Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag

by Figes, Orlando

  This more humane atmosphere did nothing to resolve Lev’s long-running problems with his boss, the head of the power station. A brutish, barely literate man, Ilia Sherman had risen to the rank of engineer-lieutenant in the MVD despite his minimal understanding of engineering. Lev described him as a ‘small-minded person who finds fault with everything … and is suspicious of everyone’. Sherman saw every setback at the power station as sabotage. He usually tried to pin the blame on Lev, to whom he had taken an instant dislike. He bullied Lev, gave him orders that could not be fulfilled and threatened several times to send him on a convoy to another camp to work as a general labourer. It was Lev’s worst fear.

  Strelkov intervened to rescue Lev. In June 1953, his laboratory assistant Tkachenko was due to be released and would need to be replaced. An engineer and chemist, Tkachenko was in charge of monitoring the water quality in the boiler system of the power station, a position of great responsibility since wrong calculations could lead to serious accidents. Lev had worked as a chemistry assistant in his student days and so could do the job, which had the added benefit of putting him under the authority of the Department of Technical Control (OTK), a higher body outside Sherman’s domain. With Strelkov’s assent, Tkachenko started training Lev. ‘Before he leaves,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 13 April, ‘K. S. [Tkachenko] is planning to pass on to me some of his wisdom on the control of feed water. Starting this very night, I’m going to be reading his notes and any literature that he has. Then he’s promising to teach me some of the more practical aspects.’ On 1 June, Lev took over the new job. Although he went on working at the power station, where Sherman was in command, his new position as a water chemist under Strelkov and the OTK protected him from being sent away on a convoy. Lev wrote to Sveta on 9 June:

  I am feeling very calm, compared with last month, and also much better than last year despite the huge amount of work. Nikolai [Lileev] for some reason thought that it would be difficult to work for G. Ya. [Strelkov], and for me especially. I never believed that, and the very idea seems strange to me. In any case, I can’t imagine a serious misunderstanding between G. Ya. and me, no matter what the circumstances. The arguments we had in the past were sometimes loud but never serious and always on account of some lack of intelligence on my part. My awareness of this fact will surely help me to control myself, although perhaps my respect for G. Ya. – which has grown every day since then – is enough to ensure it.

  But if Lev felt less stress working for Strelkov, he showed increasing signs of impatience with his other friends and nearly all his barrack-mates. After so many years of being cooped up in a confined space, it was hardly surprising that prisoners became irritable and fell out with one another. Even the best friendships came under strain.

  Lev’s relations with Nikolai Lileev, his oldest friend in the labour camp, became tense towards the end of 1952. They had been together for seven years, arriving in Pechora on the same convoy, and Lev had a very high regard for Lileev’s kindness, honesty and bravery. Lileev had displayed extraordinary courage on at least two occasions: once when he stopped a horse stampeding through the labour camp; the other when he saved Strelkov’s life by chasing away three armed criminals who attacked him in revenge for an earlier incident when Strelkov had defended his laboratory from them. Yet in spite of his fondness and respect for Lileev – and perhaps because of them – Lev would express irritation more often about him than about anybody else. He complained about his ‘childishness’, ‘flippant views on life’ and ‘lack of tact’, especially in the barracks. ‘N. annoys me more with every passing day,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 24 December.

  Lileev (left) and Lev, 1949.

  It seems we’re just bored with each other. I really can’t find anything to talk to him about. He’s not interested in the practical challenges of manufacturing. He’s indifferent to any type of machinery, including electrical, both on a practical and a theoretical level; he’s even fallen behind on his mathematics and is spending all his time playing table tennis or chess or studying German with Vadim. There’s no doubt that language is a useful thing but for Vadim, just as for N., electrical engineering and mathematics would be more useful; that’s why Nikolka’s lessons seem like pure self-indulgence to me; and it’s all I can do not to tell him. If there were no G. Y. [Strelkov], Ivan [Valiavin]51 or A. M. [Iushkevich], I would still find it ten times more interesting to talk to a machine operator or anyone at all who looks life square in the eye than I would to N.

  Lev was being unfairly critical. What was so wrong with a prisoner wanting to relax by playing chess or table tennis or learning German instead of maths? Lev’s serious-mindedness had grown alongside his annoyance with his fellow prisoners.

  Everything about his barrack-mates exasperated Lev: their talking in their sleep at night; their herd instinct; their practical jokes and noisiness; their incessant games of dominoes; their sentimental reminiscing; and the ‘excessive tenderness’ that he noted in several prisoners and found particularly ‘repulsive’. Lev was disgusted by the feelings of affection that naturally developed between men inside the labour camp. He had not encountered it before, and he was disturbed by it. ‘Regarding the family ideal,’ he wrote to Sveta,

  it seems to me that it’s really wrong when it’s in a friendship between men. In my opinion, it’s more than wrong – it’s an abnormality that for me is repulsive to the point of being loathsome. I’m sure that my friendships with Andriushka [Semashko], Zhenka [Bukke], Nat [Grigorov] and Vaska Gusev [all student friends before the war] were sincere and solid, the kind without which each one of us would have found life more difficult. Whatever affected one of us was felt by all of us, and everyone was always happy for everyone else – but outwardly this was expressed with nothing more than a handshake.

  Far from merely irritated, Lev was appalled by the human degradation he saw all around him. People who had once been decent were now brutal, selfish, mean, hardened and insensitive. ‘There is an unavoidable psychological evolution in the human being here,’ he wrote to Uncle Nikita. ‘Its extent depends on the individual, but the direction is a general one – the dulling of all feeling … What develops is an acceptance of qualities and actions that before would not have been acceptable.’

  The first thing Lev noticed was the breakdown of fellow feeling. ‘The infinite mutual hostility that chokes all human relations here amazes me,’ he wrote to Sveta.

  There’s no trace anywhere of solidarity among friends, or even of solidarity at work – everyone mistrusts everybody else and tries to ride on their back; everyone is on their guard and lying in wait. There are still, it seems, some little groups of workers who are united by common interests into something like friendship, but this connection is easily broken because of the distrust which eats away at all relationships.

  Enterprising individuals were invariably thieves:

  Watching the people around me, I’m once again disgusted that no sooner do you meet someone who’s energetic and quick-witted than he’s almost always on the make to the point of theft, the scale of which is determined only by opportunity. If he’s a cobbler, he’s stolen and sold material, and the higher-ups have taken part in it. If he’s an electrician, he’s earned money on the side in a similar way. There is no need to even talk about the drivers.

  The labour camp had taught him to believe, as he put it, ‘that in 999 instances out of 1,000, the common principles of decency lead the average person to ruin or starvation in the struggle to survive’.

  Lev was worried by the changes he noticed even in himself. ‘Once again I am overwhelmed by the fear that I thought had disappeared,’ he wrote to Sveta: ‘that in the course of time you really do become a savage and malicious animal, and slow-witted besides, so that a joke doesn’t make you smile and you aren’t even capable of telling a story to a Liudmilla or Taniushka.’

  What kind of father would he make after all these years in labour camps? Lev thought a great deal about that question. His experience had changed
his views on what mattered in raising children. Lev was not a violent man, but there had been moments in the camp when he had been forced to defend himself. After one such incident, he had written to Sveta that the camp had taught him the importance of physical strength, something he had tried to develop by lifting weights (he made them out of axles from the railway wagons in the yard). He thought that strength was especially important for children growing up in a cruel world:

  Physical strength is the most necessary condition in life. Those parents who aren’t making their children develop physically, whether they want to or not, should be subject to punishment. At any rate, physical development should play a far larger role than is mandated in schools. It’s a crime that Nikolai Lileev, who is nearly twice as tall as me, is no better than I am at weightlifting and that in a fight only his height would be of any advantage. To look at him you would have thought him strong enough to play gorodki [a kind of skittles] with telegraph poles.

  Lev’s experience had also taught him that children needed practical skills to survive:

  What is a person suitable for, having completed, as I have, a university-style course of study or graduated from an institute of higher education? If that person doesn’t remain at the institute and doesn’t become a teacher, he still has merely the raw material to develop into a future professional, although the raw material itself isn’t bad. It seems to me that children should go to school for only 7 years. They should then spend 3 or 4 years in a vocational college – construction, electrical engineering, vehicular, mechanical etc. – and then 1 or 2 years in an apprenticeship gaining practical experience. An education of this kind, fostering intensive knowledge of a special field, will help them get through difficult situations … Planning for such rainy days is important even in our radiant times – you don’t have to go far for examples. To raise a child, you must be prepared to punish him severely for all kinds of things – to punish him when his friends hit him but he doesn’t hit back and to punish him even more if he still refuses to fight … What I say relates to the female sex as well – with the exception of fighting, naturally.

  Lev had witnessed many prisoners lose what had been good in their character and become nasty, violent, alcoholic or insane. Psychologically, there was nothing more disturbing for a prisoner than watching the deterioration of another prisoner, not least because of the terrifying implications for himself. This accounts for Lev’s rather harsh response to the changes he observed in Oleg Popov, the half-Latvian he had liked so much who had been sent on a convoy to break stones and become obsessed by bread. Lev and Sveta had continued sending parcels to Oleg. They were encouraged by his interest in literature – it seemed a sign of hope to them – and discussed between themselves what books he might like. Oleg could not write to Lev from the stone quarry (where there were rules against his writing to another prisoner) but he could write to Sveta:

  I am very grateful to you for all the trouble you have taken over me, for your efforts, attention and friendship. I cannot express what is in my heart, and maybe such feelings should not be expressed. Sometimes I think that Lev must be a very lucky person, at least it seems that way to me, because it is not often that you find someone as good as you.

  In December 1952, Oleg was sent back to Pechora. He wrote to Lev from one of the forest camps. ‘I received a note today,’ Lev wrote to Sveta, ‘and you’ll never guess from whom – from Oleg! I was indescribably happy. He’s now only 3 kilometres away from here and feels as if he’s been released from Hell.’

  For the next year, Lev tried to get Oleg transferred to the wood-combine by talking to the bosses there, and in January 1954 he finally succeeded. Oleg was put into a hauling team made up of prisoners from the Baltic area. ‘Yesterday Oleg came to visit us – after 6 years of destitution in the wilderness,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 8 January. ‘Against expectations, he appears to be well – in good health and young. Only his look is more serious and there are signs of inner disturbance.’ Within days, though, Lev’s excitement turned to dismay. ‘The more I really get to know him, the less I like Oleg,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 24 January.

  More and more I think that he has absolutely nothing on the inside –no kind of serious opinions, principles or feelings. All there is is ostentatious ‘originality’. It’s in quote marks because in actual fact he doesn’t have any; it’s been a long time since he was original. He never uses plain language and when he speaks it’s always with pretensions to wit … None of this was noticeable before, evidently because his audience over the last few years has broken him of the habit of a more subtle camouflage … It’s all really sad, of course, because it’s yet another example of my disillusionment with people – even more unpleasant because it’s not the first. Having noticed falsity in one person, I’m now seeing it in many.

  Five days later, Lev wrote to tell Sveta to break off relations with Oleg. ‘We have all fallen out with him – not only I but both the Nikolais. G. Ya. [Strelkov] never liked him much – and now dislikes him even more.’

  Frightened at the thought of what might happen to himself if he remained much longer in the labour camp, Lev had frequent nightmares about not being able to leave: there was always some obstacle getting in his way and stopping him from going home, from being reunited with Sveta, the focus of his hopes.

  They had not seen each other for two and a half years. She had been unable to come to Pechora in 1952 and 1953. Her mother was bed-ridden with TB, her father weak and frail, and she had to care for them. At work she was struggling to cope with an extra burden of administrative duties because of Tsydzik’s illness. ‘Everything’s weighing on me, Levi,’ she wrote in March 1953. ‘I can’t relax at home, but I can’t go to any kind of sanatorium or holiday retreat either. I’d cry there just the same as I do at home.’ Lev encouraged her to take a holiday – there was the possibility of a camping trip in the Altai region of Siberia – and told her not to come to Pechora. He was expecting to be released at some point during the next year, possibly in July 1954, though maybe not until the following December, depending on the final decision of the MVD. ‘Sveta,’ he had written in June 1953,

  you mustn’t turn down the opportunity of a holiday in the Altai or in Erevan, whatever the circumstances … All other routes [i.e., to Pechora] are too complicated; if we have to wait another year, or a year and a half at most, we can do that. It’s not so bad any more, Sveta.

  In some ways, it was Lev who was supporting Sveta through this last year or so of separation. Their roles had changed. Despite his anxieties, Lev was getting stronger as conditions in the labour camp improved and the date of his release approached, while she was increasingly exhausted from coping with her parents and her work.

  At the start of August, for the first time in her life, Sveta found herself in hospital. She had septicaemia and was running a fever. When she had recovered, she took Lev’s advice and went on a walking holiday in the Altai. She wanted to travel to Pechora afterwards, but did not feel up to it. Lev was anxious about her.

  Svetloe, thanks to our postal system and the delivery of your telegram, I wasn’t as frightened as I should have been by Aunt Katya’s letter about your illness. That’s also why your letters from the hospital didn’t throw me into more of a panic. Still, I’m just a little worried that you might suffer a relapse of this incomprehensible ailment during your travels.

  It was agonizing for him to go so long without seeing her, but he found a paradoxical consolation in the wait:

  Sveta, increasingly I want to say all kinds of needless – and perhaps even hurtful – words to you, and I’m always trying to hold my tongue. About how it is so difficult seeing your face only in a photograph for such a long time. And how the very fact that it’s difficult is a source of joy. And how it becomes even more difficult with each passing year and therefore all the more joyful. And how, consequently, time and distance are not only able to destroy what there is but also to nourish it.

  Writing on 22 September, around the t
ime of her previous visits to Pechora, he begged her not to feel bad about missing yet another year. By this time he expected to be released in November 1954. He told her to be strong:

  Sveta, my darling, you must not take yourself to task – don’t put at risk your future or happiness, or your health. You mustn’t tear yourself to pieces with journeys, work trips, caring for your mother, your father, domestic chores, and your own problems. All the more so, since the administrative scoundrels here are this year four times more stupid, bureaucratic and malicious than before. Svetin, when all is said and done, there are only 14 months to go – that’s not so many any more. Try to be healthy, Sveta, and don’t torment yourself with doubts and worries.