Primary material that provides a rare, first-hand account of life in a Central European military prison in the early twentieth century.
Published here for the first time in English, this document provides a unique account by a young peasant conscript in the Imperial Russian army—and follower of the pacifist teaching of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy— who was sentenced to serve two years in a penal battalion as a result of his refusal to bear arms.
N. T. lziumchenko’s narrative points to an alternative tradition of non-violent protest against injustice and commitment to universal values, It shows that in Russia such sentiments were by no means confined to the westernized intelligentsia but had authentic popular roots.
Peter Brock is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of many books including Varieties of Pacifism: A Survey from Antiquity to the Outset of the Twentieth Century.
