The old zek raises his voice: “Okay lads, start rocking.”
We lean first to one side of the van and then the other. The vehicle begins to tilt dangerously and the driver stops. The guards unload the sick man and send him to hospital. Then they punish us by taking away our tobacco.
“We once derailed a train this way,” says the old man. “When you’re looking at 25 years’ hard labour you don’t care what you do.”
***
Corrective Labour Camp No. 4 holds people who have committed crimes against the person. The camp is so near the town that at night we can hear trolleybuses rattling past. While we’re waiting to be processed the elderly zek from the Black Maria explains the nature of the camp.
“It’s a bitches zone,17 although there haven’t been any here for a long while. However there are a lot of goats.18 Most of them are SVPs.”19
Almost half the inmates wear SVP armbands. They help to keep internal order. If for example, an SVP sees someone smoking in an unauthorised place, and the guards are taking no notice, he’ll run to the watch and point it out.
Recruitment for the SVP is carried out by the ‘Godfather,’ the head of the camp. He interviews everyone, explaining that only members of the SVP get remission and other concessions. When my turn comes I decide it best not to tell him what I think of SVPs. Instead I try to convince him of my unsuitability for the role.
“A condition of my sentence is that I am treated for alcoholism.”
“We have no such facilities in this camp.”
“And I am to serve my full sentence, so what’s the point of joining the SVP?”
The Godfather lets me go.
I didn’t become a Pioneer leader in my youth and I’m not about to start telling tales now. Our school teachers wanted to create a nation of stool-pigeons, but fortunately not everyone listened to them. It is the same in camp; the rest of us despise SVPs as the lowest form of human life.
Two SVPs in my cell agree to share all the extra food they receive from parcels and bonuses. When their locker is full one of them hides a razor blade in the other’s bed and informs the guard. A search party finds the blade, the culprit gets ten days in the isolator and his friend eats all the food. That incident teaches me a lot about the SVPs’ mentality.
Those who work and meet their quotas receive a small amount of money with which to buy goods in the camp shop. Anything unfit for sale in Astrakhan’s stores comes to us: piles of stuck-together sweets, dirty sugar, stinking herring and gritty rusks. The shop also sells rough shag tobacco for 6 kopecks a packet. Vodka and tea comes in via civilian workers in the industrial zone. They bribe the guards to look the other way.
On my arrival I go straight to the camp trader and offer my change of underwear for a very low price. Now I can buy enough tobacco to last until my first pay. I won’t have to humble myself by begging for it from other prisoners. Another prisoner tells me I’m an idiot, for I could have sold my new pair of pants and a vest for two roubles.
“The idiot was the one who bought them. He paid for rags and I bought independence!”
The next morning new arrivals are assembled for work detail. We are to be sent to an industrial zone to make prefab homes for the virgin lands of Siberia. As we line up one of the camp officers asks: “Is there anyone here who has completed their secondary education?”
I step forward.
“You will help in the library.”
I am lucky to get such a cushy job. In the morning I hand out letters and in the evening prisoners come for books and newspapers. ‘Soviet Woman’ is especially popular. Pictures of pretty women adorn walls and lockers. The prisoners replace them as soon as the guards tear them down. Convinced that the KGB checks which books they borrow, some zeks take out all 40 volumes of Lenin’s collected works.
My days pass easily enough; the only problem is the camp storekeeper, a former colonel, who keeps dropping into the library. This man destroys any lingering respect I might have for epaulettes: only in Russia could such an utterly stupid man have risen to such a high rank. His self-regard is so absolute it shocks me. He shows me the book he is writing. Life is not a Bed of Roses describes his life from birth to prison camp. In his childhood he was the top student, he ran the fastest and jumped the highest. In his youth he was more handsome and intelligent than his peers, in the army braver than his comrades-in-arms. His wife was the regimental beauty; he killed her from jealousy.
Our literary journals have already rejected the first volume of the colonel’s work; he assumes this is because it contains grammatical errors. Now he wants my help with corrections. I try to excuse myself, saying I’m not very literate, but he persists. In the end I give in. The task oppresses me but I haven’t got the courage to tell the colonel the truth.
A fellow prisoner named Oleg comes to my rescue. He is an intelligent lad who dropped out of university. We become friends and spend all our free time together. He helps me proofread the colonel’s book and we laugh over it together.
The library is stocked with classics and Dostoevsky’s works are constantly borrowed, especially Crime and Punishment. But the zeks are only attracted by the title. and return the book disillusioned, having failed to understand its archaic language. I try to warn them in advance: I don’t believe that someone of forty can suddenly become converted to Dostoevsky.
I can’t work out why the correspondence of our greatest authors should be in such constant demand. I’ve read Blok’s letters and was disappointed – and I’m more educated than most. One prisoner after another borrows Turgenev’s letters to Pauline Viardot. Old editions of local papers are also in heavy demand. Finally Oleg explains the mystery.
“Until last year petitioners for divorce had to make an announcement in their local papers. For example: Citizeness Ivanovna, Anna Semyonova, born 1942, living at 5, Sadovaya Street, has initiated divorce proceedings…
“Prisoners note down the names and addresses of divorced women and then they copy out Turgenev’s letters. Imagine how citizeness Ivanovna feels. She is alone after kicking out the husband who sold all her furniture for drink. Suddenly she receives a letter from an unknown admirer! And written in such effusive language that it makes her head spin. She replies and thus she becomes what we call an external student. Yura and Fedka each have three external students. They sometimes get parcels. There’s a woman in our street at home who married a prisoner after she became his external student.”
“But can’t they see from our address that this is a camp?”
“The zeks say they are working in a secret military plant, which is why the address is just a number. I am sure many women guess the truth but all the same they continue to write. It’s better to receive a letter than nothing at all. Remember the joke about two women friends who meet each other in the street? One says:
‘How’s the old man, drinking?’
‘Yes, the parasite.’
‘Knocking you around?’
‘Yes, the bastard.’
‘Well, you can’t complain, at least he’s in good health.’”
I laugh. Being a married woman in the happiest country in the world is better than being divorced, widowed or single. “Don’t you have an external student?” I ask Oleg.
“I don’t need one. My own wife’s enough. She had me arrested for beating her up. At my trial she pleaded with the judge to let me off but that only annoyed him.
“Lily was the most beautiful girl in town, but everyone despised her because she was born in prison. Her mother came from the Moscow intelligentsia and her father was an army officer, Polish I think. He was shot after the war as a cosmopolitan. After her release from jail Lily’s mother got a minus 2020 so she ended up in Astrakhan.
“Lily’s mother was a proud and defiant woman. The locals called her a prostitute. You know what it’s like - a single mother coming out of prison, and to make it worse she was a member of the intelligentsia. Lily was a tough kid, always hanging around with the boys and baiting the
teachers. She would start a fight for the slightest reason. She often won too, despite her size.
“Soon after they locked me up Lily had our daughter, Sveta. When she wants to see me she comes to the camp, sets Sveta down outside the Godfather’s office and runs away. Then she phones up and demands my release. Sveta screeches like a stuck pig, the guards can do nothing with her and in the end they give us a special visit. Then Lily takes Sveta away until the next time she decides she wants a visit. If he had the powers the Godfather would probably have released me by now.”
The library is separated from the camp schoolroom by a thin partition. School is compulsory for all those under sixty who have not completed the seventh class. Those who refuse have parcels and visits withheld. Teachers are civilian volunteers. The sound of these lessons keeps Oleg and me entertained as we work.
“Masha goes to the shop,” the teacher’s voice reads out.
Some wit remarks: “It’d be better if she came to see us.”
Ignoring him, the teacher’s voice continues: “Who can tell me which is the subject of the sentence?”
Silence.
“You, Kuznetsov, come up to the board, please.”
“What’s the point if I don’t know the fucking answer?” grumbles Kuznetsov, but we hear the scrape of his bench.
“Which word is the subject of the sentence?”
After some thought Kuznetsov answers: “Er, Masha?”
“Correct! and which is the verb?”
“Um, ‘shop’?”
“No. Anyone else?”
“Of course it is ‘goes’ but we would say: ‘staggers’” another voice pipes up.
“How do you mean ‘staggers’?” asks the teacher.
“Well, Masha’s obviously got a hangover and is going for a bottle.”
“No not, ‘staggers’ but ‘waddles,’ because of the huge arse on her.”
At that point everyone throws themselves into an impassioned discussion about Masha’s qualities and failings, her physique and her temperament.
When exams take place candidates spill out of the classroom into the library looking for us. Together we help them solve problems and correct their written mistakes. The teacher does not try to stop us. The more who pass the better it looks for him.
Our camp has a technical school which is supposed to give inmates skills that will deter them from the path of crime. The yard outside the school is full of farm machinery waiting to be repaired. It is protected from the weather by tarpaulin and guarded by an old man who was sentenced for killing his wife. In her death struggle she hit him so hard with an iron that he has a dent in his cranium the size of a fist. The blow altered his mind.
Oleg and I approach the old man one day. “Look here, Grandad,” says Oleg, “it’s a pity to sit here all day doing nothing. If you cut this tarpaulin into strips and sew them together you’ll be able to make a balloon. We’ll bring you some rope; you’ll tie your balloon to your chair, and then you’ll be able to float out of here. If you leave on a moonless night no one will see you. We won’t say anything. It’ll be a secret between the three of us.”
The old man is excited by the plan and for a whole month he busily sews together pieces of tarpaulin. He is eventually caught, but by this time he has taken to sewing. One day he turns up on evening parade in a marshal’s uniform, sewn from tarpaulin bleached white by the sun, and covered in stripes and tin medals made from old fish cans. We cheer as he smartly salutes the camp guards.
It is hard to get used to the camp regime, with endless searches and body counts. For hours we have to stand like sheep in the rain or snow. The semi-literate guards line us up in fives; even so, they usually lose count and have to start again.
Those who want to get out of work cut their wrists or nail their scrotums to their bunks. A man in our cell slashes his wrists with a piece of smuggled razor. I want to call the guards. Oleg just shrugs and says: “Don’t be in a hurry; there’s not much threat of death when the world looks on.”
And it is true; no one dies of a few slashes across their wrists. They do it for show, out of hysteria.
A prisoner named Kuptsev is an exception. He’s always hiding somewhere in the basement or under the roof, slitting his wrists and waiting for someone to find him. He never seeks help himself. When I ask him why he does it he replies: “The sensation of blood draining out of my body is like nothing else in the world.”
Another man rips his stomach open. He stands smiling at the guards, with his dripping guts cupped in his hands. Stories of people who cut themselves up are usually told with a grin but they’re not funny. Everyone responds to cruelty and injustice in their own way.
In camp I find the lack of solitude even harder to bear than the loss of freedom. You’re always in a crowd. This is not so bad when you’re working during the daytime, but at night you sleep among hundreds of men whose faces you got tired of a long while ago. You start to hate your fellow inmates and they you.
At first I am surprised to see zeks turn on warders for no apparent reason, insulting them and getting punished for it. Then I start to do the same thing myself, just to gain some solitude in the isolator.
In the evenings we exercise by shuffling around a small square. By unspoken agreement the walkers do not disturb each other. If you pace up and down for long enough you start to feel almost light-headed and detached from your surroundings. For a minute or two you can forget you are in a camp. Returning from one of these evening shuffles a tall Jew named Yura Kots approaches me and remarks casually: “Wine drinkers smell different in the morning.”
“So they do,” I reply, “but what makes you say so?”
“This is going to be the first sentence of the novel that I’ll write when I get out of here.”
“D’you know the joke about the madman who spent all day writing?”
“Tell me. I could do with a laugh.”
“A doctor comes up to him and asks: ‘What are you writing?’”
“‘A letter,’ he replies.”
“‘Who to?’”
“‘Myself.’”
“‘And what does it say?’”
“‘How should I know? I’ll find out when I get it.’”
“But I really am going to write a novel,” Kots insists.
“When?”
“When I leave here.”
After that Kots and I take our shuffles beside each other. Each month he receives a parcel of books which he passes on to me when he has finished. In the evenings we discuss our readings and study German together.
By profession Kots is a card-sharp, but he was sent to camp for theft. One day he lost to more experienced players. A card debt is a very serious matter. In order to repay it Kots robbed his former college. He was caught trying to make off with a tape recorder and given three years.
I am surprised to see that Kots subscribes to ‘Young Communist.’
“What’s up, need extra toilet paper?”
“No.”
“Then why do you order that rubbish?”
“There are a lot of things written here that you won’t find anywhere else.”
He shows me some notes on the last page about a debate between Sartre and Camus. This took place a few years ago but everything goes through the USSR like a giraffe’s neck and Kots has to keep up-to-date on western literature in order to maintain his pose as an intellectual.
Kots toured the country, presenting himself now as an architect, now as a doctor. He met his victims on long-distance trains or on the beaches of health spas. While he was swindling someone at cards he would remark casually to his victim: “Of course, Camus was not really an existentialist…”
Marcel Proust was Kots’ trump card, deadlier than a Kalashnikov in his hands. The credulous intelligentsia, who thought that culture was something you picked up with your university degree, were impressed. Kots would quickly empty his opponents’ pockets and then disappear.
Although I admire Kots and envy him his freedom
I never think of following his example. A life of crime seems too complicated, and if I’m honest, I know it is beyond my capabilities. Besides, it will inevitably lead me back to prison. I have never held romantic notions about the brotherhood of thieves. They only band together when it is profitable to do so or when they are afraid. It’s not hard to give away what has been easily come by, so thieves are accustomed to dividing up their booty. But when it comes down to parting with their last it is a very different story. When they are in difficulties thieves display as much solidarity as spiders in a jar.
No one in my family has been to prison before me. I don’t count my father. Those were different times. Besides, that was for a political ‘crime.’ Nowadays political crimes aren’t regarded as crimes at all, although on the outside people still try to keep their distance from former political prisoners, ‘to keep away from sin’ they say.
Even though I am not attracted to a life of crime I do not condemn my fellow inmates. After two weeks behind barbed wire I learn not to judge others. At first I hold myself a bit aloof. I figure that the other prisoners are probably inside for a reason while I was only put away through a misunderstanding. But I soon realise that most of them are just like me. If you exclude the murderers, bandits and professional thieves, I could stand in the shoes of any one of them. It is only by some happy accident that I haven’t been thrown into prison before. I could have been locked up just for all the spirit I stole from work.
And we are not so different from those beyond the barbed wire. Everyone in the Soviet Union steals. Wages are calculated on the expectation that people will do so – if only for their own survival. Collective farmers work for years without seeing any money at all; they would die out like the mammoth if they didn’t steal.
This is no accident. Every member of a gang has to dirty his hands with a crime so our government deliberately pushes people towards committing them. If someone then turns round and complains about the system who’s going to listen to him if his hands are already dirty?
In fact most prisoners are in jail not for what they have done, but for the time and place of their appearance on this earth. I have to thank God that I was born in 1934 and not 15 years earlier. My wagging tongue would certainly have earned me a bullet in the head during the repression of the 1930s.
Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes Page 8
