Road Prison


Road Prisons were a type of a prison in Russia, used for temporarily housing inmates on their way to Siberia, Sakhalin Island, or other places of far-off detention. This temporary imprisonment system stretched from the 18th century, at the birth of the Russian Empire, to more modern times, with the Soviet Union, and for some, arguably to the modern era.

Organization

Étapes were placed between every 25 and 40 miles, each stationed with its own detachment of soldiers.

Criticism

One modern writer calls the étapes "a form of punishment in and of itself. Its purpose seems to be to break down prisoners' will." And ultimately that... "There really isn't any objective reason why prisoners would have to be moved very long distances from their homes -- thousands of miles away -- to other facilities, where it would be hard for family to visit them."
In one incident, a Russian soldier requests to see his wife, and the Russian government responds by arresting her, binding her chains, and forcing her to walk thousands of miles as part of a Siberian prisoner contingent, living among the etapes, "maimed, insulted, violated." The prisoners' temporary allotment is "a dog-kennel, a stable, a black hole -- anything but a place to live in."
One author, writing for the Fortnightly Review, says that everything is expensive at the étapes "except the human body," as prison guards were often involved in selling liquor, tea, cards, and other assorted vices to prisoners en route to their final destination. This author made numerous other complaints that sound similar to those of other Russian prison critics: rotten building materials, absence of any heat, lack of any bedding, absolute filth, and ability for any prisoner to break out by merely twisting the tin bars holding them between their prison and absolute desperation in the wilderness.
Astrakhan to Moscow was a three to six-month journey. When prisoners could not be grouped together fast enough, they were left to rot in the étapes until enough prisoners could be gathered, and then they would be forced to march anywhere between 2,000 and 4,700 miles.
One critic, E.B. Lanin, has described these prisons as "...the most miserable lodgings any class of human beings has ever yet been housed in..."