Following my return from sailing, the tragic days continued for generally all of Rykovsk settlement, though for me in particular. From time to time the gray, one-dimensional life of katorga was interrupted by some major theft or barbaric murder that enervated even the prisoners’ environment, though major events of a different character and the new reforms did not enliven katorga. The general had gone into retirement and was living somewhere far beyond the border, and minus their master, the servants had some things up their sleeves and were engaging in more elaborate feasts, evening card games, picnics, and other amusements. However, there was one thing these officials did not overlook: to each day thrash penal laborers.

“Prisoners must always feel over them the authorities’ power, vigilant eye, and punishing hand!” they self-righteously told each other.

But this was not true. Penal laborers well understood they were at the whim of guards who might easily be bribed to allow many forbidden things. Even under the terrible warden L— — , the poorer and richer allowed card games and vodka-dealing in the evening. To satisfy the warden's bloodlust, the poorest, most timid prisoners were usually served up as the morning's victims. Because they lacked money to bribe the guards, it was on their backs that the most difficult katorga jobs fell.

In addition to thrashings and hard work, penal laborers meanwhile suffered still another kind of punishment: the lowering of their daily bread ration. If, by law, a prisoner was assigned three pounds a day, he could be punished by being given two. Warden L— — especially loved to use this method of punishment in Rykovsk Prison. For him, it had a twofold purpose: penal laborers were punished by their own physical constitutions, and the bread was economized. When a party of penal laborers was assigned to the taiga for roadwork, guards took to heart this way of felling a poor prisoner.

According to a project of the departed general, the road from Aleksandrovsk Post to Rykovsk settlement needed to be extended south, to Korsakovsk Post. Katorga in the main was sent to complete this project. A large gang of laborers with many guards set off from Tymovsk District under Alimpii Khanov, a stern executor of the leadership's directives.