Page 23 - All About History - Issue 52-17

Lazy or disobedient prisoners
were flogged to death by
leather whips

BE PUNISHED
Prisoners who did not work hard enough or
disobeyed the guards were often flogged to death
with a type of long, leather whip called a knout.
Other punishments included being chained up
in an underground hole or being forced to drag
around a 22-kilogram wooden beam for several
years at a time.
PLAN AN ESCAPE

Many prisoners tried to escape the camps, usually
with the help of peasants from nearby villages.
They would carry them away in boats, carts and
sledges, but many either drowned in the rivers
or froze to death in the forests while travelling
through the vast countryside. Some exiles were
entrusted to small villages, and were told if they
escaped, every resident would be executed.

EAT SUPPER

Food for the prisoners was supplied from
neighbouring towns and government-contracted
food allotments, and consisted mainly of bread,
meat, lard and grain. For some of the poorer
prisoners, the food was actually more plentiful
and of better quality than they would have had at
home, and they were even treated to extra portions
of beef at Christmas.

TRADE WITH OTHERS
On special occasions, the prisoners sometimes
received alms, charitable gifts, from the Russian
lower classes who empathised with their meagre
living conditions. Typical gifts were bread, vodka,
fabric or money, which could be traded with other
prisoners, helping some to gain relative importance
and financial status within the camp economy.
GO TO BED

The cells in the prison camps were damp and
freezing cold, particularly in winter when a thick
layer of ice would form on the walls, and the straw
mattresses would be covered in frost. The only heat
came from two stoves in the corridor, and so the
prisoners would move their beds closer to them to
avoid freezing to death. length of their sentence
A prisoner’s legs were
chained together for the

© Look and Learn, Getty Images

Katorga prisoners were
forced to live in filthy,
freezing conditions
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