Tom Smith - Secret speech

One of the guards, a man Lazar had never seen before, strode toward them, brandishing a knife. They were going to cut the wire and kill the speech. The guard was smiling, pleased with his solution:

– Out of my way.

The foremost prisoner stepped forward, standing on the wire, blocking the guard. A second prisoner joined him, and a third, a fourth, keeping the wire out of reach. Smiling threateningly, as if to say he would remember this for later, the guard moved to another exposed stretch of wire. Responding, the prisoners quickly pushed forward, filling the space, protecting the wire. The knot of prisoners reshaped until there was a dense line of prisoners standing side by side stretching from the timber pole supporting the speaker to the base of the administration barracks. The only way the guard could get to the wire was by crawling under the barracks, something his pride stopped him from doing.

– Get out of my way.

The prisoners didn’t move. The guard turned to face the two vakhta , the fortified towers overlooking the camp. He waved at the gunners, pointing toward the prisoners before hurrying away.

There was a burst of gunfire. In unison the prisoners dropped to their knees. Lazar looked around, expecting to see dead and injured. No one seemed to be hurt. The volley must have been targeted over their heads, hitting the side of the barracks, a warning shot. Slowly everyone stood up. Voices from the back cried out:

– We need help!

– Bring the feldsher!

Out of sight, Lazar couldn’t see what was going on. The calls for medical assistance continued. But no one came. The guards did nothing. Soon the cries stopped-there were no more calls for help. Explanations rippled through the crowd. A prisoner had died.

Sensing the mood darken, the guard put away his knife and drew his gun. He fired at the speaker, missing several times, until finally it sparked and crackled, falling silent. The other four speakers in the prisoner zone were still working, but they were some distance away: the commander’s voice reduced to an inaudible background sound. Keeping his gun drawn, the guard announced:

– Back to the barracks! And no one else will die!

The threat was misjudged.

Picking up the wire from the ground, a prisoner darted forward, wrapping it around the guard’s neck, throttling him. The prisoners surrounded the fight. Other guards ran to intervene. A prisoner grabbed the officer’s gun, firing at the approaching guards. One man fell, wounded. The others drew their weapons, firing at will.

The prisoners scattered. An understanding flashed through them instantaneously. If the guards regained control, the reprisals would be savage, no matter what speeches were being given in Moscow. At this point, both towers opened fire.

The commander was still talking, recounting bloody confession after bloody confession, seemingly oblivious to the gunfire. His mind had snapped: under Stalin his character had been pulled with such extreme force in one direction. Now he was being pulled in the exact opposite direction. He had no resistance, no idea who he really was, neither a good man nor a bad man but a weak one.

Allowing the commander to carry on, Leo opened the shutter, cautiously looking out. Rioting prisoners were running in every direction. There were bodies on the snow. Calculating the forces on both sides, Leo guessed a ratio of one guard for every forty inmates, a high ratio, in part explaining why the camps were so expensive to run-the forced labor failing to earn back the cost of keeping the convicts fed, housed, transported, and enslaved. A central expense was the guards, paid a premium for working in such remote conditions. This was the reason they were killing to cling on to authority. They had no lives to go back to, no families or neighborhoods that wanted them. No factory floor community would accept them. Their prosperity depended upon the prisoners. The fight would be equally desperate on both sides.

There was a flash of gunfire from the towers-the window shattered. Leo dropped, glass falling around him, bullets hitting the floor-boards. Safe behind the thick log walls, he slowly reached up, trying to close the shutters. The wood broke apart in a shower of splinters. The room was exposed. On the desk the PA equipment, kicked around by the bullets, was lifted up, spinning in the air before clattering to the floor. Sinyavksy fell back, curling into a ball. Over the noise Leo cried out:

– Do you have a gun?

Sinyavksy’s eyes flicked to the side. Leo followed them to a wood crate tucked in the corner, padlocked. He stood up, running toward it, only to find the commander running to block him, putting his hands up:

– No!

Leo knocked the commander aside, picking up the steel desk lamp and bringing the heavy base crashing down against the lock. With a second blow the lock smashed off and he pulled it free. The commander once again leapt forward, throwing himself over the crate:

– I beg you…

Leo pulled him off, opening the lid.

Inside there was nothing more than a collection of odds and ends. There were framed photos. They showed the commander standing proudly beside a canal: emaciated prisoners toiled in the background. Leo guessed they were the photos that had originally hung on the office wall. He tossed them aside, rooting through files, certificates, awards, and letters congratulating Sinyavksy on meeting a quota-the detritus of his great career. There was a hunting rifle at the bottom. On the handle were notches, twenty-three kills. Certain that these notches didn’t refer to wolves or bears, Leo loaded the rifle with the fat, finger-length bullets, moving back to the window.

The two primary towers, the vakhta, were strategically crucial, constructed on high wooden stilts. The guards had already pulled up the ladders, making it impossible to scale their positions. Protected behind thick log walls, the top of each tower housed podium-mounted machine guns capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute, a collective firepower far greater than anything on the ground. Leo had to draw their fire away from the prisoners. He took aim at the guard tower directly ahead. There was little chance his shot would be accurate enough to penetrate the gap in the log walls. He fired twice, shuddering under the massive recoil of the rifle. They stopped firing at the prisoners, redirecting their volley of bullets at him.

Ducking down, crouched against the floor, Leo glanced at Sinyavksy. He was in the corner, reading the remaining pages of the Secret Speech, calmly, as if nothing were amiss while his office was torn apart by gunfire. He looked up at Leo, reading:

– Let my cry of horror reach your ears: do not remain deaf, take me under your protection; please, help remove the nightmare of interrogations and show that this is all a mistake!

Sinyavksy stood up:

– This is all a terrible mistake! This should never have happened!

Leo shouted at him:

– Get down!

A bullet hit the commander in the shoulder. Unable to watch him die, Leo jumped up, knocking him flat. Landing on his injured knees, Leo almost passed out with the pain. Sinyavksy whispered:

– That speech has saved my life.

Leo smelled smoke. He rolled onto his back, taking the pressure off his knees. He stood up awkwardly, moving to the window. There was no more heavy gunfire. Through the smashed window he cautiously surveyed the zona and saw the source of the smoke. Directly underneath the base of the cabin was a fire, flames climbing the structure. Barrels of fuel had been rolled underneath and set alight, the cabin roasting like a chunk of meat at the end of a skewer. For the men inside there was no escape. Unable to climb down the ladder, the guards tried to squeeze out through the gap in the log walls. The gap was too narrow: one man was stuck, wedged in, unable to go forward or back as the fire took hold. He began to scream.