étape gives him vodka. Finally he suggests to him, Would not he like to exchange? He says his name is Mihailov, and tells him this and that, says he is going to prison, that is not to prison but to a “special division.” Though it is prison it is “special,” therefore rather better. Lots of people, even in the government in Petersburg for instance, never heard of the “special division” all the time it existed. It was a special, peculiar little class in one of the remote parts of Siberia, and there were so few in it, in my time not more than seventy, that it was not easy to get to hear of it. I met people afterwards who had served in Siberia and knew it well, who yet heard for the first time of the “special division” from me. In the Legal Code there are six lines about it: “There shall be instituted in such and such a prison a special division for the worst criminals until the opening of works involving harder labour in Siberia.” Even the convicts of this division did not know whether it was a permanent or a temporary institution. No time limit was mentioned, all that was said was “until the opening of works involving harder labour,” so it was meant for convicts who were in for life.