‘I apologize, Commissar, I’ve had enough sleep. I’ll get up now and go to the holiday home‡‡‡‡‡ for three days. I’ve been promised a place there by the head of the Third Section.’
‘What for?’
‘Because I didn’t want to talk to him.’
‘That was silly. You should consider it an honour to talk to a chief.’
‘He wasn’t talking to me, he was swearing at me.’
‘But our senior officers are supposed to swear, otherwise what sort of bosses would they be?’
‘Well, he’s the head of the Third Section, so he should do his swearing over there, but I’m in charge of the platoon here, so we’re both bosses. I can swear better than him, too, but I didn’t say a word.’
The weather is foul. Rain and cold, mud up to your knees. I walk through Zavitaya with the head of combat training, squelching, not bothering to pick our way because everywhere is equally muddy, and we debate. I bet it’s not as wet as this in Moscow. What wretch had the bright idea of dumping us here? Why didn’t they ask us first?
The May Day bonuses have been announced, rewarding both commanders and guards. Not me, which I am glad about. The boss has gone off to the line at Arkhara. Afanasiev is enjoying a good shave, and it’s good for a chief to get a breath of fresh air. They’ve put together quite some division. The divisional commander is barely literate, and the same goes for the platoon commanders and political officers. Doronin, Karpenko, Sergeyev, Soloviov . . .
One was a squad commander, the others are former guards. How amusing.
11 May 1936
There’s never a day without some new miracle. Today is supposed to be a day off, but the boss is short of things to do at home. He is poking around HQ. He calls me in:
‘What have you got going on at Phalanx 11? You just sit there. Not a damn thing is getting done and you are doing nothing about it! Get out there now! How many times do I have to tell you? When are you going to start working properly? There’s the divisional commander himself going to inspect the phalanxes, sorting things out.’
I can barely contain myself, and at some point I’m going to snap. There will be a clash.
A great day off that proved to be, stomping 34 km out there.
The zeks are having their day off. Company Commander Gridin has ruined mine. I don’t make it to the cinema or the bathhouse. He must have insomnia again and needs to bark at people to work up an appetite.
Outside, rain, mud, filth. We are so used to living in a shack now; we’re used to everything being makeshift. It’s just best not to talk about it. It’s the same in all the Armed Guards Unit camps. The guards are on duty every six hours, like clockwork. For those on contracts, it lasts two years, and for zeks the full length of their sentence.
We now have our own academicians out here and don’t need any more throwbacks, but still they keep on sending sundry Gridins. The commissar tells us caustically: ‘Gridin is thinking, those bastards are glad I’m being sent off on vacation!’
We are glad. We’re looking forward to being able to breathe. All we need now is for Political Adviser Khrenkov to go too. Life will be a bed of roses. Golodnyak instead of Khrenkov, Chistyakov instead of Gridin. That would instantly bring us five metres nearer to socialism.
‘We are building socialism together, so why does Gridin take offence all the time?’ the commissar wonders ruefully. ‘The May Day order got lost, the secret order about Dovbysh got lost, the secret order about developing the Armed Guards Unit got lost. What’s going on here? You lot are incapable of rallying the commanders round you. This is an abscess waiting to burst. Why was my ticket held up for twelve days with the company commander? What sort of nonsense is this?’
12 May 1936
With every day that passes new facts, appalling but true, come into the open.
Karmanchuk tells us, ‘I was travelling with Shishov and Gridin to a meeting. Gridin is grumbling, “If they gave me good squad commanders, I would make them acting platoon commanders and they would work. But all these miscellaneous platoon commanders are a waste of time. They just give me a lot of bad blood.’”
That’s the truth. Gridin’s unwillingness and inability to lead is the reason why our existence and our relationships are so foul. We touched once again on killings. If a guard gets killed in the army they don’t know how to account for it. But in our unit? If someone gets murdered, they file a report and that’s that. You chose to come here, so what more do you expect? Another technique: you give someone belated instructions, force them to sign for them, and instantly shed all responsibility. Officially, you are now in the right, and what happens to the other man is no concern of yours. A guard is prosecuted and sentenced, and it’s of no interest to you that he has a family and so on. He took the pay so he has to be prepared to take the rap. We don’t have enough guards, which is why they have to work eighteen hours a day, with one platoon commander in charge of thirty of them. If there’s an escape, you lose your work credits or end up in court.
My brain aches. A shudder runs through my body. Despair! How, how do I get discharged? I need to get sentenced after a year of service. I rack my brains over it from morning until night. You never know where you may be going from one day to the next. Every day brings new torments, driving home your insignificance and emptiness.
I start looking back over the days and find there’s nothing worth remembering. Everything is just vile. Where can I find solace? Nowhere. We’ll just have to get through the next four months somehow.
Divisional Commander Azarov resurfaces. He’s going to appear in court, but how can they prove he was stealing the food? Where and how was the shortfall registered? That will be the situation if Azarov denies everything. He’ll have compromised himself in the eyes of the guards, but that’s it. They’ll just transfer him somewhere else. Only at BAM could someone like him find a job. He won’t resign of his own accord. He’ll beg to be kept on. Unlike me.
13 May 1936
Even Pavlenko the autodidact has recognized the nature of the training and re-education he’s received at BAM. He is growing, learning, getting the picture. He applies to resign, adding, ‘If necessary, I’ll bypass the company commander.’
Everyone suddenly remembers us when there’s an escape. This is how it goes: there’s this son of a bitch wants to resign, let’s give him a surprise and send him across to 1 Squad. You’ll have something to complain about there! We’ll arrest you! Throw you in the cells!! Have you in court!!! That’s how they look after a commander. Oh, joy and jubilation!
14, 15 and 16 May 1936
I’m making a billiard table. On the 15th, I trek to Phalanxes 7 and 11 in the afternoon. I come across some tin cans on the way and shoot at them with a small-bore. It’s warm in the afternoon but so cold at night my hands are freezing. My legs are really bad; I have cramp so painful I could cry out. Another year of this and I’ll be a cripple. They won’t need me then. And what am I sacrificing my health for? Four hundred rubles. Not a good bargain. I wouldn’t want to stay here if you paid me 1,500 or 2,000. Billiard table just about usable, and there’s a queue of people wanting to play. Adjutant, standing in for the boss, fancies a go at winning after 8 p.m. (during his working hours). Rain, rain, rain.
17 and 18 May 1936
Back to 11. The bloody phalanx leader has contrived to select the worst villains, Tsuladze and the like. He sent Ivanov out for milk. Here they come, drinking it, while we can hardly stand. I go out after escapees with Lyashenko. We climb the hills in the dark, through the swamps and mud. I fall into a pit, probably sprain my ankle but press on. We wade through water, climb places we’d never tackle by daylight. At 2 a.m. I lie down to sleep, my legs wet, aching and cramping. There’s nowhere to dry off. When I return to the search party, I take a rifle but find no one. I’m barely able to move. Trekking 40-50 km every day wears you down. If I take the boss’s horse, the political adviser sounds off. For them, a horse matters more than an escape. I have a lot to write bu
t my head is spinning.
19 May 1936
I’m thoroughly ill. My chest aches and I can’t bend or breathe properly. Maybe it’s pleurisy. Enthusiastic army careerists go chasing after ranks, even those in BAM. Fix those bars on their collar tabs and they strut around feeling superior. Proud, smug. Golodnyak shows up. How do you get discharged? He’s probably another informer. Hard luck, laddie, no dice. The guards are being torn to pieces. I go to Political Adviser Khrenkov and show him the instructions they’ve been given. He can’t make head or tail of them.
20 May 1936
Green meadow covered in flowers. Covered in flowers! It’s a lovely summer’s day. The vault of heaven is so blue, so fathomless. Against a background of dove-grey haze on the hills the trail stretches like an emerald ribbon. The song of the larks pours out from heights unseen. The air is still and pure, with only the buzzing of flies disturbing its silence. The wall of a hut on the horizon looks like a white sail. Smoke from a campfire smoothly ascends and dissolves, dissipating. And the colours, yellows, lilacs, blues and darkest crimson. The flowers rejoicing in the sun. Birds rejoicing in the sun. The cows, stretching their necks, lazily flicking their tails, content. The sheepdog, stretched out on the ground, blinks in the sunlight, his tongue lolling to one side. In another part of the picture, meanwhile, zeks are toiling on the railway, the very sight of which is enough to make you loathe this project, to sense your insignificance in this scene and the vacuity of the life we live here. The stillness is violated by the sighing and the wailing siren of a railway engine. The thought is inescapable, reflecting as it does reality: I have been robbed of everything.
21 May 1936
My day off. For the first time in my life I paint with oils. I am not, however, allowed to spend the day as I please. A meeting has been called, and quite some meeting it is too. Company HQ are not coping. There are delays everywhere. The Plan is not being fulfilled and the project is jeopardized. They resolve to conduct a ten-day Stakhanov shock-working campaign which, of course, will be a job for the Armed Guards Unit. We are the scapegoat, considered bone idle and so on. The commanders and political officers are given full authority over the phalanxes. We are to do the job someone else ought to be doing, and need to remember: ‘How you work reveals your attitude to the Stakhanov movement in general. Fail and you will earn yourself a sentence.’
They mean ‘be guilty of sabotage’. Golodnyak quips, deciphering OGPU: ‘O God, Protect Us’. That is the prisoners’ version. We think it stands for: ‘Our Goal, Pulverize the Uppity’.
22 May 1936
Living conditions, educational recreation, diet and other matters have come under discussion. Don’t worry, no need to be incredulous, they’re not worried about us, they’re worried about the zeks. The workforce is in the wrong place, there aren’t enough essential supplies, and this obliges us to shift people around, ‘disrupt the Plan’, fail to reach the quota. What does the company do about it? Send in the Armed Guards Unit! Delegate all responsibility to the platoon commanders! Let them sort out the bungling by company HQ! That’s how it’s done.
The section head admits the twenty-four-hour worksheets are nonsense. The intensity of the work isn’t quantified and there’s no allowance for permafrost in calculating the time for earthworks. Doesn’t that sound like fun? What responsibility do these people take? None! The project leadership barks, everyone runs around, and we take the brunt of the work. Efforts at ‘rehabilitation’ continue. First it was Viuga’s turn to clown around, now it’s Arkhipov, and they think that’s only fair. Platoon commander Ogurtsov replies for all to hear that Political Instructor Novikov has not appeared because he was feeling lonely and has gone to see his wife. He wasn’t doing anything useful anyway.
Pavlenko complains, ‘The company commander had such a go at me! “Do you understand the situation in the Far East? No leave!” Then off he goes for the whole summer.’
23 May 1936
In every age and in every nation, the only thing that has ever really mattered is who you know. It is no different here. The company commander, political adviser and divisional commander get expenses for their travel, but do we? No chance. Yet who does the most travelling? It is puzzling. A fair solution would seem to be for anyone who travels for work to get expenses. The zek guards don’t want to work in security for 15 rubles when the zeks on the track are getting 250–300. That’s quite a difference.
Dubrovin is behaving strangely. On the train a guard asks him, ‘Where are you going, Comrade Political Instructor?’ ‘Abyssinia!’
‘Is that far?’
‘No, we’ll go about a hundred kilometres, then another fifty and the same again and we’ll be there!’
‘Why are you going there?’
‘I need to see the king of the natives!’
The guard believes him.
24 May 1936
Dubrovin again: ‘I open baggage wagon No. 1 with a skeleton key. The conductor appears.
“‘Where do you think you’re going?”
“‘Do you have any idea to whom you are talking? I am the commander of the YCL’s Far East Region regiment and commander of the Tamarchukan Armed Forces. Stand aside, my friend, stand aside, I say.”
‘I go to the restaurant. I’m sipping a liqueur when Khopersky comes in and sits opposite me. I slip the glass behind the curtain and concentrate on my coffee.’
Training courses. One man doesn’t show up for morning gymnastics. He’s sitting it out in the toilet and invites Dubrovin to join him. Regarding this, Dubrovin states at a meeting that evening, ‘No one’s going to lure me into that. I would never choose to sniff a stench for forty minutes instead of fresh air.’
25 May 1936
They yell at us, and force us to shout, ‘Stakhanovites!’ while there’s no tobacco in the phalanx, which is valued there more than gold dust. It is measured out a strand at a time. No one ever finds cigarette butts.
26 May 1936
Rain, sleet, darkness. I trek from Phalanx 11 to Zavitaya. Night.
27 May 1936
I went to Phalanx 24 with the head of combat training. We sat on a hill to sketch and write letters. In the evening, I watched Without a Dowry§§§§§ I’d be better off not going to the cinema, it reminds me of going to the theatre in my old life and just makes me angry and upset.
The guards unit is degenerating, or rather, more accurately, has degenerated. The report from 14 May is full of suicides, alcoholism, nobody doing their job. Why? Because life was better in the past and everyone wants things to improve, while BAM, well, it can go to hell. I’m going to behave like all the rest of them: it’s summer, time to take a break. If nobody asks questions, fine. If they kick up a fuss, we’ll work.
28 May–3 June 1936
Another Stakhanov ten-day shock-work campaign has been declared, but how is that going to happen? Perhaps I am failing to understand the actual situation and what really needs to be done. What I do understand is that they are using us to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. Your job is to travel all over the place and actually do the work, they say, while the five of us will pass judgement on what you are doing. Yershov is just the same. Sod being useful. Without pausing to think or understand, he yells and issues instructions. A typical desk worker. If I’m dealing with some pipsqueak who won’t listen or try to understand and never will, I just keep my head down. Why waste time on him? These people lord it over their subordinates, but only have authority over the lower ranks. Their equals regard them as complete dopes. The hired volunteer staff at company HQ are failing to cope so it’s decided the guards should be sent in and, to make them work harder, threatened with prison sentences. The guards can be dragged before the Revtribunal, but the hired workers get away with anything.
A zek bugler signals a warning of explosives detonation. BAM – the Second Track
I am called in by Political Adviser Khrenkov, who demands, ‘Why aren’t you at Phalanx 11?’
I tell him, ‘If you are going
to get funny with me and say I only spent six hours at Phalanx 11 and threaten me with a trial, I’ll pack in working completely.’
This is supposed to be voluntary work, for the good of the community, so if I feel like doing it, I will, and if I don’t, why should I?
I went to see Khodzko, the head of the Third Section, about withdrawing the armed guard and he called in Kalashnikov. It was all very silly, there was something obviously not right or relevant. Suspicious. In addition, some character, a track worker, comes barging in and settles himself on the sofa.
One thought bores relentlessly into my brain. When? When, for heaven’s sake, will I ever be free? Even Party members like Ogurtsov and Nichepurenko treated the review as a formality. There was an attempt to intimidate them with a telegram from Krylov at BAM HQ, but it seems to have been hot air. Intimidating, criticizing, cursing is something anyone can do, but nobody is capable of teaching or supporting, nobody. That is the BAM mindset.
Once again I tramp back from Phalanx 11, on a warm, bright, moonlit night. Right now in Moscow, from 7 p.m., people are out strolling with never a worry about escapes or zeks. They don’t know we exist, and might only laugh if they did. No, I can’t write, my soul is in tatters. I’m going insane. What a life!?!
Weather brightened up today and everything seems happier and easier. But life, life! Should I force the course of nature? The ten-day shock-work campaign took away all my personal life. When you’re playing volleyball you can forget everything, but afterwards our shambolic life comes back to haunt you in all its glory. The contrast with civilian life is stark. Everyone at BAM is mired in escapes and hopeless stupidity. Some people are angry about the working conditions, others have found this is an area where they can get by and throw their weight about, and that is how they live.
They have some original customs in Zavitaya. In a front garden the ladies who live in the house are sitting on the earth mound by the wall. Their small talk is suggestive and their husbands walk or stand about in their underwear with their hands behind their back or folded like Napoleon’s. They make jokey remarks like:
The Day Will Pass Away Page 14