Eight Years on Sakhalin

In 1887, following several years imprisonment for his role in the Peoples Will terrorist group, Ivan P. Iuvachv was exiled with other political prisoners to the notorious Sakhalin penal colony. The penal colony emerged during the late 1860s and 1870s and collapsed in 1905, under the weight of Japans invasion of Sakhalin. The eight years between 1887 and 1895 that Iuvachv spent on the island were some of the most tumultuous in the penal colonys existence. Originally published in 1901, his memoir offers a first-hand account of this netherworld that embodied the extremities of tsarist Russian penality. A valuable historical document as well as a work of literature testifying to one mans ability to retain his humanity amid a sea of human degradation, this annotated translation marks the first time Iuvachvs memoir has appeared in any language besides Russian.