In mid-December, as the temperature dropped to minus 35 degrees, the delivery of letters also slowed to a virtual halt. Lev sent his last letter of 1946 on 25 December. He had not heard from Sveta for two and a half weeks, and was desperately worried because she had been ill with a high temperature. ‘Sveta, I am drowning in a sea of despair and cannot swim to the surface – no letters have arrived.’ On 9 December, Lev had written what he thought would be his final letter to reach Sveta before the New Year. It was his twenty-fourth. ‘What do I wish for you – for us?’ he had written, equating his own wishes with her well-being. ‘For myself, all I want is more letters … and if I can wish for something else, it would be for you to start the year in better health, in good spirits, with a light heart, in spite of everything, and with friends.’ Lev was planning to spend New Year’s Eve drinking tea with Strelkov, who was looking gaunt from a recent intestinal disease and two operations that had not improved his condition. ‘He’s putting a brave face on it,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on the 25th, but ‘only those who don’t know him well are deceived by his self-control. I can see it in his face … Sveta, try to send something that will help his intestinal pains.’ It was typical of Lev to think of helping others and not ask for anything himself.
Meanwhile Sveta was succumbing to despair. She wrote to Lev on New Year’s Eve. She had not yet received his letter of 9 December. Wanting to connect to him, she had decided to stay at home that night and write to Lev instead of going out. ‘I’m tired of spending holidays without you,’ she wrote.
I hardly ever enjoy myself anywhere, and you can believe me when I say that, apart from Irina, no one really notices. Anyway, I made Alik [Sveta’s nephew] happy – we turned on the Christmas tree and drank a festive tea at the table … It’s almost midnight and Alik’s only just fallen asleep. He’s still scared to go to sleep … The Christmas tree is lovely – strong and green right up to the ceiling. Not one branch is dying yet. Yara hung a little silver nut on each of the top six branches, and on the very top there is a red star (of course). We still have the decorations from our old apartment in Leningrad, although I’ve given away a fair amount to other people for their trees. The Christmas tree seems to bring more pleasure to grownups (because it brings back memories). Alik was more interested in the reflection of the lights in his grandmother’s glasses (‘where do they all come from?’) and the ABC book he got as a present … We played word games together (Is it feminine or masculine? What kind of letter is it?) … I am happy, too, because I have been writing to you. This will be the first letter of the New Year – the clock has already chimed – and I’m going to put a ‘2’ on the next letter right away. Tomorrow, I’ll go book-hunting in the shops. I’ve got a lot of books still waiting to be sent, but I’m scared to send a lot of books at once, and for the time being we don’t even have a small box or anything to make one with, and without a box they won’t be accepted … I don’t remember whether I told you that I bought a rather lovely collection called Classical Poetry put together for the children of workers? In farewell, I’m treating you to some Aleksei Tolstoy from that book:
Don’t ask why, don’t question it,
Don’t calculate with reason:
How I love you? Why I love you?
What I love you for? And for how long?
Don’t ask why, don’t question it:
Are you a sister to me? A young wife?
Or a little child?
I don’t know and don’t understand
What to call you, how to call you.
There are many flowers in the open field,
There are many stars shining in the sky,
But I can’t name them
Or recognize them all!
I didn’t ask how I came to love you,
I didn’t calculate or question it,
I just fell in love with you,
I followed my own wilful head!
Well, Levi, that’s everything for now.
The New Year has been met and it’s time to go to sleep.
All the best.
Svet.
1 January 1947
5
A significant proportion of the people working in the Gulag system were not prisoners at all but free workers who were paid. There had always been a contingent of free workers in the labour camps, but in the post-war years their numbers increased, particularly in the timber-hauling and construction sectors, where jobs that large teams of prisoners had done by hand were gradually mechanized. This necessitated the recruitment of paid workers with the skills and expertise to operate the new machinery. By the end of the 1940s, more than a quarter of the Gulag’s workforce in construction was made up of free workers.
Most of them were former prisoners who had served their sentences but had nowhere else to go. There were millions of these workers in the post-war years, when the eight- and ten-year sentences of the Great Terror came to an end. Bureaucratic obstacles prevented many of them from leaving the Gulag. Typically, the MVD would refuse to issue them exit papers thereby compelling specialists and qualified technicians to go on working for the labour camps. Others stayed because they had no home to return to, had lost contact with their families or had married someone in the Gulag.
The Pechora wood-combine had 445 free workers in 1946. Most of them were employed by the MVD as managers and specialists. They lived with their families in various locations – some inside the prison zone, where there was a settlement of houses for free workers not far from the power station, others outside the zone, although they worked inside it. Living conditions were not much better than those of the prisoners. Many lived in overcrowded dormitories or barrack houses, where they shared a single room with as many as six other people. According to a report discussed by the Party leaders of the wood-combine in October 1946, the free workers inside the zone had just 1.8 square metres of living space per person – not much more than the 1.5 square metres allowed for each prisoner by Gulag regulations. The single-storey wooden houses had no running water or sanitary provision; most had leaking roofs; and all of them were missing basic furniture (in a labour camp that manufactured it). The settlement itself was in a squalid corner of the camp without outside lighting, washing blocks or toilets, and only one well for water. The place was littered with the rubbish of the wood-combine –sawdust, bark and kindling – which posed a fire hazard and encouraged rats.
Remains of the settlement inside the industrial zone – the chimney of the power station is in the distance on the right.
Although the free workers played important roles in the administration of the wood-combine, they were generally closer to the prisoners – with whom, as former prisoners themselves, they sympathized – than they were to the MVD or Party leaders of the labour camp, who were suspicious of them. ‘We are surrounded by disaffected people who have been opposed to Soviet power,’ argued Comrade Vetrov, the Party secretary of the wood-combine, at a meeting to discuss the free workers in December 1945. ‘We must be more vigilant and increase our agitation among the voluntary contingent.’
The camp administration was particularly worried by the intermingling of the free workers and the prisoners. Inside the camp there was no real segregation between the settlement – which contained the houses of the free workers, the administrative buildings, the staff canteen, the club-house and the shop – and the rest of the industrial zone, where prisoners like Lev were free to go about without a guard during their shifts. In 1949, the two areas were divided by a barbed-wire fence with passage in and out of the settlement controlled through a guard-house, though even then the fence was not complete, and prisoners could get into the settlement relatively easily by crossing the wasteland between the power station and the outer fence near the river. But before the fence was erected there was no more than a makeshift guard-house to control access to the settlement. Prisoners came and went regularly. They were often to be seen in the club-house drinking with the free workers. There were numerous reports of free workers – and in
deed of guards and Party members – cohabiting with the prisoners and even having families with them. The MVD was constantly calling for the tightening of security to meet Gulag regulations but its efforts were undone by lack of funding, the terrible conditions endured by everyone, human weaknesses and sympathies: minute freedoms were allowed to develop at the system’s edge.
Many of the free workers were involved in the smuggling of letters for the prisoners – sometimes for a monetary or material reward but more often simply out of friendship or solidarity. They took letters out of the prison zone by hiding them in their clothing and sent them off from the town’s post office in the Shanghai area. Conversely, they received letters sent to their own addresses and smuggled them into the prison zone. Either way, these illegal letters got round the Gulag censors, although it was still advisable for prisoners and their correspondents to write in ways that avoided incriminating anyone if the person carrying the letter was caught by a guard. The MVD was well aware of the smuggling and frequently resolved to stamp it out. Its concern was not just that the prisoners were writing candidly about conditions in the camp and undermining the secrecy of the Gulag system but more immediately that they were being sent forged documents and money to help them prepare an escape.
By 1947, Lev had a growing circle of free-worker friends ready to mail and receive letters for him and Sveta. Not all his letters were sent illegally but he used this channel when he wanted to write to Sveta about something important. The system appears to have become fully operational between March and June. On 1 March, Lev still had to wait for somebody to smuggle an important letter out:
My darling Sveta, I need to write to you a letter about all kinds of things. But I just don’t know when I’ll be able to send it; I’ll do so only when I’m sure, assuming the opportunity arises, that it will fall into your hands and your hands alone. It’s true that waiting for this opportunity, once the letter is written, is also rather dangerous. I’m planning to write about two issues – the minimaxes [the question of appeals against Lev’s sentence] and the possibility of a meeting.
By 14 May, Lev was sending letters through the ‘new system’, which still had teething problems: ‘This is to tell you that the new system of sending letters has temporarily stalled – and two letters have been waiting to be sent for a fortnight.’ And on 2 June he was able to confirm: ‘My letters seem to be more punctual with the new system because they no longer have to pass through tar [code-word for camp censor] and so there is not so much danger of their getting stuck.’
At this stage, the chief smuggler of Lev’s letters was his ‘namesake’ Lev Izrailevich, a small Jewish man with lively eyes and a round, balding head. He lived in Kozhva, a sprawling settlement on the other side of the river from Pechora, where he worked as a railroad dispatcher. ‘I’ve become acquainted with an interesting gentleman,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 16 May.
I still haven’t asked his name, but we talked agreeably … He’s an intelligent, cultured man. It turns out he’s from Leningrad and studied at the Polytechnic (he was stopped from finishing) and until 1937 was a journalist … He knows all the Leningrad big-shots and captains of industry.
Before his arrest in 1937, Lev Izrailevich had been the academic secretary of the popular journal Science and Technology and had written several books intended to bring science to the Soviet masses, including How to Make Things with Your Hands: A Practical Guidebook with 40 Drawings (1927), which showed readers how to make a range of things from microscopes and cameras to simple household items such as clothes hangers. After his release from the Pechora labour camp, Izrailevich had settled in Kohzva, where he lived in one of the wooden houses half-buried in the ground for insulation. Working as a dispatcher, he often came to the wood-combine on contract jobs as a technician and repairman. He had a pass that allowed him in and out of the industrial zone at any time. A keen photographer, he earned extra cash taking photographs of prisoners and sending them to their families.
The smuggling system worked like this: Sveta would send her letters for Lev to his ‘namesake’ along with a consignment of photographic paper, chemicals and other materials for which Lev Izrailevich had asked; delivering the letters to Lev in the wood-combine, Izrailevich would pay him for these materials and pick up any letters for Sveta. In this way, Sveta was able to get not only letters and packages to Lev but also money that would otherwise be stolen by the guards. Lev’s letters describe the system’s operation:
[16 June] I saw Izrailevich again recently. He’s still earning money through photography, although he’s always running out of developer and the resources of our laboratory are too meagre for us to really be able to help him. By the way, he suggested that, if anyone needs to write me a letter or send me a telegram, using his address will get it to me quickly and safely: To L. M. c/o Lev Yakovlevich Izrailevich, Freight Office, Kozhva Station, Komi ASSR. He can always call us on the telephone at the electric station.
[24 July] L. Y. [Izrailevich] is really grateful for your efforts. There’s no need for HgCl2 in a form other than pharmaceutical powder, although nitric acid would be better … He also asked for 6×9 film and glazed paper – any size – soft and hard. He’ll cover the expense, of course … I’m so happy that I can now receive all your letters … The only thing we need to make this possible is photographic materials. He said something about sodium carbonate and sodium borate. They are (at least, they were) cheap but difficult to send as around a kilogram is needed, so don’t count this as a definite order.
[23 August] Yesterday I[zrailevich] brought two letters – from 10 and 12–14 August, [nos.] 46 and 47, but the earlier ones have not yet turned up … I wrote to you that you should use not the address of the electric station but only the address of I[zrailevich], otherwise your letters will go missing, like the earlier ones.
In one of her letters Sveta had asked Lev whether it was necessary to write ‘For Lev’ on the envelope addressed to his ‘namesake’. Lev replied: ‘In future, as I have written, do not write to the electric station. My namesake is the correct address, and thanks are due to him: you can write without the “for”.’
Lev enjoyed the company of his namesake. The two men shared an interest in mathematics and science, and Lev always found their conversations interesting.
I learn from talking with him. Apart from the sheer pleasure of it, what I like most is that, while he may know less than me, he thinks mathematically and comprehends things better than I do, and if I get ahead of myself he is sure to correct me, so between the two of us we can usually work things out.
But, more than mathematics, it was photography that united the two Levs. Izrailevich took hundreds of photographs of the prisoners – an exceptionally rare phenomenon in the Gulag. Lev sent Sveta several photographs of himself and his friends. At first he was afraid that he had changed so much after nearly six years in the camps that she might not even recognize him. ‘The other day an opportunity turned up – quite unexpectedly – to have my photograph taken,’ he wrote to Sveta in April.
I’ve enclosed the result, which is fairly similar to the original. G. Ia. [Strelkov] is at the front. It might be worth explaining that, of the other two, I’m the one on the right. You can see from these pictures that I’m quite healthy and thus my requests for you to calm your worries about me are completely well-grounded … I sent the same picture to Aunts Olya and Katya – at Aunt O’s address (poste restante). I sent only one. If the opportunity presents itself, I’ll try to correct my negligence and send them another one, but I don’t love my face to the extent that I want to distribute lots of copies.
Sveta wrote back about this photograph (which has been lost), the first she had seen of Lev since 1941:
Aunt Katya came to see us today. She still hasn’t received your photograph, but she liked my copy. She says that you have a fine expression and merry eyes. In my opinion this is only because without stronger lenses she just can’t make out that your expression is exactly the opposite. But all things
considered, you look much more yourself than I had thought you would. Bad light has cast a shadow on your face, so half of it is gloomy, and seems to be not quite yours. But Sveta is grateful to your namesake all the same.
There were several other free workers who smuggled letters in and out of the wood-combine for Lev and the other prisoners. One was Aleksandr Aleksandrovsky, a grey-haired man in his mid-fifties who worked in the provisions department. Born near Voronezh in 1892, Aleksandr had fought in the First World War and joined the Reds in the Russian Civil War. In 1937, he was arrested after speaking out in public against the repression of Marshal Tukhachevsky, a Civil War hero. Sentenced to five years in the Pechora camp, he remained as a free worker after his release, living with his younger wife, Maria, who had been evacuated to Pechora from the town of Kalinin during the war. She worked in the telephone exchange on Soviet Street. The couple lived with their two young sons in a dug-out by the river, but in 1946 they moved into one of the barrack houses in the settlement inside the industrial zone. The house was very cramped inside. The walls were made of plywood. They had a tiny kitchen (without running water) and two small rooms but just a single bed. The boys slept on the floor. There was a garden at the back of the house where they kept some chickens and a pig.
Aleksandr and Maria with their younger son, Vladimir.
Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag Page 10
