The Day Will Pass Away

by Ivan Chistyakov

  12 December 1935

  Last night I was warm, but only because I kept my all my clothes on. You feel tied and tethered and weighed down. I spent the day trudging 45 km. After that, the boots mended two days ago were falling apart again. I got to bed at four in the morning.

  13 December 1935

  Out on the tracks again. I ride to Domikan on horseback. Look like I’m going to the wars. The phalanx leader there, a zek, wants to lord it over us. Surprising. Perhaps he would like to try lording it over the prosecutor. An armed guard sings the ballad of faithless Murka. Pleasant baritone. Very moving.

  A sleepless night makes itself felt; my eyelids droop and I’m barely able to keep my eyes open. Then it is one thing after another. I have to imprison one woman, there’s some muddle about an escape, a conflict with the phalanx leader, a knife fight. Someone’s injected something and is dying. To hell with the lot of them! Life doesn’t wait, it passes. I’ll never get today back again. What has it given me? Nothing. The question is more, how much have I lost? For many there’s nothing corrective about these labour camps. The phalanx bookkeeper has five years to serve and he’s still cooking the books. What is he hoping for? What is he expecting? He’ll get it sooner than he thinks.

  14 December 1935

  A bright, joyful, sunny day. A mere minus 34. Soon the Green Attorney will be releasing zeks in large numbers.††† There is talk about it already. We’d be in big trouble without the sloggers, the ordinary prisoners, to rely on.

  15 December 1935

  A long drawn-out hoot from an engine on the Baikal-Amur Mainline. It’s the stop signal. An odd-looking train stops. The freight wagons have a second cladding of planks, there’s glass in the hatches, and a chimney on the roof puffing away as blithely as the engine. The brakes platforms are festooned with all sorts of things: the wheels of a field kitchen, urns for boiling water, bales of straw, tarpaulins, buckets and cauldrons. From the wagons come human voices, neighing of horses, grunting of pigs and mooing of cows. The passengers wear warm tunics and sheepskin jackets, felt boots and Abyssinian-style rag boots. We can see all the men but we also hear a lot of women’s voices. What’s going on?

  What’s going on is that all the women are dressed like men. The first things they unpack are kettles and cooking pots. Y-shaped sticks, kindling, fires, and tea is served. There’s a clattering of pans and bowls, spoons, mugs and buckets. How ridiculous and wonderful that these people have just turned up, found themselves out in the open here, and made themselves at home. Someone strikes up a bawdy song. From the far end of the train comes the clanging of shovels, crowbars and pickaxes. A blacksmith is already working the bellows on a mobile forge.

  There’s a cook with a sack of potatoes on his back, a laundress with washing, and several grooms with hay and buckets. They hack at nearby trees to chop down firewood. Wash themselves, shake out clothing and straw mattresses. One is looking over the terrain, another selects a small, wizened tree for firewood, another may be thinking about home and the familiar places he has left behind, and some may be dreaming of escape. Different people, different perspectives.

  The group stands around smoking. The group argues. One man is working hard to persuade them of something, gesticulating wildly, constantly straightening his hat before it falls off. Some spit with gusto to one side, coughing and clearing their throats. Three walk down the line, inspecting something, stamping on the ground, pointing at the embankment and rails of the old section. One waves a rod at the far distance and round about. The others follow the movements of his hand, turn, consider something, note something down.

  A new phalanx is born.

  In a day’s time there will be tents, huts, dugouts, a whole movable town just a few metres from the railway. It will come to life in the mornings, get quieter during the day, come back to life in the evening. They don’t consider or comment on whether this place is better or worse than the last. Everywhere is much the same to them. They will live here for the next three to five months and then move on. If they get through the winter, every bush will provide shelter in the summer.

  ‘Momma! Momma!’ I hear someone shouting, but it’s not someone’s son or daughter. This is how the 35-ers address their brigade leader. You don’t find that kind of team spirit among the men, they don’t band together the same way. The women are different, but only the 35-ers. They form gangs with thieves’ rules and customs. For them the brigade leader is their ataman, their boss, their godmother. Momma rules everything and everyone. Momma beats or pardons, decides who gets work, feeds them or leaves them to go hungry. Momma is in charge. Men keep themselves to themselves or, occasionally, pair up. When they’re playing cards, whether they’re winning or losing, their sense of what belongs to them counts for more than friendship. They can make a pack of cards in ten minutes, so it’s a waste of time confiscating them. They gamble away anything and everything. They gamble the stores, which means we can expect robberies. They lose and their forfeit is to say something filthy to the guards. They lose parts of their body: fingers and toes, hands. The person who has lost hacks off a finger or a hand in front of everyone and throws it on the table saying, ‘Drink my blood, you parasites!’

  Aksametova, leader of a zek women’s phalanx. BAM – the Second Track

  16 December 193$

  Motorized Unit 10 are leaving. The company commander orders me to supervise the departure. I trudge 13 km there, another 13 back.

  Chernigovka village. A grey winter’s day. Low sky. Here and there smoke rises from people’s chimneys. The smoke is very still, like a pillar to the sky, merging with the background. Not a soul in the streets. Silence. The shadoof stretches its neck high above the huts, trying to look out beyond the village and warning people not to make a noise. There’s a particular smell of smoke, of ordinary hot cabbage soup and the warmth of a hut. An unhurried conversation with its hospitable owner puts my soul at rest. But then I have to march back along the sleepers. How easily I’ve been deprived of even this small happiness in life.

  That is how modest our desires and aspirations are now. It is perfectly true that, for the present, we are a republic on wheels, the front line; for the present we have no rights and cannot yet enjoy the achievements of the First and Third Five-Year Plans, free trade and so on. How many more construction projects will there be? How many more criminals? Siberia is boundless. There’s no shortage of work.

  Many company commanders hit the bottle in the hope of being fired. I have every sympathy for them. I’ll come up with something after I’ve been here a year.

  17 December 1935

  There are talk and rumours that we’ll be going east, or maybe to the Volga-Don Canal project, or to the goldmines in Aldan in Yakutia. Nothing to report today. Emptiness and more emptiness, which is not the same as tranquillity.

  18 December 1935

  Commanders’ training day. Called in by the Third Section, then by company HQ. Change my horse. I’m told it’s a Mongolian Blaze. Looks ungainly but moves all right. I’ll give the nag a go. You’re running around, surrounded by other people, making yourself useful and barely aware of the time. Or standing by the intercom in the phalanx office, a place stained by paraffin fumes and tobacco smoke and which smells of sweat. Some indolent carpenters are reluctantly repairing a partition. If you don’t pay people then that’s the work you get.

  19 December 1935

  The nag is a star. It did 36 km at a trot through a cold night. We went riding along, skirting a hill in the dark. Silhouettes of bushes, telegraph poles, a train coming towards us. Frost. My knees are chilled. The collar of my fur jacket frosts over and my eyelids freeze up. There’s hoar frost everywhere. The horse throws back its head, snorts, waggles its ears. Frost creeps into my sleeves. My gloves are covered in hoar frost from the heat of my hands. You don’t want to turn your body or move your arms. Any movement loses body heat.

  Got ‘home’ at 1.30 a.m. I had a mug of tea with pancakes, yes, pancakes, and then went to bed. Sl
eep is the best. It lets you forget everything and everyone. It’s too cold to undress, it’s cold getting into bed. I’m often cold in the night but I can warm myself by keeping the stove going. That’s nice.

  20 December 1935

  Gap in my memory.

  21 December 1935

  I waste an hour knocking frozen dung off the horse’s hooves. He’s not having it. Keeps butting me with his back and front, the Mongolian devil. I get in the saddle and we’re off. We ride to Zhuravli and back, at a trot and galloping. I tried to catch up with the deputy head of the Education and Culture Unit but no luck. Couldn’t match his fiery steed.

  I spent the afternoon going round the squads. In Moscow Centre the NKVD are celebrating the anniversary of the Cheka with feasting, and here at the railway we are celebrating it in our own way. We have to complete the Second Track at top speed, so there’s no time for holidays, not even a day off. I’m no Chekist and don’t even want a rank, but I would like civilized living conditions. I confiscated a pack of cards and a whole printing works and trekked 20 km on foot. That was how I celebrated Secret Policeman’s Day.

  Like yesterday, I spent a sloppy day at ‘home’. A brigade leader got hit by a train, which cut off his ear and flesh from his thigh. Meanwhile the track is being completed and soon we’ll be off somewhere else. It would be good if we were sent to Russia.‡‡‡ I’ve had enough of interesting places, enough of the Far East. I want no more of it.

  23 December 1935

  Spent the whole day making a billiard table. There was an escape in Phalanx 29 but I’m not going out there. Sod it! I’ve been given a deputy. I expect he . . . Let’s wait and see.§§§

  24 December 1935

  My deputy arrived. He seems all right. I’ll check him out and help him where I can. I’ll be glad if he learns well, it’ll make things easier for me. He might even be my replacement. We went to Phalanx 13, then to Uletui. An unprepossessing zek comes up to us:

  ‘Let me visit Arkhara.’

  I don’t. She drops the angelic tone. Now she’s an animal.

  ‘You won’t let me? I’ll cut someone’s head off and bring it to you. Shoot me if you like.’

  No problem. If need be, we will.

  25 December 1935

  An escape and a half! Group of seven. To hell with them. The top brass care more about the ‘soldiers of the track’ than us. Do they think I’m a ready-made expert who doesn’t need support and guidance? Well, perhaps we can get by without support, but someone needs to take a minimum of interest in the commanders. They’re surprised some get drunk on their day off. Well, what else is there to do? There’s no recreational centre, not even a doss-house like the one I stayed in for those few days in Svobodny. We have nowhere to meet up with friends. I need to let off steam. I need to joke, have a laugh, play the fool, tell tall tales. Where can I do that? Where is the club to meet up with the other commanders? You can’t let your hair down with the squaddies, because commanders and guards look at things differently.

  Here’s an order from Company Commander Gridin, complaining about negligence and so on. Does he think I’m trying for a criminal charge? Does he think I’m my own enemy? That I don’t want to see everything in good order?

  Supposing there is negligence – why could that be? Perhaps because there’s no sense of commitment from anybody else, because there is no incentive, because the whole armed guard organization is . . . whatever the hell it is. You don’t know what you’re supposed to do, how you’re supposed to do it or why. Sometimes, you find you’ve apparently done the right thing, but then the next time you do exactly the same and you’re told it’s completely wrong. You’d like to be doing a good job, but at the same time you think that if you do they might keep you at BAM for the rest of your life. Sod that!

  The newspapers are enough to drive you crazy. They write about what’s being done here, what’s being done there, but they never write about us. All they report are escapes, more escapes, guards arrested and the Revtribunal. Makes me feel really great.

  26 December 1935

  Got back last night at 2 a.m. Freezing cold, with the wind blowing outside and through the building too. It’s best not to talk about it. In the morning I finish off the billiard table, and then from lunchtime I’m at Phalanx 13 in Zhuravli. I have to motivate them, push them. What a lot of tosh I’ve started talking. Wonderful.

  You are on horseback and the ‘soldiers of the track’ are on foot. Hundreds of them on foot to one supervisor on horseback. Suppose ten or twenty decide to take off, what can you do? I feel such despair, such frustration and hopelessness. It would be so much better, almost beyond my wildest dreams, just to be anywhere else, even if it wasn’t Moscow, even if I was somewhere way out in the sticks.

  Just to be shot of all those Article 59.3-ers, 58.7-ers, 35-ers and so on.¶¶¶

  27 December 1935

  Commissioner Morozov from the Third Section: what can he actually do, what guidance is he supposed to offer, when he doesn’t have a clue about the situation or the measures we have already taken, when he doesn’t know that we have already tried everything, we’re not our own enemies, and we’re not trying to get ourselves awarded fatigue details or arrested. All they do is swear at us, punish us: the commissioner, the political adviser, the company commander, the head of the Third Section. That’s all any of them do. Who is there to advise, support and explain? Nobody. Just get on with your job!

  That’s what the Cheka call leadership. I spent from lunchtime to 1 a.m. trudging 26 km to Phalanx 14. Warm breeze and flurries of wet snow. ‘Warm’ for us is minus 27. If you take your hand out of your glove, it’ll go numb. We picked up a stray artist along the way. He was bare-headed and drunk, asked us to take him back to Phalanx 7. With pleasure. We’ll take you there and put you in the cells.

  28 December 1935

  I wait all morning for the squad commanders to turn up for lectures. They appear in time for lunch. I give them two hours on tactics and geometry.

  Shouting and fighting in the phalanx. I go to see what’s going on, truss up two and put them in the sin bin. Osipov got punched in the eye, hard. Pity it wasn’t me. I’d have shot one of them and the rest would soon have calmed down. I bet Company Commander Gridin doesn’t see this side of things. If he actually came and worked here, he’d soon find out what it’s like. Anyone can order people about, for better or worse. Anyone can do it. Anyone can issue demands.

  How can I just get away from BAM? If you can think that one out, head, I’ll buy you a new cap. I don’t have time to think, but I will all the same. I have to get out of this place. I can’t just hit the bottle because I’d only end up in 1 Squad. Can I get myself sacked for incompetence? No platoon commander ever has been, but if anyone thinks up a way to alter that I’ll be next in line. I’ll work something out.

  29 December 1935

  In anything you do, opportunity plays a big part, and your attitude is crucial to success or failure. I don’t see any opportunities yet. Perhaps it’s too soon, but getting a chance is a matter of chance.

  If one turns up, too soon or not, I’ll be waiting for it.

  The phalanxes are gradually reducing. The prisoners are going home. I can only imagine how they feel. What a completely barbaric nightmare the camp must seem to them now, as it does to me. I still can’t believe I am actually working in a forced labour camp. There’s no need to be educated or intelligent here, you just have to stop people escaping. I went to Arkhara. What a dump! You arrive and there’s nowhere you can spend an hour or two relaxing. And it’s minus 37.

  30 December 1935

  It’s cold during the night and I don’t want to get up. The latrine is outside and it’s freezing cold, minus 45. I try to warm up with tea, but it doesn’t help much. My hands are so numb I can barely write. I’d forgotten tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. That’s something that happens for people who live in cities. In two days’ time they’ll be wishing each other success and happiness and so on. No one is going t
o wish us anything other than ten days in a cell or the Revtribunal. The prisoners don’t respond to kindness. Well, too bad! Let’s at least get warm as soon as possible and that will be one thing dealt with. I need to get through the next sixty days. By hook or by crook I shall, but my health is fading, and so is my life, pointlessly.

  I sat chatting with the political instructor. There’s bedlam even among the top brass. Everything is turning against us. I think about the Maikher case: that could happen to me. Best not to cheek the bosses. I’ll wait to see what they have to say to me. I took on a squad who were slobs in terms of their combat and political training and raised their morale. I’m on the road to demob. Maikher actually wants to work here, because in civilian life he’d be a complete loser.

  31 December 1935

  Nothing to note other than that it’s minus 42. A shuttle crashed and a wagon and flat truck derailed.

  Maybe it happened by accident, but maybe it didn’t; maybe someone shoved a trolley under it. Their efforts to lift the wagons were frankly criminal. Faffing about, wasting time, cursing and swearing, but all for show, senseless and disorganized.

  I got stuck in and within an hour the wagons were back in place. A commanding tone of voice is all it takes to get people working effectively. Without authority nothing gets done. They fuss over trivial details and hold everything up. It’s just as well they didn’t block the Ussuriysk track; slacking would not have been tolerated over that.