Kara Tragedy
The Kara Tragedy was the events of November 7–11, 1889. Political prisoners enjoyed certain privileges in comparison to criminals. The Katorga administration decided to abolish them, and the politicals protested. The chief of the katorga ordered corporal punishment for a female prisoner of the Ust-Kara settlement, Nadezhda Sigida, 27 years old, a member of Narodnaya Volya. She had served 8 years for establishing an underground printing shop in Taganrog. After being flogged she killed herself. As a protest, 20 other political prisoners took poison and 6 of them (4 women and 2 men) died.
This event stirred a public outcry. As a consequence, the Kara katorga was closed, and the use of corporal punishment against imprisoned women and dvorians was abolished by the law of March 28, 1893.
Russian artist Nikolay Kasatkin (Николай Алексеевич Касаткин) painted the picture Kara Tragedy (1930).
Read more about this topic: Kara Katorga
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“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
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