Eight Years on Sakhalin: A Political Prisoners Memoir

(Hardback)

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In 1887, following several years imprisonment for his role in the Peoples Will terrorist group, Ivan P. Iuvachv was exiled with other political prisoners to the notorious Sakhalin penal colony. The penal colony emerged during the late 1860s and 1870s and collapsed in 1905, under the weight of Japans invasion of Sakhalin. The eight years between 1887 and 1895 that Iuvachv spent on the island were some of the most tumultuous in the penal colonys existence. Originally published in 1901, his memoir offers a first-hand account of this netherworld that embodied the extremities of tsarist Russian penality. A valuable historical document as well as a work of literature testifying to one mans ability to retain his humanity amid a sea of human degradation, this annotated translation marks the first time Iuvachvs memoir has appeared in any language besides Russian.

Reviews

This translation of a political prisoners memoir is another excellent work by Gentes dealing with Siberian exile and exiles during Russias late tsarist period. It not only sheds light on the Russian exile system during that period, but also has universal significance regarding prisoners everywhere. Walter G. Moss, Professor emeritus, Eastern Michigan University, US.

Author Bio

Andrew A. Gentes is an historian and translator. His publications and translations include The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia, 18631880 ( 2017) and In the World of the Outcasts: Notes of a Former Penal Laborer (2014).