Apricot Jam

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  You’d come into a village with mounted patrol and find it all shut tight, as if everyone had died. You’d knock on a door and hear a woman’s voice: “Don’t be angry, but we’ve got nothing left. We’re starving.” You’d knock again: “We can’t trust anybody these days. Every bigwig who comes through here just wants to take our grain.”

  They’d been so terrified by the Soviets and by the partisans that all they wanted was to be left alone.

  At our political meetings, they warned us not to antagonize the local population unnecessarily. But they would also say, “Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes. If you suspect anything, just give them a rifle butt in the face.”

  But even our own Red Army men worried us when they were reluctant to use their weapons against peasants (“We’re peasants, same as them, so how can we shoot at our own folk?”) The bandits were also spreading leaflets for our troops: “It’s you who are the bandits here. We did not invade your lands. Leave us alone, we can live well enough without you.” A rumor came from somewhere that within a few weeks, all the Red Army troops would be demobilized. “Why wait that long? How much longer do we have to keep fighting?” (Some of our men also went over to the bandits or deserted, particularly whenever our troops had to be redeployed.) The political officer Nochyovka would say: “Men like that have to be reeducated. Otherwise, when they’ve had a few drinks and start singing, it won’t be revolutionary songs, it’ll be ‘Stenka Razin’ or some filthy stuff. And if they spend a night in a village where all the men are away in the forest, they exploit the women as a class.” And he would give talks on the topic: “Spending your life without labor and without revolutionary struggle is parasitism!” (And someone would remind him of our woman medical assistant who was available for the whole division: “I’m not like a bowl of porridge,” she’d say, “there’s enough to go around, and plenty for the whole squadron.”)

  We’d hold our breath at morning muster, waiting to see who’d gone off on French leave. We had to keep our own Red Army men in hobbles. The instructor from the provincial military committee told us that there were 60,000 deserters in Tambov Province, all of them now reinforcements for the bandits.

  The orders that came from Tambov headquarters and the regiment were never written in strictly military fashion, setting out our reconnaissance sector or giving operation instructions; it was always just “Attack and destroy!” “Surround and liquidate!” “Whatever the cost!”

  And we didn’t count the cost. But how were we to smoke out the bandits ? How could we tell who they were? There were no Soviet authorities left in the villages; they’d all run off to wait it out in the towns, so who could we ask? An army commander would order all the village people to come to a meeting. He’d line up all the men in one rank: “How many of you are with the bandits?” No one said a word. “Shoot every tenth man!” And they’d be shot on the spot, in front of the whole crowd. The women would scream and howl and moan. “Close up the rank. Now, how many are bandits?” Once again, they’d count off every tenth man to be shot. Then the villagers would give in and point them out. A few of them would scamper away. You couldn’t pick them all off.

  Sometimes a woman walking alone along the road would be arrested and searched to see if she’d been spying or carrying messages. A lot of horse manure along a road told us that a detachment of bandits had passed by.

  Our boys also went hungry many times. Their boots were full of holes, and their uniforms were worn-out and bedraggled. They wore them all day and slept in them at night. (And some of them still had the raspberry pants!) We suffered a lot. If anyone had a leg amputated, it was done without anesthetic, and there were no bandages either.

  In the middle of April, we in Zherdyovka heard that Antonov’s men had swooped in and taken the large factory town of Rasskazovo, just forty-five versts from Tambov. They held it for four hours and slaughtered the communists in their own homes, cutting their heads right off. Half the Soviet battalion there went over to Antonov, the other half was taken prisoner. Then the bandits withdrew under fire from airplanes.

  So that was how our war with them went. Then, through the winter and spring, things got even hotter. It had been eight months now, and Antonov still hadn’t surrendered—in fact, he was even getting stronger. (Even though they sometimes had no bullets and just used bits of iron.)

  An order came from Tambov headquarters: “All operations are to be carried out with sufficient severity to inspire respect for Soviet power.” Villages that supported the bandits were burned to the ground. All that was left were the skeletons of Russian stoves and ashes.

  The Cheka Special Section in Zherdyovka wasn’t sitting still, either. The head of the section, Shurka Shubin, walked around in a red shirt and blue breeches with hand grenades dangling from his chest and a hefty Mauser in a wooden holster. He’d come into a cavalry camp (the formation commander was subordinate to the head of the Special Section): “All right, boys, whoever wants to execute some bandits, two paces forward!” No one stepped forward. “Some fine training you’ve had here.” All the people to be executed had been herded into the Special Section compound. They dug a huge pit, made the prisoners sit down on the edge, facing it and with their hands tied. Shubin and his men would walk along shooting them in the back of the neck.

  But how else could they deal with them? Yorka had a good friend, also named Zhukov, though his first name was Pavel, and he would cut the bandits into pieces.

  It was a full-scale war, and you had to give it all you had, and more. It wasn’t like that German War. It was here in Tambov that Yorka turned savage; it was here that he became a hardened, cruel warrior.

  In May, a Plenipotentiary Commission from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee headed by another Antonov (though he was Antonov-Ovseenko) arrived from Moscow to stamp out the bandits. And to command the Special Tambov Army, they sent the commander of the western front, army commander Tukhachevsky, who had just settled scores with Poland. His deputy was Uborevich, who had a good deal of experience fighting bandits in Belorussia. Tukhachevsky brought his own staff with him, along with a detachment of armored cars.

  Not long after this, Zhukov was lucky enough to see the famous Tukhachevsky in person when he came to the headquarters of the 14th Independent Cavalry Brigade in Zherdyovka along the railway in an armored trolley. The brigade commander, Milonov, ordered all the political officers and commanders down to squadron level to hear Tukhachevsky speak.

  Tukhachevsky was rather short, but he carried himself proudly, as stately as a peacock. He knew his own worth.

  He began by praising everyone for their bravery and dedication to their duty. (Everyone glowed, chests swelling.) Then he explained the mission that lay ahead of them all.

  The Council of People’s Commissars had ordered that in the six weeks following May 10, the Tambov rebellion was to be put down. No matter what the cost! We all have heavy work ahead, he told us. The experience of suppressing such popular rebellions shows that we have to flood the whole area of the revolt with troops until it is completely occupied and then station armed units at critical points all across it. Kotovsky’s renowned cavalry division has just arrived from Kiev, detrained in Morshansk, and is already advancing on the rebel area of Pakhotny Ugol. When it’s done its job, it will come here, to the center of the rebellion. We have a huge material advantage over the enemy, with our air and armored car detachments. One of our first demands to the local population will be to rebuild all the bridges on the roads through the villages so that our motorized units can pass through. (But we must never use local people as guides!) We also have a supply of chemical gasses that we will use if necessary; the Council has given permission for this. In the course of this vigorous suppression of the revolt, all of you commanders will get some wonderful military experience.

  Zhukov could not take his eyes off the army commander. This was probably the first time in his life he was seeing a genuine military leader, someone completely different from us sim
ple cut-and-thrust commanders or even our brigade commander. How self-confident he was! And he was able to instill that same confidence in everyone else: it would all unfold just as he had said! There was nothing of the peasant in his face; it was aristocratic and well groomed. He had a long, slender white neck and large, velvet eyes. He’d kept his side whiskers long, but they were carefully trimmed. And he didn’t speak at all the way we did. His Budyonny helmet—the same helmet we all wore—truly suited him and made Tukhachevsky look even more like a leader.

  Of course, he added, we’ll also send more of our agents to scout out the bandits, though the Chekists have, unfortunately, suffered some heavy losses. But we still have our biggest weapon: putting pressure on the bandits through their families.

  Then he read aloud Order No. 130, which he had already signed and just now issued across the province so that the whole population would know. The language of the order was as absolutely confident as the young commander himself: “All peasants who have joined the rebel bands must immediately place themselves at the disposal of Soviet authorities, surrender their weapons, and name their ringleaders . . . Those who surrender voluntarily will not face the death penalty. The families of bandits who do not turn themselves in will be arrested immediately, their property confiscated and distributed among the peasants who have remained loyal to the Soviet authorities. The families of those bandits who do not report and surrender will be exiled to remote areas of the RFSFR.”

  No gathering in which there were large numbers of communists, as was the case on this day, could end without everyone singing “The Internationale,” but Tukhachevsky took the liberty of not waiting for that. He extended his white hand only to the brigade commander and, with the same proud bearing, he left and drove off in his armored trolley.

  This audacious display of authority also impressed Zhukov.

  Then, even before “The Internationale,” all the commanders were given a leaflet from the Provincial Executive Committee addressed to the peasants of Tambov Province: The time has come to rid yourselves of this festering abscess of Antonovism! Until now, the bandits’ advantage lay in their frequent exchange of exhausted horses for fresh ones. Now, however, with the presence of Antonov’s criminal gangs in your area, you must not leave a single horse in your village. Take them away to a place where our forces can protect them.

  As the meeting broke up, Zhukov came away with new feelings: he felt inspired with fresh confidence, he had a new example to follow, and he was envious.

  Just fighting a war—well, that was something any fool could do. But now—to be a soldier with every bone in your body, with every breath you took, and do it so that everyone around you could sense it! That was something great.

  Zhukov loved soldiering more than anything else.

  The six-week period for the final suppression of the rebellion began. The armored cars of Uborevich’s detachment had their limitations. They couldn’t travel everywhere, and they often broke through the bridges, just as the light trucks and even the cars armed with machine guns did. The peasant horses feared the automobiles and wouldn’t go into an attack with them, and when our cavalry was pursuing the rebels, they couldn’t lose contact with the vehicles.

  We did have one other big advantage. Antonov, of course, had no radios, and so our units pursuing him could communicate with each other without encoding anything, and this made for better coordination and easier transfer of information. The Antonov men would gallop along, thinking that no one had spotted them, but meanwhile messages were being transmitted through all three regions, revealing where the bandits were, where they were going, and where to send a pursuit force to cut them off.

  So we went off in pursuit, trying to trap Antonov’s main body and force him into a major battle, which he was avoiding. Kotovsky’s brigade moved on him from the north, Dmitrienko’s brigade from the west; another detachment of Kononeko’s Cheka forces was added—seven one-and-a-half-ton Fiat armored cars with their own motorized gasoline carriers. Antonov stumbled into the trap laid for him, but he immediately rushed away; changing horses regularly, he traveled 120 or 130 versts a day, retreating into Saratov Province toward the Khopyor; and then he returned. The 14th Brigade, like all the Red cavalry, lagged behind him everywhere. Now only the armored cars were pursuing him. (People told of how an armored car detachment once almost caught Antonov by surprise while he was resting in the village of Yelan. The cars rolled through the village, firing at the bandits from their machine guns. But the Antonov men galloped to the forest, regrouped, and held on, while half our machine guns jammed. Once again, our cavalry was late, and once again the Antonov men withdrew or simply vanished—no one knows.)

  Three weeks passed, already halfway to the deadline set by the Council of Commissars, yet Antonov had not been beaten. Cavalry brigades had to feel their way, waiting for news from informants. Both mechanized detachments were waiting for parts and gasoline. An armored train and the armored trolley ran back and forth along the nearby railways, also trying to track down the bandits or intercept them. But they found nothing.

  Then came Tukhachevsky’s Secret Order No. 0050, to be read aloud to cavalry squadrons and infantry companies: “Effective dawn, July 1, we begin a mass removal of the bandit element from the general population.” This meant that we were to comb through the villages and pick up any suspicious people. As Zhukov read this to his squadron, he seemed to see Tukhachevsky; he seemed to become him and, perhaps, he even took on his voice and his bearing. He read in his fullest voice: “This removal must not appear to be a chance event; it must show the peasants that the bandit element, along with their families, are being eliminated and that the struggle against Soviet power is hopeless. Carry out the operation with vigor and enthusiasm. Avoid bourgeois sentimentality. Tukhachevsky, Force Commander.”

  Zhukov was happy—happy to be under such command. This was how it should be. This was soldiering. Before you can command, you have to know how to obey. And learn to follow orders.

  They did remove as many as they were able to scrape up. They shipped them off to concentration camps, and their families as well. But separately.

  A few days later, the location of the nucleus of Antonov’s force was discovered once more. It was some distance away, in the Shiryaevo forest on the upper reaches of the Vorona River. (There were reports that the last time Antonov was attacked by our armored cars, he had been wounded in the head.) Fresh troops arrived: Fedko’s cavalry brigade, another Cheka regiment, and one more armored train. All the escape routes from the Shiryaevo forest were completely blocked. But then a powerful thunderstorm blew in, and the commander of the Cheka regiment withdrew his troops from their positions and took them back to the nearest villages for an hour or two. The armored trolley that had been patrolling the sevenverst section from Kirsanov to the Vorona River was shunted aside to let Uborevich’s personal train pass, and then the two collided in the darkness. It was as if Antonov’s men knew precisely where and when there was a gap in the cordon, and they slipped through it while that fierce storm was raging and vanished into the Chutanovo forest.

  Antonov’s bandits even had a reply to Order No. 130: they ordered the villagers not to give their names. Now the Red Army men didn’t know what to do: no matter how they smacked the peasants around, the bastards wouldn’t give their names.

  Now we were both deaf and blind. Our headquarters found an answer to this as well, though. On July 11, they issued Order No. 171: “Citizens refusing to give their names will be executed on the spot, without trial. Hostages will be executed in villages that do not surrender their weapons. Where caches of weapons are discovered, the oldest working man in the family will be executed without trial.” A family found concealing a bandit or even some of his belongings such as clothing or dishes would have its eldest working man executed without trial. If a bandit’s family fled, their property would be seized and distributed among peasants loyal to Soviet power; any abandoned homes would be burned. The order was signed by Antono
v-Ovseenko.

  So they won’t give their names? But then the rebels’ families began leaving the villages and going into hiding. To finish the job, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the Central Executive Committee issued a new order: “Any house in which a rebel family has been hiding is to be pulled down or burnt. Those hiding a rebel family in their house will be treated as members of rebel families: the eldest worker in such a family will be executed. Signed, Antonov-Ovseenko.”

  Five days later, he issued another order, No. 178, to be proclaimed publicly: “Failure to show resistance to the bandits and failure to pass on information about their whereabouts to the nearest Revolutionary Committee in a timely fashion will be regarded as complicity with the bandits, with all the ensuing consequences. Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Antonov-Ovseenko.”

  They came swarming out as if we’d thrown boiling water on them, as if we were burning out bedbugs!

  The precise, cold-blooded army commander issued one more order, a secret one numbered 0116: “The forests in which bandits are hiding are to be cleared with the use of poison gas. Calculations must be precise to ensure that the cloud of asphyxiating gas is thoroughly dispersed through the entire forest so as to destroy everything concealed within it. Tukhachevsky, Force Commander.”

  Was that too harsh? No great commander can manage without harsh measures.

  2

  PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT it is entirely appropriate and proper to begin writing your memoirs when you turn seventy. What I did, though, was begin seven years early. It’s so quiet here, and I’m of no use to anyone, so what else should I do with myself? One year passes after another, and all I have left is the spare time that has been forced upon me and that drags by so slowly.

  No one phones me anymore, and they certainly don’t visit. The world around has gone silent and shut me out. And I may not have enough years left to live out these times.