 On 24 March 1864, Russian authorities arrested Kalinowski and in June condemned him to death by firing squad.His family intervened, and the Russians, fearing that their Polish subjects would revere him as a political martyr, commuted the sentence to 10 years in katorga, the Siberian labor camp system.They forced him to trek overland to the salt mines of Usolye-Sibirskoye near Irkutsk, Siberia, a journey that took nine months.