People don’t think. They throw away the few blessings we have: warmth, food, work that is light in comparison with what most people have here. Human beings always just hope for the best, which is destructive and pointless and against their own interests. Live for ages, learn for ages, and you’ll probably still end up dying a fool.
The company commander has nevertheless had a treat in store for me, may he be struck by a thunderbolt! I am on the career ladder. He is giving me a bonus, so now, like a serf, I’ll be in the military for decades. How do I get out of this one?
What can I think up? I’ve been here just three months, two of them completely on my own. A new man in an unfamiliar job. They took me on when the political instructor was away. I had to work at it, invent, slog and wriggle my way out of trouble, with no real support (or unreal support, come to that).
What a job! Still, Lawrence of Arabia didn’t start out legendary. I’ll get stuck in. The political adviser came in the evening. Gave me a pep talk – keep up the good work. He played billiards with me until four in the morning then left. It was entertainment of a sort, or at least the nearest we come to it. Should I make a go of it at BAM? That would be stupid, the easy way out. When spring comes it will be even harder. For me, freedom is over 80 per cent of what life is about. Minus 38, wind. You can turn one side then the other to the stove, but at the moment we have the right to turn only one side of us towards life.
22 January 1936
Looked out the window and pondered. I’m not in prison but what’s the difference? Emptiness all around. It’s cold and windy. I don’t feel like walking, and anyway there’s nowhere to go. Today is my day off but I feel ill at ease, so what sort of break is that? The Plan has us spending the winter here.
23 January 1936
I go wading through knee-high snow in the forest to Territory 14 and all I can think about is how to get fired. Even the incident with the sparkies didn’t make much of an impression on me. They’re madcaps who don’t want to go to the phalanx and that’s all there is to it. They stripped naked in 40 degrees of frost and ran all the way from the station to the phalanx. The little devils didn’t freeze to death but it beats me why they did it.
There’s no way you can get women to go into the guardhouse cells, so they’ve worked out a ploy. They put a newly arrived armed guard on duty with a pencil and paper. The women are called out, questioned, and then told to wait inside while he clarifies something, then they repeat it with the next ones.
I brought back ten kilos of soused apples. How great it is to eat something tart. Underneath my bunk is like an icebox and the apples freeze. This is the life! I walked to Uletui wearing a greatcoat this evening. The cold got to me. The oil lamp is flickering and smoking. I imagine after BAM I will find electric light amazing. January is passing, but then there will be February, then March. Spring and summer will fly by. Why are we always in such a hurry? Where do we think we are going? Damned if I know. You rush ahead expecting things to get better, but after all that waiting we look and find life has flown by. I am pleased about that bonus, but I also really don’t want promotion. It looks like a future of serfdom beckons.
24 January 1936
Wish it would warm up. Firewood is an issue, so is life, and so is the end of the project. Increasingly, the guards’ relationship with the prisoners is becoming an issue. The zeks are burning railway sleepers by the cartload. They poach a few from here, a few from there, and in total they destroy thousands. So many that it’s terrifying to think about. The top brass either can’t or won’t recognize that it is because these people must be given firewood, and that their burning of sleepers is the expensive alternative right now and in the future. In all probability, just like me, nobody actually wants to be working here at BAM, and that’s why they don’t pay attention to anything. The brass, the Party members, the old Chekists, all work in a slapdash way, not giving a damn about anything. What, I wonder, should I be doing? I’ve got no chance of demob for now so I’ll need to accept my commendation, but stay alert. Then there are the soldiers, blast them. They’re just figureheads. The prisoners only want to get to the end of their sentence. Voluntary paid labourers come to BAM only if absolutely nowhere else will have them. People like Sinilov and Zuinin are just tailor’s dummies, dead wood. It might be something if they could behave professionally, but they don’t even do that. Discipline is maintained solely by fear of the Revtribunal.
You have to be an actor. Do I need promotion? Would I be better off as a company commander?
25 January 1936
You work better and more enthusiastically if you are getting support, advice, instructions from your superiors. Many trials are easier to bear. The constant tension, the hierarchy of rank, the endless rushing around, that’s the army way of doing things.
I got really chilled last night. I sneeze, and snot flies out like a blowout from a borehole. The days are getting longer and sunnier but no more cheerful. Our joy will be pure and unalloyed only when BAM releases us.
I spent the whole day writing the wall newspaper for the guards to read.
What does a person actually need? Three sets of underwear and bed linen, three pairs of leg wrappings and socks, felt boots, ordinary boots, three handkerchiefs, a uniform, a blanket, a pillow, and that’s it. Just add a little money and I’d need no more. We live in penury at BAM.
27 January 1936
On the march to Bureya. That is, 9 km to Phalanx 29 and 28 km back home. We are not allowed on to the bridge. What sort of NKVD commander am I? Our own units want nothing to do with us. I’m tired of writing about how disorganized everything is. A couple of goats ran to within 300 m of the phalanx. While we were running about looking for a rifle they flashed their tails and were gone. One even had the cheek to run under the bridge. I got back at five in the morning. Too cold to sleep, of course. I piled whatever I could find on top of myself. It was heavy and I was still cold. I had a fit of not wanting to do anything, and thinking there’s nothing agreeable to look forward to. Morozov, the Third Section’s commissioner, is equally discouraging about the prospects of discharge. Time will tell. There must be some means of escape.
28 January 1936
How unhelpful regulations always are, and here in particular. We are trying to send off a contingent of prisoners. Some were accepted and checked in, some were not but went anyway. The commissioner was cursing, we were protesting. He was right and so were we. If anything goes wrong it will be our fault. If we had not sent them on it would have been our fault too. Either way. On top of everything else there’s the Plan, may the devil drag it down to hell. BAM is exile for all of us, prisoners and ‘free’ alike.
Yesterday’s exhaustion is making itself felt today too. If I had a separate room I could leave the lads and go to bed at seven in the evening, but as things are that would be embarrassing.
Whatever next? One of the women sewed a skirt out of a mattress cover. How are we supposed to find out where she put it or who she’s sold it to? I ought to write home but what is there to tell? I just want to sleep.
29 January 1936
My neck has frozen up and I can’t bend or turn it. I have a headache and a runny nose. Went out to Territories 13 and 14. Squad Commander Sivukha goads his grey along at a gallop but my devil of a horse, snorting and twitching its ears and straining at the reins, doesn’t let me take the lead.
My heart is so desolate, it alarms me.
I feel as if I’m not living in the real world but in some weird, unearthly world in which I can live and think but can’t speak my thoughts. I can move, but everything is constrained. The sword of the Revtribunal hangs over everything I do. I feel constantly held back: you mustn’t do this, you mustn’t do that. Although I feel solidarity with society, I feel cut off from it by an insurmountable, if fragile, partition. I’m aware of my own strength, yet at the same time feel weak and powerless, a nonentity. I feel hopelessness and apathy, almost despair, that so much cannot be achieved. I stumble blindly alo
ng the paths of this world, unable to work out what is allowed and what is not. The thought that drills into my brain is, ‘How long will this go on for?’ A lifetime? I have at least ten years of life ahead of me and I’m not being allowed to live them like a normal human being. Must I despair? We have to fight for every stupid little thing: a visit to the bathhouse, sugar, matches, clean linen, and more besides. As for heat, firewood, we almost risk our lives for that. We, the armed guards, are powerless.
30 January 1936
A purge of the guards. They retain the best.
I ought to learn from that. I am tired of writing about all the wrongdoing and bad things. But what good things can I find to write about? Perhaps the white bread roll the political instructor brought? I write a monthly report for BAM that isn’t without an element of fiction. There really doesn’t seem to be that much to do here, and yet I’m busy all day. Later in the day I feel shivery. I sit in my greatcoat close to the stove and my head feels leaden. There is no doctor or medicine here if you fall ill. So far, so good.
31 January 1936
January is over, joyless and bitter. February and March will come to an end in just the same way, and so will life at BAM. Today the sun cheered us with some heat. It warms you a little, and for that I’m grateful. I have a cough and a headache but will try to ignore them. I ought to go out hunting, but am I up to it? The zeks pilfered a load from a food truck. Nobody will do anything about it. They’ll trade a sack of sugar or cereal or whatever for vodka.
Thanks for that, at least, they’ll say. Soviet power is looking after us, even out here.
1 February 1936
It’s relatively warm. The result of the general review shows we are one person short. Where he went and when, nobody knows.
I’m wakened at one in the morning to go and see the head of the Third Section. I go with a guard to Uletui. A train passes quietly, almost soundlessly. I sit about all day reading newspapers, which proclaim that life has become better, life has become merrier! ‘Where would that be?’ I ask myself ‘Do you mean here at BAM?’ Here we are just running out of the last of our dried potato. So far, the life we live is purely theoretical. It is whatever they say it is in the newspapers. If you try talking out loud about the real state of affairs you’ll be in big trouble. I wish we could hand over this section of the track as soon as possible. It really is best not to read the newspapers or you might go out of your mind. But still, why? Why was I selected for BAM? Why Doronin?
The day is noticeably longer. Now for some warmth, please! I’ll start sketching. Perhaps I can lose myself in that.
2 February 1936
We spend the morning waiting for the BAM hikers to arrive. They are walking from Svobodny to Vladivostok wearing gas masks and with a dog called Jim. They are walking in felt boots. The world of sport long ago recognized the unsuitability of felt boots as sportswear. I am really not very interested in this event, as my personal life bears a closer resemblance to a battered tin can than to a life.
We give them a few tips and accompany them as far as Zhuravli, yet I still envy them a bit because for many days they will not be under the threat of raids and the BAM rules and regulations. Lucky them!
3 February 1936
Two guards have hit the bottle. Well, perhaps that’s only to be expected. Let’s face it, none of us has much to be happy about. There simply is nothing. Groats and meat. Some people pass the time by going to the theatre, but we don’t have one. Some find other ways. Some turn to drink, and luckily we can buy as much alcohol as we want here. This place drives you to drink.
Cover of a magazine for BAMLag guards: Bulletin of the Consultative Bureau of BAMLag NKVD Armed Guards, No.1, 1935. State Archive of the Russian Federation.
Perhaps I’m only imagining it, but I think it is getting warmer and the sun is getting brighter. I go with the political instructor to Zhuravli and he complains about life quite openly. I completely understand and sympathize. Why try to hide it? Things are bad. Quite apart from the money, we are likely to be serving here for three years. If you can save a bit of money then go home and get married after the army, buy some things for yourself . . . But for us? We earn just enough to stay alive. For now I have only one idea for getting out: write a complaint detailing all the charms of this place.
But who knows? Perhaps some opportunity will come along, they always do, everywhere, for everyone. The days are becoming noticeably longer.
4 February 1936
A dog starts barking furiously in the night. I send out a sentry and hear: ‘Who goes there? Halt!’
He rushes in.
‘Comrade Platoon Commander, someone is asking to see you. They know your name.’
I have to get up. They are skiers, wearing helmets and carrying pistols. They come in and sit themselves around the stove to warm up. They seem safe, but how can I be sure? We need to disarm them.
I seize my pistol and the sentry has his truncheon at the ready.
‘Put down your weapons!’
‘What’s the problem, comrade? Why?’
‘Hand over your weapons!’
I take them.
‘ID!’
They hand it over. It’s all in order. The duty officer of the Third Section is by the intercom.
‘How’s the file? Any information?’
‘No.’
‘Should we let them proceed?’
They warm themselves up. I give them each an apple, return their pistols, and they set off again (on foot through the snow, Russian-style). I go with them to Zhuravli and we pick up another skier there. He is quite awkward, but that’s just how young people are. They head on to Arkhara. Nobody has organized any food or a place for them to stay. That’s the way our sports organizations work. That’s what enthusiasm comes up against. You can only conclude that we still have a lot of work to do, a lot of inertia and bureaucracy to break down.
5 February 1936
The sun warms us more kindly, and is even quite hot. During the day it gets as warm as 15–18 degrees. Not long now until summer and more escape attempts. The shortages of food, shoes and underwear are so tiresome. We are promised everything, and in the Centre they clearly think we are living in a paradise. In reality, we are living in theories. We have theoretical semolina, butter and new uniforms. Theoretically the Centre is thinking about us. That’s supposed to be encouraging. For some reason I simply do not believe it. Perhaps I’m the wrong sort of person. I would like to be provided, simply and without rhetoric, with the basic necessities. Today we had dumplings and home-made noodles etc. Tomorrow, it will be home-made noodles and dumplings, and that has been going on for the past month.
We have 40 km to cover. I’ve tried to avoid this so many times, but it has to be done. At least there was no walking. I got as far as the bridge but was not allowed through. The guards are within their rights, but our superiors . . . Whether they don’t want to, or can’t be bothered, or are mesmerized by their own red tape, or most probably are just incompetent, you can sum it all up in one word: BAM. Got to Phalanx 29 at 5 p.m., covered in mud. It’s a wonder the guards can still stand. For some of them it’s at least better than forced labour, others need to earn extra money, and some are under the sword of the Revtribunal. So life continues. That’s the level we’re on. Everyone gets issued one sheet and one towel. Find a solution to that! You have to wash every day and sleep on that sheet. The guards who came here for the pay have already seen the error of their ways and repent bitterly and loudly. Some of them amaze me. They have worked at the White Sea Canal, the Turkestan-Siberia Railway, and now are working at BAM. What kind of people are they? Fools, idiots, or people incapable of finding better work and unable to fit into normal life?
Shatakhin wants to resign and go to Rostov. Rostov may be okay. The things you grew up with, or memories of the happiest days of your life, make you want to go back to a place. I would much prefer to live in any run-down corner of Moscow than in the centre of Leningrad. Party members are made to st
ay on by a system of coercion known as Party discipline, while non-Party members are kept here on the basis of some government decree or order which no one has ever actually read, or even seen.
6 February 1936
At Phalanx 14 my Mongolian demon steed digs his heels in and will not move. I whip him and drag him by the reins, to no avail. Then we cover 8 km at a gallop. On the way back I come across Osmachko, the zek leader of Phalanx 13. A pair of fine horses are smoothly speeding his sledge along, while my demon gallops the whole way back, covered in foam, tossing his head, snorting. A real demon.
You can sense that the thaw will start tomorrow. I spend the night in the warm. What a joy! What pleasure!
7 February 1936
I’ve started getting everyone out for gymnastics in the morning. They are not as dozy as they were. It’s warm and overcast, the air humid and misty. Your feet are not cold in leather boots. If I’m honest with myself, we live the life of convicts. A guard is on duty at the work site from 7 a.m. till six in the evening. He has to keep an eye on those sluts, and there are 300 of them. He comes back and needs to rest, but instead there are classes. His eyes are closing but he has sentry duties. So who has more freedom, the zeks or us?
Warm again! I was even quite hot last night. We’re slowly getting started on a bridge, but there is talk that we will soon be heading east. There’s noticeably more daylight.
And it’s quite warm. I go out in a greatcoat and leather boots, but somehow my heart is uneasy. You know that for escapes you will only get ten days in the cooler, but still, why the hell should I have to put up with that? Morozov, the Third Section’s commissioner, has been specially trained for this job. Not surprising: most people go to normal Soviet schools.
I, forgive the immodesty, find it difficult to be that stupid. I am a Muscovite, and even some remembered ramshackle fence in the Moscow suburbs seems near and dear to me. But no one is going to understand or be interested in my moods. You sit all evening in your allocated three square metres and slowly go round the bend. You could turn into a complete idiot. You have to learn to resist it.
The Day Will Pass Away Page 8