How was everyday life arranged in a prison where the condemned to death and those sentenced to life imprisonment were held? Who was sentenced to execution? What did the person feel when this terrible sentence was handed down? About all this—and also about cases of unprecedented cruelty in prisons, unfair court proceedings, and the absurdity of military justice in Russia of the late 19th century—tells the author of this book. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, a Russian classic, author of the famous novel “In Bad Company,” became known as a journalist who ruthlessly exposed all the sores of the 19th-century society of his time.