Prisoners boa...| 1880 at Sakhalin Oblast, Russian Federation

Prisoners board a steamboat before being sent to Sakhalin hard labor

“Im telling you to scald the ferry like cockroaches...”

Prisoners board a steamboat in the port of Odessa before being sent to Sakhalin hard labor, presumably in the late 1880s.

Gilary Gostkevich, a Polish Marxist sentenced to 13 years of hard labor, later recalled in his memoirs how in 1887 he was transferred through the Kharkiv Central Prison to the port of Odessa on his way to Sakhalin:

“There were about 1,000 prisoners. They took us through an unfamiliar area through Kremenchug to Odessa. We saw the city itself from a distance, because we were taken to the pier... A few hours after arriving in Odessa, we were loaded onto a ship. Before leaving, the Mayor of Odessa, the famous Admiral Zeleny, appeared, about whom so many spicy jokes were circulating. He addressed the prisoners with a speech: “The government is sending you to Sakhalin, where you can improve yourself and be even useful people; you must behave decently on the road, and at the slightest disobedience I tell you to scald you with steam like cockroaches...”

Previously in Old Photos: Eleven pages of photographs, Baskets of bells.