Shortly before the start of the Judicial Reform of 1864 in Russia, the head of state Alexander II personally traveled around the places of detention of convicts in order to identify the conditions in which people live and find out how things are in the judicial executive system.
Coming to prisons, Alexander II passed through the line of prisoners and listened to complaints and suggestions from each of the people held there. Arriving at one of the provincial prisons, the emperor also saw 120 prisoners lined up in a row.
Moving along the row, the king asked each of them questions for what he was convicted and what he would like to state.
The prisoners knew that the result of such trips of the king was mitigation of punishments, therefore, when asked what crime they were in a correctional institution, the prisoners replied that they were innocent.
The head of the Russian state, who at that time was already 46 years old, was a wise man with extensive life experience and knew how to understand people perfectly, so he did not react to such statements, and told the adjutant to write down complaints about conditions and disciplinary sanctions.
The tsar was dissatisfied with the impudent lie, but a very unexpected turn awaited him. Approaching one peasant and asking the same question about the reason for his being outside the walls of the correctional institution, he heard not only a confession of guilt, but also a full story of the reasons preceding this.
“Completely guilty,” replied the man, who looked about thirty-five years old. He said that he lived in the house of his wife's parents, and all the household members reproached and humiliated him all the time, calling him a bum and worthless person, without a house and a horse. This bored the peasant so much that, after waiting for the moment when all family members were on the field, he set fire to both the house and the outbuildings.
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Having carefully listened to the whole story to the end, the king asked the prisoner a question if he would like to return to that village after the end of the term.
The man replied that he did not want to go back. He said that after prison he was going to start building a railway.
The tsar summoned the head of the prison and ordered to prepare papers for pardoning the peasant. “You have one guilty person in your entire prison. We need to free him, because it is not good for the guilty to sit among the innocent."
Anna Ponomareva