A dramatic report of Joubert’s efforts to pass a message to a prisoner in the jail at Kaluga, which includes a vivid description of conditions inside.
While visiting an acquaintance in Kaluga, Joubert learned that a friend of theirs had been wrongly imprisoned and wanted to get a note to him. Joubert volunteered, writing: “The Politzmaister of Kaluga was well known to me … I explained that I wished to be arrested and to pass a few days in a Russian prison, sleeping and eating with the prisoners as one of themselves … I explained that I wished for the experience as I had found myself at one time or another in nearly every condition of life in Russia; but never a prisoner in jail.” The Politzmaister was suitably amused and agreed. Later that evening he was arrested and brought to jail.
“I found myself in an apartment resembling a coal pit. The stench was horrible and nearly overcame me. A smoking oil lamp on the wall threw a feeble flicker of light on a densely packed mass of human beings stretched on the floor and benches.” This mass was soon joined by rats: “I could also hear the rats scampering about and gnawing the wooden bench and boots of the luckless men.”
The prison guards were aware that Joubert’s status and, while he didn’t receive any special treatment, one of the guards allowed him to witness both male and female prisoners receive lashes. He records the scene thus: “Seven women were marched to the posts, secured and strapped as the men had been. Some of them were quite young women, and their shame at being exposed naked to the lascivious gaze of the soldiers was pitiful. Others were older and hardened. These cursed the officer and soldiers who were to be their executioners, paying no heed to the baring of their limbs, and shameless. The shrieks of the miserable women beneath the lash made my blood run cold … In my impotence I cursed aloud the Tsar and his laws and the officers who did his bidding; but the sound of my voice was unheard in the courtyard by reason of the cries of the women bound to the cross bars. Two of the women died within three hours of their punishment.”
It took another day for him to find the man he was looking for and pass the message to him.
Joubert is best known for his 1905 work, Russia as it Really Is. This text was published in the Hobart Mercury on 28 November 1904.
