In freedom a peasant most likely works incomparably more, sometimes even at night, especially in summer; but he works for himself, works with a reasonable purpose, and it is incomparably easier for him than for a convict doing forced labor that is totally useless to him. It occurred to me once that if they wanted to crush, to annihilate a man totally, to punish him with the most terrible punishment, so that the most dreadful murderer would shudder at this punishment and be frightened of it beforehand, they would only need to give the labor a character of complete, total uselessness and meaninglessness. If present-day hard labor is uninteresting and boring for the convict, it is still reasonable in itself, as labor: the prisoner makes bricks, digs the earth, plasters, builds; there is meaning and purpose. The worker sometimes even gets carried away by it, wants to do it better, more quickly, more skillfully. But if he were forced, for instance, to pour water from one tub into another and from the other into the first, to grind sand, to carry a pile of dirt from one place to another and back again—I think the prisoner would hang himself after a few days, or commit a thousand crimes, to die rather than endure such humiliation, shame, and torment. To be sure, such a punishment would turn into torture, revenge, and would be meaningless, because it would achieve no reasonable purpose. But since a portion of that torture, meaninglessness, humiliation, and shame is unfailingly present in any labor that is forced, hard labor is incomparably more tormenting than any free labor, precisely for being forced.

However, I came to prison in the winter, in December, and had no idea yet of the summer work, which was five times more difficult. In winter there was generally little government work in our fortress. The prisoners went to the Irtysh1 to break up old government barges, worked in workshops, shoveled snow around government buildings after blizzards, baked and crushed alabaster, and so on and so forth. The winter day was short, the work was soon done, and our people all returned to prison early, where there was almost nothing for them to do, if they did not happen to have some work of their own. But maybe only a third of the prisoners were busy with their own work; the rest twiddled their thumbs, sauntered aimlessly around all the barracks, cursed, schemed and plotted among themselves, got drunk if some money turned up, at night gambled away their last shirt at cards—and all that from anguish, from idleness, from having nothing to do. Later I understood that, besides the lack of freedom, besides the forced labor, there was one more torment in prison life that was almost worse than all the others. This was forced communal cohabitation. Of course, there is also communal cohabitation in other places; but not everybody would want to live with the sort of people that wind up in prison, and I am sure that every convict felt that torment, though, of course, for the most part unconsciously.

The food also seemed quite sufficient to me. The prisoners insisted that there was nothing like it in the penal companies of European Russia. Of that I cannot venture to judge: I have never been there. Besides that, many had the possibility of acquiring their own food. Beef cost half a kopeck a pound, in the summer three kopecks. But the only ones who could buy their own food were those who had a steady supply of money; the majority in the prison ate institutional food. However, when the prisoners praised their food, they were speaking only of the bread and blessing the fact that our bread was held in common, and not given out by weight. The latter horrified them: if it had been given out by weight, a third of them would have gone hungry; if collectively, everybody had enough. Our bread was somehow especially tasty and was famous all over town. This was ascribed to the fortunate construction of the prison ovens. The shchi,2 though, was very plain. It was cooked in a common cauldron, with the addition of a little grain, and, especially on weekdays, came out watery and thin. I was horrified by the enormous number of cockroaches in it. But the prisoners paid no attention to that.

The first three days I did not go to work, as was done with all newcomers: they were allowed to rest after the journey. But the next day I had to leave the prison to have my irons changed. My fetters were non-regulation, made of chain links, or “clinkers,” as the prisoners called them. They were worn over the clothes.