Conclusion: ‘Siberian Exile and Biopolitics’

Abstract

Statist goals consistently conditioned Russian penality during the period 1590–1822. This fact does not distinguish Russia from other European polities striving at the time to make use of their convict populations in one way or another. The concept of rehabilitating prisoners emerged only during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as reflected in the establishment of the penitentiary, or modern prison, and for this reason one should be wary of passing judgment based on anachronistic norms. Nonetheless, and as the Muscovite administration’s actions especially indicate, there was from Siberian exile’s very beginnings a notion that by assigning offenders to various functions and roles, they might be reformed insofar as they would be more useful to the autocracy. Muscovy’s employment of exiles further indicates a confluence between bureaucratic systematizing processes and penological development. Due to the weakening of this connection after 1725, and as particularly demonstrated by the Treskin colonies of 1806-19, exile and katorga became increasingly chaotic and probably more lethal for convicts and deportees. The 1822 Siberian reforms renewed systematizing efforts that necessarily involved exile and katorga.