Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

  Katsenelenbogen was a poet, the laureate of the State security organs.

  He recounted with admiration how, during a break at the last Party Congress, Stalin had asked Yezhov why he had carried punitive measures to such extremes; Yezhov, confused, had replied that he had been obeying Stalin’s own orders. Stalin had turned to the delegates around him and said, ‘And he’s a Party member.’

  He talked about the horror Yagoda had felt . . .

  He reminisced about the great Chekists, connoisseurs of Voltaire, experts on Rabelais, admirers of Verlaine, who had once directed the work of this vast, sleepless building.

  He talked about a quiet, kind, old Lett who had worked for years as an executioner; how he always used to ask permission to give the clothes of the man he had just executed to an orphanage. The next moment he would start talking about another executioner who drank day and night and was miserable if he didn’t have any work to do; after his dismissal he began visiting State farms around Moscow and slaughtering pigs; he used to carry bottles of pig’s blood around with him, saying it had been prescribed by a doctor as a cure for anaemia.

  He told of how, in 1937, they had executed people sentenced without right of correspondence every night. The chimneys of the Moscow crematoria had sent up clouds of smoke into the night, and the members of the Communist youth organization enlisted to help with the executions and subsequent disposal of the bodies had gone mad.

  He told Krymov about the interrogation of Bukharin, about how obstinate Kamenev had been. Once, when he was developing a theory of his, trying to generalize, the two of them talked all through the night.

  He began by telling Krymov about the extraordinary fate of Frankel, an engineer who had been a successful businessman during the NEP period.fn1 At the very beginning of NEP, he had built a car-factory in Odessa. In the mid-twenties he had been arrested and sent to Solovki. From there, he had sent Stalin the outlines of a project that, in the words of the old Chekist, ‘bore the mark of true genius’.

  In considerable detail, with full economic and scientific substantiation, he had laid out the most efficient manner of exploiting the vast mass of prisoners in order to construct roads, dams, hydroelectric power stations and artificial reservoirs.

  The imprisoned ‘Nepman’ became a lieutenant-general in the MGB – the boss appreciated the importance of his ideas.

  The twentieth century finally intruded upon the sacred simplicity of penal servitude, the simplicity of spade, pick, axe, saw and gangs of convicts. The world of the camps was now able to absorb progress; electric locomotives, conveyor belts, bulldozers, electric saws, turbines, coal-cutters, and a vast car- and tractor-park, were all drawn into its orbit. It was able to assimilate cargo and passenger aircraft, radio communications, machine-tools, and the most up-to-date systems for dressing ores. The world of the camps planned and gave birth to mines, factories, reservoirs and giant power stations. The headlong pace of its development made old-fashioned penal servitude seem as touching and absurd as the toy bricks of a child.

  Nevertheless, in Katsenelenbogen’s view, the camp still lagged behind the world that fed it. There were still all too many scholars and scientists whose talents remained unexploited . . .

  The Gulag system had yet to find a use for world-famous historians, mathematicians, astronomers, literary critics, geographers, experts on world painting, linguists with a knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Celtic dialects. The camp had not yet matured to the stage when it could make use of these people’s specialized skills. They worked as manual labourers, or as trusties in clerical jobs or in the Culture and Education Section; or else they wasted away, unable to find any practical application for their vast knowledge – knowledge that often would have been of value not only to Russia, but to the whole world.

  Krymov listened. To him, Katsenelenbogen was like a scholar talking about the most important task of his life. He wasn’t merely glorifying the camps and singing their praises. He was a genuine researcher, constantly making comparisons, exposing shortcomings and contradictions, revealing similarities and contrasts . . .

  Of course there were also shortcomings on the other side of the wire, although in an incomparably less gross form. There were many people – in universities, in publishing houses, in the research institutes of the Academy – who were neither engaged in the tasks for which they were most suited, nor working to their full capacity.

  In the camps, Katsenelenbogen went on, the criminals wielded power over the political prisoners. Unruly, ignorant, lazy and corrupt, all too ready to engage in murderous fights and robberies, they were a hindrance both to the productivity of the camps and to their cultural development. But then, even on the other side of the wire, the work of scholars and important cultural figures was often supervised by people of poor education and limited vision.

  Life inside the camps could be seen as an exaggerated, magnified reflection of life outside. Far from being contradictory, these two realities were symmetrical.

  Now Katsenelenbogen spoke not like a poet, not like a philosopher, but like a prophet.

  If one were to develop the system of camps boldly and systematically, eliminating all hindrances and shortcomings, the boundaries would finally be erased. The camp would merge with the world outside. And this fusion would signal the maturity and triumph of great principles. For all its inadequacies, the system of camps had one decisive point in its favour: only there was the principle of personal freedom subordinated, clearly and absolutely, to the higher principle of reason. This principle would raise the camp to such a degree of perfection that finally it would be able to do away with itself and merge with the life of the surrounding towns and villages.

  Katsenelenbogen had himself supervised the work of a camp design office; he was convinced that, in the camps, scientists and engineers were capable of solving the most complicated problems of contemporary science or technology. All that was necessary was to provide intelligent supervision and decent living conditions. The old saying about there being no science without freedom was simply nonsense.

  ‘When the levels become equal,’ he said, ‘when we can place an equals sign between life on either side of the wire, repression will become unnecessary and we shall cease to issue arrest warrants. Prisons and solitary-confinement blocks will be razed to the ground. Any anomalies will be handled by the Culture and Education Section. Mahomed and the mountain will go to meet each other.

  ‘The abolition of the camps will be a triumph of humanitarianism, but this will in no way mean the resurgence of the chaotic, primeval, cave-man principle of personal freedom. On the contrary, that will have become completely redundant.’

  After a long silence he added that after hundreds of years this system might do away with itself too, and, in doing so, give birth to democracy and personal freedom.

  ‘There is nothing eternal under the moon,’ he said, ‘but I’d rather not be alive then myself.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Krymov. ‘That’s not the heart of the Revolution. That’s not its soul. People say that if you work for a long time in a psychiatric clinic you finally go mad yourself. Forgive me for saying this, but it’s not for nothing you’ve been put inside. You, comrade Katsenelenbogen, ascribe to the security organs all the attributes of the deity. It really was time you were replaced.’

  Katsenelenbogen nodded good-humouredly.

  ‘Yes, I believe in God. I’m an ignorant, credulous old man. Every age creates the deity in its own image. The security organs are wise and powerful; they are what holds sway over twentieth-century man. Once this power was held by earthquakes, forest-fires, thunder and lightning – and they too were worshipped. And if I’ve been put inside – well, so have you. It was time to replace you too. Only the future will show which of us is right.’

  ‘Old Dreling’s going back home today, back to his camp,’ said Krymov, knowing that his words would not be wasted.

  ‘Sometimes that vile old man disturbs my faith,’ Katsenelenbogen replied.


  Footnotes

  fn1 New Economic Policy: a period (1921–4) of relative liberalization.

  57

  Krymov heard a quiet voice saying: ‘It’s just been announced that we’ve routed the German forces at Stalingrad. I think Paulus has been captured, but I couldn’t quite make it out.’

  He let out a scream. He was struggling, kicking at the floor. He wanted to talk to that crowd of people in padded jackets and felt boots . . . The sound of their voices was drowning the quiet conversation that was going on beside him. He was in Stalingrad . . . Grekov was making his way towards him over piles of rubble . . .

  The doctor was holding him by the hand and saying: ‘You must break off for a while . . . repeated injections of camphor . . .’

  Krymov swallowed down a ball of salty saliva. ‘No, I’m quite all right, thanks to the medicine. You can carry on. But you won’t get me to sign anything.’

  ‘You will sign, in the end,’ said the investigator, with the good-natured assurance of a factory foreman. ‘We’ve had people more difficult than you.’

  This second interrogation session lasted three days. At the end of it Krymov returned to his cell.

  The soldier on duty placed a parcel wrapped in white cloth beside him.

  ‘You must sign for this parcel, citizen prisoner.’

  Krymov read through the list of contents: onion, garlic, sugar, white rusks. The handwriting was familiar. At the end of the list was written: ‘Your Zhenya’.

  ‘Oh God, oh God.’ He began to cry.

  58

  On 1 April, 1943 Stepan Fyodorovich Spiridonov received an extract from the resolution passed by the college of the People’s Commissariat of Power Stations. He was to leave Stalingrad and become the director of a small, peat-burning power station in the Urals. It wasn’t such a very terrible punishment; he could well have been put on trial. Spiridonov didn’t say anything about this at home, preferring to wait till the bureau of the obkom had come to their decision. On 4 April, 1943 he received a severe reprimand from the bureau of the obkom for abandoning his post without leave at a critical time. This too was a lenient decision; he could well have been expelled from the Party. But to Stepan Fyodorovich it seemed cruelly unjust; his colleagues in the obkom knew very well that he had remained at his post until the last day of the defence of Stalingrad; that the Soviet offensive had already begun when he crossed to the left bank to see his daughter who had just given birth in a barge. He had tried to protest during the meeting, but Pryakhin had replied sternly:

  ‘You have the right to appeal against this decision to the Central Control Commission. For my part, I think that comrade Shkiryatov will consider this decision over-lenient.’

  ‘I am certain that the Commission will annul this decision,’ Stepan Fyodorovich had insisted, but he had heard stories about Shkiryatov. In the event, he preferred not to appeal.

  In any case, he was afraid that there were other reasons for Pryakhin’s severity. Pryakhin knew of the family ties between Spiridonov, Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova and Krymov; he was hardly likely to be well-disposed towards a man who knew that he himself was an old friend of Krymov’s.

  Even if he had wanted to, it would have been quite impossible for Pryakhin to support Spiridonov. If he had done, his enemies – and there are always more than enough of them around a man in a position of power – would have immediately informed the appropriate authorities that, out of sympathy for Krymov, an enemy of the people, Pryakhin was supporting the cowardly deserter, Spiridonov.

  It seemed, however, that Pryakhin hadn’t even wanted to support Spiridonov. He evidently knew that Krymov’s mother-in-law was now living in Spiridonov’s flat. He probably also knew that Yevgenia Nikolaevna was in correspondence with her, that she had recently sent her a copy of her letter to Stalin.

  After the meeting was over, Spiridonov had gone down to the buffet to buy some sausage and some soft cheese. There he had bumped into Voronin, the head of the oblast MGB. Voronin had looked him up and down and said mockingly: ‘Doing your shopping just after you’ve incurred a severe reprimand! You are a good little housekeeper, Spiridonov.’

  Spiridonov had given him a pathetic, guilty smile. ‘It’s for the family. I’m a grandfather now.’

  Voronin had smiled back and said: ‘And there was I, thinking you were preparing a food-parcel.’

  ‘Well, thank God I’m being sent to the Urals,’ Spiridonov had thought. ‘I wouldn’t last long if I stayed here. But what’s going to become of Vera and her little boy?’

  He had been driven back to the power station in the cab of a truck. He had sat there in silence, looking through the misted-over glass at the ruined city he would soon be leaving. He remembered how his wife had once gone to work along this pavement now covered in bricks. He thought how the new cables from Sverdlovsk would soon arrive at the station and he himself would no longer be there. He thought about the pimples his grandson was getting on his hands and chest from malnutrition. He thought that a reprimand really wasn’t as bad as all that. And then he thought that he wouldn’t be awarded the medal ‘For the defenders of Stalingrad’. For some reason this last thought upset him more than everything else; more than the imminent parting from the city he was tied to by his work, by his memories of Marusya, by his whole life. He started to swear out loud.

  ‘Who’ve you got it in for now, Stepan Fyodorovich?’ asked the driver. ‘Or did you forget something at the obkom?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Stepan Fyodorovich. ‘But it hasn’t forgotten me.’

  Spiridonov’s flat was cold and damp. The empty windows had been boarded over and there were large areas where the plaster had fallen from the walls. The rooms were heated only by paraffin stoves made from tin. Water had to be carried in buckets, right up to the third floor. One of the rooms had been closed off and the kitchen was used as a storeroom for wood and potatoes.

  Stepan Fyodorovich, Vera and her baby, and Alexandra Vladimirovna all lived in the large room that had previously been the dining-room. The small room next to the kitchen, formerly Vera’s, was now occupied by Andreyev.

  Spiridonov could easily have installed some brick stoves and had the ceilings and walls replastered; he had the necessary materials and there were workmen at hand. He had always been a practical and energetic man; now, though, he seemed uninterested in such matters. As for Vera and Alexandra Vladimirovna, they seemed almost to prefer living amid this destruction. Their lives had fallen apart; if they restored the flat, it would only remind them of all they had lost.

  Andreyev’s daughter-in-law, Natalya, arrived from Leninsk only a few days after Alexandra Vladimirovna had arrived from Kazan. Having quarrelled with the sister of her late mother-in-law in Leninsk, she had left her son with her and come to stay for a while with her father-in-law.

  Andreyev lost his temper with her and said:

  ‘You didn’t get on with my wife. And now you’re not getting on with her sister. How could you leave little Volodya behind?’

  Her life in Leninsk must have been very difficult indeed. As she went into Andreyev’s room for the first time, she looked at the walls and ceiling and said: ‘Isn’t this nice?’

  It was hard to see what was nice about the twisted stovepipe, the mound of plaster in the corner and the debris hanging from the ceiling.

  The only light came through a small piece of glass set into the boards nailed over the window. This little porthole looked out onto a view that was far from cheerful: a buckled iron roof and some ruined inner walls that were painted blue and pink in alternate storeys.

  Soon after her arrival, Alexandra Vladimirovna fell ill. Because of this she had to postpone her visit to the city centre; she had intended to go and look at the ruins of her own house. To begin with, in spite of her illness, she tried to help Vera. She lit the stove, washed nappies, hung them up to dry, and carried some of the rubble out onto the landing; she even tried to bring up the water. But her illness kept getting worse; she shivere
d even when it was very hot and would suddenly begin to sweat in the freezing kitchen.

  She was determined not to go to bed and she didn’t let on how bad she was feeling. And then one morning, going to get some wood from the kitchen, she fainted; she fell to the floor and cut her head. Vera and Spiridonov had to put her to bed.

  When she had recovered a little, she called Vera into the room.

  ‘You know, I found it harder to live with Lyudmila in Kazan than to live with you here. I came here for my own sake, not just to help you. But I’m afraid I’m going to cause you a lot of trouble before I’m back on my feet.’

  ‘Grandma, I’m very happy to have you here,’ said Vera.

  But Vera’s life really was very difficult. Wood, milk, water – everything was difficult to obtain. It was mild outside, but the rooms themselves were cold and damp; they needed a lot of heating.

  Little Mitya had a constant stomach-ache and cried at night; he wasn’t getting enough milk from his mother. Vera was busy all day – going out to get milk and bread, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, dragging up buckets of water. Her hands were red and her face was raw from the wind and covered in spots. She felt crushed by the constant work, by her constant feeling of exhaustion. She never did her hair or looked in the mirror and she seldom washed. She was always longing to sleep. By evening she was aching all over; her arms, legs and shoulders were all crying out for rest. She would lie down – and then Mitya would begin to cry. She would get up, change his nappies, feed him and walk about the room with him for a while. An hour later he would start crying again and she would have to get up. At dawn he would wake up for good; her head aching, still dazed with sleep, she would get up in the half-darkness, fetch some wood from the kitchen, light the fire, put some water on to boil for everyone’s tea, and start doing the laundry. Surprisingly, she was no longer irritable; she had become meek and patient.

  Everything was much easier for her after Natalya arrived.