Arrestantskie Roty (Penal Labor Battalions)

Reading notes

• Fintiflyushki §29 hard labor

  Arrestantskie roty, penal labor battalions to which convicted criminals in Imperial Russia were sentenced -- the punchline's grim tally of the prosecutor's old schoolmates.

• The Story of a Commercial Venture §28 the disciplinary battalions

  Arrestantskie roty, Imperial Russia's penal labor battalions; the neighboring grocer's sentencing to one (for mistreating his nephew) is the accident of misfortune that hands Sidorov the adjoining shop and lets him fold in the grocery trade -- his 'commercial venture' expands not through any plan of his own but through other people's ruin and his own refusal to say no.

• Darkness §18 the prisoners' battalion for three years

  The arrestantskie roty (convict/penal labor battalions) were a standard sentence for property crime short of capital exile; three years for a break-in and vandalism, imposed on the man the court judged (on Kirila's account, wrongly) to be the ringleader, is the sentence Kirila spends the whole story trying, hopelessly, to get overturned.

• In the Court §4 penal battalions

  The arrestantskie roty (арестантские роты) were penal labor battalions, an intermediate sentence between prison and Siberian exile in Imperial Russia, used here as one of the morning's routine, briskly dispatched verdicts before the court even reaches the Kharlamov case.