An American in the Gulag

by Alexander Dolgun

  “Oh, that!” I said. “Nothing wrong with that. Just holiday.”

  “Please!” Chichurin said, not really loud, but firmly. “Please do not try my patience! I am a very patient man. This was a clandestine trip. We know that, and we know that you bribed a trainman for a place on the train. We know that you spent two weeks in Kiev and in the countryside around it, and we know that your host was Michael Kovko, and that he was a leader in the Ukrainian underground movement. Now. Don’t you think you’d better tell us how you went there to organize U. S. support for the movement? We know that was your purpose.”

  I told him everything about the trip except the shooting incident and Khrushchev’s bodyguards. I told him about Michael Kovko’s association with my father in the States. He kept insisting that we had gone into the country in order to have privacy for our illegal plotting, and I kept insisting that it was for picnics.

  He really got quite irritated as I kept telling him the truth. He believed I was on a mission. I could tell from his attitude. He just thought I was a stubborn holdout. He said, “Don’t think you’re protecting Kovko, you know. We’ve got him, and he’s already sentenced, so don’t hold back on his account.”

  He finally gave it up.

  I realized, after many weeks, that Chichurin was a kindly man at heart and had little stomach for his work. Twice when he came back from his midnight dinner break he brought me bread and butter and smoked sausage. I still had tobacco, and when I asked him for a bit of paper to roll a smoke he always got out a pack of Astra cigarettes and gave me one. When he went to dinner he never made any special comments to the guard about watching me, and I often stole a half hour’s sleep, which probably saved my life. Later in the interrogation he would doze off at night and so would I, and when he woke he never got angry, he just told me to wake up now, and went on with the questioning. He told me he had been in SMERSH— counterintelligence—during and since the war, and that he had only recently been seconded to the MGB. I came to believe that he was sincere and loyal to his country, and trying to do his best to get this stubborn spy to spill his story.

  Despite Chichurin’s easy ways, I had no real store of stamina to resist starvation and sleep deprivation. And so I was in pretty bad shape after a few months. I talked to myself a lot, and hallucinated vague things, and went completely blank for long periods that are of course completely lost to me now.

  One day a fly appeared in my cell. It must have been getting on into April, with warmer weather that brought out the flies from crevices in the stone. For hours I watched and waited with a kind of desperate patience. I wanted to capture the fly. For company.

  I got her. I ripped a thread out of my towel and somehow, with slow painstaking motions, I tied a loop around one of her wings. I called her her because I think she had ovipositors on the end of her abdomen, but she may have been a drone, if flies have such things, or a worker. The important thing for me was to have someone to talk to. I would give her some of my sugar in a drop of water and praise her when she took it. With the thread on her she was unable to fly, and when I was taken to interrogation I tossed her on the window. She was invisible against the pattern of wire mesh in the cloudy glass, and they never found her when they searched the cell. But they could see me talking to her through the cell and occasionally I would hear the door being unlocked and get her hidden in time before they burst in.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re doing something strange, what is it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m too confused.”

  But one day when I came back from interrogation the fly was gone, and I was called to the block commander’s office and given a long, moralistic lecture about my terrible behavior, a talk in which no mention was made of the fly. When I would say, “What is it you’re complaining about?” he simply said, “You know! You know! And you must never do such a terrible thing again!”

  Every ten days I was shaved with dull hair clippers, face and head. I collected soap after my baths, and made a large ball of it. Every few weeks the ball would disappear and I would start again. I thought about my suicide plan again, and began to collect toilet paper. I think I was not very serious about the suicide at this point, but I kept it as an option.

  I became terribly agitated when Chichurin told me that the Organs were planning to arrest my parents if I did not confess. I learned only long after that he was lying: they were already in prison. But of course I had no way of knowing that. I told him I would confess anything, make up anything to save my parents, but he got really angry for a while and said that it had to be the truth. Fabrication would not do. He was serious. Again I tried to think of fabrications that would stand up to scrutiny.

  I was wearing down, and the terrible thing was I didn’t care. I had stopped smiling long ago. My sense of humor had vanished. I noticed that it had gone and felt sad.

  Chichurin seemed to be more and more agitated. He smoked a great deal, and kept giving me cigarettes and urging me to hurry up and confess.

  Then one night he just shook his head and sighed when I came in and finally told me that General Ryumin was coming that night. He smoked nonstop and coughed a great deal. A guard came and said something to him. He sent me away with two guards. By now they had to hold me up anyway; I was not able to walk by myself. We came to a room with the number 13 on it. I was too stupefied even to think at the time how corny that was. Inside there was a thick Persian carpet with a thinner runner lying on it in the middle of the room. There were dark stains on the runner. The window was covered with very heavy draperies. There was a wall of exquisite walnut panels behind the desk, with a thin slit running up it and light coming through. When I sat down and tilted my head sideways I saw that there was another room behind with a sink and a faucet.

  Then the wall moved. In fact it was an electric sliding door. Ryumin came out chewing on some snack, and the wall closed up again. He said, “Well, well, so here you are.”

  Chichurin came in, and Ryumin told him to close the window and pull the drapes all the way across. He said, “Would you like to change your mind and talk?”

  I was dull and indifferent. I simply repeated that I had nothing to say. He opened a drawer and took out a rubber club about two feet long and an inch thick, with a leather strap which he turned around his wrist. He said, “I think this will advance the process of changing your mind. Now cries will rise up to heaven.

  Chichurin, are you sure the window is secure? Prisoner, take off your trousers and lie on the floor.”

  I felt no fear. I think I believed I would feel nothing. I had felt so little for so long, except dull aching fatigue, that I could not believe it would hurt that much. I did not take my trousers off and Ryumin did not make an issue of it. I did not lie on the floor. I stayed on the chair, dull and inert. “Do you just sit there?” Ryumin yelled. He knocked me off the chair with a blow to the—head. It hurt like hell. I roared as I fell on the floor. Ryumin yelled again, “Aha!”

  He told Chichurin to sit on my legs. He said, “I have a Cossack method of beating. I draw as I hit. You will never have felt such pain! Ever!”

  I vowed to count every blow and exact revenge on this man for each of them.

  But counting was not possible.

  The thing was terrible. I broke my fingernails on the rug. No buttocks, the blows went right on the sciatic nerve, blew up inside my head, all over my body, total explosions of pain. I passed out.

  Water splashed on my face. A stethoscope on my chest. “How’s his heart?”

  “I think you may continue, General.”

  “Prisoner, will you confess now?”

  “To what, for God’s sake! Anything, just tell me what! Please tell me. I have nothing to—”

  The terrible explosions again. I have no idea how many blows. Only total pain throughout my body, and the broken fingernails. I must have yelled but I have no memory of it. When I came to again they were sitting on chairs. Somehow I knew it w
as three o’clock in the morning. “Take him away,” Ryumin said. As I was dragged out he said, “We will meet again.”

  I had three hours to sleep but there was no way to escape the pain. They put up the bed at six and I was left all day in the cell. I made up a song, a kind of persistent doggerel song about all the terrible things that were happening to me. I sang it to myself all day in a low whisper. I walked a great deal because my buttocks were too sore to sit. They burned. When I finally dared to feel them with my fingers they were swollen and ridged with welts. I was shivering from fright at the thought of being called again to Ryumin, but I found that if I sang determinedly, and as loudly as I could without being heard, I could stop the shivering.

  For weeks I had been constipated. Suddenly as the evening came on and I knew that nine o’clock was approaching, I felt a sharp pain in my belly. I scarcely made it to the pail. I realized that I was utterly, totally terrified deep within me. I began to laugh uncontrollably. The guard opened the slot peephole and yelled at me to stop. I could not. He ran off and came back with the duty officer. They slapped my face until I shut up.

  At nine thirty they came for me again. I could not walk at all. They dragged me to Chichurin’s room. He said, “Don’t you think you had better confess now? You don’t want any more of that, do you?”

  “Please! Please! Don’t let him do that anymore,” I pleaded with him. “I have told you everything I know. There is nothing more. Please! Please!!!”

  Ryumin sent for us at midnight and they began again. I cried and pleaded and lost consciousness several times. A so-called doctor applied a stethoscope and told Ryumin he could go on. Then unconscious again, and somehow back in the cell, lying on my stomach, drifting in and out of oblivion, then fiery pain, then oblivion again. I tried to take my trousers off in the morning, to examine myself. They were glued to my wizened buttocks with blood and the slightest attempt to move them was exquisitely agonizing, so I gave it up.

  At some point a woman doctor examined me in a clinic of some kind; I remember that she had a white coat. She must have got my trousers off somehow. She was not the one who came to the sessions with a stethoscope. She said, with some shock, “How did you get all those lacerations on your buttocks?”

  I flew into a rage. I said, “I sat on a red hot stove, you ignorant bitch!”

  She just pursed her lips and started pouring on iodine, and then taped on dressings.

  They left me alone for a while. A few days, or perhaps only one day. I was fuzzy and blanked out most of the time. Chichurin started at me again, and for a month or so I saw him every night and spent all day in the cell. I got a bit of sleep, I think. I must have, or I would have died. But not much. The whole period is blurred. Chichurin pleaded with me to try to remember, to withhold nothing, to do anything to avoid the terrible beatings. I am sure he was sickened by my condition. After some weeks he said one night, “You are a fool. Ryumin is coming back.”

  I was not surprised. I sat in terrible silence all night while he pleaded and urged me to talk, numb with waiting.

  The swellings had almost gone but the skin was still tender when Ryumin began again. After the first blow I knew I was through. I screamed, “All right. I’m ready. I’ll confess!”

  He kept hitting me.

  I screamed, “I’m ready!!! I’m ready to confess!!!”

  He yelled back, “Start confessing then!” And hit me again. I said, “Please! I need time to collect my thoughts.”

  He stopped hitting me. I was dragged to another room. They left me with a guard for about forty minutes. I worked my mind harder than I ever had. It had to be a story about Bob Dreyer and myself and that George Tenno they had been talking to me about before. When they came I told them Dreyer and I had been trained together and Dreyer had tried to recruit Tenno. I made up code names for both o us. Ryumin and Chichurin both took notes like mad. I tried to surround the fantasies with as many facts as. possible, to make them sound plausible, but I put in false dates so that if it came to trial everyone would know that it was a lie. I had nothing to go on except the questions they had put about Dreyer and Tenno and a few others, and it was hard work.

  They seemed extremely pleased. After an hour or so Ryumin said, “Take a rest. Have a smoke.”

  He gave me cigarettes, a whole package, and a box of matches. He pressed a button and sent a guard for food. The guard came back surprisingly soon, with a full plate of excellent roast meat and vegetables and a big mug of real tea and some white bread and butter. When I had told everything I could safely fabricate they asked no more questions. They praised me warmly. Chichurin gave me three packs of Astras and told the guards to take me to my cell.

  I was allowed to sleep all night. For ten days I had all the sleep I wanted. The food was not increased, but because I could rest I seemed less starved. My welts began to heal. I saw no one but the guard.

  Then one night, “Prepare for interrogation.”

  I felt a twinge of apprehension. Suppose there had been a fault in my fabrications?

  At least it was not room 13 I was taken to. But when Chichurin came in, his face looked genuinely anguished.

  “You are in worse trouble than ever, now,” he said gravely. He said nothing more, and I didn’t ask. I was too frightened to speak.

  At midnight we went to room 13. Ryumin came in. “You tried to cheat us, did you!” He knocked me flat. He danced around me with the rubber truncheon. “Confess that you lied!” he screamed. After two or three of those explosive blows, I said, “Yes! Yes! I lied. I don’t have any truth!”

  He kicked me in the jaw. There was a tearing pain right through to the back of my neck. A stream of blood poured out of my mouth onto the carpet. I looked at it in horror. My eyes were blurred with tears, but I could see that there were two teeth on the stained runner.

  When I came to I was very fuzzy. I remember that I said, “All right, I will tell the truth. Everything. But I need to get rest first because my mind is blanking out.” Ryumin brandished the club. He said, “Now!”

  I had spent those days in the cell working up a new story. They did not like the story. They sent me to wait in another room. Then I was dragged back to 13 and the beatings began again. I was sure I would die. I was rolling about so hard to escape the blows that Ryumin hit himself on the leg and swore and hopped up and down and then came at me with new fury. Twice I rolled too far and the truncheon landed on my belly. There was a ripping sensation and a deep pain that would not go away, as though there was a continually crushing force on my testicles.

  I screamed out a third version. Out of some desperation I found another way to try to be credible. The blows stopped; I passed out several times. Each time a feldsher listened to my heart. At 3 A.M. he said it was too weak to continue. Water was splashed on my face. I felt a needle in my arm and the pressure of some injected fluid. And then I found myself bleeding on the floor of cell 18. My stomach was hugely swollen. I had a high fever and my pulse rate seemed to be terrifyingly fast, perhaps 200. I looked at my stomach. The tight, distended skin was blotched with blue and purple. I was shivering out of control. I said, “I’m going to die now.” But I banged on the door and yelled for a doctor. It was the woman. I remember that her face looked very worried. She went away. I heard the motor of a van. A stretcher came with a lot of men. I screamed when they put me on it buttocks down. They rolled me over.

  I woke up in Butyrka. A tube was taped to my arm. I passed out again. I woke up again after several hours. I was stiff in every joint and my skin felt like parchment that would tear if I moved. I saw a face with long whiskers in another bed. Then I went off again.

  After a while I came to again. I began to examine my body. I had a terrible shock when I looked between my legs. My scrotum was swollen to the size of a child’s football. It was like two fists in a bag. A part of my intestines had descended into it. The man with the whiskers was an Austrian colonel. He told me that I had been given huge injections and continuous intravenous feeding.
He himself had suffered a mild heart attack during interrogation. He had been brought back from camp for questioning on some details about the Austrian military, some things that had been missed years before when he was first kidnapped. The interrogation was easy and friendly, but he had developed high blood pressure and then had the slight attack.

  After two weeks, during which I slept almost all the time, I was taken in a wheelchair to an interrogation room. Chichurin was there. He seemed very anxious. His sympathetic manner had gone. He was—distracted and very formal. He gave me a fifteen-page protocol to read. Out of all my fabrications he had written up a confession. It was cleverly done and I could see that it would probably withstand scrutiny and satisfy Ryumin.

  Chichurin had composed it himself. There was a litany that went: Q. “Is it true that prior to your arrest the American intelligence service was preparing to spring you into action?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Were you assigned to strike up acquaintances with military personnel?” A. “Yes.” Q. “For what purpose?” A. “For the purpose of persuading them to divulge information.” Q. “On what subjects?” A. “On Moscow defense installations.”

  And so on.

  Q. “Is it true that it is only because of the vigilance of Soviet security operatives that you have been prevented from carrying out your assignments?” A. “Yes, that is very true.”

  Half a page or more in praise of the MGB.

  I handed it back. I said, “That’s very interesting but I’m not going to sign it.” Chichurin said with a sigh, “Then it will all start again, you know.”

  I said “When is the trial?”

  He shook his head. “There isn’t going to be a trial.”

  “Why not?”

  He just shook his head.

  “Why do you need this confession, then?”

  For the first time he became really violent in his manner. “Sign it, you stupid son of a bitch! Sign it or Ryumin will be here tonight, hospital or no hospital! Sign it! Sign it! Sign it!”