concept
Main Prison Administration
also: Главное тюремное управление, Glavnoe tyuremnoe upravlenie
The central Russian Imperial body, under the Ministry of the Interior, responsible for the Empire's prisons and penal-colony system, including Sakhalin; headed in 1890 by Mikhail Nikolaevich Galkin-Vraskoy. Chekhov petitioned it directly for assistance in advance of his 1890 journey to Sakhalin, formally routing his planned visit through the administrative authority that governed the island as a penal colony.
Reading notes
- To M. N. Galkin-Vrasky, 20 January 1890. Petersburg. §2 Your Excellency,
The Main Prison Administration (Главное тюремное управление), the central Imperial body under the Ministry of the Interior overseeing Russia's prisons and penal colonies, including Sakhalin. Though not named directly in the letter's body -- the address is entirely to Galkin-Vraskoy personally, per the conventions of formal petition -- it is the office Chekhov is petitioning, and the reason a private literary traveler needed to write to a prison-system official at all: Sakhalin's status as a penal colony placed access to it under the administration's authority.