1. If food is scarce, you must overcome pity or disgust and eat your pets. If the water from the aquarium has already been used, eat the goldfish too. In fact, it is better to eat it while there is still some water left in the aquarium. Eat the cat next. Prepared cat meat is difficult to distinguish from rabbit. You can eat hamsters, rabbits, parrots; only a dog might be useful as a good hunter, although it can be finished off too.

2. The extensive executions, especially the death of the minor Pchelintsev, caused a public outcry and strengthened the sympathy of the Penza Governorate residents for the revolutionary movement. The executioner had to be immediately sent away from the Kazan region back to Moscow. However, at the end of 1907, the anarchist-communist group was liquidated, and its most active members perished in shootouts or by execution. On 15 January 1908, the entire group, consisting of 18 people, including Velikopolsky, was arrested with bombs and weapons in a safe house following a tip-off from the provocateur Nikulin-Mikulin (agent codename “Pyatnitsky”, who received 65 roubles a month from the police). That same year, Almazov was cut down by guards while escaping from prison, and Mokshantsev died of typhus on the way to katorga. Later, Velikopolsky escaped from Penza prison, was wounded, and then shot himself in the forest.

3. “About seven fewer lynx have been hunted this hunting season, which may be related to the weather conditions,” said Lūsis.

4. In general, death compared to the length of life and its saturation with the most wonderful tragedy is a negligible moment, moreover, one without any signs of meaning. And if that is terrible, then it is terribly stupid. Talk about the theme of “eternal renewal” and the like cannot hide the idiocy of so-called nature. It would be wiser and more economically advantageous to create humans to be eternal, just as the Universe, one must think, is eternal and does not need partial “destruction and renewal”. The human will and intellect must take care of eternity or longevity. I am absolutely convinced that they will achieve it.

5. Sometimes a woman sets a goal for herself to get child support from her husband at any cost, as if punishing him in that way. But she does not think about how such a punishment might turn out for her child. That is why it happens that a man who has decided to start a new family is ready to do anything to get rid of child support payments. Sometimes he declares himself dead, as one raftsman did on the Northern Dvina. Following the advice of his comrades, he sent his photograph in a coffin and a copy of a death certificate. The woman told the child that his father had heroically perished while floating logs, but then it turned out that he was alive and well and even giving an interview to a correspondent. And the child was traumatised once again; he had been proud of his father, had believed his mother's stories, who was in fact talking about the father's death according to the words of colleagues who had written to her, but in reality, it turned out he had been deceived only because his mother did not want to give up the child support.

Sources:

Wiseman, John. SAS. Survival Handbook, Zvaigzne ABC;
Polyakov, A. B. “Revolutionary Terrorism in the Penza Governorate in 1905–1907 (based on sources of personal origin)” // Historical Sciences: Proceedings of the Penza State Pedagogical University named after V. G. Belinsky, 2011. – No. 23;
Koshko, I. F. Memoirs of a Governor. (1905–1914): Novgorod Samara–Penza: “Sodruzhestvo” Printing House, 1916;
Tsindik, A. A. “Secret Police Agents in the Struggle Against the Revolutionary Movement in Western Siberia (1907–1914)” // Historical Sciences: Omsk Scientific Bulletin. – Omsk State Technical University. – No. 3 (67);
Tashkentets. “The First Gallows in Penza. Trifles of the Past” // Katorga i ssylka. – All-Union Society of Political Exiles and Settlers, 1929, No. 50;
lsm.lv;
Maxim Gorky in a letter to Ilya Gruzdev, 1934.
Basinsky, P. V. Gorky. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2005;
Bogacheva O., Dubyagin, Yu. Survival School, or 56 Ways to Protect a Child from Crime, 1997.
Article first published in the Rīgas Laiks magazine February 2019 issue