The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  ■ ■ ■

  G. G. Yagoda

  The new policy and the new wave of prisoners solved Granovsky’s labor problem. A few weeks after the publication of the decree, a group of Vishera prisoners was sent down to Berezniki. Among them was Varlam Shalamov. “In the fall of 1929, in the company of Angelsky, a former officer who had run away from Perm that same year, and fifty other prisoners, I set out by boat from Vizhaikha to the settlement of Lenva, near Usolye, in order to found a new branch of the Vishera camp, thus inaugurating the giant of the First Five-Year Plan, Berezniki.”12 The branch became a transit point, and then a camp.

  The inmates spent the winter of 1929–30 “warming up” the stone boxes erected by the contract laborers in Churtan, the City of Light. There were thousands, tens of thousands of people sleeping on the damp planks or heaped together on the floor and spending their days building the City of Light, working at the chemical plant, or building a new camp for themselves a little closer by, on Adam’s Mountain…. As soon as the new camp on Adam’s Mountain was finished, the construction workers were moved over there. They found forty barracks, built according to the two-level Solovki model, and the camp service personnel waiting for them.13

  Only the best workers from each convoy were selected to work at the site. The camp commander, M. V. Stukov, and head of personnel (and convicted “wrecker”), P. P. Miller, prided themselves on being able to see the other side of the heart:

  Huge convoys passing through on their way to the camp headquarters would stand in formation at the Berezniki station. Stukov, the head of the Berezniki branch, would walk down the line and simply point his finger, without asking anything and almost without looking—“this one, this one, this one,”—selecting, without fail, the hardworking peasants, who had been arrested under Article 58.

  “But they’re all kulaks, Citizen Commander!”

  “You’re still young and eager. The kulaks are the very best workers.”

  And he would grin.14

  Over the course of a year (from the summer of 1929 to the summer of 1930), the overall number of inmates in OGPU camps increased from 22,848 to about 155,000 (in addition to the about 250,000–300,000 being held in republic-level NKVD camps). The prison population of the Vishera camp, which included both Berezniki and the Vizhaikha paper mill, grew from 7,363 in 1929 to about 39,000 in April 1931. On April 25, 1930, a new OGPU camp administration was formed. After November, it became known as the Main Camp Administration, or GULAG.15

  In Berezniki, according to Shalamov, matters had come to a head in the fall of 1929, around the time of his—and Granovsky’s—arrival:

  Granovsky, the head of construction or some Moscow commission—it’s all the same—discovered that the first stage of the Berezniki Works, for which millions of rubles had already been spent, simply did not exist….

  Granovsky and his deputy, Omelianovich, and later Chistiakov, had a noose hanging over their heads. Both the engineer and the administrator had run away from Berezniki in fear, but Granovsky, the boss who had been sent down by the Central Committee, could not escape. It was at this moment that a brilliant solution was suggested to him—to get the camp involved in the construction.16

  After three months of work by the carefully selected Berezniki inmates and many more unaccounted-for transit prisoners, “the honor of the project was saved, and the territory was connected to a real railroad with real train cars and filled with real sand procured in a real forest quarry.”17

  In the summer of 1930, a special OGPU commission came to inspect the new camp. The head of the commission was the thirty-two-year-old deputy head of the GULAG, Matvei Berman. The son of a brick factory owner and graduate of Chita Commercial College, Berman had been in the Cheka/OGPU since the Civil War. He had recently received an apartment in the House of Government, but, like Granovsky, was hardly ever in Moscow. According to the history of the White Sea–Baltic Canal (written after Berman became head of GULAG),

  It took this man very little time to answer the personnel-form question concerning his occupation since 1917.

  What did cause some difficulty was the question concerning his permanent address. To save time, he would have preferred to write nothing and simply attach the map of the Soviet Union. But this did not prove possible. What could he do? In the personnel office they always told him there was no such place of registration. And this was said to a person who, over the course of twelve years, had changed only his place of residence—never his occupation….

  He could spot an engineer, tsarist army officer, dentist, manufacturer, railroad worker, or apartment building manager as easily as if each one were openly wearing a badge of his profession. In fact, many were concealing it and surviving by passing themselves off as other people.

  He knew the dialects of the Urals, Siberia, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and the docks. And although many people lacked such powers of recognition, Berman did not think it was anything special. It was a common trait among the breed of people to whom he belonged.

  Matvei Berman

  Berman was a Chekist. He lived with the clear knowledge that he was responsible for the Party each day of his life.

  He was permanently engaged in the creative intellectual process of generalization. A casual word, unexpected intonation, unconscious gesture, stiff gait, accidental occurrence, or odd error would imprint themselves on his memory.

  A railroad official’s cap glimpsed through the window of an international train car at the Tashkent Station might become linked to an automobile parked in front of a famous professor’s house in Leningrad.

  What all these capriciously scattered details had in common was an absolute hostility and mendacity.

  The counterrevolution no longer liked to speak openly or look one in the eye. It had learned to detect and distinguish voices by the movement of the lips alone; to interpret a look by the tension in the eyelids or the slight trembling of the eyelashes.

  Berman’s perspicacity, the counterrevolution’s hostility, and the needs of industrialization came together in the “Vishera experiment.” According to the same history,

  A convict costs the state more than 500 rubles per year. Why on earth should workers and peasants feed this army of parasites, swindlers, wreckers, and counterrevolutionaries? Let’s send them to the camps and say: “Here are your means of production. Work, if you want to eat. Such is the principle of existence in our country. We will make no exception for you.”

  The camps should be run by an organization that will be able to carry out the important economic assignments and initiatives of the Soviet state and to colonize a number of new territories.

  “Such was the direct order of the Party and government,” remembered Berman.18

  In the summer of 1930, he had just begun the work of building the GULAG. According to Shalamov,

  Berman arrived with a large retinue, all wearing trench coats with two or three stars on the collars. Berzin, the Vishera camp commander, a man of impressive height with a dark goatee and wearing a long cavalry coat with three stars, loomed over the other members of the commission. Accordingly, Stof—the army medic, inmate, and head of the medical section who was supposed to report to the commission—leapt off the porch and, goose-stepping straight up to Berzin, directed the full poetry of his camp report at him.

  Berzin stepped to one side and, with the words “This is the Commander,” gave way to a short, stocky man with a pale prison face, wearing a worn black leather jacket—the obligatory Cheka uniform of the first days of the revolution.

  In an attempt to aid the bewildered medic, the GULAG boss unbuttoned his jacket to reveal the four stars on his collar. But Stof was struck dumb. Berman shrugged, and the commission moved on.

  The brand-new camp territory glistened in the sun. Every piece of barbed wire shone and glittered blindingly. Inside were forty barracks—250 two-level, continuous bunks each, according to the Solovki standard of the 1920s; a bathhouse with an asphalt floor for 600 wooden tubs with hot and co
ld water; a theater with a projection booth and a large stage; an excellent new disinfection chamber; and a stable for 300 horses.19

  The inspection went well. The head of camp personnel and convicted wrecker, P. P. Miller, took advantage of the good mood and asked Berman for an audience. His account of the meeting was recorded by Shalamov: “Berman was sitting behind the desk when I entered the room and stood to attention, as required. ‘So tell me, Miller, what exactly did you wreck?’ asked the head of the GULAG, clearly enunciating each word. ‘I did not wreck anything, Citizen Commander,’ I said, and felt my mouth go dry. ‘Then why did you ask for a meeting? I thought you wished to make an important confession. Berzin!’ the head of the GULAG called out loudly. Berzin stepped inside the office. ‘Yes, Comrade Commander.’ ‘Take Miller away.’ ‘Yes, Comrade Commander.’”20

  ■ ■ ■

  The brick factory was ready by August 1930; most of the auxiliary shops (foundry, smithy, welding shop), by early 1931; the oxygen plant, by May 1931; the sulphuric acid factory, by December 1931. On April 25, 1932, Pravda wrote: “The ammonia factory of the Berezniki Chemical Works has started production. It is a great day not only for the Soviet chemical industry, but for the whole country.”21

  Berezniki Chemical Plant, 1932

  Towering over the cranes, chimneys, and masts was the figure of Granovsky, whom his deputies depicted as the reincarnation of Peter the Great during the building of St. Petersburg. “Every day on the site you could see the head of construction, M. A. Granovsky, doing the rounds of the shops or rushing by in a carriage. The bay stallion, the carriage, and the coachman—everything looked solid, as solid as their passenger.” (According to his son Anatoly, he also had a car and a motorboat; according to a complaint by a disgruntled German Communist, the carriage was also used to take his sons to school; according to Shalamov, his boots and overcoat had been made by prisoners.) “Dark legends were being told about this man. People hated and feared him, but no one dared disobey or ignore his orders…. Mikhail Aleksandrovich went into every technological detail himself and issued orders that, as I said, no one would think of contradicting for fear of rousing his wrath. In effect, he played the role of chief engineer—quite justifiably, in my view, because he did not want to entrust his favorite child to a handful of timeservers.” In Tsukerman’s summary, “Granovsky acted as if he were on the frontline of a battle: he did not spare himself and was ruthless in his demands toward those who worked under him.”22

  In 1933, he received the Order of Lenin (Berman did, too). In January–February 1934, he attended the Seventeenth Party Congress. In November 1934, on the seventeenth anniversary of the Revolution, the Granovsky family moved into a new two-story house. According to Anatoly’s memoirs, written in English: “The grounds were soon full of the cars and horse-drawn coaches of all the leading officials and authorities for many miles around and a gay party was held lasting well into the night. The building was presented to us fully furnished and most splendidly decorated. The interior walls were paneled up to about five feet from the floor and above that were painted with a mural design. All the finest chinaware, silver, linen and everything needed to make a princely home had been provided at not a kopec’s cost to my father.”23

  Granovsky (left) accompanying People’s Commissar of Heavy Industry G. K. Ordzhonikidze, on his visit to Berezniki, 1934 (Courtesy of I. T. Sidorova)

  Granovsky with his youngest son, Vladimir, 1936 (Courtesy of I. T. Sidorova)

  A woman who, as a little girl, had lived in a small room off the kitchen of the Granovsky house recalled: “From the outside, it was nothing special, but the interior decorations were impressive. On the first floor was the technical library and a large tiled kitchen. On the second floor was the study and some other rooms. The house had solid furniture, a chandelier, and many large potted palms.” Anatoly’s fondest memories were of being at home with his father. “I remember the warmth of warm, dark bedrooms, the flutter and soft padding of snow on windows as I lay open-eyed just before sleep under thick, smooth blankets and on soft, receiving mattresses. I remember the awe I felt for my father, the fearful love I bore him and the feeling of safety and assurance that he inspired—when I was good.”24

  Five months later, in April 1935, Granovsky was made director of the Central Administration of Railroad Construction, and the family moved permanently into the House of Government. According to Anatoly,

  The Berezniki we left was very different from that which we had encountered when we arrived five years before. Then it had been a little town surrounded by forest and marsh and boasting three stone houses, the rest being of wood. Now it was a thriving industrial hive in which lived 75,000 workers and their families.

  Many people came to see us off at the station as we prepared to leave in our special coaches, all smiling and wishing us well. Some of the workers too came out of curiosity and stood staring at us from a little way off. Their faces were blank and expressionless.25

  According to the head of the Planning Department, Fedorovich, “the employees of the Chemical Works reacted to this change in different ways. Some breathed a sigh of relief—finally, they were free of Granovsky’s despotic power; others were sorry he was leaving; yet others felt at a crossroads and wondered what would come next.”26

  12

  THE VIRGIN LANDS

  The First Five-Year Plan was about construction: “installing special foundations capable of ensuring the stability of structures on swampy land” and building eternal houses “that shone with more light than there was in the air around them.” But it was also about destruction: draining the bubbling, rumbling swamps and slaying the wreckers who lived there. The real revolution—the most radical of Stalin’s “revolutions from above”—was to take place in the damp, rural shadow of the cranes, chimneys, and masts. The goal was to do what Peter the Great, in his “small-artisan way,” had not considered, and what no state in history had ever attempted: to turn all rural dwellers—peasants, shepherds, trappers, reindeer breeders—into full-time laborers for the state.

  Industrialization could not be accomplished without foreign equipment; foreign equipment had to be bought for cash; cash could only be raised by selling grain; grain had to be procured from the peasants in the form of “tribute” (as Stalin put it). Because a steady flow of tribute from traditional peasant households could not be counted on (as the grain crisis of 1927 clearly demonstrated), traditional peasant households were to be destroyed once and for all.

  In a millenarian world, whatever is necessary is also inevitable, and whatever is inevitable is also desirable. “Collectivization” had been predicted (mandated) by Marx, Engels, and Lenin; the fact that its fulfillment was urgently needed meant that it was about to begin, and the fact that it was about to begin meant that those who had ears were ready to hear. The policy of wholesale collectivization was launched on November 7, 1929, by Stalin’s speech, “The Year of the Great Breakthrough,” which revolved around a series of Lenin’s predictions and proclaimed, contrary to what most eyes could see, that the majority of the peasants had decided to give up the old ways and, “in the face of desperate resistance by all manner of dark forces, from kulaks and priests to philistines and right opportunists,” follow the Party on the path to a “radical breakthrough.”1

  The Central Committee plenum of November 1929 made the new policy official. On December 27, 1929, Stalin told Kritsman’s Conference of Agrarian Marxists that, since the countryside was not going to follow the city of its own free will, “the socialist city can lead the small-peasant village only by imposing collective and state farms upon it.” And, since the peasants who were not kulaks were now ready to have the collective and state farms imposed upon them, the Party could move on to the policy of the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class.” On January 6, 1930, the Central Committee formalized the new policy, and on January 30, the Politburo issued a “strictly confidential” decree “On Measures Regarding the Liquidation of Kulak Households in the Ar
eas of Wholesale Collectivization.”2

  All rural residents in the Soviet Union were divided into three categories: poor, middle, and rich (kulaks). Selection criteria varied considerably and tended to be improvised by local officials, most of whom were specially mobilized urbanites. The poor peasants were expected to welcome the imposition of state and collective enterprises (the collectives, or kolkhozes, were also run by the state). The middle peasants were expected to be persuaded by the success of the poor ones and the fate of the kulaks. The kulaks were to have “their backs broken once and for all” before they had a chance to reveal their intentions. According to the January 6 decree, they were to be deprived of their possessions and subdivided into three categories. The first group was to be “immediately liquidated by means of imprisonment in concentration camps, not hesitating to use the death penalty with regard to the organizers of terrorist acts, counterrevolutionary actions, and insurrectionary organizations.” The second was to be exiled to “uninhabited and sparsely populated areas” in “remote regions of the USSR,” for use as forced laborers. The third group was to be resettled in specially designated locations within their native districts.