The 1891 Manifesto Easing Exile Terms

A companion imperial manifesto of May 1891 permitting convicts who had completed specified terms of Siberian settlement or exile-peasant status to return to European Russia, though barred from residing in the capital provinces. Chekhov, just returned from his own journey to the Sakhalin penal colony and immersed in writing about it, singles this measure out as a genuine, if partial, step toward ending lifelong punishment -- a rare note of approval for a government act in his letters, and one the press had passed over without comment.