Most genealogists and archivists can only dream of finding a cache of historical detail such as is contained in the personal diaries of Ivan Pavlovich Iuvachev, a naval officer who served a term of political exile in the infamous Sakhalin penal colony between 1887 and 1895. Immediately after his arrival to the island Iuvachev began to journal his experience of exile. Although the notebooks that he kept during his first few years on the island have been lost, those that remain (descriptive of the years 1890-1895) were published in 2014 by the Ministry of Culture of the Sakhalin Region in conjunction with the Sakhalin Regional Archive under the title, ‘Sakhalin Diaries of Ivan Pavlovich Iuvachev, (1860-1940)’. The two-volume set was prepared for publication by historians from the local archive and is introduced in a forward written by St. Petersburg researcher and journalist, N. Kavin, who also compiled the works of poet Danil Kharms, Iuvachev’s son. More recently, in 2022, the diaries have been made available to an English-speaking audience under the title, Eight Years on Sakhalin: A Political Prisoner’s Memoir, translated by the Russianist Andrew A. Gentes (Anthem Press).
Ivan Pavlovich Iuvachev, 1883
Iuvachev received his sentence to exile after being accused of association with The People’s Will (Nardonaia Volia), a revolutionary group that carried out the assassination of Tsar Aleksandr II in 1881. He was examined at the Trial of Fourteen in 1884, during which he denied membership in the organization. Despite his lack of involvement, Iuvachev was found guilty and sentenced to death, a sentence that was later commuted to fifteen years of hard labour. He was held for four years in solitary confinement in Schlisselburg Fortress before receiving a transfer to Sakhalin where he lived in exile for another eight years.
Iuvachev’s diaries provide valuable detail regarding the day-to-day lives of the prisoners who lived in Sakhalin. His words enable us to better understand how the penal colony functioned from the vantage point of a prisoner within it as opposed to from the viewpoint of a penal administrator or a visitor. Very few such descriptions of the colony have surfaced, probably due to both the low literacy rate amongst the prisoners and also damages wrought during the Russo-Japanese War. From Yuvachev we learn of the ways in which prisoners lived, worshipped, dealt with agricultural challenges, birthed their children, and buried their dead. For example, concerning the building of the church at Rykovsk, Iuvachev wrote,
Those who could not take part in [the church’s construction] copied church texts. [Some] sewed sacred vestments for the throne and the altar. The district chief himself began making special doors from various species of wood. In short, everyone wanted to leave some trace or memory of themselves. In addition to the interior decoration and writing on the iconostasis, I was asked to draw a large banner of the image of the resurrection of Christ (89).
The church at Rykovsk, Sakhalin penal colony, c. 1890
In another passage he describes the efforts of a charity worker, Maria Antonovna Krzhizhevskaia, who founded a botanical garden in her settlement, and converted an abandoned bathhouse into a two-room medical station. She also served as midwife to the prisoners as they delivered their babies. He writes, inclement weather notwithstanding, Maria walked ‘from one corner of the village to another’ to aid women in labour. ‘When the roads were flooded such that carts could not pass, Maria waded through the water. When terrible snowstorms hit [she] would crawl through [them] with great effort, frozen over and exhausted, without departing from the intended goal’ (256).
Sakhalin penal labourers
Iuvachev also describes in some detail his own responsibilities within the penal colony, which involved working at the meteorological station, as well as the lives of those around him. We read the details of funerals, of conversations with local residents, of meals. In his words are preserved the voices of both hard labourers and fellow political exiles, such as Bronislaw Pilsudski, with whom he shared an apartment and who worked extensively with the Indigenous groups in the area. We glimpse the island’s living conditions, hear of attempted escapes and floggings, and begin to observe, at least in part, the complicated lives led by the colony’s many beggars and indigent, for most in Sakhalin lived in poverty. Those whose ancestors may have lived in Sakhalin as either prisoners or settlers may find Ivan Pavlovich Iuvachev’s diaries interesting as they provide valuable details about what life was like in the Russian Far East during the nineteenth century.
Carrie Crockett
Carrie Crockett is Honorary Fellow in the School of History, Politics & International Relations, University of Leicester.