The warden of Rykovsk Prison, L— — , having received a new assignment in Korsakovsk District, gladly departed from the burgeoning scandal. Alleging that Butakov had cut him out of monitoring the Khanov party, he washed his hands of the Onor matter. In actuality, the moral responsibility fell partly on him: he’d been the primary creator of Tymovsk District's system of extreme violence, increased quotas, and the reducing of a prisoner's bread ration as a form of punishment. It was from this fine school on how to manage penal laborers that Khanov had graduated, and in Onor, he immediately proved himself a punctilious acolyte.

At first, everyone supposed that after the assignment of a new commander in Korsakovsk Post, L— — would return once more as Rykovsk Prison's warden, but during that time his pension for twenty years’ service in the Maritime Region came due, and he hastened to abandon the island. However, it was said there were too many complaints by officials and clergymen on Sakhalin about L— — and, to a certain extent, this was why he retired.

In place of L— — , N. N. Ia— — v, a graduate of the Grigoretsk Agricultural Institute, was named warden. After arriving in Rykovsk he, a dedicated anthophile, primarily occupied himself during the day with building a greenhouse and tending to his flower beds, and in the evening by either playing cards or declaiming verses of Russian poetry with a small group of friends, so that he had little remaining time for the prison or its management. Judging by his words, he tried to have friendly relations with prisoners and wanted to win from them a nickname as their natural father, but knowing not how to manage himself, he could do nothing for them— and so he was neither a fool nor a virtuoso. Abandoned to the guards’ capriciousness, the prison got out of hand, so to speak. Nonetheless, on Sakhalin, a land of contrasts, flowers and poesy did not prevent Ia— — v from thrashing prisoners or even female exiles; nonetheless, he always tried to justify himself in those instances, with either an order from the leadership or some other conceit.