Like modern Americans, the Romans had a firm belief in liberty and a long-held hatred of tyranny. We are told they despised the word rex (king). Hatred of tyranny makes a lot of sense for a people who overthrew an oppressive authoritarian monarch. What makes less sense is that after centuries of republican government such people would tolerate the restoration of autocracy.

The Romans understood liberty (libertas) most basically to mean the opposite of servitude. If one was free, one was not enslaved. But this could also be stated another way—to be free meant not to have a master; and this definition can take on a broader metaphorical meaning when applied to the relationship between free citizens. The liberty of the Republic surely insisted on the idea that citizens were free from masters, but it also insisted that they were not free from each other. For the Romans, liberty meant being a free citizen in a community of other free citizens, such was the political system they set up when they drove out the last king. Liberty was a virtuous mean between the extremes of servility and flattery on the one hand and unrestrained dominance and license on the other. An individual could fall out of this mean in one of two ways. Oftentimes, the powerful were attracted to the strong form of freedom, which the Romans called domination (dominatio) or license (licentia), individual power which we often mistake as true freedom. License culminated in a behavior that sought to master and dominate one's fellow citizens by seeking for oneself freedom from all public constraint. Ambitious citizens looking to accrue enough political power for themselves to make themselves a master (dominus) over their fellow citizens became tyrannical, but the Republic, when healthy, found ways either to subdue this type of citizen or to create a more productive outlet for them that worked for the common good.

The other extreme for a citizen was to be drawn to the weak form of liberty, that is freely choosing servility (servitus) and flattery (adulatio) rather than liberty and its responsibilities. Such a citizen ostensibly made the free choice to enable the domineering citizen in order to receive short-term benefits. Such an exchange required the servitude of the enabling citizen. As Publilius Syrus, a Late Republican author of moral sayings, wrote, “To receive a benefit (beneficium) is to sell your freedom (libertas).”

If freedom and institutions are no bulwark against economic inequality, political violence, and the abuse of power, what remains? There remains the civic virtue of the citizens who are willing to defend the common good over personal advantage, that is, the practice of political forbearance and the willingness to resist the lure of undue private financial gain, violence against fellow citizens, and excessive political power. By the Late Republic, the Romans had built up a strong tradition of civic virtue. Many of the stories the Romans told about themselves were meant to provide examples of civic virtue, and although many of these stories were from the dim past or overly romanticized, they instructed generations of Romans to put the public good over private gain.

No story exemplified this better than the account of the dictatorship of Cincinnatus in 458 BCE. First, it should be noted that the Romans had a constitutional office of dictator that they would turn to in times of emergency, usually after a foreign army soundly defeated a Roman army. The dictator, as we might suspect, had broad powers; the Romans therefore put as many constraints on the dictator as possible while also giving him wide latitude to accomplish the necessary task. Therefore, the senate had to issue a decree authorizing the consuls to nominate a dictator, who was often then recognized formally by an assembly of the people, thereby giving consent to the broad powers. In addition, the dictator had a deputy, the master of horse, who was not necessarily the dictator's political ally. Lastly, the dictator was given six months to address the emergency; if he had not done so within that time, his office was up and other means were taken. We might imagine that an unscrupulous dictator could hold onto his power and use it to become master of the Roman people. The Romans were aware of this possibility too, but for over four hundred years, no dictator ever abused his power in this way, at least for long.

In 458 BCE, the Sabines and Aequi had defeated Roman armies in the field, and there was need for a reliable commander. The current consul was deemed unfit for the task at hand, but Cincinnatus, now in retirement, had been an accomplished politician and general.

As I now write my memoirs, I am ridding myself of Sakhalin by a distance of ten thousand versts and a considerably long time, and the wealth of new impressions given me by my peregrinations through Russia and abroad obscure to a certain extent everything Sakhalin. The many things that were so sickening in katorga have been cleared up, cured, or calmed. As the suffering I endured passes into oblivion, I’m already starting to forget exiled heroes’ names, though I will always remember my Sakhalin exile in general. It is impossible to absolutely forget that foul, hellish, yet at the same time, personally singular and unprecedented, life in Sakhalin katorga.

When you imaginarily transport yourself to the world's end where lies the wretched island, there sweeps across the imagination: barracks, wards, maidany, penal laborers, guards, executioners, mares, rods, whips, wheelbarrows, chains, cassocks, prison sandals, shaved heads, labor quotas, rations, skilly, ramson, keta, sables, bears, Giliaks, yurts, sleighs, vagabonds, cordons, exile-settlers, cohabitants, blizzards, taiga, coal shafts… This Sakhalin kaleidoscope is so complex in consistency, it will hang before my eyes my entire life. Sakhalin by itself, without prisons, might offer an interesting, colorful picture; but, to its grief, its various colors are concealed by the katorga population's gray gloom, discoloring that island of two seas as does the ocean fog sometimes to be found rising over southern Japan's delightful niches.

I try to find the good in everything, and even in the bad, I search for the better. What good did my eight-year life on Sakhalin do me? … I developed no career there, acquired no money, did not become healthy… Perhaps I gained renown? O Sakhalin renown! just as I often had to diligently hide you from people in the Far East, where Russian life is confounded with exiles, so now, in Russia, I’m sometimes obliged to conceal you as a horribly disgraceful thing…

The great Russian penal laborer Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii sees in the severe punishment on the island and in katorga a means for saving criminals. They, in his expression, purge themselves through suffering. I say: an ascetic life makes a man, to a certain extent.

Only one who has experienced it will understand the grief of another. Only one who has experienced hunger, cold, and pain can sympathize with another's hunger, cold, and pain.

The Background

I was born in October 1944 in Bristol. I was pre-constituted as a Nonconformist. This is not to say that I was ‘naturally’ or ‘constitutionally’ disinclined to conform to authority, but rather that my parents were active members of the local Baptist church. It is strictly inaccurate to call them ‘nonconformists’. Historically, protestant denominations were forced to be regarded as such by the attempted imposition, in 1662, of the Act of Uniformity. As David D. Hall has shown recently, this act united, in opposition to the Anglican Church, movements which were fundamentally dissimilar. In particular, the non-conformist label wrongly identified protestants from the reformed tradition with those who were ‘separatist’. As early as the 1590s, however, separatists had ceased to try to reform the established church and had, instead, formed congregations of their own. By this means they avoided the two main problems concerning the English Puritans, as identified by Hall:

As Carlyle wrote in 1845, in his introduction to his edition of Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, the Puritan movement had become ‘unintelligible’: ‘we understand not even in imagination […] what it ever could have meant’ (Carlyle, 1845, vol. 1, 1–11, quoted in Hall, 2019, 349). This seems even more so in 2021, but in my childhood I unconsciously imbibed a sense of separateness. The lives of my parents revolved around the local chapel. My father was a deacon and my mother was a Sunday school teacher. They had no friends outside the chapel community. There was strict adherence to Lord's Day Observance on Sundays and also to total abstinence from alcohol. There was no television in the house until well after the queen's coronation in 1952. I remember no conversation at all about politics. We took the News Chronicle until it ceased in October 1960, which suggests sympathies with the Liberal Party, but I had no knowledge of this orientation.

Having looked at the most problematic issues relating to the admissibility of collective complaints, it is now time to dwell on the main features and tools characterising the proceedings before the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR), concerning the examination and assessment of such complaints.

An Adversarial Procedure

The collective complaints procedure is essentially of a judicial nature, being characterised by the adversarial principle and carried out, most of the times, exclusively in writing.

Once a complaint is declared admissible, the ECSR asks the respondent state to submit written observations on the merits of the complaint within a time limit which it fixes. It then invites the organisation that lodged the complaint to submit a response to these submissions within the same time limit, before inviting the state to submit a further response. Once this further response has been submitted, the written procedure can be considered, in principle, to be closed.

Third-Party Observations

During the written procedure, several kinds of intervention in the proceedings by entities which are not parties to the complaint are possible.

Firstly, there may be interventions by the international social partners mentioned in Article 1 of the 1995 Protocol, which are invited to submit observations on any complaint, whether lodged by international or national NGOs or by national trade unions or employers’ organisations. Any other state which has accepted the collective complaints procedure may also intervene by submitting comments.

However, in practice, interventions by other states parties to the Protocol are very rare. By contrast, interventions by the social partners mentioned above, particularly the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), are more common.

It has also to be pointed out that when states parties or international social partners intervene by submitting observations, this does not have the effect of making them parties to the proceedings, and the ECSR's decision cannot produce direct legal consequences for states other than the one against which the complaint is directed. These submissions are simply observations on the complaint, which the Committee must consider when making its assessment and coming to its final decision, and they may also be submitted ad adiuvandum, in other words to lend the intervening body's support to the allegations of one of the parties to the proceedings.

Decisions on the Merits

The act which brings an end to the adversarial stage of the collective complaints procedure is the adoption by the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) of a ‘decision on the merits’, in which the ECSR finds and declares that there has been – or has not been – a violation by the state concerned of the social rights at stake.

Each decision is adopted by the ECSR following one or more deliberations on a draft decision prepared and proposed by the rapporteur, namely, an ECSR member specifically appointed by the president of the Committee once the complaint has been registered.

As appears from the text of the ECSR's decisions, each decision is the outcome of an in-depth examination and legal assessment of the situation that is the object of the complaint, which are conducted on the basis of the wide range of information being available to the ECSR and all the elements, in fact and in law, that are relevant to the implementation of the Charter provisions and social rights in question.

When it finds a violation of the Charter, the ECSR does not just summarise in its pronouncement what the violation is. It also explains extensively in the grounds given for its ruling (which appear in the part of the decision entitled ‘Assessment of the Committee’) why, in the specific situation to which the complaint relates, it considers that the state has not satisfactorily applied the Charter and implemented the rights protected by its provisions, in the light of the most appropriate interpretation of what these provisions require in such a situation.

Where it deems it necessary, the ECSR may also label the situation an ‘aggravated violation’ of the Charter.

As part of its evaluation work, the ECSR often gives proof of its capacity to reorder and reclassify the complainant's ground of alleged violation and, above all, to systematically interpret the provisions concerned. It also engages in a systemic and teleological interpretation of the Charter as a whole, viewing it as a ‘living instrument’, whose content and implications must be seen in the light of changes in actual circumstances and new situations, so as to meet current requirements in the field of social rights protection and in keeping with changes in international human rights norms and standards in the field in question.

My carpentry work ended upon my assignment to the meteorological station, but katorga had still not ended: for the time being, I was deprived of all the rights of my social estate, living in the prison, unable to absent myself to another settlement, liable to be ordered about with a single word as the leadership imagined, and, I was still on Sakhalin. Only my exterior changed. Now that my place of service did not conveniently situate me as one among the gray masses, I began to wear the prisoner cassock and yellow cats (cats, or chirki, as they were called there), with the former tucked into short gray trousers. The local administration's attitude toward me changed. I often happened to meet administrators, officers, and their wives in Mariia Antonovna's apartment, and rather unwillingly got to know them. Nearly everyone treated me extremely warmly. Some, wishing by one or another means to help, frequently invited me to dine at their places (for example, the leader of the military command, Colonel Durov), others gave me small gifts with the same intent. Although I was pleased to see such sympathy from local society, I did not try to take advantage of it. I wasn't suffering from extreme need: the prison leadership paid me fifteen rubles a month for my meteorological observation reports, furthermore, relations sent me funds from time to time, so that I saved my own money through frugal living. I didn't like to dress foppishly and, through spartan habits, insured myself against life's varied vicissitudes. I safeguarded my comparative independence. Like some Roman philosopher delivered into slavery, I strove dearly to liberate my spirit and protect it and not sell out for promised luxuries. I recognized that my masters and I stood at opposite poles, and that any sort of close relations with them were as unstable as a balanced yoke. Preserving one's equilibrium there imposed considerable mental torment! You could hardly allow yourself to speak freely, because with one foolish word or sharply expressed heartfelt gesture— the equilibrium would be broken.

I was welcomed in Aleksandrovsk with open arms. Hospitable homeowners (there was a trio: Pl— — i, his wife Ser— — ii, and another exile) gave me their entire mezzanine as my lodging and were exceptionally attentive and cordial toward me. Regardless of the fact that Pl— — i had completed university and had a good job in the district commander's chancery, it provided them a thoroughly modest lifestyle, and he rather shamefully existed at the level of laborers hired simply to attend livestock, rummage in the garden, and generally do the dirty work. As a trio, they maintained a rather large farm, and their dairy products were renowned not only on Sakhalin but across the Sea of Japan, in Vladivostok. Their house was, as they say, a full bowl. It was interesting to observe them, young, healthy, always busy.

Next day, I hurried to present myself to the district commander, who in General K.'s absence was fulfilling the island commandant's duties. I was invited onto the veranda, where I stood before a table of nearly all of Aleksandrovsk's officials. It was customary for them to gather every morning for tea in the district commander's apartment, and to conversationally decide matters and devise a plan of action for the coming day. As such, many issues were straightforwardly settled through personal meetings, without procrastination or chancery communiqués.

The district commander, having introduced me to all the officials, shared with me General K.'s wish that, in addition to extensive voyages in the new steamer, I produce for them a map of Aleksandrovsk's shipping lane and work out the navigation of the Tatar Strait.

“We always get complaints from ship captains,” continued the district commander, “that they don't have an accurate map of Sakhalin and, in particular, the Aleksandrovsk lane, which, among other things, makes sailing the Tatar Strait very dangerous. This is why we want our bay measured. Everything you need will be at your disposal. You can use the steam cutters; you can take as many laborers as you need; we’ll assign a government horse to get you to the wharf; you’ll find instruments at our surveyor Karaulovskii's place. We have here a capable fellow— the draftsman Zagarin. If you need anything drawn, he can help as well…”

In the summer of 1892, a Professor Krasnov came to Sakhalin. Wishing to understand the island's nature up close, he followed, in Rykovsk, a neglected route through the Pilinga and further along the Poronai River to Patience Bay. Exiled penal laborers accompanying him in the capacity of guides and porters unabashedly told him about the latest happenings in Tymovsk District. Upon arriving in Russia, the professor published his impressions of the island in the journal Books of the Week, in which he described Khanov's beastly violence toward starving, defenseless people. As if to support his stories, correspondence from Sakhalin began appearing sporadically in the newspaper Vladivostok. The Onor business was finally being spoken of abroad. The administration grew anxious. It would seem to have been necessary to extinguish the fire quickly, that is, to investigate the matter onsite, sack Khanov, make new arrangements, and pay especial attention to those being beaten; but the opposite was immediately done: Khanov was prominently left in charge at Onor and, scandalously, D. S. Klimov was nearly removed; the nascent “Onor Affair” was “put under the rug,” even stricter censorship was imposed on exiles’ letters, and a search was launched to identify among them the Vladivostok correspondent.

Truth be said, the correspondents sometimes overdid it. Alongside writing about the Onor developments, they touched on administrators’ intimate lives and didn't begrudge scandalous petty tales concerning exile-settlers. It was immediately possible to surmise by the articles’ nature that the hand writing them was not that of an educated person but some poorly educated clerk. Nonetheless, the leadership concluded for itself that the correspondent was to be found among Rykovsk settlement's educated exiles.

One day, the commandant came to our district. As per the famous itinerary, he was shown all the sights in Rykovsk settlement. Of course, he was left very satisfied by everything he saw.

Following his tour of the neighboring settlements, my comrades and I were summoned to the police administration's chancery. Supposing the commandant wished to personally familiarize himself with us, we calmly entered into his presence; but, having noticed his stern face, I immediately understood that the conversation to occur would not be of a completely peaceful nature.

In the past decade, we witnessed a number of crises and changes, which have had, and are still having, an adverse impact on the effective enjoyment of economic and social rights by many communities across the world, undermining the capacity of states and the political will of governments to safeguard and promote the enjoyment of these rights.

Most of the countries in Europe have been particularly affected by the consequences of such crises and changes. A major source of concern and problems in terms of protection of social rights in Europe is related to the serious difficulties which workers, families and the most vulnerable people have experienced, and are still experiencing, because of the economic crisis which has endured since 2008 and the ‘austerity measures’ deployed by some states to cope with it. Inadequate levels of social security benefits and social assistance continue to disproportionately affect those who are most vulnerable, namely the poor, the elderly and the sick. Public policies continue to be unable to stem a generalized increase in poverty and unemployment. The pursuit of flexibility and changes to employment contracts are at risk of undermining workers’ rights and safety. Austerity measures and budgetary cuts are placing ever-increasing pressure on health systems, and there are also signs of a potential deterioration in the protection of health and safety at work.

Secondly, problems have arisen in the recent past, and are continuing in the present, because of the migrant and refugee crisis. Over the past five years, millions of migrants and refugees fleeing war, terror, torture, persecution and poverty have crossed into Europe, where divisions have arisen among European states over how best to deal with resettling people. Offering these millions of individuals hospitality, respect for their dignity and their fundamental rights, as well as prompt and effective social integration, poses a major challenge for European states attempting to apply international social rights standards.

At the same time, as globalisation and automation progress, amplified by the ongoing technological revolution and the immense potential of artificial intelligence, it is clear that employment and labour market policies are changing radically, and it is predicted that millions of jobs may soon be lost.

Although the city of Rome began as a poor community on the hills along the Tiber River, its slow but steady domination of the Italian Peninsula and its rather swift conquest of the Mediterranean made Rome immensely wealthy. The territories acquired in Spain, North Africa, and Greece within 70 years (202–133 BCE) had thrust upon Rome a fortune that it had little time to understand or to incorporate. Moreover, the absence of any foreign foe of any magnitude put Rome in an unprecedented space. A generation or two before, Rome had been but one of several powerful Mediterranean states, but by 133 BCE Rome was the master of the Mediterranean, even if it did not control and occupy the entire land mass. The Romans had some breathing room and some time to ponder the new landscape, which would be an idyllic way to put it. Another way to put it is that Rome could no longer ignore the domestic concerns that had developed out of this rapid conquest and infusion of wealth. How would they do? Well, as it turned out, the Romans themselves accomplished what the Greeks and Carthaginians could not do: they brought down the Roman Republic.

The Romans had always thought of themselves as simple agricultural people. Even if the stories of early Romans were over-romanticized, there is no question that the Romans included in their legal code the restriction of certain kinds of ostentatious displays of wealth. The Twelve Tables, Rome's earliest code of laws, restricted the conspicuous display of wealth at funerals. Subsequent laws sought to address public luxury and opulence in other areas, such as the amount of money spent on entertainment and banquets. Why did the Romans pass these laws? A cynical, though accurate, view would be that people must have been conspicuously displaying their personal wealth. But why did the Romans think that was a bad thing? In modern capitalist countries, such public displays of one's personal wealth are often considered a virtue, whether they truly are or not. The Romans, however, understood the capacity wealth had to tear the state apart. First, luxury had the power to seduce citizens to pursue private wealth over the common good and then to use that wealth to consolidate political power.

Now that we know a little about Rykovsk settlement's climatic conditions, it's possible to talk about the local colony's agriculture. A fair amount of statistics, reports, and various opinions, official and unofficial, have been written on this issue over the past decade. I will limit myself only to sharing the unmediated impressions and voices of the region's true farmers. I say true, because whether those exiles forcibly settled in the taiga ever pushed a plow in Russia cannot be ascertained. From an early age, a Russian village peasant carries on an occupation established by his father and grandfather. He follows them in the running of the farm, house, cattle, plow, harrow, in preparing the fields, but most of all, in knowing how to turn the soil. But the island's “Robinsons,” as they’ve been christened, are expected, with government spades and hoes in hand, to do all this from nothing. It is understandable that eventually, in places of settlement like Palevo, for example, a strange group of folks emerges: not quite vagabonds, not quite beggars, not quite robbers. And, truly, they’re not to blame for this. The late M. S. Mitsul distinctly knew it was impossible to send seasoned farmers into the taiga empty-handed, and so was remarkably generous toward Rykovsk's first exile-settlers, supplying them all the items they needed for farming. From this came good peasants, who at Mitsul's death were attending to their farms beautifully. Some had ten or twenty cattle, many had vast meadows and were working several desiatiny. Not only did they consume their grain and feed it to their cattle year-round, they even sold it to the treasury. They sowed rye, barley, and wheat. At first, the new land gave very good harvests. Even I found surprising the caches of potatoes. That was Rykovsk's golden age of agriculture. Every year, the cornfields grew and the cattle quickly multiplied. It was comparatively easy at that time to root the soil because workhands were cheap. During the ‘eighties, Rykovsk's penal laborers had a lot of leisure time and gladly did private jobs.

The next morning, I’d just gotten out of bed, when the telephone station summoned me.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Just now,” the day watchman I— — v answered from the wharf, “the general's ordered you kept from boarding the steamer.”

Greatly alarmed, I ran to the governor.

“You were given a travel ticket mistakenly,” the general told me. “We don't have the right to let you leave the island without a decision from Petersburg.”

“So please send a telegram!”

Incensed by this new obstacle to my leaving, I went to the steamer for my things. Sensing my upset, the passengers were very sorry for everything that was happening and couldn't imagine what it meant. I, too, didn't understand a thing. In the meantime, the general notified, by telegram, the district commander who had issued me the ticket. For his part, he telegraphed Aleksandrovsk to hold and return me to Rykovsk.

“From one hour to the next it gets worse!” I thought. “It's as if I’m some fugitive, or guilty for the issuing of the ticket. Just last year, I applied for a passport with the permission of the governor himself, and now it's ‘Stop!’ “

The Tymovsk commander's latest request was, of course, not fulfilled, and the general decided I could wait in Aleksandrovsk for the answer to his telegram.

One of my exile acquaintances who is Jewish had left for Vladivostok the previous autumn. After setting foot on mainland soil, he telegrammed me in a rapture: “Like an Israelite, I’ve crossed the sea and stepped from an Egypt of labor and servitude into the Promised Land of the Asiatic mainland.” But next day, by order of Sakhalin's governor, he was arrested, supposedly due to a mistaken release, and returned to Sakhalin aboard the first steamer.

Thank God that, although I was being detained there on the wharf, I would definitely not be scandalously returned from Vladivostok under convoy, like some vagabond!

Melancholy days followed. I was recalling so many disappointments and oppressive insults after eight years on Sakhalin, heightening even more my emotional torment.

Comrades tried to distract me, during the day, by dreaming up various walks through Aleksandrovsk's neighborhoods, and during the evening, by arranging literary soirées.