Dostoyevsky’s book, House of the Dead, is
based on the authors’ personal experience with the Russian justice system over
one hundred and fifty years ago in Siberia.
Dostoyevsky had been arrested in 1849 and at first been sentenced to death
for being involved the non-revolutionary Petrashevsky circle which read some
Hegel and perhaps dared to critique the Imperialist policies of Tsar Nicholas I.
After a terrifying mock execution, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to 6 years of hard
labour, later reduced to 4, in Siberia. The prison camp was a hell hole, a tomb
for health, time, and life; a place of of brutality, inhumanity, death, tears
and paradoxically, of humanity and caring. He reflects near the end of his
sentence, of the passing of the tedious arduous days “…as the dripping of water
from the roof after rain, and”… burying each day with satisfaction that it was
over and gone” (pp. 339, 340). With his
perceptive professional eye, his existential philosophical-religious social
perspective, and his writer’s ability to express his observations, the author
captures the specifics of many enduring moments especially of the micro-dynamics
of prison life. The reader becomes witness to life in the prison camp as well
as the author’s inner struggles to make some sense of all the senselessness.
Incredibly he survives with his faith renewed, a personal resurrection from the
dead, from the house of the dead. During
all those deadening days what had got him through was his hope for
resurrection, for renewal, for a new life (p.339). His release and resurrection
is described when having said his goodbyes, his fetter are removed by the blacksmith:
“The fetters fell to the ground. I picked them up. I wanted to hold them in my
hand, to have a last look at them. Already I could hardly believe they had ever
been on my legs at all. ‘Well God go with you!’ said the convicts in voices
that were curt, gruff, but somehow also pleased.’ Yes God go with you! Freedom,
a new life, resurrection from the dead…What a glorious moment!” (p.356-357).
Having
served as prison chaplain for 20 years, I became absorbed in the author’s
descriptions and reflections on life “inside.” I could relate to many of the
book’s themes and descriptions. Dostoyevsky
explains that has written of his
experiences because, “ …I believe it will be understood by anyone who
serves a prison sentence in the flower
of his years and strength, for the same things are bound to happen to him”
(p.340). Physically, prisons and life inside are very different today, but the
social and psychic drama and the civil
death that happens behind the walls and bars is much the same, especially
in these days of so called truth in sentencing and maximum security big-box
prisons. However, as Dostoyevsky experienced
and narrated, new life for him did arise from the numbing death dealing days of
prison life. This is not an endorsement of prisons, (nor of the “new-improved”
ones of the 21st century), but a testament that a miracle can occur despite incarceration. With his
existential, spiritual eye, no doubt relying on his Russian Orthodox faith and
his New Testament, the only book allowed inside, Dostoyevsky at times notices
the transcending spirit of love and humanity inside. He describes the camp
doctor as an example of compassion and understanding; the hospital area became
a sanctuary in which ones humanness was respected and one could be restored.
The camp doctor is portrayed as loved by all; the local visiting Orthodox
priest is respected and venerated by virtually all. Both the Doctor and priest
perhaps portray types of Christ: The Priest as the mediator of the mysteries
and grace of God; and the doctor as Christ the compassionate incarnate love of
God in Christ. Dostoevsky notes a great variety of faith expressions
in the prison camp which are daily and unashamedly openly performed and
tolerated by all. This varied religious-spiritual
pluralism, at times eccentric, was vital to the men to maintain some manner of
emotional equilibrium. Every lent, the prisoners were escorted in
groups of 30, under armed guard, to the local Church for the sacrament.
Dostoyevsky remembers his younger days when as a person of status and means, observing
from the front near the altar, that the poor at the entrance door prayed more fervently
and shamelessly. Now in fetters himself, at prayer in the back row by the entrance
and observing the rite from afar:
Now it was my turn to stand back there, and
even farther back: we were in fetters, and exposed to public disgrace; everyone
avoided us, feared us, and on each occasion we were given alms. I remember that
I found even this pleasant – it was an experience that contained a peculiar, subtle
flavour of enjoyment. “If this is how it is to be, so be it,” I would think.
The convicts would take their prayers very seriously, and each time they came
to church each one of them would bring his widow’s mite with which to buy a
candle or contribute to the collection. ”I’m somebody, too,” was what they
thought or felt as they gave it up – “Everyone is equal before God…” We took
communion at early mass. When with the chalice in his hands, the priest came to
the words “…receive me o Lord, even as the robber”, nearly all the convicts
fell kneeling to the ground with a jangling of fetters, apparently interpreting
these words as a literal expression of their own thoughts (p. 275).
Dostoyevsky reveals a colourful social-cultural
diversity in the life of his “fortress” as he called it. He does not witness religious or social
prejudice being practiced openly, but he acknowledges the reality of rather fixed
notions of social status and ethnic differences. Social stratification with
rigid class differentiations was accepted as the normal order of life in
Russia, as well as in Europe itself, at that time in history. These social
cultural beliefs ran deep, etched in human consciousness as well as endorsed by
theology and political ideology. Respect
for God’s Divine Order for life mandated the maintenance of the status quo of
rule by Tsar (or King or Queen), noblemen, and clergy. This was just the way it
was. Dostoevsky was doing time in prison
in Siberia (read exile) for having challenged the political status quo even
though he had been born and raised a nobleman.
He does admit that there were different strokes for different folks
(read classes); and, goes on to describe how punishment and incarceration
effects noblemen differently than the common folk, but corporal punishment for anyone is demeaning
and stultifying. In this corrosive atmosphere, he recognizes his affinity to
these common folk and realizes we are all one-humanity at the core. He
recognizes the ultimate worth of everyone yielding to an attitude of
solidarity, compassion, and respect. Status and the right order of estates are
not everything, but our common humanity is. A nation or culture that
dehumanizes other human beings really implicates and brutalizes itself. To make
this existential connection with humanity, we may have to be incarnate and
suffer the realities of the social lives of those of low estate, those we call
other, or “them.”
In his narrative, Dostoevsky describes brutal
aspects of a justice system, commonplace at that time in Russia and Siberia. As
a keen observer human behaviour and life, he describes scenes and themes in
serving time in captivity, as a human being held captive, legal captivity mind
you, by other human beings. Work camps in
Siberia were akin to transportation, or exile, to frontier lands far away. This
had been quite common throughout Europe in the early years of colonial rule. In
Siberia, thousands of miles away from Moscow, there was no place to escape to,
especially in winter, and the convicts made handy cheap labour for local
farmers. Brutal corporal punishment and capital punishment disproportionate to
the crime was also normal; England had just “reformed” Its prisons and work
houses, their criminal policy on corporal punishment with rational, utilitarian
policy to make punishment less publically appalling. In his Siberian hard
labour prison, Dostoyevsky describes brutal lashings with birch or wooden rods,
some of 1500 or 2000 lashes, in increments as allowed by the doctors; some
judicial beatings for internal rule infractions led to death. According to the
cultural sensitivities and mentalities of that era, these people resigned
themselves to the fact that they had it coming; their world view was of a
radically stratified society by social status and rank, they simply bowed to
the fact that violation of a superior’s rules was a punishable act, one to be “accepted
like a ‘man’.” Corporal and capital punishments were seen as obligatory to
maintain God’s divine order for life. One could only hope and pray to get lucky
and avoid this fate.
Dostoyevsky, a convict with education and
former status, found it hard to serve time as the common man seemed to be able
to do. It did not come naturally to him, as it did to the commoners he thought.
However, in his four years of serving time with them, along with much swearing,
irrationality and brutality, he sees their humanity and has special memorable
moments of experiencing human community with them. He notes especially his experiences in
participating in Christmas skits, music and programs, and the food preparation.
The whole camp got involved. Dostoyevsky comes away from his term of
incarceration with a deeper sense of connection to the human beings that he did
time with regardless of ethnicity or status; perhaps reflecting a social-status
implication of his “resurrection.” He implies that it’s not basically the evil
deviant citizen we need to be primarily concerned about; it is rather the brutalizing
effect of powers assumed by authorities that lock up and punish other human
beings. His influential perception and
prophetic words are relevant today for those who dress up hard prison time with
the “cosmetics” of 21st century technology. Dostoyevsky pointedly
declares:
Tyranny is a habit; it is able to, and does
develop into a disease. I submit that habit may coarsen and stupefy the very
best of men to the level of brutes. Blood
and power make a man drunk: callous coarseness and depravity develop in him;
the most abnormal phenomena become accessible, and in the end pleasurable to
the mind and senses. The human being and the citizen perish forever in the
tyrant, and a return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration becomes
practically impossible for him. What is more, the example, the possibility of
such intransigence have [sic] a
contagious effect upon the whole of society: such power is a temptation. A
society which can look back on such a phenomenon with indifference is already
contaminated to its foundations. Put briefly, the right given to one man to
administer corporal punishment to another is one of society’s running sores,
one of the most effective ways of destroying in it every attempt at, every
embryo of civic consciousness, and a basic factor in its certain and inexorable
dissolution (p. 242).
One could suggest that Dostoyevsky, writing
about prisons in a cultural situation of almost two centuries ago, is out of
date; and besides, he is writing novel, not a professional text on criminology.
However, the author writes with a keen existentialist point of view as one who
experienced the justice and authority of and political powers of 19th century Russia. There is
an enduring nature to his critique of the dehumanizing nature of prison
culture. Winston Churchill made similar warnings fifty years later about what
incarceration reveals about the civilization of a country. Similarly, Justice
Louise Arbour made reference to the same practice of the dangers of the
violation of human rights of prisoners by Canadian prison officials in our century, and
the danger of a downward spiral of degradation as a person in power ignores the
human rights of one, he, or she, can easily do it to other. There are many
incidences in recent history as well as social justice experiments that reveal
the shadow side of incarceration. One can also say,” well prisons today are
civilized and we no longer practice corporal or capital punishment as in
Dostoevsky’s time”. True, cultural mentalities and penal practices have
thankfully changed, in some ways; and, I am certain that Dostoyevsky’s and
Tolstoy’s challenges to the violation of human rights in those days did make a
difference then. The treatment of offenders who violated the social order in
those days was responded to violently with swift counter-violence by the
authorities. Capital and corporal
punishment as justice was considered normal to most then; the convicts accepted
their fate, and perhaps tried to change their luck by escape. Challenges to authority were readily seen as
revolutionary and demanding severe punishment by the state of the kind
Dostoevsky was served. However, the latent imprints of such punitive practices
are still present in the shadow side of our modern attitudes and treatment of
law breakers. Our media also m daily reflect vindictive hateful comments about
criminals; few “hugs for thugs” available today. But if we profess to be a
reflective, mature, just society, we cannot live as if the human rights and
civil rights movements of the 1960’s and1970’s have not happened, nor may we
ignore the wisdom of the prison abolitionists, nor ignore the alternative
paradigm available from the work on restorative justice.
The
world was seen differently in Dostoyevsky’s day than we do today. It is
surprising though, that Dostoyevsky did not approve of the “reforms” Tsar
Nicholas I was proposing. The Tsar was in favour of introducing to the Russian
prison system, the new emerging state-of-the-art British model based on
Utilitarian, rationalist thought. Dostoyevsky did not regard the new solitary
confinement model such as that of Britain’s Pentonville (opened in 1842) as an
improvement. The New Pentonville “super
jail” near London England, was based on
similar design and policy as the North American Philadelphia and Auburn models,
(including Kingston Penitentiary in Kingston Ontario, a mixture of solitary
confinement and hard labour and corporal punishment). Such prisons foreshadowed
our 20th century maximum security prisons, majoring in sensory and social
deprivation. Even Charles Dickens (in
his novel, David Copperfield) treats
the fabricated programed penitential lines of prisoners Uriah Heep and Mr.
Littimer in Pentonville prison, as just that, fabricated. It seems apparent that the social connections
and a sense of love and respect in human company, such as it was, that
Dostoevsky experienced in his term of incarceration, was a necessary human
condition for the survival of the human soul in prison. A fundamental lesson
that prisoners need to learn, Dostoyevsky exhorts is to experience that they
are loved and valued as human beings. The New prison factory-like fortresses in
England and America were (and mostly still are) tombs of civil death, devoid of
love, too sterile and cold for the human spirit to flourish.
Dostoyevsky had a keen eye for the nuances
of human social and cultural as well as psychological-spiritual experience. Dostoyevsky illustrates the amazing capacity
of the prisoners to endure; that the prisoner’s hope “to change one’s fortune”,
or, “I will get out some day”, kept the prisoners sane and human in the” house
of death”. Dostoyevsky is aware of the self-defeating habits that often kept
them locked in unhealthy lifestyles. However, the inmates do not become
repugnant to him. Sharing life with the prisoners in the harshness of the
dehumanizing institution, Dostoyevsky himself awakens to what is truly sacred
and enduring in their humanity, and his own. Observing the genuine humanity of
the prisoners as they stage a Christmas program, he discloses, “One has only to
remove the outer, superficial husk and look at the kernel within attentively,
closely and without prejudice, and one will see in the common people things one
had no inkling of. There is not much that our men of learning can teach the
common people. I would even say the reverse: it is they who should take a few
lessons from the common people” (p. 191). However, one cannot conclude that
because of the lessons learned that changed Dostoyevsky’s social perspectives
and deepened his faith, for what he calls “resurrection”, that he endorses
forced confinement. Far from it, the prison form him is puts to death the soul,
vitality, youth, human dignity and threatens to destroy the social bonds
necessary of life’s flourishing.
Miracles, though, can occur despite society’s inhumanity to itself.
Dostoyevsky’s account illustrates the
importance human bonds and the validating of each ones humanity. Experiencing
worth and mutual validation as a human being was at the core of “resurrection
for him. Criminologist Nils Christie, in the 20th century, noted the
brutalizing effect of social distance,
thus emphasizing the importance of social affirmation and attachment in prison.
In Social psychology, the related term, social
categorization, an aspect of social cognition, is used to describe how we
as human beings tend receive and use information about other human beings in
society. Categorizing other humans as,
“them,” distinguished from “us,” creates social distance. Such categorizing
becomes unjust and caustic when it lowers and dehumanizes the other as a thing,
a project to be worked on; or implicitly endorsing prejudicial and harmful
action against those of a negatively labelled group. Christie, a Norwegian
criminologist in WW II prison camps, observed that Nazi prison guards who
treated prisoners with a sense of common humanity, such as sharing family
pictures, and learning the language of foreign enemy prisoners, etc., showed
more leniency and compassion to the prisoners than did the guards that postured
in a cold, authoritarian and aloof manner. The cold, professionally dethatched
guards could consequently do hard cruel things to the prisoners without
compunction. It is easy to commit hard punishment onto those we don’t feel
close to; compassion and justice and love inhere in social closeness.
Social
categorization and social distance are destructive to the health of the common
good of society. Social distance can easily create a social atmosphere in which
human beings are seen as less than human, who then as objects of social scorn,
deserve bad things. I am just horrified
at the lack of recognition of human worth for people in conflict with the law
or for those in prison. Derogatory labels
dehumanize and desensitize, so when good people from ordinary society hear that
thousands of murderers and criminals are languishing in jail, very little
empathy is evoked. Dostoyevsky counters
that all people, irrespective of life status or circumstances, are image bearers
of God, and human, and since human must be treated as such. It is especially, he states, “…these “unfortunates’
[convicts] that must be treated in the most human fashion” (p.145).
Dostoyevsky and Churchill remind us that our
prisons can tell us much about the moral health of our nation. How we talk about people different than us is
an important factor of a healthy society. Labelling and categorizing other
human beings as bad, mad, unbelievers, criminals, riff raff, and brigands, you
name it, all foster distance, making it easier to ignore their human rights and
wellbeing. Once we lower ourselves to declaring war on them as enemies, as
garbage to be swept off the streets, as
a lower form of life that do not deserve to be treated as human beings ,we are
possibly heading for, as Dostoyevsky says, “inexorable dissolution.” Once we
have reduced the humanity of the other, we have reduced our own as well; and of
course, we have harmed Christ as well, for he did say, that which we do the
least of our society, we do unto him.