Cilka's Journey (ARC)

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Cilka's Journey (ARC) Page 38

by Heather Morris


  Der Nister, who died at Vorkuta in 1950, had been impris-

  oned for celebrating their Jewish identity. Yet they found

  themselves taunted and persecuted for their ethnic asso-

  ciation with the Jewish Bolsheviks such as Genrikh Yagoda,

  who had created the Gulag system.

  For ten months a year, the intense cold was a constant,

  lethal companion of Vorkuta life. ‘Touching a metal tool

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  with a bare hand could tear off the skin,’ recalled one prisoner. ‘Going to the bathroom was extremely dangerous.

  A bout of diarrhoea could land you in the snow forever.’

  And prisoners were woefully badly equipped to deal with

  the brutal climate. In Vorkuta, according to camp records,

  only 25 to 30 per cent of prisoners had underclothes,

  while only 48 per cent had warm boots. The rest had to

  make do with makeshift footwear made from rubber tyres

  and rags.

  The Arctic summer of Vorkuta, when the scrubland

  bloomed with scarlet fireweed and the low-lying landscape

  turned into a vast bog, was scarcely more bearable.

  Mosquitoes and gnats appeared in huge grey clouds,

  making so much noise it was impossible to hear anything

  else. ‘The mosquitoes crawled up our sleeves, under our

  trousers. One’s face would blow up from the bites,’ recalled

  a Vorkuta inmate. ‘At the work site, we were brought

  lunch, and it happened that as you were eating your soup,

  the mosquitoes would fill up the bowl like buckwheat

  porridge. They filled up your eyes, your nose and throat,

  and the taste of them was sweet, like blood.’

  Escape was unthinkable. Some of the remoter camps

  had no barbed wire, so unlikely was the possibility of

  prisoners ever making it across hundreds of kilometres of

  wilderness to freedom. Those that did attempt to escape

  did so in threes – the third prisoner coming along as a

  ‘cow’ – food for the other two in case they didn’t find any

  other nourishment.

  Former prisoners frequently recall their time in the

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  Gulag as a season in another world, one with its own climate, rules, values and even language. As Solzhenitsyn

  wrote, the ‘Gulag was a universe’ with its own speech

  and codes. For camp administrators, pregnant women

  were ‘books’, women with children were ‘receipts’,

  men were ‘accounts’, released convicts who remained in

  exile were ‘rubbish’, prisoners under investigation were

  ‘envelopes’, a camp division was a ‘factory’. Tufta was the art of pretending to work, mastyrka, the art of malingering.

  There was a rich underground culture of tattoo designs

  for politicals, addicts, rapists, homosexuals, murderers.

  The slang of the Gulag soon spilled back into mainstream

  culture and became the slang of the entire Soviet Union;

  the rich vocabulary of Russian obscenity developed mainly

  in the camps.

  Occasionally, the tormented slave labourers of the Gulag

  rose against their masters. The Vorkuta Uprising of July–

  August 1953 was one of the bravest, and most tragic, of

  such uprisings. Stalin died in March 1953, and his chief

  policeman Lavrentiy Beria was arrested shortly afterwards

  after a Politburo power struggle. On a warm July day, the

  prisoners of one Vorkuta camp downed tools, demanding

  that inmates have access to a state attorney and due justice.

  Convicts in neighbouring camp, seeing that the mine-head

  wheels in the rebel camp had stopped spinning, joined

  the strike. Top brass from Moscow was sent in – the State

  Attorney of the USSR, and the commander of the Internal

  Troops tried to reason with the strikers. On July 26 pris-

  oners stormed the maximum-security punitive compound,

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  releasing seventy-seven of its inmates who had been kept in solitary cells that spelled death in wintertime. Days later, the authorities finally acted, massing armed troops to open

  fire on the rebels, killing sixty-six and wounding 135.

  The Vorkuta Uprising changed nothing – but in Moscow,

  the political climate was shifting. The winner of the

  struggle to succeed Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, ordered the

  release of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.

  Later, he would denounce Stalin’s crimes at a secret session

  of the Communist Party, and decree the re-examination

  of most of the political cases of the Great Terror. By the

  end of 1956, over 600,000 victims of the Terror would be

  officially – posthumously – pardoned.

  Released prisoners were given a small sum of money

  and travel orders to other parts of the USSR. The vast

  majority remained limitchiki – forbidden to live within 101 kilometres of any major city, largely to limit the political fallout of their stories on the Communist faith or

  urban citizens. The remaining foreign prisoners, mostly

  German prisoners of war, were finally allowed home. A

  few found their way to the US and testified to Congress

  about the horrors of the Gulag.

  Today, around 40,000 people still live in Vorkuta – many

  the descendants of convicts or camp guards, plus a few

  hardy nonagenarian women who were imprisoned there

  and never left. In Soviet times, Vorkuta miners and

  residents enjoyed a generous state subsidy for enduring

  the harsh conditions. Those subsidies disappeared with

  the end of Communism, but nonetheless most of the

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  population stayed. In the 2000s a new gas pipeline was built, bringing new prosperity and a new generation of

  workers. Every year on 31 October residents meet at a

  monument to the victims – a small space filled with a mass

  of rusty barbed wire on the spot where investigative geol-

  ogist Georgy Chernov pitched his tent in 1931, effectively

  founding the city.

  But the most enduring monument to the victims of the

  Gulag remains in the printed words of the survivors – the

  stories of their lives and their battle not just to live but to retain their humanity. Reading a simple litany of horrors

  quickly ceases to be meaningful. As Boris Pasternak wrote

  of the man-made famine that killed millions in the Ukraine

  in the early 1930s, ‘There was such inhuman, unimaginable

  misery, such a terrible disaster, that it began to seem almost abstract, it would not fit within the bounds of consciousness.’ Reading about the Gulag begins to seem like a story

  of another planet, too distant for comprehension.

  But listen to how Varlaam Shalamov, a writer who

  survived seventeen years in Kolyma in the Soviet Far East,

  defined what it meant to feel fully human in the Gulag.

  ‘I believed a person could consider himself a human being

  as long as he felt totally prepared to kill himself,’ a char-

  acter says in one of Shalamov’s ‘Kolyma Tales’. ‘It was this

  awareness that provided the will to live. I checked myself

  – frequently – and felt I had the strength to die, and thus />
  remained alive.’ Both he, and Cilka, lived. And that was

  their victory.

  The last word must go to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ‘I

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  dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it,’ he wrote in the foreword to his classic study, The Gulag

  Archipelago. ‘And may they please forgive me for not

  having seen it all, nor remembered it all, for not having

  divined all of it.’

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Lale Sokolov – you gave me your beautiful story and

  shared with me what you knew of Cilka Klein.

  Sending you my heartfelt thanks for inspiring me to write

  Cilka’s Journey.

  Angela Meyer, on a visit to Lale’s hometown of

  Krompachy you sat with me on a window ledge into the

  small hours of the morning, solving the world’s problems

  and drinking Slivovitz. You encouraged me to make Cilka’s

  story my next project. You have been with me every step

  of the way as my friend and editor in telling this story.

  You are simply brilliant, funny, dedicated to telling stories well. From the bottom of my heart – thank you.

  Kate Parkin, Managing Director of Adult Trade

  Publishing, Bonnier Books UK. How many authors get to

  call their publisher a friend? I do. Your guidance, wisdom

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  and support past, present and future is with me always.

  Thank you so much.

  Margaret Stead (Maverick), fellow Kiwi, fellow traveller,

  Publishing Director, Zaffre, Bonnier Books UK: Mauruuru.

  What a talent, what a person to have on my team.

  Ruth Logan, Rights Director, Bonnier Books UK, thank

  you for making Cilka’s story fly to all four corners of the

  globe, ably assisted by the amazing Ilaria Tarasconi.

  Jennie Rothwell, Assistant Editor, Zaffre, Bonnier

  Books UK, your eagle eye in producing the highest-quality

  content makes my writing better than it would/should

  be. Indebted.

  Francesca Russell, Publicity Director at Zaffre, and Clare

  Kelly, Publicity Manager at Zaffre, thank you for keeping

  me busy and arranging for me to share the stories the

  team at Zaffre all work so hard to release.

  There are others at Zaffre to thank for their brilliant

  work in art, marketing and sales. Nick Stearn, Stephen

  Dumughn and his team, and Nico Poilblanc and his team.

  Thank you all very much. The Slivovitz is on me.

  There are many wonderful people at St Martin’s Press

  in the United States who have been involved in developing

  the story and getting it to print. I need to mention a few

  here, with full acknowledgements being given in the US

  edition.

  A woman who met me at an elevator in New York with

  the biggest smile and arms ready for an embrace, the

  President and Publisher of St Martin’s Press, Sally

  Richardson. Thank you. Thank you. This welcome soon

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  extended to publisher extraordinaire Jennifer Enderlin.

  Again, my sincere thanks. The rest of the team, please

  accept my thanks, your names and roles will be broadcast

  in the US edition.

  Benny Agius (Thelma), General Manager, Echo

  Publishing, you are a shining, bubbling beacon, holding

  me together on many occasions. Someone I can laugh

  with, share concerns with when my life is pulled in many

  directions. Thank you for being there.

  Dakujem (thank you), Lenak Pustay. You got caught up

  in the spell of learning all you could about Cilka. Your

  time, effort and stubbornness to not leave any stone

  unturned in the pursuit of this information has been a joy

  to be on the receiving end of.

  Anna Pustay – Dakujem. You started me on my journey

  to Krompachy. You embraced Lale’s story and became

  attached to Cilka’s story in the same way. You are a beau-

  tiful lady.

  The people of Košice who knew Cilka, invited me into

  their homes and shared stories of Cilka and her husband.

  Mr and Mrs Samuely; Valeria Feketova; Michael Klein –

  Dakujem.

  My friends in Krompachy to whom I have become so

  attached, who have assisted me in many ways with Cilka’s

  Journey – Lady Mayor Iveta Rusinova; Darius Dubinak,

  Stanislav Barbus and the always smiling driver who deliv-

  ered me safe and sound to so many destinations around

  the countryside, Peter Lacko – Dakujem.

  For her outstanding research uncovering life in the

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  Gulags, in particular Vorkuta, professional researcher

  Svetlana Chervonnaya in Moscow – Thank you.

  Friends and family who supported me on my journey

  writing Cilka’s Journey who I am so happy to have in my life. I love them all dearly. My big brother John Williamson

  who sadly died before the book was released, but whom

  I consider a far superior writer to me, and for whose

  support to write I am eternally grateful. Ian Williamson,

  Peggi Shea, Bruce Williamson, Stuart Williamson, Kathie

  Fong Yoneda, Pamela Wallace, Denny Yoneda, Gloria

  Winstone, Ian Winstone.

  To the people who matter the most to me who sometimes

  lose out as I devote time to research, writing and travelling

  – my children and grandchildren. Ahren and Bronwyn,

  Jared and Rebecca, Azure-Dea and Evan, and the beautiful

  little people to whom I am just Grandma – Henry, Nathan,

  Jack, Rachel and Ashton. You are my life, my world.

  Alyth and Alan Townsend, thank you for providing me

  with accomodation in my soul city – Christchurch, New

  Zealand, to write Cilka’s Journey. We go back a long way.

  And especially the man of my life for forty-six years.

  Steve, it seems lately you are missing out the most in this

  crazy journey of mine. Thank you for your love, your

  understanding, your unquestioning support and yes, I

  know, you are my biggest fan.

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