Solzhenitsyn

by Joseph Pearce

  Eventually, he was told to put on his clothes and was once more taken from the cell. He was led along corridors, into a yard, down some steps, and into another wing of the prison. Ascending to the fourth floor in a lift, he was placed in another cell, almost identical to the previous one. This, he assumed, was his new “home”. Soon he was again on the move, this time to a slightly bigger cell, about ten feet by five, which had a wooden bench fastened to the wall as well as the customary stool and table. Compared with his previous home, this new cell was a luxury. He almost, unwillingly and unconsciously, felt grateful. After all, the bench was long enough to stretch out on full-length, long enough to sleep on. Already Solzhenitsyn was adapting himself to the survivalist psychology of the long-term prisoner. The unconscious gratitude was accentuated a few moments later when the door opened, and, instead of being called out for a further bout of humiliation, he was handed a mattress, a sheet, a pillow, pillowslip, and blanket. He was being allowed to sleep! Almost as soon as his eyes were closed, the door burst open, and a warder stormed in. He was supposed to sleep with his arms outside the blanket. Regulations. This was easier said than done. His arms grew cold as the night wore on, and he was unable to pull the blankets up to cover his shoulders. In this unnatural position and with a powerful 200-watt bulb glaring overhead, he had a restless night, sleeping only fitfully.

  Having been “processed”, Solzhenitsyn was now ready for interrogation. He was led to the office of Captain 1.1. Ezepov, where a thirteen-foot-high, full-length portrait of Stalin gazed down menacingly from the wall, piercing the accused with his larger-than-life eyes. He was informed that he was being charged under Article 58, paragraph 10, of the criminal code for committing anti-Soviet propaganda, and under Article 58, paragraph 11, for founding a hostile organization. Solzhenitsyn soon learned that his interrogator possessed copies of all correspondence between Solzhenitsyn, Nikolai, Natalya, Kirill, and Lydia from April 1944 to February 1945. He also possessed a copy of “Resolution No. 1”, which Solzhenitsyn had kept in his map-case. The letters contained numerous thinly veiled attacks on Stalin, while the Resolution stated unequivocally the intention of Nikolai and Solzhenitsyn to organize a new party. This was more than enough evidence for the experienced interrogator to build a case that Solzhenitsyn was part of a sinister conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet regime.

  After four days of interrogation, Captain Ezepov was sufficiently confident about securing a conviction that he gave permission for Solzhenitsyn to be transferred from solitary confinement to a normal investigation cell. Here he would be sharing with three other prisoners, three other human beings in the same pathetic predicament as himself. He would have someone to talk to, someone with whom he could share experiences. After the days of nightmarish seclusion and uncertainty, he would now have human contact, mutual support, companionship. He again felt the involuntary gratitude that had swept over him when he first arrived in the “luxury” cell four days earlier. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn wrote that he was so happy when the cell door opened and he saw “those three unshaven, crumpled, pale faces . . . so human, so dear” that he stood hugging his mattress and smiling with happiness. “Out of all the cells you’ve been in,” Solzhenitsyn recalled, “your first cell is a very special one, the place where you first encountered others like yourself, doomed to the same fate. All your life you will remember it with an emotion that you otherwise experience only in remembering your first love.”2

  There was another parallel with first love. In his contact with these three prisoners, he was about to be introduced to new horizons, new insights into life, new perspectives that had been invisible to him in his previous blinkered existence. His eyes were opening to a whole new world.

  First there was Anatoly Ilyich Fastenko, the oldest of the prisoners. Fastenko was an Old Bolshevik, one of that revered elite of revolutionaries who had been members of the Bolshevik Party before the Revolution. At this stage, Solzhenitsyn still considered himself a good and loyal Marxist. His only complaint was with Stalin, not with Marxism-Leninism, and this Old Bolshevik was an object of reverence in the young communist’s eyes. Solzhenitsyn listened wide-eyed as Fastenko recounted his life story. He had been arrested under the tsarist regime as long ago as 1904 and had participated in the revolution of 1905. He served eight years’ hard labor, followed by internal exile, and fled abroad to Canada and the United States, only returning to Russia after the October Revolution. Most interesting of all, in Solzhenitsyn’s eyes, was the fact that this Old Bolshevik had actually known Lenin personally. Pressing Fastenko for anecdotes and impressions of the great man, who was still for Solzhenitsyn an object of idolization, he was shocked to find that the Old Bolshevik was ready to criticize Lenin as well as Stalin. It was tantamount to blasphemy as far as Solzhenitsyn was concerned. Stalin may indeed have betrayed the Revolution, but Lenin could do no wrong. As Solzhenitsyn insisted on Lenin’s infallibility, a slight coolness developed between the old man and the young Marxist. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”, Fastenko responded.

  The second prisoner in the interrogation cell was a middle-aged Estonian lawyer named Arnold Susi. Whereas Solzhenitsyn could relate readily to the Old Bolshevik’s life story, steeped as it was in the revolutionary traditions that had been instilled in Solzhenitsyn as an integral part of his Soviet education, the Estonian was of a type quite new to him. Not only was Susi an educated European who spoke fluent Russian, German, and English, as well as his native Estonian, he was, politically speaking, both an Estonian nationalist and a democrat. “Although I had never expected to become interested in Estonia, much less bourgeois democracy”, Solzhenitsyn wrote, he found himself fascinated by Susi’s “loving stories” about his country’s struggle for national self-determination. As he listened, Solzhenitsyn grew to love “that modest, work-loving, small nation of big men” and became interested in the democratic principles of the Estonian constitution, “which had been borrowed from the best of European experience. . . . And, though the why of it wasn’t clear, I began to like it all and store it all away in my experience.”3

  The third cellmate was Georgi Kramarenko, a man for whom Solzhenitsyn developed an almost instant dislike. There was “something alien”, something not quite right about him. Neither was it very long before Solzhenitsyn learned that his initial suspicions were justified. He had never come across the word nasedka—“stool-pigeon”—but he realized quickly that Kramarenko was betraying their private conversations to the prison authorities.

  In these three prisoners, and with the incisive grasp of human personality that was to characterize his books, Solzhenitsyn began to see everything more clearly. The Old Bolshevik who criticized Lenin; the cultured Estonian who loved democracy and the smallness of his own nation; and the “stool-pigeon” who had sold his soul, betrayed his companions, and prostituted himself to the prison system—three very different people in one small cell. But what of the fourth prisoner in the cell, Solzhenitsyn himself? Arnold Susi later recalled that Solzhenitsyn emerged in their conversations about Estonia and democracy as “a strange mixture of Marxist and democrat”, an observation Solzhenitsyn thought was accurate: “Yes, things were wildly mixed up inside me at that time.”4

  As his worldly ambitions had crumbled, so had his ideological and political preconceptions. From atop the rubble of his former ideas, he was slowly, meticulously, observing the world through fresh and unprejudiced eyes. “For the first time in my life I was learning to look at things through a magnifying glass.”5

  All this time, Solzhenitsyn was still being interrogated and trying desperately not to incriminate anyone else in the process. After all, his interrogator had letters from his wife and university friends. And all the time, beyond the walls of the Lubyanka and the claustrophobic world it enclosed, major events were unfolding in the world at large.

  At the end of April, the blackout shade on the window of the cell was removed, the only perceptible signal the prisoners received that the w
ar was almost over. On May 1, the Lubyanka was quieter than ever. All the interrogators were out in Moscow celebrating, and no one was taken for questioning. The silence was broken by someone protesting across the corridor. The unknown, unseen prisoner was bundled into one of the windowless cells that had greeted Solzhenitsyn on his arrival in the Lubyanka ten weeks earlier. The door to the tiny cell was left open while the warders beat the prisoner for what seemed like hours. “In the suspended silence,” wrote Solzhenitsyn, “every blow on his soft and choking mouth could be heard clearly.”6

  On the following day, a thirty-gun salute roared out across Moscow. Hearing it, the prisoners guessed that it signified the capture of another European capital. Only two had not yet fallen—Berlin and Prague—and the occupants of the cell tried to guess whether it was the German or Czech capital that had succumbed. In fact, it was Berlin, amongst the ruins of which the suicide of Hitler had signified the death of the Third Reich. A week later, on May 9, there was another thirty-gun salute. Prague had fallen. This was followed on the same day by a forty-gun salute announcing the end of the war in Europe, final victory for the Soviet army. Again the Lubyanka was thrown into a deathly silence by the absence of warders and interrogators who had gone to join the thousands of revelers thronging the streets of Moscow.

  Blissfully oblivious to the darker secrets sealed behind the walls of the Lubyanka, one Western observer witnessed the joy in the Russian capital on the day victory was announced:

  May 9 was an unforgettable day in Moscow. The spontaneous joy of the two or three million people who thronged the Red Square that evening—and the Moscow River embankments, and Gorki Street, all the way up to the Belorussian Station—was of a quality and depth I had never yet seen in Moscow before. They danced and sang in the streets; every soldier and officer was hugged and kissed; outside the US Embassy the crowds shouted “Hurray for Roosevelt!” (Even though he had died a month before). . . . Nothing like this had ever happened in Moscow before. For once, Moscow had thrown all reserve and restraint to the winds. The fireworks display that evening was the most spectacular I have ever seen.7

  The contrast between the hush of the cells and the celebrations on the streets could not have been more marked. Solzhenitsyn and his desolate colleagues observed the fireworks lighting the heavens through the window of their private hell. “Above the muzzle of our window, and from all the other cells of the Lubyanka, and from all the windows of all the Moscow prisons, we, too, former prisoners of war and former front-line soldiers, watched the Moscow heavens, patterned with fireworks and crisscrossed by the beams of searchlights.” There was no rejoicing in the cells and no hugs and kisses for the soldiers. “That victory was not for us.”8

  In June, after his interrogator had informed him that the investigation was now completed, Solzhenitsyn was transferred to Butyrki, another Moscow prison, to await his fate. Arriving in his new cell, he could hear through the windows further reminders of the world beyond the walls. Every morning and evening, the prisoners stood by the windows and listened to the sound of brass bands playing marches in the streets below. This seemed to confirm the rumor that had filtered through even to the prisoners that preparations were under way for a huge victory parade in Red Square on June 22—the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war between the Soviet Union and Germany. One wonders what thoughts passed through Solzhenitsyn’s mind as the anniversary arrived. Four years earlier, fresh from university, he had arrived in Moscow full of hopes and dreams of the future, the world seemingly at his feet. Now that world had fallen away beneath him, disappearing from view so that it was not four years but an eternity away.

  With the iron resilience that would serve him so well in the years ahead, Solzhenitsyn was already adapting to his new world, the world of the Gulag. His education continued in the cell at Butyrki, where he heard nightmare stories from returning prisoners of war who had survived the Nazi death camps. After all they had suffered, they were returning home not to the hero’s welcome being rehearsed in the streets below but to the fate awaiting “traitors of the Motherland”. Having endured Hitler’s concentration camps, they were now to experience Stalin’s concentration camps. Such, Solzhenitsyn concluded, was the nature of Soviet justice.

  In the summer of 1945, Solzhenitsyn, still only twenty-six years old, was about to receive some valued lessons from an even younger generation of dissident Russians, the most notable of whom was Boris Gammerov. Solzhenitsyn’s first impressions of this young man, four years his junior, were graphic. He was “a pale, yellowish youth, with a Jewish tenderness of face, wrapped, despite the summer, in a threadbare soldier’s overcoat shot full of holes: he was chilled”. Yet, though feeble and anemic-looking, Gammerov held a reserve of spiritual strength which belied his physical frailty. He had served as a sergeant in an anti-tank unit on the front and had been invalided out with shrapnel wounds in a lung. The wound had not healed, causing his poor physical condition. Almost as soon as they met, Solzhenitsyn and Gammerov began a long conversation, principally on politics. Somewhere in the course of the dialogue, Solzhenitsyn had recalled one of the favorite prayers of the late President Roosevelt, which had been published in one of the Soviet newspapers following Roosevelt’s death two months earlier. Having quoted the prayer, Solzhenitsyn expressed what he assumed was a self-evident evaluation of it: “Well, that’s hypocrisy, of course.” To his surprise, Gammerov frowned in obvious disagreement. “Why?” the youth asked pointedly. “Why do you not admit the possibility that a political leader might sincerely believe in God?”9

  Solzhenitsyn was completely taken aback by the nature of Gammerov’s reply. If the words had been spoken by someone of his parents’ generation, he could have dismissed them as superstitious nonsense. After all, this was 1945, and Soviet society had progressed beyond irrational belief in a God of any description. Yet the riposte to his self-assured atheism had not come from an elderly Russian tied to the traditions of the Old Believers, but from a twenty-two-year-old New Believer not even born when the Revolution had swept religion aside, allegedly forever. Forced to reappraise his own self-assured certainty, Solzhenitsyn suddenly realized that his condemnation of Roosevelt’s prayer had been spoken not out of conviction but as the result of a Pavlovian response instilled by Soviet education. For once, he was lost for words and found himself unable to answer Gammerov’s question. Instead, he asked meekly whether Gammerov believed in God. “Of course”, was the simple and calm response. Again, Solzhenitsyn was dumbstruck.

  Although Gammerov’s words had given him food for thought, as had so many other words he had heard since his imprisonment began, Solzhenitsyn was still a long way from any faith in the existence of God. He did, however, share a faith with the majority of other prisoners in something far more tangible—a general amnesty. It was simply inconceivable that all these people, thousands upon thousands of them, could be kept in prison for much longer, especially as so many appeared to have committed no crime other than being taken prisoner by the Germans. Explaining prisoners’ hopes at the time, Solzhenitsyn wrote that “it just couldn’t be that so many people were to remain in prison after the greatest victory in the world. It was just to frighten us that they were holding us for the time being: so that we might remember and take heed. Of course, there would soon be a total amnesty and all of us would be released.”10 Their hopes were fueled by the various rumors that were rife at the time. Someone had even sworn that he had read in a newspaper that Stalin, replying to some American correspondent, had promised an amnesty after the war the likes of which the world had never seen. Desperate to believe anything that would offer a glimmer of light at the end of their tunnels of fear and misery, the prisoners convinced themselves that it was no longer a question of whether there was going to be an amnesty but when it was going to be. They were placing all their faith and hope in Comrade Stalin’s charity.

  As the rumors circulated, faith in the impending amnesty became obsessive. Every new prisoner was asked, the moment he ente
red the cell, what he had heard of the amnesty. If two or three prisoners were taken from their cells with their things, it was immediately assumed that they were being taken out to be released. Perhaps it had begun! Every prisoner was on the lookout for signs, and one day, early in July, a sign was given. Written infallibly in soap on a glazed lavender slab in the Butyrki baths were the words of prophecy: “Hurrah!! Amnesty on July 17!” There were celebrations throughout the prison as the inmates prepared joyfully for their imminent release.

  The seventeenth of July came and went, but hopes remained high nonetheless. There had been a slight miscalculation perhaps, but the infallibility of the soapy message was still in no doubt. Then, after morning tea on July 27, Solzhenitsyn and another prisoner were summoned from their cell. Their cellmates saw them off with boisterous good wishes, and they were assured that they were on their way to freedom. At long last, the amnesty had arrived. Perhaps they had misread the message in the baths. Perhaps it had said, “July 27”, and not, “July 17”. After all, it was not easy to write clearly in soap.

  Solzhenitsyn soon discovered that he was one of twenty prisoners summoned from various cells throughout the prison. For three hours, they waited, hoping from the depths of their being that the prophecy of the baths was true. Were they on the point of freedom? After what seemed an eternity, the door opened, and one of their number was summoned. The tension was beyond bearing. The door opened again. Another was summoned, and the first man returned. He was a changed man. The life had drained from his face, and his glazed expression struck fear into the hearts of his colleagues. “Well?” they asked him, already sensing the worst. “Five years”, he replied, crestfallen. At that point, the second man returned, and a third was summoned. “Well?” they asked, crowding round the returning man in the forlorn hope that the first result was an aberration. “Fifteen years”, was the hope-shattering reply.