Short synopsis story
In 1884, on the Russian owned island of Sakhalin, a collegiate assessor fresh from St. Petersburg takes over administration at the Alexandrovsk Post prison. Him and his three sons learn to work with both the officials and the convicts, and find out how wildly different life in Siberia is compared to their home in European Russia.
A bit about Siberia!
Katorga
My story takes place before the existence of the famous Russian gulags. Before the gulags, the Russian penal labor system was called Katorga. They would take criminals from European Russia- that is anything west of the Ural mountains- and exile them east to Siberia. They could be transported by barge, train, or by marching to prisons all across Siberia. There they would do hard labor for the government until their sentence was served. When it was complete, they were still banished to Siberia and not allowed to return to European Russia. Most of my information on Katorga I have referenced from two books: ‘House of the Dead’ by Dostoevsky and ‘Siberia and the Exile System’ by George Kennan.
Sakhalin
In the 19th century, one of the worst places you could serve out your prison sentence was the prison island of Sakhalin. Russian owned at the time, it is located just above Hokkaido- the northernmost island of Japan. It was so far from Saint Petersburg that many of the rules put in place to improve conditions for convicts were ignored. They were also majorly understaffed and undersupplied. No one wanted to live on the island and as soon as exiles were allowed to resettle on the mainland, they would abandon the island. Most of my information on Sakhalin is sourced from ‘Sakhalin Island’ by Anton Chekov.
Characters
