Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag (10 page)
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Authors: Orlando Figes
BOOK: Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag
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Lev was seldom harsh or candid. In his early letters he was always careful to give Sveta a positive impression of his situation in the camp. Self-pity was not in Lev’s character. Stoicism was. His main anxiety was not about himself but about Sveta and how it might affect her if he described his living conditions in detail. He never wrote of cold or hunger – on the contrary, he insisted he was warm and had enough to eat – and hardly ever wrote about the guards, whose treatment of the prisoners was often cruel and violent. The archives of the wood-combine reveal that there were several random killings of prisoners by guards during Lev’s first six months in the camp – cases where a group of guards got drunk and shot or beat to death a prisoner. It is inconceivable that Lev was unaware of any of these incidents – rumours of them circulated in the camp –but he never mentioned them in his letters.
Instead he wrote about the beauty of the northern sky – his greatest visual relief from the prison zone and the only part of the world they could now both see:
The autumn here is beautiful. The sky is clear, the days are warm, the morning freshness of the first cold spells has a calming and invigorating effect. The northern lights are already fighting with the stars.
Their bright, luminous curtains, which look as if they have been woven together from the beams of blue, red and green searchlights, shimmer in the sky, ever changeable, wonderful and enticing. They’re a symbol of human happiness, light, tranquil, always dreaming of the future – thank God for that – yet impossible to reach.
Their bright, luminous curtains, which look as if they have been woven together from the beams of blue, red and green searchlights, shimmer in the sky, ever changeable, wonderful and enticing. They’re a symbol of human happiness, light, tranquil, always dreaming of the future – thank God for that – yet impossible to reach.
Lev mourned the time they were losing. ‘Sometimes when I write to you, Sveta,’ he reflected in his eighth letter,
I look at the people around me in the camp, all of them living in circumstances and surroundings so different from what they were used to once. Their spiritual outlook has changed beyond recognition. This is not a matter of ageing, of changes a person must go through with age – it would be bad if they didn’t. You once said, and quite correctly (you were sitting at your table with ‘Principles’ or ‘Thermodynamics’, I’ve forgotten exactly, but I remember it was evening and a table lamp was buzzing, and I was standing near the piano) that without changing over time people would not become themselves … What can I say about you, Svetushka? That I see you every day, that I know how you used to be and how you are now … and that although I will regret every greying hair on your head, although every additional crease in the corners of your eyes will hurt me, these things must occur, and when they do they will not take anything away from how I feel about you, they will only add something –something new but yours. Does it really matter if this is called old age? You were my world and always will be, and whatever you were, for me you will always be my Svet, my light.
‘Time is moving on and people are changing, it’s true,’ Sveta agreed. ‘But are they really changing for the worse?’
I don’t know, Lev, it seems to me that every age has its good side. The question of age and the passing of time worried me most between the ages of 17 and 19. It seemed to me then like half my life, the best half, had already passed, but once I was with you, I never
thought about my age again. My life was good and it seemed that it would go on being good or not change a lot. I’ve probably aged over the past five years, it’s difficult for me to judge, but at least I haven’t become old (to grow older and be old are different things). If I’m concerned about age at all, it’s at a more banal level, a purely physical one. I would like to preserve my youth and as much beauty as I was given – as a gift to you.
thought about my age again. My life was good and it seemed that it would go on being good or not change a lot. I’ve probably aged over the past five years, it’s difficult for me to judge, but at least I haven’t become old (to grow older and be old are different things). If I’m concerned about age at all, it’s at a more banal level, a purely physical one. I would like to preserve my youth and as much beauty as I was given – as a gift to you.
Meanwhile, Lev kept her informed about how he was counting down the 3,360 days that remained of his sentence before he could hope to see her ‘greying hair’. He sent Sveta his carefully censored commentary on the main events inside the prison camp. The big news of that first autumn was his transfer from the drying unit to the electric power station of the wood-combine. He had no training or experience as an electrical engineer, but his scientific background was deemed sufficient to qualify him to work on the high-voltage power cables. There were few engineers in the labour camp and the administration cared little for the safety of the prisoners it used for such dangerous work. ‘I’ve finally managed to get moved to a job I like more,’ he announced on 2 September.
I have been transferred to the Electrical Group as a fitter. I like the work and the people here are much better, although the job is more difficult physically. I’m working with pleasure and don’t even notice the days of the week. Today’s the 2nd, a Monday, isn’t it? I’m going to have to study a bit more because in the past I’ve only worked on wiring and a little on electrical installations in factories, but now I’m working on the overhead cables. If you find an electrical installation manual or some kind of textbook on electrical engineering, please send it.
Lev owed the move to his friendship with Nikolai Lileev, a prisoner he had met on the convoy from Frankfurt. Lileev had been so ill with scurvy when he arrived at Pechora that the only work for which he was deemed fit was in the power station, where he recommended Lev to Viktor Chikin, the head of the Electrical Group.
Chikin was himself a prisoner. He had been arrested in 1938 and sentenced to fifteen years in Pechora because a fire had broken out at a power station in Vologda on his watch. His expertise as an engineer was so highly prized that he was put in charge of electrical maintenance at the wood-combine. The labour camp had many prisoners like Chikin and Strelkov who worked as specialists and administrators. Indeed, in 1946, more than half the responsible positions on the production side of the wood-combine were occupied by prisoners. Lileev’s recommendation came at a good time. The wood-combine was falling far behind its production plan. There was a particular problem with shortages of electricity: the power station was unable to supply the drying unit, saw-mill and workshops with more than half their requirement; the three generators (worked by steam-engines burning wood) were operating at only a quarter of their 700 kw capacity and were constantly breaking down; accidents and fires were a frequent occurrence; and there was a chronic need for electricians, engineers, mechanics and chemists. To increase productivity, the MVD decided to recruit or train 212 more specialists from among the prisoners. Lev was one of them.
Chikin was himself a prisoner. He had been arrested in 1938 and sentenced to fifteen years in Pechora because a fire had broken out at a power station in Vologda on his watch. His expertise as an engineer was so highly prized that he was put in charge of electrical maintenance at the wood-combine. The labour camp had many prisoners like Chikin and Strelkov who worked as specialists and administrators. Indeed, in 1946, more than half the responsible positions on the production side of the wood-combine were occupied by prisoners. Lileev’s recommendation came at a good time. The wood-combine was falling far behind its production plan. There was a particular problem with shortages of electricity: the power station was unable to supply the drying unit, saw-mill and workshops with more than half their requirement; the three generators (worked by steam-engines burning wood) were operating at only a quarter of their 700 kw capacity and were constantly breaking down; accidents and fires were a frequent occurrence; and there was a chronic need for electricians, engineers, mechanics and chemists. To increase productivity, the MVD decided to recruit or train 212 more specialists from among the prisoners. Lev was one of them.
Working in the power station was a privileged position for a prisoner. It was easy by Gulag standards, a world apart from the back-breaking labour of the hauling teams. There were eight-hour shifts instead of the normal twelve, an effort by the camp administration to cut down on accidents caused by fatigue. For those on duty there was little to do but check the running of the plant and carry out repairs, which left them a lot of time to read, write letters and play cards, dominoes or chess. It was always warm in the power station, and there was a shower room for stokers and machinists where Lev could wash himself and his clothes in hot water – an important advantage because it meant he did not have to go to the wash-house, where clothes were often stolen and the water was cold. There were no guards inside the power station and no convoys to escort the prisoners to work, so Lev and his friends in the Electrical Group were free to move around the industrial zone. They could visit the voluntary workers who lived in houses by the power
station; go to the club-house of the wood-combine, a place out of bounds for other prisoners, where films were shown, there was a radio (tuned only to the Pechora Gulag station), and vodka and tobacco could be bought from the nearby shop; stop by Strelkov’s laboratory to see their friends on their way home from work; and pass in and out of the barracks zone more or less as often as they liked. ‘Going through the guard-house between the barracks and the rest of the industrial zone,’ recalled Lileev, ‘all we had to do was to say our surname and prisoner number. A guard would mark down the time of our departure and the time of our return in a notebook kept on a special desk. Sometimes an inspector would try to tighten things up a bit, but on the whole everything was quite relaxed.’
station; go to the club-house of the wood-combine, a place out of bounds for other prisoners, where films were shown, there was a radio (tuned only to the Pechora Gulag station), and vodka and tobacco could be bought from the nearby shop; stop by Strelkov’s laboratory to see their friends on their way home from work; and pass in and out of the barracks zone more or less as often as they liked. ‘Going through the guard-house between the barracks and the rest of the industrial zone,’ recalled Lileev, ‘all we had to do was to say our surname and prisoner number. A guard would mark down the time of our departure and the time of our return in a notebook kept on a special desk. Sometimes an inspector would try to tighten things up a bit, but on the whole everything was quite relaxed.’
In the autumn of 1946, Lev was working the day shift from 8 o’clock in the morning. Because he started later than the other prisoners, he would get up after them, at 6 a.m., and eat his breakfast in the canteen while the work convoys were being counted by the guards in the railway yard. Many of the convoys had an hour’s march to their work site and an hour’s march back afterwards; but Lev could walk to work in eight minutes. Lunch was brought to him while he was on duty at the power station. During the hours when all he had to do was keep an eye on the machinery, Lev composed his letters to Sveta. ‘Right now in my den the commotion of the day is settling down,’ he wrote on 30 October:
the working day is over; no more installations to do until tomorrow. In an hour my relief worker will arrive. You can’t hear your own voice over the noise of the machines but that doesn’t bother me, I’m used to it. Through the windows, a dark blue twilight turned into black night an hour ago, and darkness is the master of Pechora now.
There was no ventilation in the generator room (‘It’s like a banya here – hot, damp and steamy’) so it was a problem to keep the paper dry. But writing in the power station was easier than at night in the barracks, where the din of the prisoners was more intrusive than the machines in the generator room, and the light from the lightbulbs
hanging from the ceiling was ‘so dim and yellow’, as Lev explained to Sveta, ‘that it would be difficult to write at all without placing the kerosene night-lights on the table’.
hanging from the ceiling was ‘so dim and yellow’, as Lev explained to Sveta, ‘that it would be difficult to write at all without placing the kerosene night-lights on the table’.
After work, Lev had free time until the evening meal and the final roll call before bed. Normally he spent these precious hours in the laboratory, where Strelkov liked to entertain his friends from the Electrical Group. ‘At the moment work is done,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 2 September, ‘and I’m enjoying the hospitality of the manager of the laboratory. I’m sitting in cultural and “scientific” surroundings among jars, weights, flasks and test tubes and I’m writing to you in complete silence, pleasantly disturbed only by the sounds of a mazurka on the loudspeaker.’ Strelkov was particularly fond of the electricians, who were all his young admirers. ‘The time we spent in the laboratory was the happiest in our lives,’ remembers Lileev. ‘We used any opportunity we could to go to Strelkov’s. We often spent our lunch breaks in the laboratory. Sometimes – if our work shifts fell at the same time – we even managed to meet there for somebody’s birthday or some other anniversary.’ Strelkov’s laboratory was a refuge where they could store their letters, parcels and other precious belongings, which would otherwise be stolen by the guards or by their fellow prisoners in the barracks. It offered them a few hours’ respite from the harsh conditions and boredom of the camp. The electricians went there to drink and smoke, tune in to a concert on the radio, play cards and chess, read or write their letters or just listen to Strelkov, who was ‘an excellent raconteur with a colossal store of all sorts of information, incidents, events and things that he has read,’ Lev explained to Sveta. ‘I listen to his stories with my mouth open.’
Lev in the laboratory
.
.
There were half a dozen electricians who regularly gathered at Strelkov’s. One of them was Liubka Terletsky, Lev’s bunk-mate in the barracks, who also worked with Lev during the day shift in the power station. Lev enjoyed the company of Terletsky. He felt protective towards the young Ukrainian, whose health had been destroyed in the six years he had already spent at Pechora. ‘Liubka is a wonderful, very special boy,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 15 November.
He looks about 24 years old, is intelligent, and has a sense of humour and pleasant character. As a schoolboy in Lvov he studied physics and taught himself electrical engineering … He loves Russian literature and misses reading Polish … He has lived through a lot, and if you spoke to him you would understand why for six years he has not dared to write to his parents, although he thinks about them all the time. He is such a modest, honest, decent person, yet he demands even more from himself. He has lost all hope, it seems, and believes that once someone has been here ‘he cannot make himself whole again’. Sometimes when I listen to him speak, I think I am listening to myself. He says there is logic in my thoughts. But the only logic I can live by, Sveta, is contained in your letters.
The Muscovite Lyosha Anisimov, Lev’s other bunk-mate, was also part of Strelkov’s circle, along with Gleb Vasil’ev, the twenty-three-year-old mechanic who had been to the same school as Svetlana in Moscow. ‘Gleb is good at mathematics and knows his poetry,’ Lev wrote to Sveta, ‘and he has a talent for reciting it, which is cherished here. He doesn’t advertise it but keeps it for “domestic consumption”, which I also like.’ Lev enjoyed talking about Moscow with Gleb, whose wife and son lived there with her mother. He described his friends in so much detail that Gleb almost came to know them all. He would tell Gleb the news from Sveta’s letters about Moscow. But he said very little about her. ‘I can’t share you with anyone,’ Lev explained to Sveta. ‘You are mine!’
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