I thought the driver would be furious, but he laughed uproariously. Then he told me he’d show me how to handle Vashka. He strode to the stall, yelling the horse’s name at the top of his lungs, cursing and shouting like an old mule-skinner. Vashka looked terrified. Instead of kicking or snorting, he began to back nervously into the corner of his stall with dancing little steps, his eyes flashing. “See how easy it is,” said the driver. “All you have to do is make the first move, and be meaner and more cussed than he is. Go ahead, try it!”
I didn’t particularly like the idea, but I got a bucketful of oats in one hand and strode over to Vashka’s stall. I began to bellow and holler at the top of my lungs, waving my free hand, yelling out anything that came to mind and just sticking old Vashka’s name in the middle of every phrase. It worked. Vashka got that skittish look in his red eyes and minced over into one corner of the stall. Still shouting, I spilled his ration of oats into the trough, walked out of the stall, and slammed the gate behind me. I felt like a real professional after that, and I never had any more trouble with Vashka.
About the first week of April, I was called to the camp office and told I’d be liberated in ten days. Checking my records, they found that according to the new regulations I was entitled to three months off for exceptional work; I actually served only fourteen years and nine months of my fifteen-year sentence. So, in my free time, I began the round of medical exams and the red tape of paperwork preparatory to any release.
The night before I was to leave, we had a going-away party. These were almost a tradition now in Kayerkhan, because so many had left. The men took up a collection and everyone tried to help out a little bit. Some gave 3 rubles or 5, and somebody scrounged up a new pair of padded pants and jacket to help me along. That night we went over to the free dining room near the camp gate, took over a few tables, and talked long into the night. Everyone was full of advice, telling me where to go, who to see, where to find old friends who had gotten out before I did. In return, I promised to see as many of their families as I could if I was anywhere in the vicinity. They gave me messages and wrote down the estimated date of their own release, so I could pass it on.
The next morning, April 22, 1955, I was wide awake. I don’t think I slept a wink all that night; I just couldn’t believe that after fifteen years I was really going to be free. About nine o’clock, the foreman called me and took me to the KGB office. I was there for about two hours, signing documents and filling out forms. I expected some trouble or possibly another interrogation, but this was all routine for them. They went about it quite matter-of-factly, paying no more attention to me than they would to any other prisoner being set free.
Still, I was extremely nervous and anxious. I was wearing an old pair of valenki, my new padded jacket and pants, and a cap with padded earpieces. All my personal belongings had disappeared years ago. In the course of the morning’s processing, one of the KGB men handed over a letter and two photographs of Sonia, one of my former Albertin parishioners. She had sent them to me in 1949; I got them now. I stuffed them into my pocket alongside the 50 rubles ($5) which were all I had in the world. They represented my pay, what was left of it, and the gifts from the party the night before.
I kept waiting for some sort of instructions from the KGB, but they simply explained at great length the details of my new status. When you leave the prison camp, you don’t get a passport. You get a “document of liberation,” so-called, which is a certificate stating that you have completed your sentence, and a statement of your citizenship status. A man may either be fully liberated and rehabilitated, or only partially, as in my case. As a convicted spy, I got what is known as a restricted certificate or polozenie pasporta.
With the polozenie pasporta, you’re restricted as to where you can live and, in a sense, how much you can earn. For instance, at that time there was a very generous polar bonus, called the zapolarie, for those who worked in the Siberian Arctic. It was a government inducement to get workers for this fierce frontier. The longer a man worked here, the greater was the bonus; if a man worked in Siberia for five years, he could earn double his salary as a result of this zapolarie.
With my restricted citizenship status, I wasn’t eligible for this polar bonus. Neither could I live wherever I wanted. I wasn’t allowed to live in any “regime city,” i.e., the big cities like Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Vladivostok, Tashkent, nor in any of the border cities from which, presumably, I might be able to leave the country. I could visit such places for a period not to exceed three days, with the express permission of the government. And, with a polozenie pasporta, one of the first things I had to do in any city was report to the police and register my presence there.
After the officials had explained all this to me, and checked out my camp documents for what seemed the one-hundredth time, they told me to report to the police in Norilsk with my documents of liberation. There I would be given a formal set of identity papers. By 11:30, it was all over and I walked out the main gate of the camp for the last time. Automatically, after I had gone about fifteen paces, I stopped and waited for the guard. The prisoners and the guards were watching me, laughing—nine out of ten liberated prisoners made the same mistake.
I was so self-conscious, I didn’t know how to walk like a free man. My arms, dangling at my sides rather than folded behind my back, felt strange. I took a long look at the camp, almost as if I’d have to tear myself away, then put my hands in my pockets and walked toward Kayerkhan. There was a train at the station. I boarded it and no one paid the slightest attention to me. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like a movie, as if everything were just a series of pictures unrolling before my eyes, or as if I were in a dream and might wake up at any moment.
The conductor, a woman, collected my fare. I was expecting her to ask me questions or to raise a difficulty of some sort. She just smiled politely. I sat down in the seat looking out the window, almost in tears—a free man, treated like a free man. I kept waiting for something to happen, for somebody to shout or something to stop the train or someone to point at me. Nothing happened. I sat back and looked at the mountains, the mines, the coal pouring out of the hoppers, the camp—then the train began to move and I was on my way to Norilsk.
CHAPTER 4
A Free Man, Restricted
UNION MEMBER IN NORILSK
EVEN IN THE two years since I’d seen it last, Norilsk had changed. It had assumed less the aspect of a frontier town and more that of a city, thanks to the buildings and the industries put up by the prisoners. By 1955, its population was more than 120,000, and those who were lucky enough to have houses were living for the most part in the former prisoners’ barracks and the five-story apartment buildings I’d helped to build while at Camp 5.
The industry, like the big BOF plant we’d built at Camp 2, and the huge Kombinat we’d built at Camp 4, were right at the foot of Schmidtika, Norilsk’s most striking geographical landmark. From there, the main road, Oktobrskaya Street, ran west through the old city to Lenin Platz, a traffic circle, beyond which the new city began. West of Lenin Platz was Sebastobolskaya Street with the police station, the new hospitals, schools, theaters, and department stores. All along the streets which paralleled Sebastobolskaya were the five-story brick apartment houses I remembered building.
Two years earlier, I had left Norilsk on a narrow-gauge railway. Now I arrived in town on a wide, standard-gauge railroad which had been completed in the interim. Big Stalin-type locomotives were standing in the yards, coal-burning monsters used on the continental runs, now transferred for use in the north.
As I stepped out of the train on arrival, the air somehow felt warmer than in Kayerkhan. Everywhere, however, there was a coat of heavy snow, dirty with factory smoke. Having known the city as a prisoner, I felt strange walking through it now as a free man. It was a peculiar feeling of mingled pride and nervousness, a sense of mastery and of loss, for I felt somehow out of place.
I did carry with me two addresses. One was Fathe
r Viktor’s; he’d been released from Camp 4 two months earlier and was living just off the main boulevard, Oktobrskaya. The other address was that of another former prisoner, a young Pole named Ladislas, who had invited me to look him up in Norilsk. Since I was closest to Oktobrskaya, I walked that way, past the stadium and theater, along the main street of the old city, just looking at the shops and the buildings, and feeling somewhat shabby in my padded prison clothes. Yet most of the people I saw were dressed as I was; many of them, no doubt, were former prisoners, too.
Out beyond the stadium, I could see a random conglomeration of shanties, huts, and shacks (called boloks) that had once housed a large Chinese population and was called “Shanghai Town” by the people of Norilsk. When I came to where the tracks of the spur line to Tecz, the electric power plant, crossed Oktobrskaya, I turned left as per Viktor’s instructions.
About 200 yards in from the boulevard was another jumble of shacks and shanties made of old boards and packing crates, built one onto the other like a series of dominoes. The walls were usually double, made of the thin scrap lumber, then filled with ashes for insulation. The better ones were covered with tar paper or clay or plaster on the outside.
There was no discernible order, so I stopped at the first shack and asked for Viktor. The family inside directed me to one of the jumbles nearby, and eventually I found Father Viktor’s bolok, a tumbledown shack in the middle of one of these rabbit warrens. He was living with another priest, Father Neron, who had been in Kayerkhan and liberated before I worked there. They had two beds in the room, separated by an altar; this little room, 10 by 10 feet, served as their chapel as well.
They were delighted to see me, as I them. They cooked me a dinner on the little electric stove which served both for cooking and for heating the hut. Then we talked for hours. They wouldn’t hear of my going anywhere else, so that night we put three chairs in the little space between the two beds, and I used my padded coat and pants for a mattress. As soon as we got up in the morning, we cleared out the beds and prepared to celebrate Mass.
By 6:30, there were ten or twelve people in that little room for Mass. On Sundays, the people jammed not only this room, but the corridor beyond the open door as well. To accommodate the growing crowds, Viktor and Neron said two Masses every Sunday and preached a sermon at each, and there might be sixty or more people at every Mass. For this, in effect, was a parish church.
That first morning, after Mass, I went with Viktor to the police station to register, as I’d been instructed. I handed in my documents and the police registered me, then gave me a set of identification papers. They explained again the restrictions I was under because of the polozenie pasporta, my “limited rehabilitation” status. They also added a new twist. Since my political charge, 58:6, had been for espionage, I was subject to further limitations. I had to live where I was told, in this case Norilsk; if I wanted to move to another city, I could do it only with permission and for a good reason, such as health. I was not so free, in short, as I had thought on walking out of Kayerkhan!
They asked me where I was living, and I told them I didn’t yet have a place of my own. But they insisted I had to have some address for the MVD1 register, which contains the address of every citizen in the city. I told them I was living with Viktor. My name was accordingly entered in the police book at that address, then in Viktor’s “house book,” a registration certificate which every householder must have (something like a driver’s license), containing the names of all the residents in his house. Now I was officially registered.
I lived with Viktor for more than a week while I looked for a job and a place of my own to live. Meanwhile, I met Viktor’s parishioners and neighbors. Ludwig, the choirmaster, lived in the bolok next door to Viktor’s with his wife and teenaged son. He was a short, dark man with Mongol features, extremely dedicated to the church, who sang Mass every morning before going to his job as a boiler repairman. His wife, Niura, was also small and dark, with glowing cheeks and a warm personality. Unlike most of the women in Norilsk, she didn’t work during the day, for Ludwig’s skill was much in demand and he was highly paid. So Niura was happy to spend her time as housekeeper for the priests, and sacristan for our little chapel.
In the bolok immediately behind Viktor’s, and built onto it, lived two Lithuanian women, Nina and Ludmilla, who cared for an old and infirm Greek Orthodox priest, Father Foma. He used to say Mass for them early in the morning, after which they would come over to attend our Masses. They worked in the surgical hospital on Oktobrskaya, and they used to help mend our clothes, wash the floors, and bring us food from the hospital kitchen.
After a week, I still hadn’t found either a place to live or a job. Finally, I looked up five young Poles whom I’d known in the mines, former prisoners, who were living in a sort of bachelor’s barrack near the Kombinat. They worked as an emergency rescue squad for the mines in the area—as far away as Kayerkhan and up in the mountains to old Zapadnaya—wherever and whenever they were needed. They had a room about 10 by 12 feet in which the five of them lived, but they invited me to bunk with them.
One of them was always on duty, so we arranged that I’d sleep in the duty man’s bed. Moreover, there was a dining room in the barrack which served good meals, so I wouldn’t have to continue scrounging from Father Viktor—without a job, I couldn’t afford a restaurant. It wasn’t the best arrangement, but I thought it was better than overcrowding poor, generous Viktor, so I decided to move in with them.
Meanwhile, I had gone to see the young Pole, Ladislas. He was working at BOF in the laboratory, and he told me there would be a job opening at the plant in a couple weeks. He had spoken to his supervisor about me, and he felt sure he could get me the job.
I still went to Viktor’s every morning to say Mass, but on Sundays, with a valise full of Mass equipment provided by Viktor, I’d go out to one of the old barracks which had been part of Camp 5. Now it was part of the city housing, and I said Mass there, at 9 A.M., for another “parish” of Poles. Before Mass, I’d hear confessions, then after Mass I’d have baptisms and weddings, in ever-increasing numbers as the people found out I was available every Sunday.
I always refused to take any money or stipend for this work, but the people wanted to do something to show their appreciation. Since I wouldn’t take money, they asked me at least to accept some clothes to replace the prison camp clothing I was still wearing. They took me down to the new part of the city beyond Lenin Platz, where there was an avenue of new stores: a big food store called the Gastronom, something like a supermarket; the Promtovarni Magazin for manufactured goods, much like a department store; and a row of shops for specialty items.
I was amazed at how full and well-stocked these stores looked, even out here in Siberia. It was only when I began to shop for clothes that I realized how difficult it was to get the quality or the size I really wanted. In fact, it was taken for granted by the people that the clerks made extra money by seeing to it that you got what you wanted. I had to take an overcoat which was a size too small, because it was as close to a fit as I could get. I couldn’t get shirts with collars, nor a pair of low-cut shoes. For that matter, there weren’t any shoes in my size so I had to be satisfied with a very uncomfortable pair a size smaller. The few galoshes they had were much too big—until I paid the clerk to look again. Then he found my size.
One morning, when I came to say Mass, Viktor told me there was a possibility I could get another apartment, at least for several months. One of the families in his “parish” had told him their neighbors were going away for a few months, and they could arrange for me to have the bolok if they could have an answer that same day. I jumped at the chance. Immediately after Mass, Viktor and I went to make the arrangements.
I went home with Viktor that evening and helped him celebrate a Panikhida, or Requiem, a very beautiful Russian memorial service for the dead. The ceremony is sung and takes perhaps forty minutes; all the people know the chants by heart, so everyone sings. Dur
ing the ceremony a kutia—a small bowl of rice mixed with raisins—is placed on the altar, and after the ceremony everyone partakes of it, along with cookies and cakes provided by the family. After the ceremony, I stayed the night with Father Viktor and the next morning, after Mass, I went to my new apartment. It was a small bolok, but it had three rooms. There was a little kitchen, perhaps three-by-five feet, a bedroom just big enough for two beds, and a small sitting room. But it was a good base of operations for me, since it was private, and I said Mass here daily for a constantly growing number of people. I continued to say Mass on Sunday, however, at the Polish barrack out at the old Camp 5.
A few days after I’d settled into my new bolok, Ladislas came to tell me that the supervisor of the laboratory at BOF wanted to see me. BOF—Bolshaya (Major) Obogatitelnaya (Refining) Fabrika (Factory)—is a massive building which sits almost halfway up the hill overlooking the city. Ladislas was waiting when I arrived the next morning and took me up to the second floor, which housed the laboratory. We went first to his office, where I waited while he checked with the supervisor. He was back in a moment and led me down a corridor to the supervisor’s office. The supervisor was a thin woman in her late thirties, with black hair, dark eyes, delicate features, and a beautiful face. “Anastasia Nikolayevna,” said Ladislas, “this is Wladimir Martinovich.” She got up, came around her desk, and shook hands. She asked me to sit down for an interview and I narrated my background; I admitted frankly that I had no experience. “But I need a job,” I said, “and I’m willing to work.”
Anastasia smiled. She said she would be happy to have me. I would work in the laboratory as Ladislas’ assistant until I acquired some experience, and she asked if I would be satisfied with a starting salary of 1100 rubles ($110) a month, with a 200-ruble bonus for good work. I was almost overcome, and I thanked her profusely. She told me she would like me to start the following day.
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