Ivan Cherniavski, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right, between 1880 and 1886. Kennan describes Cherniavski and his wife as two of the most interesting political exiles that he met in Irkutsk in September, 1885. The couple were banished to the Tobolsk province by administrative process in 1878. In 1881, when Cherniavski refused to take the oath of allegiance to Tsar Alexander III, they were sent further east, first to Krasnoyarsk, then to Irkutsk, and finally to a settlement 165 miles from Yakutsk.