Zoia’s voice trembled when she spoke about parting from her beloved place. The homestead passed into the hands of the government, and when Zoia went back after a few years to see what had become of the homestead, she found a frightening desolation. Some people still seemed to work there, but there were almost no cattle and no vegetable garden either. The house had been gutted and had fallen into complete decay, and even her favorite painting in the dining room hung in tatters on the dirty wall.
Zoia formed a definite worldview, well-considered and shaped by suffering. Rarely did I meet among educated women such clarity of mind, such comprehension, as possessed by this young Siberian woman with a third-grade education.
Mariia Shapiro, A Soviet Capitalist
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In her first years of marriage Zoia did not work anywhere. There was no necessity and not even the desire. The war began. Zoia’s husband was registered at his plant and was not subject to being dispatched to the front. But Zoia with her sharp mind realized that she, a young, healthy, childless woman, would sooner or later be mobilized for some kind of, perhaps unpleasant, work. And she decided to take the bull by the horns. Zoia proposed to the administration of the plant where her husband worked that she take charge of the supply of provisions for the workers of the plant. The proposal was accepted and Zoia began to work.
So here was this young woman, not having had the slightest trade or business experience, not having ever worked even as a simple sales clerk, not having had even a high school education, beginning an undertaking under conditions of war and great shortages. And this very person took upon herself the task of supplying hundreds of workers scattered throughout the taiga and along the Lena under the conditions of the severe North, of the spring mud and the impassable taiga roads.
And the work went well. Zoia sent shiploads of products up and down the Lena, and entire convoys into the taiga. Her organizational talent and ability to direct people emerged, the talent of a guide, of a leader, inherited from her father and, in a larger sense, given to her by nature.
The plant’s administration, seeing how well Zoia managed the acquisition and distribution of food, put her in charge of all the vegetable gardens and the creation of new gardens. And she was successful here as well. Then they entrusted her with the organization and supervision of the renovation of workers’ and employees’ living quarters. And she successfully organized this as well.
“But I didn’t forget about myself,” Zoia openly declared to me. “My apartment was first in line for the renovations.”
The war ended. After her enormous achievement and the joyous awareness of knowing her revealed abilities and strengths, a series of humdrum days set in. The former, quiet pre-war life spent in the shadow of her husband and the reading of books no longer satisfied Zoia.
I understood Zoia’s nature: during my childhood before the revolution I saw, in Siberian cities, such female merchants and gold dealers. There would be an elderly widow who, after the death of her husband, had mines, flour mills, and steamships left to her. In a city such as Blagoveshchensk on the Amur River, such an entrepreneur would leave her home in the morning in her surrey and go to the bank and her enterprises: to the mill, the basin to check the repairs to the steamships, and so forth. She would usually drive the horse and buggy herself. Often she would be barely literate, even unable to sign her name. But what an organizer, what acumen in questions of trade and, in particular, of business obligations and banking laws.
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“That’s not a woman, but a minister,” my late father, an old, experienced barrister, would say about such women. He had dealings with such women who, after the death of their husbands, expanded the enterprises and fed hundreds of people. From the second generation of such entrepreneurs came Zoia.
After the war, Zoia started down a path which, according to Soviet law, is criminal, but in capitalist countries would be called successful business operations. Zoia busied herself with dealing in “gold” coupons.
For each gram of gold turned in to the government through its “Gold Purchasing” department, gold miners received either fifty rubles in cash or a coupon worth the same amount at a special-goods store. These stores were very well supplied. In them were lots of foreign goods—for example, English woolen cloth, which was almost impossible to obtain anywhere. Naturally, there was a great demand for these coupons, in particular by people who had no connection to the mines.
Zoia found out that besides Iakutsk there was a “Gold Purchasing” office in Irkutsk and Novosibirsk where black market dealers purchased these coupons for 600 rubles—that is, twelve times their face value. So Zoia decided to start dealing in these coupons. She began to buy up gold from prospectors and take it to Irkutsk, where she turned it in to the “Gold Purchasing” office and received coupons in return. She then sold the coupons to a speculator. She took a long-term lease on a room in Irkutsk from a landlady who could be trusted. This was very important, since she, a woman, carried large amounts of gold with her and occurrences of robbery were frequent. One had to know with whom you could stay.
During one of these trips from the Iakutsk mines to Irkutsk, Zoia met her future collaborator, Ekaterina Stepanovna, who was in the same line of work. It was convenient for them to join forces: they were safer and less afraid of drawing attention to themselves. Their operations gradually expanded and it became necessary to be more careful in order not to be noticed. In general, they had an agreement: if one of them or both were arrested, under no circumstances were they to confess to the joint venture, but insist that each of them worked individually in order not to be charged with violation of the group law from 7/VIII, for which there were only two penalties, death or a ten-year term. Amnesty was never an option under this law.
When the operations grew, they began to transport gold to Novosibirsk as well. They also rented an apartment in Novosibirsk in order to have a secure place to stay. They often made the Iakutsk-Irkutsk and the Irkutsk-Novosibirsk run by airplane for the sake of speed and comfort. They dressed well. There were suitcases with clothing both at the Irkutsk landlady’s and at the Novosibirsk landlady’s, whom they generously paid and gave gracious gifts to.
Mariia Shapiro, A Soviet Capitalist
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On the last, fateful trip to Novosibirsk, Zoia and Ekaterina Stepanovna brought with them an amount of gold worth no more nor less than 600 thousand rubles. They had decided that on the day of arrival with the gold, Zoia would turn in 150 thousand worth, and then Ekaterina Stepanovna would turn in another 150 thousand rubles’ worth. On the next day they would repeat the procedure with the remaining 300 thousand. Zoia already suspected that they were under surveillance. They instructed their apartment landlady that if one of them or both did not return home that day, under no circumstances was she to call the police, but rather send word to Iakutsk to Zoia’s husband. He would come to pick up her things and the 300 thousand rubles of gold that was left.
On the day of the arrival, Zoia went with half the gold, which they decided to turn in to the “Gold Purchasing” office. She handed in the gold successfully. Zoia said that a speculator approached her to whom she succeeded in passing the coupons. It seemed that this was the same Irkutsk speculator. But when she went outside, she sensed that she was being followed. She encountered a woman who began speaking to her. Wishing to save the woman from any unpleasantness, Zoia asked her to go away. When the woman had barely left, Zoia heard behind her the steps of a man overtaking her and a shout:
“Citizen, stop for one minute.”
Everything was finished.
Ekaterina Stepanovna was arrested the same day either on the street or at the purchasing office itself. The two of them had another agreement: in the event of arrest outside the house, under no circumstances were they to reveal the address of the apartment so that the remaining gold worth 300 thousand rubles would not be lost. However, in spite of the instructions to the landlady, when they both di
d not return that day for the night, the landlady fell into a panic and reported it to the police. In this way the remaining part of the gold was lost.
“Trifles,” laughed both Zoia and Ekaterina Stepanovna, saying, “Money will come with time! Money is a thing that is acquired. It was, and will be, and still be even more.”
I was delighted. Not every capitalist would be so cheerful about the loss of 600 thousand rubles!
For Zoia it was most important to have the investigation and trial proceed not in Novosibirsk but in Iakutsk. In Iakutsk she had a sister who was married to a public prosecutor, another prosecutor was her cousin, and a third was some sort of relative. With such a situation and the fact that the lost 600 thousand in gold did not make up all of their liquid capital, Zoia had good reason to think that if they succeeded in having the trial in Iakutsk they would manage to smother the case and obtain freedom.
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And they succeeded. They were being sent to Iakutsk for trial. It was in the process of being moved to Iakutsk that they were quartered at the Irkutsk prison. Here they waited for the Iakutsk convoy, which was supposed to arrive specially for them, since there was no regular transfer of convicts to Iakutsk.
Among the female criminals Zoia was just like a tamer in a tiger’s cage. For them, I think, her calm and disdainful confidence had a most powerful effect, so that they did not dare touch her. In her, they also saw a procurer of material goods such as themselves, but on an immeasurably greater scale. Sometimes she liked to tease the “tigers,” when they were already gnashing their teeth, but she was far above their criminal ways.
At that time the cell captains were appointed rather than elected by the inmates as before, and one fine day Zoia was appointed captain. How quickly did order enthrone itself in our chaotic cell! There was no extortion, no getting rations out of turn, no special privileges, no fights. Even cursing occurred less frequently.
How did Zoia achieve this? She didn’t scream, as some captains did. She didn’t threaten to complain to the administration. This relative order seemed to come on its own.
I would end almost every one of my sketches about the Russian women whom I met in prisons and transfer points with a question of their destiny. I wanted to know whether they managed to mend the broken threads of their lives. And I would especially have liked to know about the future of Zoia Zhigaleva.
She undoubtedly was an extraordinary person. How often in the ensuing years in the camps would I remember seeing the helplessness of captains and sometimes even the brigadiers before the anarchic criminal convicts, plain hooligans and even those women who were convicted on article 58 [political prisoners]—not criminals, but more vile than the criminals. How often in the Akmolinsk camp during the wild screaming of obscenities and utter lawlessness frequently ending in injury and even murder did I think to myself: “If only Zoia were here!” With her mere presence, with her calm and derisive response to hooligan behavior, she brought order and organization where there had been rampage.
I would say to her: “Zoia, in an earlier time in Russia or in the West, you would have become one of the great agents in the nation’s industry or commerce. But here they consider you a transgressor of the law, a speculator, that is, an enemy of the people.” I didn’t notice that Zoia had any repentance or wish to stop her interrupted activity. On the contrary, temporary failure and a clash with the Soviet laws strengthened her daring and desire for success despite all obstacles.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Valerii Leviatov, My Path to God
The first paragraph of this selection sets the theme. How does a child of committed communists, who feels an intense hatred for religion and believes in its eradication by force, turn to God while a teenager? Cases of this type lead to broader questions peculiar to the twentieth century—what are the psychological factors which make an individual a dissident in a dictatorial state? Originally published as “Kak ia prishel k Bogu” [How I Came to God] in Grani, Nos. 111–112, 1979.
The saying “He was Saul and became Paul” applies to me. Raised by parents who were devoted communists, I was not, like most children my age, simply indifferent to religion—I hated it. I dreamed of the time when the last devout old woman would die and the last church would be closed. I was perturbed with the government for mollycoddling believers. Why wait for the last old woman believer to die? Just close the churches and be done with it. There certainly would be no believers from my generation, that’s for sure. How could an educated person believe in the flood and in a God with a beard? And if you had told me, a ten-year old boy, that in seven years time I would be baptized of my own accord, I would have laughed out loud. But that’s what happened.
With the best of intentions, my parents played a dirty trick on me, but it worked out for the best because I was led to God. With the best of intentions my parents, as did our literature, served up fantasy for reality. They believed that the truth could be harmful to a child’s developing worldview. And so they taught me that the goal they worked for, “man is a friend, comrade and brother to man,” was already achieved or almost achieved; that with rare exceptions, all of our people were good, conscientious, and placed the interests
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of society ahead of their own. But when I encountered life, I found nothing of the kind.
In my children’s books I read about child volunteers who helped the sick and elderly and about teachers who devoted their lives to children, but in life I found none of this, either.
My parents and our writers had obscured my vision with rose-colored glasses and when I removed them, my eyes hurt.
Evtushenko [Evgenii Evtushenko, the poet] wrote that a “chain of inconsistencies could lead to loss of faith.” But he put it very mildly. In fact, inconsistencies did make many lose faith. It’s no accident that among my generation, those who were sixteen or seventeen in 1956, there are so many “superfluous” people. Fortunately, my disillusionment in one faith led me to another. But that all came later. For the time being, at nine and ten years old, I only bumped into sharp corners and sustained bruises.
It began with my ethnicity. My father is Jewish and my mother is Russian. If I don’t look Jewish, than I look even less like a Russian. The first blow was when the kids in the courtyard that we moved to when I was six years old called me a short, small, three-letter word: Yid. The concept of different nationalities was a very vague one for me. Thanks to my parents, I figured approximately thus: there is the Soviet Union and then there are other countries. And those who live in the Soviet Union are all Russians, all Soviets.
When I came home and told my parents that the other children had called me some strange word and refused to play with me, my parents explained that in the dark past Jews were called that word, that my father was indeed a Jew, but now that no longer meant anything. The parents of the children who called me this name were probably just very backward. This consoled me, but then in the courtyard, at school, and the young Pioneer camp, I continued to hear that word.
For a long time I could not understand and tried to explain: “What do you mean, guys? I was born in Moscow, after all. My homeland is Russia, I don’t even know the Jewish language.”
“But you’re still a Yid, since your father’s a Yid,” was the answer.
When I finally came to realize that these kids would never accept me, that I would always remain a Yid to them, even though I was no more Jewish than Russian (and even more Russian than Jewish), and despite the fact that I did not have those character traits for which Jews are despised, I recall how I crawled under the table and cried for hours.
From then on, probably to assert myself, I started to fight with my offenders. I fought often, with all of them, and was often beaten, but the kids in the courtyard came to respect and even like me. And subsequently in every new group, I always had to prove I was bold and brave from the start.
Valerii Lev
iatov, My Path to God
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The courtyard where I grew up caused me to part rather early with the illusions which my parents had spoon-fed me. (I write this now on a positive note. At the time, however, the incongruity of life with my illusions was a tragedy.)
This is the sort of courtyard it was: all the older boys were thieves—some had been jailed for stealing once, some twice, some three times. Our courtyard’s past was shrouded in legends about certain big-time criminals, known throughout the Soviet Union, and about how it used to be that passers-by crossed the street to avoid our building. The courtyard resembled a well—a dark, narrow space surrounded by buildings. Not a single shrub or blade of grass, only asphalt. In the evening the older boys played cards for money and we, the younger ones, hung around, ran after cigarettes and vodka for them, listened, enraptured, to the stories of their criminal life and learned their underground songs. The air was thick with juicy profanity, and bloody fights often broke out between the card players. It’s no wonder that the seven and eight-year old boys cursed as not every adult could, and at eleven or twelve they could split a half-liter of vodka “three ways” and were somber realists. (At twelve I had a much more sober view of life than did my communist parents.)
The Russian Century Page 39
