ↑ Russian Wtoraja Pad
- ↑ Russian Ульяна
- ↑ Edition used, from p. 386, 15. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 204, 8. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 206, 4th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 392, 5th Zvu
- ↑ "nota" is an Ainu word and roughly means sea surface
- ^ Graßhoff in the afterword of the 1982 edition, p. 485, middle
Remarks
- ↑ According to Chekhov, there were almost 6000 convicts on Sakhalin on January 1, 1890 (Edition used, p. 268, 10. Zvo) - 91 of them aristocrats and 924 from the urban middle class (Edition used, p. 284, 8. Zvo).
- ↑ Chekhov writes that until 1875 all women exiled to Sakhalin were immediately taken to the brothel there (edition used, p. 288, 4th Zvu). How free women and their growing daughters on Sakhalin became necessarily prostitutes around the year 1890 is described in the edition used from p. 300, 4th Zvu (see also p. 377, 4th Zvo).
- ↑ See also Gleb I. Uspenski : Man against Man (Russian " Один на один ").