The Gulag Archipelago

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  I went right through Ekibastuz with the number Shch #232 until my last few months, when I was ordered to change it to Shch #262. I smuggled patches with this number on them out of Ekibastuz, and I have kept them to this day.

  The author in 1953, right after his release from the special camp

  Body search

  Georgi Pavlovich Tenno

  A man is the product of his whole experience—that is how we come to be what we are.

  In 1948 he was suddenly demobilized. This was a signal from the other world (he knew languages, had sailed on an English vessel, and was, moreover, an Estonian, though it is true a Petersburg Estonian), but if we are to live we must hope against hope. On Christmas Eve that year in Riga, where Christmas still feels like Christmas, like a holiday, he was arrested and taken to a cellar on Amatu Street, next door to the conservatory. As he entered his first cell he couldn’t resist the temptation to tell the apathetically silent warder, “My wife and I had tickets for The Count of Monte Cristo and should be watching it right now. He fought for freedom, and I shall never accept defeat.”

  But it was too early yet to start fighting. We are always at the mercy of our assumption that a mistake has been made. Prison? For what? It’s impossible! They’ll soon get it sorted out. Indeed, before his transfer to Moscow they deliberately reassured him (this is done as a safety measure when prisoners are in transit). Colonel Morshchinin, chief of counterespionage, even came to the station to see him off and shook hands with him. “Have a good journey!” There were four of them, Tenno and his special escort, and they traveled in a separate first-class compartment. The rhythm of the carriage wheels was soothing. We can fill their rattle with any meaning, any prophecy we please. It filled Tenno with hope that they would “get it sorted out.” And so he had no serious intention of running away. He was only sizing up the best way to do it. (Later on he would often remember that night and cluck with annoyance. Never again would it be so easy to run, never again would freedom be so near!)

  The luxury of a special escort came to an end at the station in Moscow. The admission routine, sleepless nights, solitary confinement, more solitary confinement. A naïve request to be called for interrogation soon. The warder yawned. “Don’t be in such a hurry; you’ll get more than you want shortly.”

  At last, the interrogator. “Right, tell me about your criminal activities.” “I’m absolutely innocent!” “Only Pope Pius is absolutely innocent.”

  In his cell he was tête-à-tête with a stool pigeon. Trying to box him in. Come on, tell me what really happened. A few interrogations and it was all quite clear: they’d never straighten it out, never let him go. So he must escape!

  The world fame of the Lefortovo Prison did not daunt Tenno. Perhaps he was like a soldier new to the front who has experienced nothing and therefore fears nothing? It was the interrogator, Anatoly Levshin, who inspired Tenno’s escape plan. By turning mean and arousing his hatred.

  People and peoples have different criteria. So many millions had endured beatings within those walls, without even calling it torture. But for Tenno the realization that he could be beaten with impunity was intolerable. It was an outrage, and he would sooner die than suffer it. So when Levshin, after verbal threats, first advanced on him and raised his fist, Tenno jumped up and answered with trembling fury: “Look, my life’s worth nothing anyway! But I can gouge one or both of your eyes out right now! That much I can do!”

  The interrogator retreated. One rotten prisoner’s life in exchange for a good eye was not much of a bargain. Next he tried to wear Tenno down in the punishment cells, to sap his strength. Then he put on a show, pretending that a woman screaming with pain in the next office was Tenno’s wife, and that if he did not confess she would undergo still worse tortures.

  Again he had misjudged his man! If a blow from a fist was hard for Tenno to bear, the idea that his wife was being interrogated was no less so. It became increasingly obvious to the prisoner that the interrogator must be killed. This and his escape were combined in a single plan. Major Levshin, too, wore naval uniform, was tall and fair-haired. As far as the sentry on the interrogation block was concerned, Tenno could very easily pass for Levshin. True, Levshin’s face was round and sleek whereas Tenno had grown thin.

  In the meantime they had removed the useless stoolie from the cell. His bed was left there and Tenno examined it. A metal crosspiece was rusted through at the point where it was fixed to one of the legs. It was about 70 centimeters long. How could he break it off?

  First he must . . . perfect his skill in counting seconds precisely. Then calculate for each warder the interval between two peeps through the spy hole.

  During one such interval he tried his strength, and the metal bar cracked off at the rusted end. Breaking the other, solid end was harder. He would have to stand on it with both feet—but then it would crash onto the floor. So in the interval between two visits he must make time to put a pillow on the cement floor, stand on the bed frame, break it, replace the pillow, and hide the bar for the time being; say, in his bed. And all the time he must be counting seconds.

  It broke. The trick was done!

  But the problem was only half solved: if they came in and found it, he would be rotting in the punishment cells. Twenty days of that and he would lose the strength he needed to escape, or even to defend himself against the interrogator. Yes, that was it: he would tear the mattress with his fingernails. Extract a little of the flock. Wrap flock around the ends of the bar, and put it back where it had been. Counting the seconds! Right—it was there!

  But this was still good only for a short time. Once every ten days you went to the bathhouse, and while you were away your cell was searched. They might discover the breakage. So he must act quickly. How was he to take the bar from the cell to the interrogation room? When they let you out of the cellblock there was no search. They only slapped your clothing when you came back from interrogation, and then only your sides and chest, where there were pockets. They were looking for a blade, to prevent suicide.

  Under his naval jacket Tenno wore the traditional sailor’s striped jersey—it warms body and soul alike. “The sailor leaves his troubles ashore.” He asked a warder for a needle (they will give you one at certain fixed times), as if to sew on buttons made of bread. He undid his jacket, undid his trousers, pulled out the edge of his jersey, and turned it up and stitched it so that it formed a little pocket (for the lower end of the rod). He had previously snapped off a bit of tape from his underpants. Now he pretended to be sewing a button on his jacket and stitched this tape to the inside of his jersey at chest level, so that it formed a loop to hold the rod steady.

  Next he put the jersey on back to front, and began practicing day after day. The rod was set in position down his back and under his jersey: it was pushed through the loop at the top until it rested in the pocket down below. The upper end of the rod came up to his neck, under his tunic collar. His training routine went like this: In the short time between two inspections he would have to fling his hand to the back of his neck, seize the end of the rod while bending his trunk backward, then with a reverse movement straighten like a released bowstring while simultaneously drawing the rod—and strike the investigating officer a smart blow on the head. Then he would put everything back in place.

  He also provided himself with two wads of flock, from the same mattress. These he could insert between his gums and his cheeks to make his face fuller.

  He must also, of course, be clean-shaven on the day—and they scraped you with blunt razors only once a week. So that the day must be chosen carefully.

  How was he to put some color into his cheeks? He would rub just a little blood on them. That fellow’s blood.

  Mustn’t forget anything important, and must pack it all into four or five minutes. When he’s lying there, knocked out, I must:

  1. Slip off my jacket and put on his newer one with shoulder tabs.

  2. Remove his shoelaces and lace my own floppy shoes up—
that will take time.

  3. Tuck his razor blade into a specially prepared place in the heel of my shoe (if they catch me and sling me into the nearest cell I can cut my veins).

  4. Examine all his documents and take what I need.

  5. Memorize the license plate number and find the ignition key.

  6. Shove my own dossier into his bulky briefcase and take it with me.

  7. Remove his watch.

  8. Redden my cheeks with blood.

  9. Drag his body behind the desk or screen, so that anybody coming in will think he’s left and not raise a hue and cry.

  10. Roll the flock into little balls and put them in my cheeks.

  11. Put on his coat and cap.

  12. Disconnect the wires to the light switch. If anybody comes soon afterward, finds it dark, and tries the switch, he will be sure to think that the bulb has burned out and that’s why the interrogator has gone to another office. Even if they screw another bulb in, they won’t immediately realize what has happened.

  That makes twelve things to be done, and the escape itself will be number thirteen. . . .

  Of course, the odds were against him. For the moment, he gave himself a 3 to 5 percent chance of success: the outer guardroom was completely unknown and he had no real hope of getting past it. But he couldn’t die there like a slave!

  So Tenno turned up, freshly shaven, for one nocturnal interrogation, with the iron bar behind his back. The interrogator questioned, abused, threatened, and all the time Tenno looked at him in surprise: couldn’t he sense that his hours were numbered!

  Tenno’s heart thumped. A day of rejoicing was at hand. Or perhaps his last day.

  Things turned out quite differently. Around midnight another interrogator hurried into the room and began whispering in Levshin’s ear. This had never happened before. Levshin made hurried preparations to leave, pressed the button for the warder to come and remove the prisoner.

  That was that. Tenno went back to his cell and replaced the iron bar.

  Then came a daytime interrogation. And it took a strange turn: the interrogator refrained from yelling, and weakened his resolve by predicting that he would get five to seven years, so that there was no need to be downhearted. Somehow Tenno no longer felt angry enough to split his head open. Tenno’s wrath was not the sort that lasted.

  The mood of high excitement had passed. It seemed to him now that the odds were too great, that it was too much of a gamble.

  The escaper’s moods are perhaps even more capricious than those of the artist.

  All his lengthy preparations had gone for nothing. . . .

  But the escaper must be ready for this, too. He had brandished his bar in the air a hundred times, killed a hundred interrogators. A dozen times he had lived through every minute of his escape in detail—in the office, past the square window, along to the guardroom, beyond the guardroom. He had worn himself out with an escape which he would after all not be making.

  Soon afterward they changed his interrogator and transferred him to the Lubyanka. There Tenno did not actively prepare to escape (his heart was not in it now that his interrogation seemed to have taken a more hopeful turn).

  Vague hopes of clemency and reasonableness clouded Tenno’s resolution. Only in the Butyrki Prison was he relieved of this burden: his sentence, read out from a piece of paper with a Special Board stamp, was confinement in camps for twenty-five years. He signed his name and felt relieved, found himself smiling, felt his legs carrying him easily to the cell for twenty-five-year prisoners. That sentence released him from humiliation, from the temptation to compromise, from humble submission, from truckling, from promises of five to seven years bestowed like alms on a beggar. Twenty-five is it, you bastards? Right; if that’s all we can expect from you—we escape!!

  Other people in the cell might talk about what they liked, but Tenno wanted stories about escape attempts and those who took part in them.

  From the Kuibyshev Transit Prison they were taking prisoners to the station in open trucks—making up a long train of red prison cars. In the transit prison Tenno obtained from a local sneak thief who “respected escapers” two local addresses to which he might go for initial support. He shared these addresses with two other would-be runaways and they concerted a plan; all three would try to sit in the back row and when the truck slowed down at a turning they would jump, all three of them at once—right, left, and rear—past the guards, knocking them over if necessary. The guards would open fire, but they would not hit all three. They might not shoot at all—there would be people in the streets. Would they give chase? No, they couldn’t abandon the other prisoners in the truck. So they would just shout and fire into the air. If the runaways were stopped, it would be by ordinary people, our Soviet people, passers-by. To frighten them off, the runaways must pretend to be holding knives! (They had no knives.)

  The three of them maneuvered at the search point and hung back so that they would get onto the last truck and not leave before dusk. The last truck arrived, but . . . it was not a shallow three-tonner, like its predecessors, but a Studebaker with high sides. When he sat down even Tenno found that the top of his head was below the rim. The Studebaker moved quickly. Here was the turn! Tenno looked around at his comrades in arms. There was terror on their faces. No, they wouldn’t jump. No, they were not committed escapers. (“But can you be sure of yourself?” he wondered.)

  In the dark, with lanterns to light their way, to a confused accompaniment of barking, yelling, cursing, clanking, they were installed in cattle cars. Here Tenno let himself down—he was too slow to inspect the outside of the car (and your committed escaper must see everything while the seeing is good; he is not allowed to miss anything at all!).

  At stops the guards anxiously sounded the cars with mallets. They sounded every single plank. They were afraid of something, then—but of what? Afraid that a plank might be sawn through. So that was the thing to do!

  A small piece broken off a hacksaw and sharpened was produced (by the thieves). They decided to cut through a solid plank under the bottom bed shelf. Then when the train slowed down, to lower themselves through the gap, drop onto the line, and lie still until the cars had passed over them. True, the experts said that at the end of a cattle train carrying prisoners there was usually a drag—a metal scraper, with teeth which passed close to the ties, caught the body of anyone trying to escape, and dragged him over the ties to his death.

  All night long they took turns slipping under the bed shelf and sawing away at a plank in the wall, gripping the blade, which was only a few centimeters long, with a piece of rag. It was hard going. Nonetheless, the first breach was made. The plank began to give a little. Loosening it, they saw in what was now the morning light white, unplaned boards outside their car. Why white? The reason was that an additional footboard for guards had been built onto their car. Right there, by the breach they had made, stood a sentry. It was impossible to go on sawing till the board came away.

  Prison escapes, like all forms of human activity, have their own history, and their own theory. It’s as well to know about them before you try your own hand.

  The history is that of previous escapes. You can learn the history from others who once escaped and were recaptured. Their experience has been dearly bought—with blood, with suffering, almost at the cost of their lives. But to inquire in detail, step by step, about the attempts of one escaper, then a third, then a fifth, is no laughing matter; it can be very dangerous. It is not much less dangerous than asking whether anyone knows whom you should see about joining an underground organization.

  Still, as he moved from prison to prison, camp to camp, Tenno eagerly interrogated escapers. He carried out escapes himself, he was caught, he had other escapers for cellmates in the camp jails—and that was his chance to question them.

  As for the theory of escape—it is very simple. You do it any way you can. If you get away—that shows you know your theory. If you’re caught—you haven’t yet mastered it. The e
lementary principles are as follows. You can escape from a work site or you can escape from the living area. It is easier from work sites: there are many of them, the security measures are less rigid, and the escaper has tools to hand. You can run away alone—it is more difficult, but no one will betray you. Or you can run away in a group, which is easier, but then everything depends on whether you are a well-matched team. Theory further prescribes that you should know the geography as well as if you had an illuminated map in front of you. But you will never catch sight of a map in the camp. A further precept: you must know the people through whose region your escape route lies. Then there is the following general advice as to method: you must constantly prepare to escape according to plan, but be ready at any minute to do it quite differently, to seize a chance.

  Tenno’s first camp was Novorudnoye, near Dzhezkazgan. Now you’re in the very place where they have doomed you to die. This is the place of all places from which you must escape! All around there is desert—salt flats and dunes, or firmer ground held together by tufted grass or prickly camel weed. In some parts of the plain Kazakhs roam with their herds, in others there is not a soul. There are no rivers, and you are very unlikely to come upon a well. The best time for flight is April or May, while melting snow still lingers here and there in puddles. But the camp guards are very well aware of this. At this time of year the search of prisoners going out to work becomes stricter, and they are not allowed to take with them a single bite or a single rag more than is necessary.