The Day Will Pass Away

by Ivan Chistyakov

  Political Instructor Brench still going off somewhere, doing something. I wrote to complain about him too. These are Party members, the enthusiasts, the instructors, conduits of culture, the people who’re supposed to be organizing everybody else.

  I’m glad the weather is good. No mud or we’d be done for. My boots are wearing thin and my legs are aching. I went off to do some sketching, freeing my head of too many thoughts. At times, though, Moscow flares up again, explodes in my memory.

  They say my junior commanders are unsatisfactory, as am I. But if Gridin was a satisfactory company commander, why would he have an unsatisfactory platoon commander under him? Nobody asks that. Gave fifteen talks on different topics: the Moscow Metro, the situation in the East and West, Voroshilov’s and Hitler’s speeches, the creation of the Earth, the creation of Man, the formation of hills and mountains. The guards and their wives enjoyed it.

  Only the wife of Kravets replied to my invitation by saying, ‘I’m stupid, so there’s no point my trying to learn, I’ll leave that to them as is smart.’

  Suffering from a general weariness, mental exhaustion, increasing forgetfulness. My memory is losing its edge.

  Old age a witch as black as pitch

  now step by step will come,

  and clutch at you and leave you blue

  and starved without a crumb.

  Winter is coming. There’s frost in the mornings. We have no firewood, and no legal right to compel the phalanx to bring us any. The zeks go out of their way to make the guards’ life a misery.

  3 October 1936

  I went to Phalanx 11 in the evening. The admin head from HQ materializes in all his glory. In the guards’ quarters he bellows at Squad Commander Bezrodny for not wanting to transfer zeks to Territory 8000 without an armed escort:

  ‘I’ll send you off under armed escort! You’re disrupting the Stakhanov ten-day shock-work campaign, you saboteur!’

  Aizenberg is spinning like a top. After reading the order for Bezrodny’s arrest, he says he’s already eaten one empty-headed idiot for breakfast and is quite prepared to eat another. He read out the order to the ‘soldiers of the track’, undermining the guards’ authority. He never reads out any of the orders about him.

  Bezrodny is accused of ‘regularly disrupting the unloading of ballast’. I’m surprised that’s only being mentioned now . . .

  At a territory I ask a man in uniform, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘The platoon commander!’

  ‘Of BAM?’

  ‘Well, I’m the head of admin [illegible] unit, but what are you shouting at me for?’

  ‘I’m not shouting, I’m talking to you!’

  ‘In that tone?’

  ‘You don’t like my tone?’

  The tents people live in are full of holes and it’s pouring with rain. Well, to hell with them. But nothing has been done for the guards either. They just ignore the guards, everybody’s enemies.

  Aizenberg is breathing down my neck: ‘We’ve got a train with ninety wagons and can’t get it unloaded!’

  I sense he’s lying, so I lie in return and say not all the wagons are for us. What a farce.

  I tell Mozgovoy, ‘I would not have done that. I would not have told Bezrodny I was sending him off under armed escort. In the first place, we answer to the company commander, and in the second only a commander can escort another commander under convoy.’

  ‘Why are you telling me what to do? I work for the Third Section.’

  Night, cold, rain. The water is freezing. The guards’ premises are leaky and draughty. Mozgovoy has even thoughtfully removed the canvas from the roof over the kitchen. Rain leaks straight into the soup.

  Uneasy sleep, cold. I have cramp in my arms and legs. We need to put an end to all this. Health can be undermined in a single day. I go home in the morning, my hands numb with cold. I come across some ducks at the quarry. One teal falls, six fly up but settle again 300-400 m away. I sneak closer. There’s one swimming. Bang! Dead. Soup.

  See! That’s our right as the top of the food chain, the strong, the powerful!

  There is no firewood or paraffin and the phalanx doesn’t bring us any. I don’t have authority to order them to. Sergeyev wants to get out of the Organization and Staffing Section and has written to Krylov. Brench also wrote a report which he is sending by mail, so that is going to the Armed Guards GHQ. I’ve completely given up all ideas of continuing to serve here and I’m concentrating on resigning.

  4 October 1936

  I spend the whole day at company HQ in Zavitaya. When you’re with people who see things the way you do you can talk and get things off your chest. You can eat like a human being. There’s a very respectable frost, the water is freezing in the washbasins. It’s last year’s nonsense all over again; you splash water in one eye and the other opens by reflex. In unheated accommodation you forfeit your health. There’s nothing heroic about it, you just make your rheumatism worse.

  I went to see Adjutant Kamushkin to raise the matter of resigning. He replied, ‘Sapozhnikov from GHQ has already told you, you can resign when the project is completed.’

  We have a chat. He touches on our relationship, wants to know why I raised the question of resigning.

  One fisherman spots another from afar. As do birds of a feather.

  I got talking to Shishov, a senior surveyor; turns out he is a hunter. We agreed to go goat hunting on our day off.

  Is something about to happen?

  Company Commander Gridin, when I suggested the end of the project would be 8 May and that I was not intending to wait that long, said, ‘The project ends on 8 November. We’re ditching some finishing touches.’

  Everyone has stopped talking about the project ending. You don’t even hear the things that were previously being said. Perhaps they’re deliberately keeping quiet to avoid an outbreak of demob fever. I sit on the platform at Zavitaya and chat to Parkhomenko about this and that.

  I learn that the bridge at Arkhara was built 2 m higher than specified so they had to raise the subgrade at the last minute. They overspent and had to alter the cross-section, and so on. Oh, dear!

  5 October 1936

  It’s my day off tomorrow. I plan to go hunting but it rains and rains. It makes you weep. There are shadows, darkness and uncertainty in my heart. It is extraordinary that in every area of life you retain hope and never give up, but here you don’t even trust hope.

  I sat at home all day. Come the dark of the evening, there was no paraffin. Now I’m not even able to read.

  The works supervisor of Phalanx 35 asks, ‘What are you, a well-educated man, doing serving as a platoon commander in the armed guards?’

  Search me. Someone has a nasty sense of humour?

  At Phalanx 35 they’re digging a vegetable clamp for the winter, and the devil only knows what’s going on with the project’s end date. More escapes from Phalanx 11. Company Commander Gridin, instead of giving the guards an order to get over there, simply asked them to and three days later they still haven’t arrived. At high-security Phalanx 35, Rodak and Sager got drunk and ran amok, maybe because it’s so dire there. The guards have no tobacco but the railway workers get a ration so the guards beg from them. The top brass don’t give a damn. I’ve written to them, spoken to them, nothing helps. You can’t tell what’s going on up there. I’m writing in the dark so that I can save the last drops of paraffin in the lamp. There’s no lamp at all in my room.

  6 October 1936

  It’s my day off and I’ve received more joyful tidings of an escape from irrepressible Phalanx 11. Do I need to go? I stomp out there. Political Instructor Sergeyev is to sort out the living conditions of the ‘soldiers of the track’. What the hell is going on? The zeks have care lavished on them, get discussions, representatives, leaders and the like, but the Armed Guards Unit never gets a look in. To this day the guards’ accommodation has no heating, no firewood, and Aizenberg makes no attempt to conceal his outright hostility towards them.

&
nbsp; My political instructor, Brench, arriving back at the platoon, asks, ‘Did you write to GHQ to say that I never show up in the platoon and all that?’

  I reply, ‘Goodness me, no! I’d be better off without you. At least then there would be no one informing on me to Political Adviser Khrenkov.’

  He laughs at my application to resign. Acting Platoon Commander Kravets has applied, and so has Political Instructor Brench. That’s a clean sweep.

  We sit with no light and no firewood and get no response to requests to company HQ. Half rain, half snow. Foul. Nobody notices when you do your job well. There’s supposed to be a ten-day Stakhanov work campaign, but there’s little sign of it. I seem to smell asphalt being poured on a street in Moscow, and my whole body quivers. I need to act, and decisively.

  Every day brings us closer to winter and excessive work. I just want to hide somewhere for the entire day, but there is nowhere. If I had half-decent boots I would go hunting. But I haven’t. The day will pass anyway.

  17 October 1936

  Over the last few days, events have swept chaotically forward. I saw Krylov at GHQ in Svobodny. We went through my letters.

  In the evening at GHQ with Loshchinin we reminisced about Sergeyev’s courses at our local HQ. The political instructor mentions that a new fuel called apatite – an aggregate! – has been discovered in the Khibiny Mountains of the Kola Peninsula.

  They don’t really believe I’m only going on vacation, they suspect something more.

  Political Adviser Khrenkov and Adjutant Kamushkin treat me with respect and affection, and humour. A few raised eyebrows when I mentioned I was going back to Moscow in a few days’ time, when I had also said I only promised to serve at BAM for one year. Too much of a coincidence?

  Outside it is already winter. My room is cold. We have no wood or coal.

  Lavrov appeals to Kamushkin: ‘Comrade Chief! I need to be able to light a stove in my office!’

  He replies jocularly, ‘But maybe I am deliberately preventing that, so you don’t get too comfortable!’

  * The town of Svobodny (which means ‘Free’) was the headquarters of BAMLag, the Baikal-Amur Corrective Labour Camp administration, part of the Gulag system. [Tr.]

  † The uniform for staff in the GPU (later NKVD) prison camp system, as specified by GPU Order 207 of 21 May 1923, was: greatcoat with red collar tabs and red piping; jacket and jodhpurs, dark blue with red piping; cap with dark blue band and red piping. Not everyone in the security services was an established NKVD staff member; some were prisoners, so they could be dressed variously. It is also possible there was simply a shortage of regulation items in the store at the time.

  ‡ Arkhara is in the south-east of Amur Province, and was close to the border with Japanese-occupied Manchuria. It is the fifth stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok.

  § Chistyakov probably had the status of a junior officer drafted for twelve months. A law ‘On Compulsory Military Service’ was adopted by the Central Executive Committee and Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR on 13 August 1930. Section 10 sets out the regulations and length of service for graduates of technical colleges and institutes. While writing his diary, Chistyakov had no rank and the ‘little square insignia’ on his collar tab indicated only his function as a platoon or section commander. On [p.35] of the diary he says he is not a ‘Chekist’ (secret policeman); in other words, he is a soldier of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, seconded to the NKVD to serve on the BAM construction project.

  ¶ On the vast BAM labour camp complex, the basic administrative unit was the ‘section’ (otdelenie), subdivided into what, for a time at BAM, were known as ‘phalanxes’, consisting of about 300 prisoners.

  # A mark of distinction awarded temporarily to the winning team m a ‘socialist competition’ contest

  ** A reference to N. Kozlov’s popular song of 1859, ‘The Fire of Moscow Roared and Blazed’ (‘Shumel, gorel pozhar moskovskiy’), in which Napoleon looks down ruefully from the Kremlin walls.

  †† After the diary entries in his n058otebook, Chistyakov has a draft or re-working which appears to relate to this entry. It reads:

  Oh, life, why do you so mock people?059 The hut at Phalanx 7. There are gaps everywhere in the walls, snow on the sleeping prisoners. No firewood, and perhaps in this sieve firewood would be of little help. A swarm of living creatures, not human beings. Why is it like this? Rags! Dirt! They sleep wearing jackets, felt boots and fur hats. If you look in, you wouldn’t guess straight away what you are looking at. A store for old surplus uniforms, or a rubbish tip? There are groans, shouts, whistling snores, curses from sleepers. It’s a madhouse

  One man is sprawled out, his arms hanging lifelessly down, his legs splayed. He looks as if he’s been murdered. On his face there is a plea combined with horror.

  ‡‡ Sentenced under Article 35 of the Penal Code as an ‘element harmful to society’.

  §§ A fantasy at the end of the book 063may be wish fulfilment, a rewriting of how Chistyakov would have preferred this evening to have gone. See ‘Rebels’ in the Appendix [p.199].

  ¶¶ There is a related variant a065fter the end of the diary which reads:

  FIGHT

  There’s a commotion in the halanx. I need to go. The noise is coming from the club. No human voices. A thump, a crack, the sound of broken windows. The ringing of an overturned iron stove. Then a moment before – more noise.

  ## A line from ‘Sleigh Bells’, a popular ballad by the Imaginist poet Alexander Kusikov.

  *** A line from ‘Vesper Bells’ (‘Vecherniy zvon’, 1827), a ballad by Ivan Kozlov.

  ††† The stove, a wood-burning iron ‘burzhuika’, was suitable for heating only a small room.

  ‡‡‡ Article 58.8 of the 1926 RSFSR Penal Code covers ‘organization for counter-revolutionary purposes of terrorist acts against representatives of Soviet power or officials of revolutionary organizations of the workers and peasants, as well as participation in performance of such acts, even if the individual participating in such an act does not belong to a counter-revolutionary organization’.

  §§§ It is not known who ‘F.’ is. [Tr.]

  ¶¶¶ Article 35 of the Criminal Code provided for up to five years’ imprisonment for violating the passport laws or for those categorized as ‘socially harmful elements’. These included tramps, prostitutes and petty criminals.

  ### A cryptic entry but which probably means ‘Phalanx 14, 6 escapes, 1 caught; Phalanx 29, 6 escapes, 2 caught.’

  **** Chistyakov’s constant fear of punishment derives from Article 193.17 of the RSFSR Penal Code. Paragraph a) provides for punishment for ‘exceeding authority, failing to exercise authority, or neglect of duty by a person in a position of command within the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army’ by imprisonment for not less than six months. Paragraph b) provides for punishment of the same offences where there are serious aggravating circumstances by penalties up to and including capital punishment.

  Article 193 was usually invoked to punish service personnel, including NKVD officers, for serious neglect of duty, such as allowing escapes, riots or causing delays through inaction.

  ††† The coming of the Green Attorney was prison camp slang for escaping in the spring.

  ‡‡‡ Chistyakov was serving in Amur Province in the Far East Region of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which is included in the broader definition of Siberia. Strictly speaking he was already in ‘Russia’, but would just like to be somewhere nearer Moscow, and with a less severe climate.

  §§§ He evidently suspects his deputy has been appointed to spy on him.

  ¶¶¶ 59-3 was an article of the Penal Code from 1926 until 1959 that covered criminal activity and exceptionally grave crimes against governance, not undertaken for counter-revolutionary purposes.

  58.7 covered ‘sabotage’, defined as ‘counteracting the normal functioning of state institutions and enterprises or related exploitation of the same to
destroy and subvert state industry, trade and transport in order to commit acts covered by Article 58.1 (economic counter-revolution).’

  ### The Stakhanov movement took its name from Alexey Stakhanov, a worker who allegedly mined fourteen times his quota of coal on 31 August 1935. The Soviet authorities claimed the movement increased labour productivity by 82 per cent during the Second Five-Year Plan of 1933–7.

  ***** It is no longer attached.

  †††† From Lermontov’s poem of 1840, ‘Life is boring and sad and there’s nobody to give my hand, to salve this ailing of my heart.’

  ‡‡‡‡ Offences under Article 59.3 included armed robbery. Embezzlement came under the Directive of the Central Executive Soviet and Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR of 7 August 1932, ‘On security of property of state enterprises and collective farms’.

  §§§§ A Jewish stew of sweetened vegetables, sometimes with fruit and/or meat. Here the meaning is ‘weather to enjoy’.

  ¶¶¶¶ On 1 January 1935, 153,547 prisoners were working at BAM; by 1 January 1936 this had increased to 180,067. (Sistema ITL v SSSR. Spravochnik [The Corrective Labour Camp System in the USSR A Guide], comp. M. B. Smirnov, Moscow, 1998, P. 153.

  #### A comedy by Vasiliy Shkvarkin popular in the 1930s.

  ****** Allusion to a popular ballad by Nikolai von Ritter, ‘Coachman, do not whip the horses!’

  ††††† As far as we can tell, Chistyakov was single.

  ‡‡‡‡‡ The guardhouse.

  §§§§§ Bespridannitsa (1936), film from a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, directed by Yakov Protazanov.

  ¶¶¶¶¶ Red Sport was a newspaper published from 1924 until 1946, when its title was changed to Soviet Sport. Its first editor, Aron Itin, was shot for treason m 1938.

  ##### A joke classified advertisement circulating in the 1930s.