10 April 1936
My view and understanding of life are becoming more primitive thanks to BAM. That violin awakens memories of times past and my heart quivers with pain. This is such a bad situation. At least the sky is blue. Dusk. Compare the vastness and power of nature to you, a miserable worm. I may have little option but to take my own life. They will condemn but never understand another’s soul, because nobody is interested in how anyone else feels. Where can I find refuge? Where can I escape to and how? Oh, violin, you tear my heart to shreds. I rage and I rejoice. The HQ staff guffaw oafishly, their shallow souls incapable of understanding the profundity of music.
Adjutant Kamushkin would like to get away too. He opposes the company commander and would be glad to see him, his old-fashioned ideas and loutish approach replaced. All I want is to replace my greatcoat for a raincoat. Kamushkin tries to scare me by telling me that once I’m discharged from BAM no one will give me a job. That is tripe, but needs to be thought about. Lavrov, the head of ammunition supplies, is a Muscovite and I sense he’s finding things here heavy going. He’ll get used to it.
I took out my pistol and put it against my throat. It would be so easy to press the trigger and then . . . feel nothing. How easily it could be done, as if you were only joking. It’s nothing to be scared of, nothing supernatural. It’s just like supping a spoonful of soup. I don’t know what held me back. It was all so real, so natural, my hand didn’t even tremble. Oh, life! There are moments when that inner voice is silent. Instead I hear the voice of a would-be duty officer.
‘Put me through to Phalanx 42 . . . Who’s that?’
‘The tailor.’
‘Don’t you have a shoemaker?’
‘No.’
‘Pity!’
What I actually need is the phalanx’s duty officer, not its tailor.
There’s nobody to give my hand.††††
Two zeks have bunked off from Phalanx 11: an Article 59-er and an embezzler of state property, in for ten years.‡‡‡‡ There’s plenty of noise, but no effective action. They ordered a deployment of troops and allocated territories and districts, but couldn’t actually follow through on any plans because there are simply not enough guards. I was summoned by the deputy head of the Third Section for a dressing down and warnings. I just thought to myself, you need to be realistic and actually do something rather than sounding off. There hasn’t been a single conference on methods or any guidance. We know nothing, we have no background information about how to cooperate with the operational group. The man looked stupid, and looked even more stupid when he started trying to seem smart and issue a supposedly smart order. It all ended with a meeting, which began as usual. The top brass in the Third Section were up all night and decided to catch up on their sleep in the morning, but made sure we were all up. The meeting began at noon. My head is leaden. It’s difficult now to remember, think straight and write anything down.
11 April 1936
Everybody’s political state and morale are dire, which causes an aversion to work, and hence escapes. Then, when the situation turns critical – and in the first ten days of April there have been twenty-eight escapes – they start ranting and threatening us with the Revtribunal. They blast us, and the political adviser offers his mite:
‘Regarding the escape from Phalanx 11, the alarm should have been raised and everybody mustered.’
And who, pray, would provide security for a large section in the meantime, relieving the sentries, providing armed escorts? Those same guards? All right, the guards are seen as no better than dogs, which is doubtless why they serve no better than dogs. Another day has passed, so what? They’re all shrieking, ‘We were relying on you!’ Yes, but did you manage to provide us with even the bare minimum, you Chekists, Communists and so on? No. Thank you for all the kind words, but out here in the Far East Region we don’t need your bonuses.
They think they can improve political consciousness and morale by coming down hard on us, without wanting to know the circumstances or learn anything from our situation. People come to the political adviser’s office to respectfully measure his collar size, but don’t even get round to mending our uniforms. They go on and on about escapes and the Guards Unit’s lack of enthusiasm or its inability to do its job, but did the operational group catch the escapees? No! Does that mean they’re no good either?
For the top brass, a guard’s life is cheap and I can tell you why. In the army, if a soldier gets killed they mourn him properly; the command don’t have a ready-made way of acting or responding. But here? The guards are in danger, risking their lives every second of the day. They’re ordered to prevent escapes but also not to kill anyone, and all the while they have to make sure they don’t get their throats cut and their weapons seized from them. The brass choose not to take that into account. You need nerves of steel. A phalanx is filching railway sleepers to burn as fuel. The guards are responsible for the sleepers. They take them off the zeks, firing a shot in the air and causing the woman in charge of the phalanx to faint. Then it’s the guards’ fault for giving the silly bitch a fright. A vicious circle. It’s all very well pontificating about this in your office with your bureaucratic thinking, but how are we supposed to predict how the Third Section will react?
The political adviser jokes, ‘Platoon commanders get tired because of their work and the courses they teach, so they don’t investigate issues.’
What brilliant wit! Commanders and guards are not human beings, why are they getting tired?
They’re completely unfair to the guards. We are now practically ordered to do our supposedly voluntary, out-of-hours service for the community. Meanwhile, what has happened to the instructors in the Education and Culture Unit? They complain the guards don’t help them enough. We don’t help the operational units enough. But when do the operational units help the guards? The zeks run away because their living conditions are terrible and that causes lots of concern. I wonder how they’d take it if I ran away from my living conditions!
The devil himself would be hard pressed to make sense of this place. Some are saying we should stop guarding the 59-ers completely and then they would work better. Others yell, ‘What are you thinking of, letting former armed robbers loose without any guards?’
Actually, Political Instructor Golodnyak was to blame for the Bachevsky episode. Khodzko, the head of the Third Section, mentions my education, and Bachevsky agrees that I’m politically well trained. I have a pain between my eyebrows. I Company has degenerated, 10 Company has degenerated, and there are hints from the two of them that my company commander, Gridin, is a troublemaking one-man disaster zone. In a place like this, everyone degenerates. Me too. Nobody wants to be serving at BAM.
Zeks checking the laying of sleepers on the track. BAM – the Second Track
Backfilling the track with aggregate. BAM – the Second Track
12 April 1936
Tsimmes weather.§§§§ No wind, steaming hot, too warm in a greatcoat. Today is a holiday in Moscow and, if they are having the same weather, there will be excitement, laughter and joy at the stadium. Here our drunk cook ruined breakfast and no one got anything to eat. Now he’s got five days’ in the cells to chew on, and has lost three months’ remission.
Promotion can come quickly at BAM. Tsigankov had no Party documents but was the political adviser of a company, and now he is the commander of a section. The political adviser of I Division, on the other hand, used to be a squad commander.
My first spring not spent in Moscow, apart from when I was in the Red Army. People are being released in batches. Five hundred are due to leave on 15 April. But when will we be released?
13 April 1936
They’ve stripped the platoon down to the point where the deputy commander is on night duty. They are transferring and redeploying zeks¶¶¶¶ and expect us to provide guards to escort them. The section head rings to say, ‘Send us an armed escort’; the Third Section rings, ‘Send us an armed escort’; the division rings, �
��Send us an armed escort’; and so on. Send them to us, even if you have to give birth to them yourself!
Political Instructor Lykov’s wife is giving birth and asks for a horse to take her to the hospital. It’s urgent, but our bunch aren’t sure whether or not that’s allowed; how will the top brass view it? It doesn’t matter if somebody dies, as long as you don’t contravene the regulations and remember to get all the necessary permissions.
The cleaner comes bursting into the office at HQ from the kitchen, shouting, ‘The guards are turning the air blue with their swearing. What sort of job is this? Aren’t we human beings?’ She went on and on and, in her indignation, started swearing herself.
The witches get so indignant, but while they yammer on we just have to put up with it. In fact you can get a flea in your ear if you respond less than diplomatically.
14 April 1936
Every day there’s some new freakish incident that should have consequences for someone. Gridin is throwing his weight about. He didn’t show up to work in the morning. He was sleeping. Then he stayed in the office till midnight and the clerks were all stuck there. At two in the morning he comes out of his office and says to his adjutant:
‘Anyone who doesn’t work out of fear but for a clear conscience can leave!’
Taisumov, not well versed in Russian idioms, asks, ‘What does chief say?’
‘I said you need to work at the prompting of your conscience, not out of fear.’
Terrified, the lad squeals, ‘I work out of fear! Only out of fear!’
I try pressuring the maintenance manager about my room and have him spinning like a top. ‘There’s only me and a few others, and we’ll do it, and you can see for yourself how busy we are.’ They’re so busy that the company commander’s food ration cards aren’t ready yet; the adjutant still needs his shelves fixed, and the company commander wants his apartment whitewashed.
Nature is awakening. The geese are flying north, the rooks are on the cornfields, the larks are singing. A spider rushes in a terrific hurry, a fly buzzes noisily. I feel hot in an overcoat. There’s a haze on the horizon. I don’t remember anything else.
Oh, and then the zek leader of Phalanx 11 lodges a complaint with the section commander and Bachevsky, claiming that the guards are behaving outrageously, not allowing him and the instructor and all the rest on to the work site. The guards are sabotaging the project – we just desperately want to work, etc. We check it out. The instructor is only allowed to move around under guard, and the rest of the zeks had proceeded through the camp zone. Does he think the sentry is a bumhole? It is his duty to stop him. He’d stop us and give us a tap with that truncheon if need be. But it’s noticeable how very swiftly the section head responds to a complaint from a zek. We are to investigate as a matter of urgency and report back. What about our version of events? They don’t want to hear. Well, we’ll investigate the matter.
15 April 1936
I draw a plan for an ammonal store. The sun is blazing hot. I dream and believe I am in Moscow, in Sokolniki Park. There is gymnastics in the stadium and I am training as usual alongside everyone else. They say they stiffen the discipline here with Muscovites, but the opposite is true.
Are we going to have an easy time, after the bustle of the capital, in a hole like the Far East Region? They demand a lot of us: we work eighteen hours a day, live in conditions only fit for a dog, and get paid less than we would in the army. We have a higher likelihood of getting sentenced here than anywhere else. What on earth is the point of it all? Platoon Commander Nikolenko is off. To where we all want to be, away from BAM. Party members, where is your sense of duty?!
He confirms that the political adviser himself would be only too happy to resign. So much for our political motivation and morale. You should just hear the way he shrieks at us, the bastard. What can you say? He’s a time-server.
16 April 1936
Impenetrable darkness, my eyes hurt from straining to see.
3.30 a.m. To arms! Four zeks have escaped from Phalanx 11 under fire. I take five volunteers and we fan out over land, swamp and water. The 15 km forced march warms us up but to no avail. The fugitives are picked up in Zavitaya.
I’m called in to the Third Section by Khodzko and carpeted. He speaks quietly, tactfully, even, but could let rip at any moment. They consider me tantamount to a Party member and promise to discipline me like a miscreant Party member. And prosecute me as a commander. I feel like pointing out to the esteemed head of the Third Section that the escape happened just two hours after his pep talk, but refrain. I need to be diplomatic and not ask for trouble. In the afternoon I photograph an [illegible]. It’s hot. The skylark trills joyously as it rises in the sky. It sings its heart out, rejoicing in the sun, the springtime and its life. I am not rejoicing in my life. I’m dragging out an existence, wasting my life for nothing, for 300 rubles a month. Called to the phone again.
‘Comrade Chistyakov! When is all this disgraceful behaviour you are presiding over going to end? You’ve posted guards at the station and they’re dozing off! You need to choose men with more mettle!’
The guards are not mine, what does this have to do with me? Where am I supposed to find these mettlesome fellows who don’t exist? The Third Section keep trying to lumber us with their work. They have no staff of their own to process arriving and departing prisoners, but soon find people when they want to cause us trouble.
17 April 1936
Walk 15 km to Phalanx 7. Beyond the switching track the railway changes markedly, turning sharply into the hills. It snakes through the slopes in a narrow cutting. The line of the subgrade briefly slices through the hill but then proceeds over a terrace to left and right. To one side is a drop, to the other sandy landslides where the slope has been cut into. There are layers of coloured sand, the roots of trees and bushes, gullies, and telegraph poles which, as you look along the line from above, have the appearance of the teeth of a huge saw. In addition to all this, woodcocks flock in clouds, causing the most amazing commotion in the air.
At Phalanx 7. Clean, bright premises. It’s warm and cosy. I meet the renowned leader of the phalanx, Viuga. Someone locked Shakova in a cupboard and kept her there for two days after sending the guard with some people to Bureya on a fool’s errand, and in the afternoon she turned up, shrieking:
‘The guards are victimizing me. I’m afraid of them, they want to kill me!’
Another incident. Squad Commander Zakharov got TB in the guards and is no longer needed, so he is being fired. While you’re healthy, you’ve got a job; if you’re ill, away with you!
My foot hurts. I got a blister and it spoiled my mood. I had a wash in their bathhouse and felt I was in paradise. After that I would have loved to just go to bed, but had to sit up even though nothing needed to be done. My thoughts broke off, or rather, were broken off. I have to transfer a group of released prisoners to Phalanx 9.
18 April 1936
Went to Phalanx 11 and my head is in such a muddle I don’t feel like writing anything. Sky overcast.
19 April 1936
Escapes from Phalanx 11. Two people today and no reaction from the Third Section. Barbed-wire enclosure with lamps not completed. Neither we nor the Third Section can order or compel that to be done. Why should I want to draw attention to my own powerlessness? Somebody evidently finds it more expensive to construct a secure camp and cheaper to let a few people go missing. There’s a shortage of guards to take prisoners out to work. The guards are accused of failing to provide an armed escort. They are being scapegoated.
How does the camp administration react to the escape? They don’t. It’s nothing to do with them. Our job is to watch them escape and your job is to catch them! Our job is to insult the Armed Guards Unit and yours is to put up with it. Company Commander Gridin rants at Divisional Commander Inyushkin, who doesn’t give a damn. He sticks to his guns and stays at home.
20 and 21 April 1936
Stomach ache. Nausea. I go to the hills with Lavro
v. It’s overcast. I regret not bringing a gun when a couple of grouse take off under our noses. No matter what we start talking about, we always come back to how to get discharged from BAM and how much we don’t want to serve here.
The lads are trying to form a jug band, but when will they find the time to rehearse and play in a day that runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is already overloaded? We have a break from 4 to 8, and then we–re back at it until 2 a.m. Gridin has said that by 10 a.m. tomorrow the volleyball court will be ready. I will come to play.
‘Why are you here so early, Comrade Chief?’
‘What else have I got to do?’
He is right. What else can he do? He can’t talk to anyone because of his rank, and if he starts hanging around at HQ no one is going to be too thrilled. My platoon has been declared ‘special’, which is doubtless a slight advance.
22 April 1936
I just want to forget everything. I have a talk with Adjutant Kamushkin, which makes me feel a bit better. At one point we talk about how erratically the telegraph works.
Political adviser telegraphs: ‘On Thursday daughter all well’. Arrives as: ‘On Thursday doctor farewell’. Another day of my life passes, remarkable only for this incident.
Khodzko calls the political adviser: ‘We need at all costs to hold on to those guards who are trying to resign.’
Response from the guards: ‘Prosecute us if you like, we will not serve.’
Many people imagine serving at BAM must be the happiest time of your life. It just shows how much they know.
I have cramp in my arms and legs. It’s as cold in my ‘room’ as it is outside. I’m forever transient, living this nomadic existence, eternally unsettled. Going to bed preparing to be woken up over some alarm in the night is just great. Rain and hail. Is it really going to be like this for long, for a whole lifetime? The hairs stir on my head.
The Day Will Pass Away Page 12