It happened during my term in prison, though extremely rarely, that some one of the superiors would come to the prison without an escort. You should have seen how that struck the prisoners, and struck them in a good sense. Such a fearless visitor always aroused respect for himself, and even if something bad might actually happen, it would not happen in his presence. The fear inspired by prisoners exists wherever there are prisoners, and I really do not know what in fact causes it. There are, of course, some grounds for it, starting from the outward appearance of the prisoner, the acknowledged criminal; besides that, anyone approaching a prison senses that this whole mass of people has been gathered here against their will, and that, whatever the measures taken, a living man cannot be made into a corpse: he will be left with his feelings, with a thirst for revenge and life, with passions and the need to satisfy them. But, despite that, I am firmly convinced that there is still no need to fear prisoners. A man does not so easily and so quickly attack another man with a knife. In short, if the danger is possible, if it does sometimes happen, then, from the rarity of such unfortunate occurrences, one can conclude directly that the risk is negligible. Naturally, I am speaking now only of prisoners who are already sentenced, many of whom are even glad that they have finally made it to prison (a new life is sometimes so good!), and are therefore disposed to live quietly and peacefully; besides, they would not allow the really troublesome among them to show much bravado. Every convict, however bold and impudent he may be, is afraid of everything at hard labor. A prisoner awaiting judgment is another matter. He really is capable of attacking a stranger just like that, for nothing, solely because, for instance, he is going to be punished the next day, and if there is a new trial, the punishment will be postponed. Here there is a reason, a purpose for the attack: it is “to change his lot” at all costs and as soon as possible. I even know a strange psychological case of this sort.

In our prison, in the military category, there was a prisoner, a former soldier, not stripped of his rights, who had been sentenced to two years in prison, a terrible braggart and a remarkable coward. Generally, braggadocio and cowardice are met with extremely rarely in a Russian soldier. Our soldiers always look so busy that, even if they were so inclined, they would have no time for braggadocio. But if he is already a braggart, then he is almost always a do-nothing and a coward. Dutov (the prisoner’s name) finally served his short term and went back to a battalion of the line. But since everyone like him, sent to prison for correction, is definitively spoiled there, it usually happens that, after enjoying their freedom for no more than two or three weeks, they are taken to court again and turn up back in prison, only not for two or three years now, but in the “perpetual” category, for fifteen or twenty years. And so it happened. Some three weeks after leaving prison, Dutov committed a burglary; on top of that, he was rude and rowdy. He was tried and sentenced to severe punishment. Terrified in the extreme, to the utmost, by the forthcoming punishment, pitiful coward that he was, on the eve of the day he was to run the gauntlet, he attacked a guards officer with a knife as he came into the prisoners’ cell. Naturally, he knew very well that by such an act he would greatly increase his sentence and his term at hard labor. But he was precisely counting on putting off the terrible moment of punishment for at least a few days, a few hours! He was such a coward that, in attacking the officer with a knife, he did not even wound him, but did it all for the sake of form, only so that there would be a new crime, for which he would again stand trial.

The time before punishment is, of course, terrible for the sentenced man, and over several years I got to see a good number of them on the eve of their fatal day. I usually met with sentenced prisoners in the hospital, in the prisoners’ ward, where they would be lying sick, as happened quite often. It is known to all prisoners all over Russia that the people who sympathize most with them are doctors. They never make any distinction between prisoners, as almost everyone on the outside involuntarily does, except perhaps for simple folk, who never reproach a prisoner for his crime, however terrible it was, and forgive him everything on account of the punishment he endures and in general for his misfortune. Not for nothing do folk all over Russia call crime misfortune and criminals unfortunates. That is a profoundly significant definition.