{"value"=>"<p>Documents arranged here pertain to the prisons and exile towns of Irkutsk, Kara, and Yakutsk, and include correspondence, written testimonies, illustrations and plans of prison cells, descriptions of trial proceedings, newspaper clippings, and a few official documents. While many of these accounts were sent from Siberia, several were written and sent by former exiles who subsequently settled in France.</p> <p>Of particular interest are materials pertaining to the Yakutsk massacre of 1889, which was precipitated by exiles' having petitioned the provincial governor, protesting changes to the regulations managing their comings and goings. In response, the chief of police sent out Cossack guards armed with bayonet-fixed rifles to break up a peaceful meeting of the petitioners, which resulted in several shootings and bayoneting of unarmed exiles, and the shooting of two guards. Following the fracas, it was reported that six exiles and a guard had died, and twelve exiles and one guard were wounded. The surviving exiles were tried by court-martial, resulting in extended prison, exile, and hard labor terms for fourteen, and condemnation to hanging for four of them. Particularly egregious was the case of Kohan-Bernstein, who had been injured during the scuffle. Condemned to hang, he was found to be too incapacitated to stand on the scaffold; the hangman's noose was placed around his neck while he lay on his hospital cot.</p> <p>Included with the Yakutsk documents are first and third-person testimonies regarding the events, manuscripts about other exiles' protests in response to news of the massacre, and newspaper clippings with official government reports of the events.</p> <p>Also of interest in this subseries is the file on the Kara political prison and mines. Included are descriptions of the prison facilities and life within; authorities' abuse of convicts; plans of the prison and sketches of mining operations; samples of cipher cards used to decode the prisoners' knock alphabet; and a song entitled \"Song of the Kara Convicts.\"</p> <p>In Russian and English.</p>"}