Caroline Walton - Smashed in the USSR

Despite these concessions the Godfather continues to censor our letters. My friends and I start to write to ourselves, posting letters via different channels. We cover the pages with meaningless words, sprinkled with numbers and symbols. Let him waste his time trying to decipher these, we laugh.

Thanks to the barrack stoolies, the Godfather knows the strike was my idea. He has his revenge when VV and I get completely pissed at work. One of our freed companions has thrown a bottle over the fence. Medvedev, the officer in charge of our work brigade, drives us back to the barracks saying we’ll face the music in the morning. When he tries to follow us into the barracks we rush at him, flapping our arms and puffing vodka breath in his face. “Phoo, phoo, phoo, get out, get out.”

Medvedev has not brought an escort, so he leaves, muttering threats. A few minutes later guards come and haul us off to the isolator.

In the morning Medvedev rages at us: “You’ll be punished under article 77 for interfering with an officer in the line of his duty and causing mass disorder.”

This charge is considered worse than murder and punishable by anything from eight years to execution by firing squad. We refuse to answer questions or admit to anything. “Bring the Godfather. We won’t say anything until he’s present.”

Medvedev laughs in our faces. “I can assure you that he will not come.”

“But he must. He is head of the camp.”

“He won’t.”

On hearing this we begin a hunger strike. A few days later a Black Maria takes us to Kuibyshev jail. We learn that our strike was in vain, because the Godfather was away on holiday that week.

Kuibyshev jail is full of men who have taken part in a riot that makes ours look like a children’s tea party. I hear about it from a prisoner in my cell: “It began when a packet of tea was thrown in. It landed on the strip of ploughed earth between the inner and outer wires. As a prisoner stretched his hand through to recover the tea a guard shot him in the leg. News spread around the zone. When the SVPs got wind of a revolt they ran off to the guard house. A couple of them who didn’t make it were beaten to death.

“We broke into a workshop and found a tank of diesel fuel. We soaked our jackets in the oil, lit them and threw them through the windows of the guards barracks. That set the zone on fire. Some prisoners armed themselves with iron bars and took over the isolators, killing a guard in the process. That day we were possessed by a sort of demonic joy.

“The camp director tried to stop us. I have to admit he was a brave man, for he came out without an escort. He seemed to be prepared to listen so we started to tell him our grievances. Then a zek lost his patience and hurled a waste bin at the director’s head. Rage took over again and the director was severely beaten. He died later.

“No one touched the nurses in the camp hospital. One of the zeks with authority led them across to the guard room. The cruel thing is, I’ve just heard he got eight years. They said that if he had the authority to protect the women he might have intervened to end the riot.

“Troop carriers surrounded the zone and a helicopter circled overhead. A voice shouted over loudspeakers: ‘Citizen prisoners! Cease this mass disorder immediately!’ We began to wonder why the soldiers didn’t storm the place to restore order. It seems they were waiting for orders from Moscow.

“When the day ended we realised we had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. We threw stones at anyone who tried to enter the zone, but the night was cold and by the next morning we’d lost our enthusiasm. They came for us in Black Marias and we no longer had the energy to defend ourselves.

“We were sent to different jails. They took me to Syzran, where I opened my big mouth. Some bastard of an SVP overheard me and here I am, looking at another five years. I didn’t even kill anyone or beat the guards. What a mess. If I hadn’t got mixed up in that business I’d have been out next year.”

This man’s story depresses me, for I too am looking at a longer sentence, and this time it will be in a camp rather than a ‘treatment centre.’

Fortunately for us, Medvedev can’t produce a witness at our trial. When we threw him out of the barrack there was only one other man present and he was in a state of Antabuse-induced psychosis, cowering in a corner pointing a piece of plywood at Medvedev and shouting: “Bang! Bang!” Our charge is reduced to hooliganism. Even so, we get four years each.

Four years! I torment myself imagining this endless length of time. But my cellmates congratulate me. Well done! That’s nothing! It’s true that many people get longer sentences for lesser crimes but I fear I’ll go out of my mind.

Then the impossible happens. Our sentences are overturned thanks to VV’s mother. As director of a Syzran department store, she is an important person and able to hire a good lawyer who wins our case at the court of appeal. The judge simply orders us to serve out the rest of our original sentences — a year in my case — in a different prison. VV and I are moved to Barkovka near Toliatti.

The camp at Barkovka is strict regime, full of SVPs and headed by a bastard called Dubov. It lies near an industrial dump which burns continually, shrouding the area in black smog.

The industrial zone is a brick-making plant separated from the living area by a high fence with gates and watch-towers. The factory works around the clock, one brigade taking the heavy wet bricks from wagons and loading them into the kilns, the other pulling the scorching bricks out. They give us gloves once a week, which wear out before a single shift is over. Zeks wind old cloths around their hands but these do not prevent serious burns. Barely a week passes without a zek inflicting an injury on himself to get out of work.

My crippled leg saves me from the kilns. I am sent instead to make fluorescent lamps in a separate workshop. There I make friends with a man who deliberately broke his arm to get away from the kilns. Sanka Mirzaev is a Tatar from Chapaevsk. My wife attended his mother during her numerous pregnancies.

Sanka has had a series of different ‘fathers’ and eventually ended up in a children’s prison where he became very fastidious. He never picks up bread or dog ends from the ground, he will not share a table with a loud or messy eater, and he makes his bed as neatly as a soldier. When his arm starts to heal they threaten to send him back to work in the kilns. Workers who break their arms usually only get a couple of months off. Sanka has plenty of peasant cunning and manages to outwit them by writing a letter to a friend, detailing escape plans. He tries to pass it out via a zek suspected of being a stoolie. The plan works like magic and the letter falls into the Godfather’s hands. Sanka is categorised as a potential escapee and banned from the work zone.

Another lad who works with us is so stunted he could pass for a twelve-year-old child. His prison jacket reaches to his toes. “That’s our Pakhan,” [26] In criminal jargon a Pakhan is a leader of a gang of thieves. Usually he is a retired thief who sends younger lads out to work for him, a sort of Fagin character. says Sanka. “Poor little sod. I knew him back in children’s camp. His mother was a prostitute. He’s never known home-cooking or sweet pies, but he’s been sucking on vodka since he was a toddler. His mother used to send him out in the mornings to pick up dog-ends from the streets. Then he had to fend for himself while she entertained her clients. He survived by snatching bread from people’s hands, running off and eating it in entranceways. After his mother died of TB, Pakhan took to the streets. He was soon arrested for theft and sent to a children’s prison. I got to know him there. I felt sorry for him as he was always being beaten up. Once they stuffed him in a locker and threw him out of a first floor window. Now he’s blind in one eye and he can’t hear much. One day he stabbed one of his bullies to death. He got six years.”