The Day Will Pass Away

by Ivan Chistyakov

  It must be who we are looking for. If I go over and try to arrest them they will just run away and I can’t see in the pitch-dark. I look out for a wagon. There. Open, loaded with coal. I climb in, listen. The train whistles. One climbs in, a second, a third. I stay silent, climb up higher, and get my pistol out. A guard shines a torch round the inside and I see them. They might be the ones from Phalanx 6.

  So, no sleep tonight. Cramp and aching in my legs. I’m black from the coal and can feel the dust working into my pores. The zeks sleep soundly, snoring, but I’m on duty. I get out at Zavitaya as black as the devil, go to the operations post and they muddle the names. Sure enough, they’re from Phalanx 6. It’s 4 a.m. All thanks to the Third Section. It happens.

  The phalanx leader requests permission to transfer zeks from Phalanx 17 to 6, presents a list. Toryaev on reception authorizes it, Yepifanov confirms, and off the villains go without a guard. We, meaning the Third Section, ‘re-educated’ them and there’s the result. Ten scarpered. The episode doesn’t strengthen my position, even though I warned the divisional commander about the contingent the day before. What action did he take? None.

  24 and 25 June 1936

  I spend half the day waiting at the station for the express bringing firewood and timber then go to Phalanx 11. I walk, photographing the scenery along the way. At the phalanx I run into the section head and Gridin. I spend half the day walking round the huts. There’s a lot of talk, noise and hot air. Brilliant ideas and hopes abound, and all the while the place leaks zeks. Adjutant Kamushkin tries hard to persuade me I am wrong to think everybody is out to get me, and says I should stop scowling. In parting, he shakes my hand firmly, communicating friendly concern, and adds, ‘So everything’s all right, then?’ I’m not getting enough sleep. Not a single escape today. Incredible! That is good, but I feel no inner peace. I don’t manage to do any sketching; trek from Phalanx 11 in sheeting rain.

  26 June 1936

  I’m sick at heart. Everyone is talking about the end of the project. The hired workers are gradually being dismissed. I’m so envious. Kamushkin is surprised that I have learned that it makes better sense to let twenty people leave without a guard than enter ‘Task delayed’ in the Armed Guards Unit’s work record.

  I had quite a conversation with Torpan, recalling escapes and killings. We went out into the taiga looking for escapees and found scattered corpses. Who killed them? When? Nobody has any idea who these people were. If someone gets on your nerves and you take a shot at them, you just leave them where they fell. If someone finds them, fine. If they don’t, they’re dead anyway. Here’s an example:

  ‘Bugayev went out to the forest and brought back one that he caught. The other one he shot. The one he shot, clean through his chest, crawled back 35 km. We didn’t go out looking for him, of course. He rotted out there for twelve days.’

  27 June 1936

  The guards sometimes deliberately let zeks escape, saying [illegible] officially that they’ll live and get paid better as forced labourers than they do as guards. The top brass just can’t, or won’t, see that. So far we have peace and quiet in our company, but in 12 and 13 they’re losing fifty to sixty people a day. You reread these lines and wonder: was that all life had to offer today? ’Fraid so.

  Great sunset, but it’s not for us. It’s just unsettling. Its beauty doesn’t inspire good thoughts and reflection, but bad. It’s good that the head of combat and I have the same rank. Makes it easier for us. Otherwise we’d do ourselves in.

  28 June 1936

  What have I had to celebrate today? The one high point is that I have moved in with the head of combat from my storage cupboard, and my head aches because it feels so amazing to be in a real room where it doesn’t leak and where I can feel at home. I can hardly believe it’s possible to live so well.

  My heart is still coated in a residue of disgust and the room only emphasizes the sheer nastiness of living and serving at BAM.

  Outside there’s rain and mud up to your knees. The clay sticks to your boots and you can barely lift your feet. So that was my day, but it is also worthy of note that I got no supper. The guards are saying that the project will actually take about another twenty years. Grinevich. Adjutant Kamushkin reports through the head of combat that they’ve now found me a room. As unacceptable as the others, I expect.

  1 July 1936

  For some, this is their day off but I am deputed to trek out to Phalanx 11. You have to talk the same nonsense every time. People ignore you, snap back at you resentfully, and that’s how I feel too, completely fed up with everything. Everywhere there is moral exhortation but no practical help. The same old mistakes and shortcomings are repeated year after year and nothing gets any better.

  I’m sick, sick at heart, completely worn out, at daggers drawn with the top brass.

  2 July I936

  If only the weather would clear up. It’s as dull as autumn, and cold at night. Summer is passing unnoticed, just like life in this place. The days are empty, and filling the emptiness with work, BAM work? No, I just can’t do it. To wish on yourself something you can’t bear to see and hear, you would have to be an idiot.

  Queues in the canteen. Spent forty-five minutes today waiting. Yershov comes barging in, helps himself and that’s all fine. Will that be all, sir?

  Khodzko jumped when I asked, ‘Who’s in charge of this queue?’

  Gurko is quietly beavering away, making suitcases and beds, presumably for the brass. Just try saying anything about it!

  3 July 1936

  Well, here’s a joke. Tsvetkov, the secretary of the Kamchatka Company, shares his impressions of the work of a commissioner:

  In Phalanx 4 all the workers are Stakhanovites, working seventeen hours a day. Even more original is Phalanx 18, linked to 4. In Phalanx 18 they have savings amounting to several thousand rubles, direct costs are low, and the Plan has been overfulfilled 107–140 per cent with only thirty Stakhanovites. The five-man committee has castigated the commissioner for this. Phalanx 4 has overrun its budget, has high direct costs, and has not fulfilled the Plan, but there are lots of Stakhanovites, so everything is fine. The foreman of Phalanx 4, a Tatar, took due note of the situation. Tsvetkov bumped into him and, when he asked why he was in such a hurry, he said:

  ‘You don’t get criticized for failing to fulfil the Plan but you do get into trouble for not having enough Stakhanovites. I’m rushing to make more of them, every one of my people will be a Stakhanovite.’

  Four more zeks have escaped from Phalanx 11. Divisional Commander Inyushkin, on behalf of Company Commander Gridin, has ordered me to go and live in the phalanx. He can forget that! Devyatkin doesn’t want to work and deliberately drags his heels, and the company commander doesn’t cancel the zeks’ credits because he’s afraid the head of security will find out the actual situation in the company.

  There are rumours we’ll be here until May 1937. Wonderful! And Khrenkov’s wife will be here even longer.

  4 July 1936

  There’s no electricity. We sit by candlelight.

  There are rumours we’ll be here until May 1937. In Phalanx 11 everything is shambolic. The site foreman has no idea what he’s doing and the workforce are in total disarray.

  Yesterday I sent twenty-nine workers to Tyukan and it turned out there was nothing for them to do there. Meanwhile, at the turf site there’s no one to cut the turf and people are standing idle. Foreman Gusarov is drunk all the time. They are deliberately disrupting the Stakhanov movement. In the report they wrote nothing about intending to fulfil the July Plan. People are being eaten alive by bedbugs. The medical unit does nothing about it, and Yershov’s tone seems to have changed.

  The fact that we took the billiard table has so incensed Adjutant Kamushkin that he has conveyed, through Lavrov: ‘Now I see the true face of Chistyakov. What kind of petty bourgeois ideas and actions are we getting from him? He made it out of BAM materials, used the workshop, and paid for none of it.’

 
Came back from Phalanx 11 on the Young Pioneer railcar. It moved at speed, catching up with a freight train. You get a pleasant breeze. The twenty-minute ride distracted me, but not for long. Even in that short time for reflection I was mostly pondering how to get discharged. That’s the life I live.

  5 July 1936

  Pasenko, the divisional political adviser, had us in stitches telling us how Brench explained the word ‘aggregate’: ‘It means the chief of all the combine-harvester engineers.’

  Trusting his definition, the group leaders left to pass on this heresy to their squads.

  Afanasiev is in raptures over how the propaganda brigade’s balalaika player renders ‘The Moon is Shining’, drumming on the body of the instrument and twirling and twisting it:

  ‘I’ve never seen a musician to rival him!’

  Well, where could he? Unless he saw one at the annual village fair. Such is the sophistication and education of divisional commanders and political advisers. In the evening he will be reporting to the five-man inspection committee.

  In the canteen, Kamushkin, speaking loudly to make sure I hear, tells Yershov, ‘If he’s not prepared to work, he must be removed.’

  I write a letter of resignation. Let’s see where that gets me.

  I sent someone to his apartment to invite Lavrov for a game of volleyball. He’s missing his wife. No word from her for a month, or maybe ever again. She doesn’t fancy a trip to the Far East Region, and is perfectly able to remarry.

  My letter is being talked about: ‘He wants to get back to Moscow!’ says Kamushkin. ‘He can earn 300 rubles there and have a good time.’

  Paskevich replied, ‘We should invite him to play volleyball. Is he a Party member?’

  Political Adviser Khrenkov pipes up, ‘He was expelled from the Party.’

  6 July 1936

  I went to confession today. Khrenkov and Kamushkin have decided to sort me out, and how. Political adviser:

  ‘What’s this? Your latest tantrum?’

  I asked what he was talking about.

  ‘Your letter of resignation, of course. First you call your bonus a bribe, then you tell the guards you’d rather face a court hearing than serve at BAM. You are revealing your class allegiance. I look at your face and don’t like the allegiance I see there.’

  Then Kamushkin piles in: ‘You are disrespectful of your superiors. You leaned your elbows on the table and didn’t even stand up when I gave you an order.’

  Khodzko, head of the Third Section, denies he ever suggested I should resign.

  Lavrov wriggles, insinuating that I tend to exaggerate. They have probably already been briefed on how I am to be dealt with.

  Khrenkov adds, ‘You are conditioning Lavrov to your own way of thinking. The definitive response to your application is this: you were conscripted into the army. If you had not been drafted into security you would have been enlisted into a regular unit. We will therefore not accept your resignation, and you will not return to Moscow.’

  Sergeyev has been in Zavitaya since lunch but does not visit the platoon, saying something about Phalanx 11. But who is the stool pigeon now reporting to the political officer? Perhaps Sergeyev, or Pasenko, of course. An ambitious commander or someone else? Perhaps even Lavrov? I feel like shooting myself. My head is splitting and my rheumatism is acting up. The weather is diabolical, rain, mud, devil knows what.

  But what a bastard Khodzko is! He denied everything he had said about my resigning.

  7 July 1936

  Two more gone from Phalanx 11. When will this ever end? If I’m supposed to be here for the rest of my life, the only way out is to get a criminal conviction. Company commander Gridin has replaced some of the guards at Phalanx 11 and it’s made damn all difference to the escapes. I go with Nikolenko to receive Phalanxes 3 and 25. He asks, ‘How’s it going?’ I feel really ill. After lunch I have to slog, sort things, find things out. The guards must be laughing at us rushing around, knowing it won’t make the slightest difference.

  8 July 1936

  I probably will, in the end, like it or not, have to take leave of life by myself. Seven escapees from Phalanx 11. Spend all day trying to catch them. My nerves are so stretched I don’t feel the rain or the branches hitting my face. Everything seems unreal, including life. I pass my days under intolerable strain, waiting only for the next disaster. I’m dog tired after walking 50 km, and when I get back to HQ the top brass have a little surprise for me.

  Divisional Political Adviser Rodionov calls me in and demands, ‘Do you even know what’s going on at your Phalanx 11? What are you doing here?! Go straight back.’

  Night, 11 p.m., rain. I’m mentally exhausted, endless quizzing. How about jumping off a train in the dark? I could maybe break my limbs, cripple myself. No. I reply that I am not going back right now.

  Divisional Commander Inyushkin, standing beside me interjects, ‘I’m just back from Phalanx 6 and the mood there is exactly the same, everybody says we’ll be in court soon.’

  That’s down to the influence of the platoon commander. Rodionov orders me to accompany Inyushkin to Phalanx 11, but he too refuses to go there in the night.

  To me, Rodionov adds, ‘You are not educating the guards, you are not doing your job.’

  I wonder what the political adviser is here for if not to educate the guards. I got so angry I thought I was having a heart attack, didn’t want to eat or sleep. So what has today brought? A declaration to the Armed Guards HQ that this platoon commander is a class enemy, doesn’t obey orders, and that his crimes have been witnessed by Divisional Commander Inyushkin and Divisional Political Adviser Rodionov. That’s the legal situation, and the way the court will view it.

  9 July 1936

  Like it or not, whether it makes sense or not, ‘Get back to Phalanx 11!’ So I do. Rain, cold. The divisional commander, political officer, me, the whole gang. I am summoned to Zavitaya, to the Organization and Staffing Section. I wonder what Inyushkin’s going to come out with there. Escorting the political officer to Tyukan, I hear him say:

  ‘I am a Communist, do you think I enjoy working in security? You are all the same. If you were allowed to resign where would you go? What are you capable of?’

  10 July 1936

  Endless meetings. They’re scheduled for 9 a.m. but Naftaliy Frenkel arrives, or rather just puts his head round, so we’re kept waiting till 1 p.m.†††††† Reprimands and political rhetoric.

  After dinner another meeting and a movie, The Tailor from Torzhok.‡‡‡‡‡‡

  Only, oh, silent horror, the movie has more breaks than film.

  Orlov is doing his best for us ‘active’ non-Party members. I ask for a funeral march to accompany the film and suggest it must have been shot during a solar eclipse with the tailor cutting the film himself. Nothing helps. There’s a general sigh of relief when the lights finally go up again.

  11 July 1936

  You have to authorize your own days off or do without. I sketch at the quarry but my soul is full of gloom and garbage.

  After lunch, Political Adviser Rodionov from 1 Division comes into the room. Oh, these subtle approaches. He’s an envoy. Well, sniff out what you’ve come for. I get a pep talk about the need to complete the Second Track, after which I can leave, and: ‘You’ll go back to Moscow, go to the movies and Park of Culture.’

  In order not to say anything unwise, I greet him by expressing surprise a divisional political adviser should call in on a mere platoon commander.

  Are they collecting evidence against me? Life is rife with paranoia. You can’t help losing your balance and going crazy. Your head gets muddled. It’s chaos.

  12 July 1936

  Read yesterday in Izvestiya about the errors of paedology in educational research. The other commanders gradually move away from me, unable to understand what it’s all about.§§§§§§ Fine commanders!

  A lot of what is said in an article titled ‘Ignorance’ is directly applicable to Rodionov. Yershov admits he is at fa
ult, not having opened the complaints boxes for the past two months.

  These commanders have a job for life. There are still plenty of opportunities in the USSR where young professionals are put off by the working conditions and nobody else wants to work there. Still, how come a platoon political instructor, a divisional political adviser and a company political adviser have between them failed to educate the guards of Phalanx 11?

  13 July 1936

  This is a brilliant place to put a penal phalanx. The train slows down when it has to go uphill, so any number of people can pile on without it stopping. Where it does stop, it doesn’t take on passengers. For example, after I’ve been playing volleyball, when my entire body aches and I need some rest, I still have to trek on foot all the way to Phalanx 11. My boots have lasted 0.5 months and are wearing thin. Rodionov, travelling with me on a goods train, volunteers his opinion:

  ‘I’ve written to Krylov and Shedvid and the Centre about how we are treated and all the disgraceful things that go on.’¶¶¶¶¶¶

  He starts wondering aloud whether we will finish soon. That suggests he has no information.

  Then he says, to encourage me, ‘It will probably all be over by November.’

  He would like to get back to Moscow as well.

  Political Instructor Sergeyev decides to put his foot down: ‘Either I play volleyball right now or I never will again. What’s the meaning of substituting Tishchenko, who’s a guard, for me?’

  The meaning is that Sergeyev is totally useless at volleyball.

  14 July 1936

  This is how they classify people: ‘Obedient, carries out orders unquestioningly, docile as a calf’, in other words, just the kind of commander that’s needed. They could have added ‘terrified of the top brass’.