The prisoners didn’t believe them. As the city and camp officials left the conference, they were booed out of the gate by prisoners shouting from all sides, “Words, words, words—we want action!” After a long conference outside the gate with the camp officials, the Party officials climbed back in their cars and returned to Norilsk.
That evening, truck convoys of troops came out to reinforce the camp guards and surround the prison complex. In the camp itself, under Mikhail’s leadership, the prisoners began to organize. A prisoner police force was formed to prevent rioting and looting; guards were stationed along the fences to alert the camp if any move was made by the troops. The troops began erecting spotlights all around the barbed wire to illuminate the area.
Word was passed to the factories and to Gor Stroi that Mikhail’s committee was in charge of the camp. They asked all Camp 5 brigades to remain in Gor Stroi and the factories, if at all possible, instead of returning to camp. Food would be a problem, but the committee requested that we conserve what we had and stick it out. The women, too, decided to strike as long as the men did.
Early that night, under the glare of the spotlights, those in camp held a general meeting in the main compound. Over in the factory area, we strained our ears to catch what was said. First of all, Mikhail announced what everybody knew: there was to be no more work! This brought a great cheer from the crowd. “We’ve had enough suffering,” he shouted. “We’ve had enough ill treatment, enough work without pay! Vsio ravno! (It’s all the same!) We will die fighting for freedom, rather than dying at work.”
All the time Mikhail and the other leaders were speaking, the guards outside were snapping pictures from all angles, trying to catch as many faces in evidence as possible. I watched them and thanked God I was in the factory area. Mikhail went on to outline the camp program. There was to be no looting, because the food had to last. The brigades would eat, each at its appointed time. The program of the day would be posted on the camp board, and everyone should observe the new camp order and obey the instructions of the committee and the camp police.
Over in the factory zone, we were cheered by the speeches as much as the other prisoners, but we didn’t have any food and we hadn’t had any dinner. The rest of it was all very fine, but we wanted our share. Finally, bread was thrown over the fence to us.
That night, the officials from the city came back with General Zveriev himself. They left their cars at the camp entrance and about twenty of them, on foot, walked the 200 yards down to the factory zone. Our brigadiers immediately passed the word to lock all the factory doors and not to talk to them, but they walked right by the brick factory and down to the smaller factories along the railroad tracks. They had brought engineers with them and wanted to inspect the machinery to see that it wasn’t damaged.
Finally, some of our brigadiers went out to meet them, but the factory doors were kept locked. The men in the camp saw the brigadiers headed for the official party and shouted across the distance: “Don’t make any deals! Don’t listen to them! Stick it out! We talked enough, follow us!” Little by little, the workers in the brick factory grew curious and began to slip out the doors in small groups, crowding around the brigadiers and the officials from Norilsk.
The conversation was disorganized in the extreme. Everyone was shouting at once. The workers were complaining about the strict regime, mishandling and rough treatment by the foremen and the guards, the poor food, and the long hours. The officials from the city told the men they hadn’t known conditions were so bad; they agreed to all the proposed changes if only the men would go back to camp and resume work. Most of the prisoners just muttered, but others were willing to listen—especially when the officials began to talk of reprisals.
“Don’t you see how you’re being fooled?” said a Party official. “Your ringleaders are men with nothing to lose, but those of you who aren’t to blame will have to suffer, too, if you continue acting this way.” Some of the men seemed convinced. They began drifting toward the gates of the factory area. But they were threatened by those in the camp and, as they hesitated at the gate, the troops pushed them out roughly, not toward the camp, but toward the city of Norilsk. That was the last straw. The factory workers felt betrayed; the brigadiers cursed and shouted at the officials, who hurriedly left. From our zone, they went over to Gor Stroi.
There the situation was much worse. The workers in Gor Stroi had had no supper; they were a good distance from the camp and there was no way to get food to them. They were much more willing to listen to the officials and return to camp. They wanted to eat. But the men in the camp, who saw them lining up to march out, hurled threats and curses in their direction and told them not to come back. Finally, the workers retreated. At that, the officials gave up. The guards closed the gates, the men stayed in Gor Stroi, and we all settled down for the night. It was a peculiar night. Sleep came hard because of all the excitement and the continuing tension. There was no telling what the officials might do, when the troops might move.
Next morning, the camp officials came down to our area. They asked us sympathetically if we had gotten a good night’s sleep and whether we had eaten, what we were going to do next, and why we were engaged in this revolt. The men said little. They just told the officials to consult with the prisoner leaders in the camp. Frankly, though, there were many in the factory area who didn’t see any sense in staying here “on strike.” They wondered if we were going to get anything out of the whole business at all except empty stomachs.
I chatted for a few moments with one of the officials over by the fence. He told me honestly that the revolts in the prison camps were now widespread, not only around Norilsk, but on the continent as well, and that Moscow was quite concerned. “Moscow, however, hasn’t decided what to do,” he said, “so no one is willing to take any action with the troops.”
That morning, the prisoners in the camp held a funeral for the two men who had been shot by the tower guards. There was a great ceremony, and much speechmaking about these two “martyrs” of prisoner freedom, resolves to hold out until the changes these men had died for were obtained, and so forth. Then the bodies were taken to the gate and turned over to the camp officials for burial.
The people in town, by this time, were curious. We could see them peering out the windows of the taller buildings, some of them even standing on the rooftops. But no civilians were permitted close to the camp.
About 5 P.M., we noticed a commotion in the camp. The Gor Stroi brigades had decided to return. The guards led them back to Camp 5, but as soon as they were checked through the gates they were assaulted by those in camp for “giving in.” Mikhail’s committee wanted all the brigades to hold their posts and keep spread out, so that as many troops as possible would be needed to keep the area surrounded and the troop concentration in any one place would be weak. Gor Stroi, especially, was considered a vantage point. It was right on the edge of the completed parts of the city and, in an emergency, the leaders hoped to be able to knock down the Gor Stroi fences and escape into Norilsk.
Again we spent a very uneasy night. All that second day we remained at the factory, wondering what would happen; the third day passed the same way. From time to time, the city officials came out to talk to the revolt leaders, but nothing much seemed to happen. On the fourth day, around noon, we were beginning to get restless. We had had nothing but bread and water all this time, and we couldn’t see that we were accomplishing much by remaining in the factories.
That afternoon, finally, word came from Camp 5 for us to return; the officials had promised better conditions. That suited us just fine. We lined up, were checked out, and practically ran the 200 yards to the camp gate. As soon as we were checked back into camp, we made a beeline for the kitchen where we demanded—and were served—hot soup and kasha for the first time in four days.
That same evening, the officials returned to take over the camp. Mikhail and his committee passed the word that no one was to work for the next three days. We would
remain on strike until we saw whether the officials would keep their promises. But there were no reprisals and the food immediately began to get better, so after three days the brigades returned to work. That night, back in camp, those who had been in Gor Stroi reported that the katerzani (long-termers) in a special camp to the south of the city had revolted and were still on strike. The free men in Gor Stroi had also told of other revolts. In Camp 5, though, work went on for a week or two under much improved conditions. We had gotten many of the changes we had asked for, most of the others were promised, and the only concession made on the part of the prisoners was that the Benderovcy had agreed to work. It seemed too good to be true, and the prisoners sensed it.
One morning, about the second week of April, the truce was broken. The brigades marched out to Gor Stroi and the factories as usual. My brigade went through the zone first that morning, then some others, and last of all two newly formed brigades of Benderovcy. I noticed there were more guards at the gates than usual that morning, almost double the number at the camp gates and the gates to the factory area, yet nothing happened until the two brigades of Benderovcy started to enter the gates to the factory area. Suddenly, they were surrounded by troops and pushed back, and the factory gates were closed. They were neatly trapped between the camp and factory zone, cut off from the other prisoners, subdued with gun butts if necessary.
Meanwhile, trucks roared down from the city, full of soldiers. The ringleaders were sorted out of the two trapped brigades, loaded into the trucks, and carted away. By this time, our shouts had finally alerted those left in camp. They surged toward the barbed wire with clubs, ready to break into the factory zone, but Mikhail and his staff stopped them from any premature rioting.
The camp officials again retreated to the north gate and left the camp itself to the control of the prisoners once more. Nothing much happened during the afternoon, and in the evening the brigades from Gor Stroi returned to camp. Mikhail told us, however, to stay in the factory area. Bread and a few fish were once more tossed over the barbed wire to us from the camp.
That evening, the city and camp officials again met with the leaders of the revolt. This time they were much more aggressive and threatened to use force. Mikhail refused to be intimidated; he told them that force would be met with force. “You promised no reprisals the last time,” he said, “but God knows what happened to those men you hauled away this morning. There has got to be an end to all this, a drastic change! We gained nothing by giving in before, so this is it! This is the end, either death or life!”
At the end of the meeting, signalmen climbed to the top of the two-story building at the north end of camp and hung out a huge homemade skull-and-crossbones flag. Others stretched a big banner along the side of the barracks which faced Norilsk, with a painted slogan, “Help us get free of these murderers.” The signalmen wig-wagged to all the camps in the area to go on strike. They all responded that they were with us to the death. From the upper windows of the factory, we could barely see the signal flags from Camp 4, two miles away. From then on, the signalmen were always at their posts on top of the building.
Even as the camp got organized, the troops were back. They stood almost shoulder to shoulder around the whole perimeter of the camp complex, including the factory zone and the women’s camp. At first, the officials tried to get everyone back into camp, to reduce the size of the perimeter and the number of troops needed, but we refused to leave the factory zone. The city officials were worried because most of the troops in the area were out at the prison camps, yet there was quite a bit of unrest in the town itself. Many of the people in Norilsk had once been prisoners, and they sympathized with our demands.
This time we held out in the factory zone for five days. On the morning of the fifth day, the city officials and army officers came to the gates of our zone and gave the brigadiers strict orders to return the men to camp that day. They meant business and they were prepared to use force. The brigadiers told them nothing doing; the army officials turned on their heels and led the procession back to town. It began to look critical, but the camp leaders told us to hold out at all costs.
That afternoon we nailed up all the doors to the factory and began barricading the building at different points with piles of bricks. It was a long, nervous night. We were all tense, and nobody got much sleep. Early the next morning, trucks full of troops armed with machine guns began rolling out from town. They deployed around the factory and we were cut off in our “citadel.” The women in their camp, and the prisoners in Camp 5, rushed to the barbed wire and began to hoot in protest. But this was the regular army. They paid no attention to the shouts; calmly and efficiently, they set about the job they had been ordered to do.
As soon as his troops were deployed, the commanding officer charged us to leave the factory at once and return to camp. He got nothing but curses and shouts of defiance for his answer from the brigadiers. There were more than seventy of us inside the brick factory, stationed at various points behind piles of bricks which would serve both as shelter and weapons. Many of the men had clubs and iron bars. I was with a group in the big kiln room at the east end of the factory.
A pistol shot was the signal for the beginning of the assault. The troops moved in from all sides at once, hammering at the doors to break them down. It was absolute bedlam. I remember the women shouting from their camp across the road, about an octave above the curses of the prisoners and the dull booming of the gun butts on the doors. The first group to penetrate the building came through the stockroom in the basement, up a ramp, and into the kiln room.
As soon as the first helmet appeared, the soldiers were showered with bricks and imprecations. They backed out and began firing bursts from their machine guns. We knelt behind our piles of bricks, petrified, but ready to shower the door again as soon as the first uniform appeared. While we were concentrating on that, though, other soldiers broke into the room behind us and took us by surprise. They didn’t bother to shoot; they just used their guns as clubs. I got a whack across the back that almost broke me in two and leveled me on the floor. Somebody kicked me in the head to be sure I’d stay down, then one by one we were thrown out the windows like sacks of cement.
Some of the prisoners who were badly mangled were loaded into trucks and driven off. The rest of us were lined up outside the factory, slapped and kicked into line. Within fifteen minutes, the troops had cleared not only the brick factory, but all the other factories as well. I was a little dazed, but it seemed to me the whole city was watching from windows and rooftops. The women’s camp and the prisoners in Camp 5 were in an uproar. The army commandant, however, stood as immovable as a rock, grim and unyielding.
When all the prisoners had been lined up, we were marched out the factory gates. Instead of taking us back to camp, though, the soldiers marched us along the railroad tracks and down to the clay pits. There we were herded out of sight of the camp, ankle deep in water, and the soldiers stood around us with machine guns at the ready. There was a moment’s pause while the commandant came up. His eyes flashed, he gave a command; the troops leveled their machine guns right at us. At that point I made an Act of Contrition as best I could, but everything inside me seemed to be both frozen and churning at the same time.
That instant of waiting for the shots seemed like an eternity. Then, in the next moment, a car roared up spitting gravel from behind its wheels, and two camp officials jumped out, yelling. The guns were lowered to the soldiers’ hips. My knees went limp and I breathed again. We were ordered to sit down on the wet ground. I collapsed.
Three officials strode around the group, calling out names from various lists they had in their hands. The prisoners went forward, one by one, and were looked over closely and checked against photographs among the papers. When my turn came, I got a good long look from one of the officials, who then consulted his papers again and whispered with the other officials. After a while, he said to me gruffly: “To the right!” By the time we were all sorted out, there
were about thirty-five prisoners on the right and perhaps thirty on the left. I wasn’t sure what the divisions meant.
We stood there under guard, while the officials climbed back into their car and drove off. In a few minutes, a truck roared down the road. Now that my brain was functioning again, after the extreme terror of the last few minutes, it might have been a good time to pray. But frankly, the only thought that kept running through my mind as I saw the truck coming down the road was, “Here’s where we go and get ourselves dumped somewhere.”
Interwoven with that refrain was a bit of self-pity and a pang of loneliness. I thought for the last time of my family at home, my friends, my fellow Jesuits, who would never know what happened to me or where I died—out here some place in a clay quarry in the wastes of Siberia. By the time the truck reached us, though, the moment had passed and my reaction had set in: “Do you think God, too, doesn’t know where you are? Do you think He has protected you thus far and has now just forgotten about you?”
I was immediately flooded with confidence in God’s Providence and a strong faith. It sounds rather maudlin as I try to write it here, but it was a tremendous help to me at that moment and an experience I will never forget. My trust in God’s Providence, learned during the long years of Lubianka, had been put to the ultimate test. And it had not failed.
The group on the left was loaded into the truck. They were packed in tightly together and made to sit with their heads between their knees and arms folded over their heads. The motor started and the truck drove off. One of the officials walked over to us on the right. “You men,” he said, “are lucky you’re still alive, thanks to us. You know what the punishment should be for open rebellion against the government. You were almost shot, remember that! Now I’m sending you back to camp with a warning: If you’re ever again caught in anti-government activity, subversive work, or collaboration with the revolutionaries in camp, you’ll get no mercy next time.”
With God in Russia Page 26