During his time there Tenno had got to know a lot of people in the camp and he now quickly assembled a team of four: Misha Khaidarov (he had been with the marines in North Korea, had crossed the 38th parallel to avoid a court-martial; not wishing to spoil the good relations firmly established in Korea, the Americans had handed him back and he had got a quarter); Jazdik, a Polish driver from the Anders army (he vividly summarized his life story with the help of his unmatching boots—“one from Hitler, one from Stalin”); and, lastly, Sergei, a railwayman from Kuibyshev.
Then a lorry arrived with real posts and rolls of barbed wire for a boundary fence—just as the dinner break was beginning. Tenno’s team, loving forced labor as they did, especially when it was to make their prison more secure, volunteered to unload the lorry in the rest period. They scrambled onto the back. But since it was, after all, dinnertime, they took their time while they thought things over. The driver had moved away from his vehicle. The prisoners were lying all over the place, basking in the sun.
Should they run for it or not? They had nothing ready—no knife, no equipment, no food, no plan. But Tenno knew from his little map that if they were driving they must make a dash for Dzhezdy and then to Ulutau. The lads were eager to try it: this was their chance! Their lucky chance!
From where they were to the sentry at the “gate,” the way was downhill. Just beyond the gate the road rounded a hill. If they drove out fast they’d soon be safe from marksmen. And the sentries could not leave their posts!
They finished unloading before the break was over. Jazdik was to drive. He jumped off, and puttered about the lorry while the other three lazily lay down in the rear, out of sight—hoping that some of the sentries hadn’t seen where they had got to. Jazdik brought the driver over. We haven’t kept you waiting—so let’s have a smoke. They lit up. Right, wind her up! The driver got into the cab, but the engine obstinately refused to start. (The three in the back of the lorry didn’t know Jazdik’s plan and thought their attempt had misfired.) Jazdik began turning the crank. Still the engine would not start. Jazdik was tired and he suggested to the driver that they change places. Now Jazdik was in the cab. And the engine immediately let out a roar! The lorry rolled down the slope toward the sentry at the gate. (Jazdik told them later that he had tampered with the throttle while the driver was at the wheel, and quickly turned it on again before he himself took over.) The driver was in no hurry to jump in; he thought that Jazdik would stop the lorry. Instead it passed through the “gate” at speed.
Two shouts of “Halt!” The lorry went on. Sentries opened fire—shooting into the air at first, because it looked very much like a mistake. Perhaps some shots were aimed at the lorry—the runaways couldn’t tell; they were lying flat. Around a bend. Once behind the hill they were safe from bullets. The three in the back kept their heads down. It was bumpy, they were traveling fast. Then—suddenly—they came to a stop and Jazdik cried out in despair: he had taken the wrong turn and they were pulled up short by the gates of a mine, with its own camp area and its own watchtowers.
More shooting. Guards ran toward them. The escapers tumbled out onto the ground face downward and covered their heads with their hands. Convoy guards kick, aiming particularly at the head, the ears, the temples, and, from above, at the spine.
The wholesome universal rule “Don’t kick a man when he’s down” did not apply in Stalin’s katorga! If a man was down, that’s just what they did—kicked him. And if he was on his feet, they shot him.
But the inquiry revealed that there had been no breakout! Yes! The lads said in unison that they’d been dozing in the back when the lorry started moving, then there was shooting and it was too late for them to jump off in case they were shot. And Jazdik? He was inexperienced, couldn’t handle the lorry. But he’d steered for the mine next door, not for the steppe.
So they got off with a beating.
On May 9, 1950, the fifth anniversary of victory in the Fatherland War, naval veteran Georgi Tenno entered a cell in the celebrated Kengir Prison. It was a select company in the Kengir jail, brought together from various camps. In every cell there were experienced escapers, hand-picked champions. Tenno had found his committed escapers at last!
They were destined never, never to remain long in one place! The committed escapers, like Flying Dutchmen, were driven ever onward by their troubled destiny. If they didn’t run away, they were transferred. This whole band of men in a hurry was switched, in handcuffs, to Ekibastuz camp jail.
In something like a month there had been three attempts to escape from Ekibastuz—and still Tenno was not on the run! He was pining away. A jealous longing to outdo them gnawed at him. From the sidelines, you see all the mistakes more clearly and always think that you could do better.
Zhdanok was small, swarthy, very agile. When he caught fire he was very energetic, he put everything he had into his work, into an impulse, a fight, an escape. Of course, he lacked discipline, but Tenno had plenty of that.
Everything pointed to the limekilns as the best place for their escape. One day at the limekilns they damaged the electric cable of a cement mixer. An electrician was called in from outside. While Tenno helped him with his repairs, Zhdanok stole some wire cutters from his pocket.
While they were at the limekilns the would-be escapers made themselves two knives: they chiseled strips of metal from shovels, sharpened them at the blacksmith’s shop, tempered them, and cast tin handles for them in clay molds. Tenno’s was a “Turkish” knife; it would be a handy weapon to use, and what was more important, the flashing curve of its blade was terrifying. Their intention was to frighten people, not kill them. Wire cutters and knives they carried to the living area held to their ankles by the legs of their underpants, and stowed them away in the foundations of the hut.
Their escape plan hinged on the Culture and Education Section. While the weapons were being made and transferred, Tenno chose a suitable moment to announce that he and Zhdanok would like to take part in a camp concert. Sure enough, Tenno and Zhdanok were given permission to leave the punishment wing after it was locked for the night, and while the camp area as a whole was still alive and in motion for another two hours. They roamed the still unknown camp, noting how and when the guard was changed on the watchtowers, and which were the most convenient spots to crawl under the boundary fence. In the Culture and Education Section itself Tenno carefully read the Pavlodar provincial newspaper, trying to memorize the names of districts, state farms, collective farms, farm chairmen, Party secretaries, shock workers of all kinds. Next he announced that he would put on a sketch, for which he must get hold of his ordinary clothes from the clothing store and borrow a briefcase. (A runaway with a briefcase—that was something out of the ordinary! It would help him to look important.) Permission was given.
The sketch required so much rehearsing that the time left till lights out in the main camp area was too short. So there was one night, and later on another, when Tenno and Zhdanok did not return to the punishment wing at all, but spent the night in the hut which housed the Culture and Education Section, to accustom their own warders to their absence. (Escapers must have at least one night’s head start!)
What would be the most propitious moment for escape? Evening roll call. When the lines formed outside the huts, the warders were all busy checking in prisoners, while the prisoners had eyes only for the doors, longing to get to their beds; no one was watching the rest of the camp area. The days were getting shorter, and they must hit on one when roll call would come after sundown, in the twilight, but before the dogs were stationed around the boundary fence. They must not let slip those five or ten uniquely precious minutes, because there would be no crawling out once the dogs were there. They chose Sunday, September 17. It would help that Sunday was a nonworking day, so that they could recruit their strength by evening, and take time over the final preparations.
The last night before escape! You can’t expect much sleep. You think and think. . . . Shall I be alive this time to
morrow? Possibly not. And if I stay here in the camp? To die the lingering death of a goner by a cesspit? . . . No, you mustn’t even begin to accept the idea that you are a prisoner.
The question is this: Are you prepared to die? You are? Then you are also prepared to escape.
A sunny Sunday. To rehearse their sketch, both of them were let out of the punishment wing for the whole day.
The runaways were very short of food: in the punishment wing they were on short rations, and hoarding bread would excite suspicion. They banked on seizing a lorry in the settlement and traveling quickly. However, that Sunday there was also a parcel from home—his mother’s blessing on his escape. Glucose tablets, macaroni, oatmeal—these they could carry in the briefcase. They must also get hold of a “katyusha”—an improvised lighter consisting of a wick in a tube—and a steel and flint to light it. This was better than matches for a man on the run.
Sunday was coming to an end. A golden sun was setting. Tenno, tall and leisurely, and Zhdanok, small and vivacious, now draped padded jackets around their shoulders, took the briefcase (by now everyone in the camp was used to their eccentric appearance), and went to the prearranged departure point—on the grass between some huts, not far from the boundary fence and directly opposite a watchtower. The huts screened them from two other watchtowers. There was only this one sentry facing them. They opened out their padded jackets, lay down on them, and played chess, so that the sentry would get used to them.
The sky turned gray. There was the signal for roll call. The prisoners flocked to their huts. In the half-light, the sentry on his watchtower should not be able to make out that two men were still lying on the grass. His watch was nearly over, and he was less alert than he had been. A stale sentry always makes escape easier.
They intended to cut the wire, not in the open, but directly under the tower. The sentry certainly spent more time watching the boundary fence farther away than the ground under his feet.
Their heads were down near the grass, and besides, it was dusk, so they could not see the spot at which they would shortly crawl under. But it had been thoroughly inspected in advance. Immediately beyond the boundary fence a hole had been dug for a post, and it would be possible to hide there a minute. A little farther on there were mounds of slag: and a road running from the guards’ hamlet to the settlement.
The plan was to take a lorry as soon as they reached the settlement. Stop one and say to the driver, “Do you want to earn something? We have to bring two cases of vodka up here from old Ekibastuz.” What driver would refuse drink? They would bargain with him. “Half a liter all right? A liter? Right, step on it, but not a word to anybody.” Then on the highway, sitting with the driver in his cab, they would overpower him, drive him out into the steppe, and leave him there tied up. While they tore off to reach the Irtysh in a single night, abandon the lorry, cross the river in a little boat, and move on toward Omsk.
It got a little darker still. Up in the towers searchlights were switched on. Their beams lit up the boundary fence, but the runaways for the time being were in a shadowy patch. The very time!
Soon the watch would be changed and the dogs would be brought along and posted for the night.
Now lights were switched on in the huts, and they could see the prisoners going in after roll call. Was it nice inside? It would be warm, comfortable. . . . Whereas here you could be riddled with Tommy-gun bullets, and it would be all the more humiliating because you were lying stretched on the ground.
Just so long as they didn’t cough or sneeze under the tower.
Guard away, you guard dogs! Your job is to keep us here, ours is to run away!
Chapter 7
The White Kitten (Georgi Tenno’s Tale)
In this chapter Georgi Tenno picks up from where the preceding chapter left off and tells his own story. Exercising great daring, he and Kolya Zhdanok remained on the loose for the better part of a month, scrounging for food and water and sometimes stealing. Eventually, they were captured and given long sentences. After his release from camp, Tenno died of cancer.
Chapter 8
Escapes—Morale and Mechanics
ESCAPES FROM CORRECTIVE Labor Camps, provided they were not to somewhere like Vienna or across the Bering Strait, were apparently viewed by Gulag’s rulers and by Gulag’s regulations with resignation. They saw them as only natural, a manifestation of the waste which is unavoidable in any overextended economic enterprise—a phenomenon of the same sort as cattle losses from disease or starvation, the logs that sink instead of floating, the gap in a wall where a half-brick was used instead of a whole one.
It was different in the Special Camps. In accordance with the particular wish of the Father of the Peoples, these camps were equipped with greatly reinforced defenses and with greatly reinforced armament, at the modern motorized infantry level. At the moment of their foundation it was laid down in the instructions for Special Camps that there could be no escape from them, because if one of these prisoners escaped it was just as though a major spy had crossed the frontier, and a blot on the political record of the camp administration and of the officers commanding the convoy troops.
But from that very moment 58s to a man started getting, not tenners as before, but quarters—i.e., the limit allowed by the Criminal Code. This senseless, across-the-board increase in severity carried with it one disadvantage: just as murderers were undeterred from fresh murders (each time their tenner was merely slightly updated), so now political prisoners were no longer deterred by the Criminal Code from trying to escape.
And although there were fewer escapes from the Special Camps than from the Corrective Labor Camps, they were rougher, grimmer, more ruthless, more desperate, and therefore more glorious.
Stories told about them can help us to make up our minds whether our people really was so long-suffering, really was so humbly submissive in those years.
Here is just one of them. In September, 1949, two convicts escaped from the First Division of Steplag (Rudnik, Dzhezkazgan)—Grigory Kudla, a tough, steady, level-headed old man, a Ukrainian (but when his dander was up he had the temper of a Zaporozhian Cossack, and even the hardened criminals were afraid of him), and Ivan Dushechkin, a quiet Byelorussian some thirty-five years old. In the pit where they worked they found a prospecting shaft in an old workings, with a grating at its upper end. When they were on night shift they gradually loosened this grating, and at the same time they took into the shaft dried crusts, knives, and a hot-water bottle stolen from the Medical Section. On the night of their escape attempt, once down the pit each of them separately informed the foreman that he felt unwell, couldn’t work, and would lie down a bit. At night there were no warders underground; the foreman was the sole representative of authority and he had to bully discreetly or else he might be found with his head smashed in. The escapers filled the hot-water bottle, took their provisions, and went into the prospecting shaft. They forced the grating and crawled out. The exit turned out to be near the watchtowers but outside the camp boundary. They walked off unnoticed.
They lay down in the daytime and walked at night. Not once did they come across water, and after a week Dushechkin no longer felt like standing up. Kudla got him on his feet with the hope that there might be water in the hills ahead. They dragged themselves that far, but the hollows held no water, only mud. Then Dushechkin said, “I can’t go on anyway. Cut my throat and drink my blood.”
You moralists! What was the right thing to do? Kudla, too, could no longer see straight. Dushechkin was going to die—why should Kudla perish, too? But if he found water soon afterward, how could he live with the thought of Dushechkin for the rest of his days? I’ll go on a bit, Kudla decided, and if in the morning I come back without water I’ll put him out of his misery, and we needn’t both perish. Kudla staggered to a hillock, saw a cleft in it and—just as in the most improbable of novels—in the cleft there was water! Kudla slithered to it, fell flat on his face, and drank and drank. (Only in the morning had he eyes fo
r the tadpoles and waterweed in it.) He went back to Dushechkin with the hot-water bottle full. “I’ve brought you some water—yes, water.” Dushechkin couldn’t believe it, drank, and still didn’t believe it (for hours he had been imagining that he was drinking). They dragged themselves as far as the cleft and stayed there drinking.
When they had drunk, hunger set in. But the following night they climbed over a ridge and went down into a valley like the promised land: with a river, grass, bushes, horses, life. When it got dark Kudla crept up to the horses and killed one of them. They drank its blood straight from the wounds. (Partisans of peace! That very year you were loudly in session in Vienna or Stockholm, and sipping cocktails through straws. Did it occur to you that compatriots of the versifier Tikhonov and the journalist Ehrenburg were sucking the blood of dead horses? Did they explain to you in their speeches that that was the meaning of peace, Soviet style?)
They roasted the horse’s flesh on fires, ate lengthily, and walked on.
Farther on they frequently came across streams and pools. Kudla also caught and killed a ram. By now they had been a month on the run! October was nearing its end; it was getting cold. In the first wood they reached they found a dugout and set up house in it. They couldn’t bring themselves to leave this land of plenty. That they settled in such surroundings, that their native places did not call to them or promise them a more peaceful life, meant that their escape lacked a goal and was doomed to fail.
The Gulag Archipelago Page 44