Sakhalin. Penal servitude

Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich (1864 - 1922) Contemporary of Chekhov, almost his peer. He made a loud name as a feuilletonist in Odessa newspapers, and then the publisher Sytin, organizing the Russian Word newspaper, invited Doroshevich to his place.
Doroshevich’s sketches about hard labor are compared not only with the Chekhovsky, which is quite predictable, but also with the "Kolyma stories" of Varlam Shalamov, of course, with the difference that the author studied hard labor, though close, but still from the outside. Doroshevich’s goal was absolutely concrete - to see the hard labor with the "such as it is", and not the one that officials" would like to show him. See and write about it.
"Sakhalin" is a book of morals. Doroshevich gives a sociological section of hard labor, describes its life, the types of convicts and island authorities, the typology of crimes and criminals, punished and punishing, as well as their similarity and ease of transition from one category to another.
The most obvious and the most bitter thing that you understand, reading this book, is that it is not outdated even after a century. And now it is incredibly difficult to survive in our penitentiary system. And to survive without losing a human appearance is even more difficult