Part I. Through Fighting Russia

1. EXTRAORDINARY BULLETIN

TWO spades,’ the chief engineer said as he arranged his hand.

‘Three diamonds,’ said Ivanov.

‘Three spades,’ said the chief clerk somewhat timidly.

‘Pass,’ said I, and the chief engineer announced, ‘Four spades.’

Just as Ivanov led his ace of spades the loudspeaker hanging in the corner suddenly went silent. Until then it had been broadcasting a physical culture lesson from Moscow. A couple of seconds later, after the ace of spades had taken the trick, the voice of the announcer intoned loudly:

‘Attention, comrades, attention!’

The voice was so unusual that we all looked up involuntarily.

‘This is an extraordinary government bulletin. Attention, comrades! The Vice-Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Comrade Molotov, is about to speak,’ the announcer shouted, his voice growing progressively louder.

This was something new. Never in our lives had any of us heard an ‘extraordinary bulletin’. I looked at my watch and realized that in Moscow it must be 7 a.m. What could have got Molotov out of bed so early?

While the announcer was repeating his preface for the third time we looked at each other silently. My heart was beginning to beat a little faster.

At last a muffled and somewhat stuttering voice began to speak. It was Molotov.

‘Citizens of the Soviet Union! The Soviet Government and its head, Comrade Stalin, have instructed me to make the following announcement:

‘At 4 a.m., without making any demands on the Soviet Union, and without declaration of war, German troops invaded our country, attacked our borders in many places, and subjected our cities to bombardment from their aircraft.’

The cards seemed to lower themselves to the table.

‘The government calls upon you . . . to unite your ranks even more firmly around the glorious Bolshevik party, around our Soviet Government, around our great leader Comrade Stalin,’

Ivanov got up and turned off the loudspeaker. Then he went to the cabinet. We heard the clink of a glass and the gurgle of liquid. The smell of vodka filtered into the room.

The cards were forgotten. My guests sat quietly, not looking at each other, for ten minutes, and then left. Ivanov gripped my hand hard as we parted.

Left alone, I lit a cigarette and went to the window. Below, at the foot of the hill, stood the tents of the local concentration camp in crowded rows, surrounded by a double fence of barbed wire – the place which I had left only recently.

War! A chill went up my spine as I thought of the significance of this development. Who would win? Could it really be . . .? My eyes went involuntarily to a little picture hanging on the wall, of a man with moustache and a pipe in his hand. I remembered the words of a friend, a Socialist, who had died in a hunger strike two years before.

‘The war will start any day now. My whole hope is that the dogs will attack one another. If the Germans hang Joe, well, our peoole will be able to breathe freer anyway.’

War! And the victims? How many would there be? What would happen to those still in the camp? As if in answer to my thought a detachment of guards appeared, marching with a quick step up the only street of the settlement. They disappeared into the gate of the camp, and almost immediately I saw two of them hauling something dark into the tower nearest to me. Looking at it hard, I managed to distinguish a machine gun.

The next days brought many troubles. In the first place several dozen people who had been freed from the Northern Goldmining Administration Camp earlier because their terms were finished were rearrested by the local authorities of the N.K.V.D. and sent to a more remote camp. Kostya Ivanov and I, who worked in the administration, managed to escape this fate through our good relations with the High Command. Ivanov got his discharge pay quickly and left for Magadan.

There was a rumour that all prisoners of German descent had been collected from the various camps and taken to the Serpantinnaya execution camp to be shot.

Rations were cut sharply, and the camp regime was tightened up: prisoners went out to work only with a strong detail of guards.

In addition there were events of a more general character. All bank accounts and savings were frozen, and after work all the voluntary employees of the camp had to have military drill. However, nobody in the Kolyma District was subject to military service: Dalstroy, as a powerful ‘trust’ of the N.K.V.D. doing the most important job for the government – gold mining – was considered a militarized organization.

During one of the meetings of voluntary employees which former prisoners like me were permitted to attend the head of the political department said:

‘Counter-revolution is not asleep in the camp. We have received reports from all camps that prisoners are petitioning to be sent to the front, because, they say, they want to defend the fatherland. Patriots, so to speak. It is evident that the enemies of our fatherland and state wish to be issued weapons and then go over to the Germans. Camp commanders have received orders to mete out severe punishment to all those who submit such petitions.’

But a carpenter working on the new building, a former artillery captain convicted after Tukhachevsky’s plot, said, ‘They don’t believe us when we tell them we want to defend our country against the invader. But I know that our army hasn’t recovered by a long shot from the purges of 1938; three-quarters of the commanding personnel was liquidated and the present regimental commanders hardly know how to sign their names. We are prisoners, that’s true. But after all we are still Russians! Why do they deny us the right to die in battle against the enemies of Russia? The High Command itself doesn’t believe all the accusations that were made against us.’

An order came from Magadan, signed by Nikishov: the plan for gold production was to be curtailed. No new gold fields were to be opened, and production was to be continued only in the fields already being worked. At the end of the gold washing in the areas under production, or earlier if possible, 10,000 men were to be transferred from our mining administration to the west where they would come under the jurisdiction of the road-building administration. The healthiest men were to be picked. Work in the lead-mining administration was to be intensified.

By the end of August groups of workmen were already being sent to the west, where through hills and swamps, in deserted and isolated country, a road was being built to the Indigirka River and, still farther, to Aldan. Land communications with the rest of Russia were being created.

News from the front was not comforting; the Soviet armies were retreating rapidly eastward. The Donets Basin was threatened, as was the northern Caucasus, where my mother, the person dearest to me in the whole world, lived. There was growing danger that I would be cut off from her. There were other reasons too which prompted me to go back home. They were foggy and indefinite, and even when I was alone I avoided thinking about them.

At the beginning of September when the first snow fell I took warm leave of the friends with whom I had gone through so much. In my pocket I had a complete set of documents and about 3,000 rubles which I had received in pay at my final discharge. The suitcase with my belongings was packed.

It was a moonlit night when I boarded a truck bound for Magadan to pick up provisions for the north. Shaking hands again with the friends who were seeing me off, I looked over the settlement, now white with snow, for the last time. The truck started up, gathered speed, and began to climb the pass.