There was an awkward pause, nobody had a response. Even Budnikova seemed uncertain about whether or not to accept the banner. After half an hour everything began to cool down as people went outside and began talking to each other. Soon the club was empty and the banner languished up on the platform. What would happen now?
The following day we expected refusals to go out to work, from Samokhvalova, from Budnikova, and many in other brigades.
This prediction was spot on. There was no sign of Samokhvalova’s brigade in the morning. The rest came out to work, but there would be no records broken today, just enough done to qualify for a basic ration.
If you turned up during this time in Samokhvalova’s hut, you would be on the receiving end of logs, bowls, boards, boots, anything that came to hand, anything that could cause injury, and all of it seasoned with a cascade of expletives of such inventiveness you could never hope to match them.
From the direction of the hut we heard a great commotion, shrieking and screaming as Shedvid was seen off the premises. Their strike could go on for three to five days, but the project cannot wait, the building work cannot be postponed, there are deadlines to be met. We decided to try an approach at noon. I was very agitated, no less so than the brigade. Hell! I was met by bedlam.
‘Come in, come in, you screw. If you dare!’
Dong! A bowl hurled from an upper bunk clangs against an opposite upright.
‘Who are you throwing that at?’ My yell cut short a rising chorus of catcalls. ‘Is that your way of saying, “Good afternoon”?’
The question extended their moment of uncertainty, which I needed to exploit if all was not to be lost and I was to leave with anything to show.
‘Is your storekeeper here?’
‘That’s me!’ a woman washing her hair in a bowl says.
‘No wonder I couldn’t recognize you, that hair makes you look like a mermaid.’
‘More like a witch,’ a voice corrected me.
‘Ha ha ha,’ someone guffawed. ‘The witch from Bald Mountain!’
‘Not from Bald Mountain, only from Uletui. Give her a broom. She needs a good demon. Saddle the boss! We shouldn’t just have them riding us, we ought to have a go on them.’
‘I’ve not ridden you and have no plans to do so in the future.’ ‘But would you?’
‘No, I can’t do it with people watching.’
‘Would you ride on Shedvid? If she shows herself here again, the whore, we’ll tear her apart.’
‘The parasite!’
A hail of choice curses filled the air.
‘Well, why are you blaming me?’
‘Why are we blaming you? Why, are you going to stand up to her? All you security guards grow fat on our blood.’
‘And have you had a lot of your blood spilt?’
‘More than you!’
‘Where?’
‘Right here, in your camp!’
‘Has somebody knifed you? How and where?’
‘Your guards, your secret policemen.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘But we get plenty of bad blood from you.’
‘We get more from you. There’s thirty of you in this brigade, three hundred in the phalanx, and only four of us. Who gets more grief? You stuff it up our noses and down our throats, enough for lunch and dinner and some to spare. You women are hot-tempered, you sometimes get worked up over nothing, pointlessly. If we look at this calmly, you are absolutely in the right, but when there’s all this shouting and screaming there’s no telling what you want exactly, and you may end up with the opposite.’
‘We know where this is leading. Go on, persuade us!’
Two of them started singing, ‘We are not afraid of work, we just ain’t gonna do it.’
‘None of you? Is that it! Can we put it to a vote?’
‘Go right ahead!’
‘Enough yelling! Cut it out, big boss! You’re just getting on our nerves!!!’
‘You’re getting on your own nerves. Why don’t we leave it to your brigade leader to decide this? I see she’s sitting there and pondering. There’s no point in thinking up something bad, so she’s probably thinking up something sensible.’
‘I’m not going out to work!’
‘Not today! How about tomorrow?’
‘Are you trying to find something out?’
‘I’m not trying to find anything out, but I’m interested, because I feel bad for your brigade.’
‘Great! Look who’s our supporter!’
‘First you trample our brigade into the mud and now you come here to sort things out!’
‘I didn’t trample on you!’
‘What, are you against Shedvid?’
‘Too right, I am! That’s why I’m here. Let’s talk business instead of shouting at each other. You think Shedvid is wrong, is that it? Does that mean you’re right?’
‘Yes!!!’
‘And your strike? Your strike only gives Shedvid more ammunition and takes it from you. That’s just what she needs, a trump card, something to use against you. Well, let’s suppose Shedvid is in the wrong, she’s done something stupid; does that mean you should do something wrong?’
‘What, are you defending her?’
‘What are you trying to get from us?’
‘You’ve never understood us and never will.’
‘I paid for this photograph and article in Builders of BAM with my own health. I might just have been starting to believe in the impossible. I might just have been starting on the path of honest labour, of breaking with the past. That banner in the corner of our hut always reminded me that while I was working I was the equal of any other citizen. When I’m working, I’m not a criminal, because criminals don’t march under the red banner. It could only mean I was a Soviet citizen. The whole of BAM wanted to be like me, the head of the entire project set me as an example.’
There are not many people like Samokhvalova. And then along comes some stuck-up idiot and the banner is transferred to Budnikova. For what? For a single day’s work.
‘We held that banner for five months. That’s not red dye but our sweat and blood. She could have brought another one, and we might have won that one too. The snake! If she so much as shows her face, we’ll kill her.’
‘What difference does it make? Our lives are scarred.’
‘You need to get these thoughts out of your head. The more days you work, the more credits you will earn and the sooner you will be back home. Without today your release has been set back, and if you are not careful it may be put off even longer. Whose fault is that? I have come to join you in resolving your problem and an issue of importance to our state. You live in the USSR and have no plans to live anywhere else. Do you want to live in China?’
‘No!’
‘In Japan maybe, or Germany?’
‘Hell, no!’
‘Well, to live in the USSR you have to live by Soviet rules. Labour is a matter of honour, glory, valour, and heroism. He who does not toil, neither shall he eat. This is not something I have to persuade you of.
‘Tomorrow, go out to work to get that banner back, and I shall get another from our sectional HQ. You will earn that one too. Agreed?’
* Oskar Shedvid was overall head of the Third Section at BAM. See footnote on p.151 to 13 July 1936. The use of his name in this context is evidently intentional. [Tr.]
Shock Workers
Ivan Chistyakov
The Uletui–Zhuravli section of BAM was the responsibility of Track-Laying Phalanx 30. They decided to lay the track in record time, and complete it as a gift to mark the 18th anniversary of the October Revolution. There were just three days left before the holiday. It is 12 kilometres from Uletui to Zhuravli, which meant they had to lay 4 km of track every day.
For BAM such rates were unprecedented. Nothing had been said or written of any such achievement, which meant it had never been done. Here, just as at Phalanx 7, nobody had been told about the Ten-Day Campaign. Those in charge at sec
tion level had evidently ordered it, so there was no advance preparation in the phalanxes. Their only consultation came when it was already time to start work. There were also no guidelines from the section, apart from enquiries: ‘How is your Ten-Day Campaign doing?’ This called for inventiveness. It seemed entirely possible that our work during the campaign might be at odds with the overall Plan. Nobody knew.
‘Lads! They’ve started delivering the ballast for this stretch. Fifty wagons of sleepers are being delivered. We’ve got the rails, spikes, bolts and all the rest, so now it’s all up to you. We have no track-laying and work tempos we could give as examples. Lads, I invite you to pioneer new quotas. We need to make sure the next three days between now and the anniversary of the Revolution go down in history as one of the achievements of 1935. You are making construction history, so let’s start a movement that cannot be stopped. Let’s test ourselves and find out what human beings are capable of, what each one of you can do! Our Soviet heroes, our medal bearers are of our stock. You are the same people with the same blood, so each of you has it in him to be a hero.
‘We’ll go and unload the sleepers now, and start laying the track this very day. We will present this section as a gift to the October Revolution. I know there will be some who won’t like this speed, but the shock-work campaign will sweep them aside and cast them from our path. So I say to you now, if you’re not with us, step aside. And now, lads, to the unloading. You each know what you need to take, an axe, a hook. Your work will show who is for and who is against.
‘Forward, workers of the BAM,
And sun, shine bright on each man’s back!
The Far East Region is our home
As we create the Second Track.’
The answer was a heavy, deathly silence. Whether it indicated consent or not was difficult to judge. The whistle of a steam locomotive left no time for reflection.
‘Four men per covered wagon and eight on the platform, unloading to both sides. We have twenty-five minutes. What do you say, lads, can we do it?’
‘Why ask? Don’t you trust us?’
‘Right, we’ll have breakfast an hour from now and then we’ll start laying the track.’
‘You’re on!’ someone shouted from the crowd.
Quick as a flash they were up on the wagons, and immediately beyond the exit points of the passing loop, brand-new sleepers gleamed in the air as the train moved slowly along, a triple line lain along the sides of the track. Ivanishin, the senior guard, stayed back at the phalanx to make sure the breakfast was at its best.
The hands on my watch moved quickly, and seemed to speed up as time began to run out. We won’t get the sleepers unloaded in time! Yes, we will. No, we won’t. What am I saying? Of course we will!
The covered wagons prevented me from moving the length of the train so I walked along the platforms.
‘Well, lads, looks like I won’t be able to give anyone a flea in their ear today!’
Less and less frequently do I see the white bulk of the sleepers up in the air, and many of the men were already lighting up, having finished the job. Uletui. I checked them. Empty empty, empty. But what’s this? Four locked wagons.
I winced at the thought, which hit me like a sleeper. Can they be full of . . . sleepers?!
I opened one: sleepers, more sleepers, a third wagon of sleepers. In the fourth, a lone worker.
‘Why are you on your own?’
‘Citizen Commander, it was impossible to get in while the train was moving, so I got in from the top through the hatch. I threw out what I could, but nobody else came in with me.’
‘Okay, lads, there’s a bit more unloading here. Don’t want these sleepers travelling back and forth.’
‘Will do!’
I went to the intercom and called up the wagon of the head of security.
‘Comrade Chief, your instructions have been carried out. We are doing our bit for the Ten-Day Stakhanov Campaign.’
I got on the ballast shuttle from Zhuravli to Uletui. At Kilometre 758 there was subsidence where the embankment had collapsed. No matter how we tried to reinforce it, it kept sliding away. We decided to dig out the embankment and remake it with ballast. A women’s phalanx had been doing the digging and working on the ballast. There was bewilderment and surprise when a shuttle appeared bearing workers from Phalanx 30, who were enjoying a smoke.
‘Look, girls! Who are these?’
‘Helpers for us!’
‘Why haven’t they got any shovels, then?’
‘Must be a bunch of idlers. Hey, you lot! What are you doing, riding up and down the line? You’ll wreck that shuttle! Sprawling in there!’
‘Been working hard, have you? Lots and lots?! Stakhanovites! While we’re here waiting for ballast.’
‘Actually we’re just off to breakfast.’
‘What?’
‘That’s right. Did you see the sleepers along the way? How do you think they got there?’
‘Come on, damn it. Give us a shovel. We’ll give you a hand.’ And ballast, shimmering and gleaming like gold, streams steadily into the gap.
‘If you don’t fill in that hole for us by 5 November and you hold up the track-laying, you’ll have only yourselves to blame.’ ‘Are you really going to get here that soon?’
‘Ask us that when we get here.’
While they were tidying up the slope there was an impromptu political meeting. X stood on the platform and treated the women to a speech.
‘Don’t you go imagining we are a bunch of lazy bluffers. Don’t be in such a hurry to glorify your Samokhvalova. You only have one Samokhvalova and a team of thirty. Well, there are a hundred and thirty of us. We’ll do better than Samokhvalova. Admittedly her bridge is pretty good, but we are going to be over that bridge in record time, both by the standards of the Soviet Union and of BAM. Our record will be on top of hers!’
‘You certainly talk big, but I bet you’ve only got a pig in your poke!’
They began laying the track after breakfast, albeit without any spectacular innovations. They just made sure they chose good tools, and left the broken ones behind to be repaired. The foreman took the phalanx banner to plant in the ground at the point they had to reach by the end of the day. He carried it off round the bend. From Uletui to the bridge Samokhvalova had built was a kilometre and a half and they needed to lay that section in two hours. For each rail, with twenty sleepers and a hundred spikes, they had just twelve and a half minutes.
Mathematics likes precision in calculations and that is the only way to arrive at the correct answer. You need the same kind of mathematical accuracy in work, but work needs something beyond dry mathematics, and that is a sense of competition, lively commitment, enthusiasm. The phalanx was divided into two teams, one for the left and one for the right rail. Both sides got drawn into the contest. As soon as the spiker on the left rail got two or three sleepers ahead, you heard a commotion and trampling on the right rail, and vice versa.
They got over the bridge in one hour and fifty minutes.
On the grey concrete of a pier they scrawled in charcoal, ‘Pull your socks up, Samokhvalova.’
The banner didn’t stay in place either, they moved it ahead one rail at a time. The left team went one rail ahead and, to keep things even, laid one rail on the right side. Competition flared, and in the evening, returning from their work to the phalanx, Samokhvalova’s brigade were taken aback.
‘Not bad rails, eh, girls?’
‘Good rails, boys!’
They reached the subsidence on schedule but it had not been filled in. The rise at the quarry and also the Amur road sometimes slowed down regular movement of the ballast shuttles. They erected trestles at the dip and laid the rails on those, rejoining the main track at the points. Now the shuttle could deliver ballast along the second track without causing hold-ups.
The Hunt
Ivan Chistyakov
[taken from the second notebook]
1934
First day
of the six-day week 1 August
The day begins, and with it the lying Shoot an animal low down and a bird in flight Aim ahead and aim high.
There’s a certain amount of the truth in every lie. It can be impossible to determine the boundary, so let everyone decide for themselves what is true or false.
August 1934
Day 1
The marsh begins 180 kilometres east-south-east of Moscow. It extends another 100 kilometres to the south-east of Ivanovskaya and the River Kobylskaya.
My companion, Alexander, known as Doc, overbalances on the first step he takes and sinks knee-deep into clinging peatbog. ‘Oh, feet and fiddlesticks!’ he exclaims. ‘Pardon?’ I ask in mock surprise, on which note our conversation ends.
Low-growing birch scrub surrounds us. Our gundog disappears into the undergrowth. I whistle periodically to call him back, and occasionally have to shout ‘Halloo!’ when Doc gets lost. We walk for an hour, with no luck – no berries, no game – and head for Lake Malovskoye. The dog stops and points his muzzle. A brood of partridges rises up. Two right-and-left shots go wide. Another point from the dog, another brood, another two double shots, another miss. The day is getting hot.
‘Let’s make for Lake Dolgoye,’ Doc suggests. ‘We can rest, and a bite to eat wouldn’t come amiss.’ We set off. Covering two kilometres of marsh takes the same effort as eight kilometres on dry land. From time to time, Doc, trailing behind, asks, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
‘Yes, it’s just round the bend!’ I say encouragingly, but the bend is never-ending. A sliver of lake, glinting like a knife blade, raises our spirits and I surreptitiously increase the pace. Lake Dolgoye lives up to its name as a long lake; it’s four kilometres long, and one and a half wide. Now there are pine bushes among the birch, the grass is waist-high and the moss is a quarter of a metre deep. There are dead trees and tree stumps here and there. A pungent smell of resin. Water gently lapping. Stillness. An old man fishing by the shore looks at us sleepily and says in a dull voice, as if to no one in particular, ‘You shouldn’t have been there. That’s a game reserve, that is.’ We sit down on the shore, eat, and drink the lake water, which is warm, with a savour of peat. After our rest stop we move on to Lake Karasovo, taking a shortcut part of the way. Nothing from the gundog, not a shot fired. There is seemingly no game, even though there has been a reserve here for a year. Doc, completely whacked, now thinks nothing of sitting down in a puddle. It’s no wonder: you pull your left leg out, your right sinks in; you pull your right leg out, your left sinks in. Evening is falling. We reach Lake Karasovo and move stealthily towards the shore.
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