Part III. Black Times in the Gold Fields

7. BLACK TIMES

THE settlement faded away in the distance. Dressed in a warm short winter coat, new felt boots, and a fur cap, I sat in the back of the car contemplating the ups and downs of fortune and the surprises which might be in store for me. The car moved slowly since the roads, after the recent heavy snowfall, had not yet been cleared for traffic. Criss-crossed with ditches and looking strange in the moonlight, the outlines of the Vodopyanov gold mines floated by and disappeared. The road turning off to the distant Shturmovoy gold mines was also left behind, and we began to climb a steep and winding road to the top of the ridge beyond which lay Yagodny.

On the way up, a little off from the road, we passed a few long and unpleasant-looking barracks. At one time those barracks had housed a road-building unit, and were called Serpantinnaya, but since the completion of the road to Khattynakh they had been empty for over a year. I recalled that a few days before, by orders from Magadan, Serpantinnaya had been transferred to the district section of the N.K.V.D. which sent two brigades of men there to carry out some secret work.

I knew the nature of those ‘secrets’. The little camp was to be fenced with three rows of barbed wire, watchtowers for sentries were to be erected every twenty-five yards, and commodious house for officials and guards would be built as well as a garage. What puzzled me was the garage. It was not usual to build a garage in a small camp like this, especially since only three miles away were the big garages in the Khattynakh camp and in the Vodopyanov gold mines.

We soon reached the camp At-Uryakh. We were ordered to stand on one side by the fence, and were not allowed to warm ourselves in the tents although the long trip had nearly frozen us. In our group, numbering from fifty to sixty, I soon found men I knew, and we began talking among ourselves in low voices, conjecturing as to what we could expect. On the whole, we agreed nothing good could happen. To me it was also clear that the trick Prostoserdov, Bocharov, and I had used a year earlier at Lower Khattynakh could not be repeated. The whole situation had utterly changed, and I was certain no hunger strike could help matters, whereas any disturbance of this kind was bound to lead to many serious complications. The others agreed.

Almost an hour later, when we were all quite stiff with cold, guards appeared again, we were lined up in a column four deep, and were escorted out of the camp.

When At-Uryakh was far behind and we had climbed a fairly steep hill up a barely distinguishable snow-covered road, I realized we were going to the Tumanny gold field which only a short time before had been opened in the Tumanny Valley which lay between the Khattynakh and At-Uryakh valleys. We could not imagine a worse destination.

The road, running continuously through the woods, got steeper and steeper. The guards gave up any intention of keeping us encircled since that would have made them walk over deep unpacked snow. Accordingly they split up into two groups, a smaller one which walked in front, and a larger one, bringing up the rear.

The changes which had taken place since Pavlov’s arrival in the Kolyma applied to guards as well. With the exception of a few privileged prisoners who had not more than six months left to complete their terms in the camps, all other prisoners in this category were dismissed from service as guards. The number of guards was greatly increased by reinforcements which came from Vladivostok. Everywhere new barracks were being hastily built for them. A week before the last raid I had had a talk with a friendly guard about the methods the N.K.V.D. used for recruiting troops which included camp guards. This is how it was usually done.

During their service in the Red Army all soldiers were constantly under observation of the army commissars and political instructors who made a careful study of each man’s psychological aptitudes and political sympathies. Toward the end of their army tenure the most reliable of the men were transferred to the N.K.V.D. troops of internal defence. Here they were offered higher pay and numerous privileges to make them sign up with the N.K.V.D. on a voluntary basis for a period of from three to five years, or for permanent duty. Many soldiers were tempted by these offers since the Red Army pay for an enlisted man was 30 rubles a month, whereas guards in the Kolyma region received 500 to 800 rubles a month. Those who volunteered for this service were usually men not well adapted to normal working life because they were not too bright, lacked professional skills, or preferred an easy life. As guards in our camps they really did have a pretty easy time of it. They were not bothered with drill, their duty hours were usually short – on the average not more than four or five per day – and they were excellently fed. They had little to complain about. A considerable percentage of these guards were members of the Young Communist League, wholly convinced that their happy life was possible only because of the Soviet government. They were therefore most ready to defend that government from the disarmed and helpless ‘enemies of the people’ who were held in concentration camps. In fact they were systematically indoctrinated with the idea that camp inhabitants were all dangerous criminals whom one could treat like the scum of the earth with complete impunity. Particularly well trained ideologically was the contingent of guards which arrived at the Kolyma with Pavlov. They did not even talk to the prisoners, and without ceremony cut short all attempts to draw them into conversation. Instances of guards using their fists on the slightest provocation were becoming more and more frequent.

Some four hours after we had set out from At-Uryakh, when it was already quite light, we saw the Tumanny gold field below us in the valley, and in another half hour, completely famished and worn out by the journey, we reached the camp. Some prisoners, unable to carry their suitcases, dropped them by the wayside after taking the most valuable things for themselves and giving the rest to other prisoners. Since the guards allowed no one to halt, the emptying of suitcases was done hurriedly while the men marched forward.

At the gold field, after the roll call and registration, we were escorted to various tents. The camp was small, containing only about ten tents in all. Six or seven of the big ones were used for housing the counterrevolutionists, and three or four of the small ones were occupied by the criminals. As I had expected, the tents had been put up very recently and were of flimsy construction. A shaky wooden framework was covered with tarpaulin, while the walls inside were lined with ply-wood sheets which were loosely put together and let in the cold air.

In every big tent two stoves made of petrol barrels stood in the central passageway. But even when the stoves were red hot and one could scarcely stand close to them, just three steps away by the walls the temperature was freezing. In the old gold fields it had been the custom to cover the walls of such tents with moss going up four to five feet on the outside, but this had not been done here. Only the thick layer of ice which covered the ply-wood walls at the bottom helped to a certain extent to keep some warmth inside the tent.

We laid our things on our bunks and, leaving one of our men to guard them, went out to look over the camp.

The general impression we got did nothing to cheer us up. The camp grounds were not cleared after the last snowfall, and only the open area near the gate where prisoners were mustered showed any trace of clearance. Although the camp was a new one, the tents were made of used material. However, one thing in our camp was unquestionably new. That was the barbed wire which thickly encircled the camp territory. It had not even had enough time to get rusty.

A new building was also next to the gate – a control booth and house in which about a dozen guards were always on hand. On each of the six turrets, which were part of the camp security system, a sentry in a sheepskin coat was standing in the cold wind stamping his felt-shod feet.

The dining-room was disgusting, and clearly had been built so as not to encourage the men to stay in it any longer than necessary for gulping their breakfast, dinner, or supper. The shabbiest of all tents, this one did not even have a ply-wood lining on the walls, and gave no protection against ordinary wind, let alone the frosts of 50° below zero. From an adjoining kitchen steam poured into the dining-room and, cooling instantly into snow, formed a slippery skating rink surface on the floor. Men slid and fell flat with the dishes they carried.

It was said by some that soup still warm when received in the kitchen would become covered with ice during the period of time one man would wait for a spoon from another who had finished with one. This probably explained why the majority of men preferred to eat without spoons – forks and knives were forbidden at all times – and drank their soup as if it were tea, helping when necessary with their fingers.

The men, too, were quite different, as I found out later that first evening when our tent became filled with prisoners returned from work at the mines. Their faces all showed signs of frostbite, although the winter was only three months old and the most severe frosts were yet to come. The majority of them were so dirty looking I was willing to wager that some of them had not washed their faces for weeks. Their clothes were like nothing I had ever seen at the Kolyma – everything from the torn felt boots to the incredibly dirty rags wrapped around their necks instead of scarves, their burned and tattered winter coats.

The men had starved, worn-out faces, quiet voices, were completely absorbed in themselves and uncommunicative. Their range of interest was limited to work and food, and more food, and food again. Besides work and food the other questions discussed among them were tobacco – the eternal Kolyma shag – and the cold.

They came to the tent after having supper in the dining-room. They had rushed there as soon as they had returned to the camp from work – and immediately crowded around the stoves, coming so close that one feared they would catch fire. Indeed, now and again one heard voices: ‘Look out! Your coat’s burning!’ The repulsive smell of burning rags would come up and bite into your nostrils.

The sight of these creatures who had almost lost the image of man made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. The possibility of becoming one of them seemed anything but attractive. I felt the necessity to do something about it at once, and even before the men started for their plank-beds I set out on an inspection tour of other tents.

I soon found what I was looking for. One of the neighbouring tents seemed markedly different from the others. It, too, was occupied by prisoners, but from the appearances of both the tent and the men inside, I realized that here were the ‘old guard’ of the Kolyma, and not the caricatures of human beings I had seen in the first tent, men who had bee at the Kolyma only two or three months. These were men that had already spent one or more winters there. They were incomparably cleaner. Even in the extremely harsh conditions of their life in camp they had managed to wash their faces every day, and when they could not get water, they had used snow. They were better dressed, too, thanks to the better clothes they had been able to preserve somehow from the old pre-Pavlov days. These old-timers were more self-possessed. They did not crowd about the stoves, but sat on their bunks either doing something or talking about their affairs. Even from the outside their tent looked different. You realized that the men who lived there tried by themselves, as far as they could, to make the tent warmer by covering it with moss and snow.

As I entered I asked an old man who sat at the door on guard duty against possible thieves, what brigades lived there and who were the brigadiers. He pointed to a tall grey-haired man who, despite his age, looked exceptionally strong. The man’s name, I was told, was Kachanov. I walked over to him.

‘What do you want?’ he asked none too affably.

‘I came here today. Take me into your brigade.’

‘How long have you been at Kolyma?’

‘A year and a half.’

‘Did you work in the mines before?’ Kachanov continued.

‘No. I worked in Magadan at first. And during the past year I served in the administration in Khattynakh.’

‘You won’t do for our work,’ said Kachanov, giving me a critical once over. ‘We manage to get along because we work more and better than the others. You won’t be able to stand our work. We have picked men in our brigade.’

‘Give me a try, Kachanov,’ I persisted. ‘I’m not as weak as you may think.’

He paused for a second, then rose to his feet and donned his cap and mittens.

‘Let’s go. I’ll speak to the man who assigns the jobs.’

We walked out of the tent and soon found ourselves in another, smaller tent which served as the camp office. It was brighter, warmer and much cleaner than the tents we lived in. Kachanov called one of the functionaries who were sitting at several tables – they were obviously of the ‘socially elect’ category – and said, pointing at me:

‘I’m taking this one into my brigade. Make out the papers.’

Then he turned to me and added:

‘When you’re through with this, pick up your things and move over to our tent.’ With this he left.

Everything suggested that I had chosen the right course. The authorities knew Kachanov and reckoned with him since his brigade was the best in the gold field and in output surpassed any other by three or four times. The man who handled assignments entered my name on his list, issued dinner coupons, and let me go. I left the office, walked quickly over to my tent, told my friends of my new arrangements and advised them to do the same. Then I carried my simple baggage to Kachanov’s tent and got myself a berth on an upper deck in the corner of the tent. Everyone was already asleep, and without wasting time I followed their example.

I was awakened by a light push. Opening my eyes I saw the elderly man I had first met guarding the door.

‘Time to get up,’ he said and went off to wake up the others. Quickly I put on my clothes, and from a can which stood on top of the stove, scooped up a mug full of water. The orderly had melted some snow during the night. I washed my face over a bucket outside the door, and in five minutes was ready. Nearly all the others were on their feet, completing their simple toilet. Bread and two big iron containers of soup were brought in from the dining-room. As a special privilege, the Kachanov brigade was allowed to take food for all its members at once and eat it not in the dining-room but in its own tent where there were two long tables and four benches. This was much more pleasant and comfortable. I did not take the soup – it smelled much too objectionable – but I took the bread, and with sugar I had brought from Khattynakh made some ‘snow tea’, which completed my breakfast.

The piece of bread was quite big, weighing over two pounds. Walking past me Kachanov said:

‘You will be getting the same amount of bread as the rest of the brigade if you qualify to stay with us. There are four rations of bread here – 1,300, 1,000, 800 and 400 grams. Also there is a 200 gram punishment. We get one kilogram each. In the tent where you were first, the men get 400 grams. You don’t have to worry about things left in the tent. Ours is a good orderly. Nothing will be stolen.’

A steam whistle was heard and we all began to file out of the tent.

It was completely dark, and only a few scattered lamps could be seen. After walking past several tents, we came to the open ground fronting the gate which was lit by powerful searchlights. There we lined up in three rows. Only one other brigade, also made up of oldtimers, stood beside us. It was intensely cold, but I was warmly dressed. Gradually men lined up around the open space. Shouts drifted out from the tents, as did loud swearing and cries from the dining-room.

‘That is the headman and the assigner, gathering the dokhodyágas for the muster. These fellows are always slow in mustering up,’ a man next to me explained.

The word dokhodyága I heard for the first time. It is applied in the camps to the men who have been reduced to such a low level mentally and physically that even as workers they are of very limited value. The name dokhodyäya is derived from the verb dokhodit which means to arrive or to reach. At first I could not understand the connection, but it was explained to me: the dokhodyágas were ‘arrivists’, those who had arrived at Socialism, were the finished type of citizen in the Socialist society.

Little consideration was shown in the treatment of these dokhodyágas. They were being reprimanded constantly, and received frequent cuffs on the head from the camp officials and guards. Having finished eating their bread – the dokhodyágas always gobbled up the entire day’s bread ration at breakfast time – they formed in brigades. The open space was now filled with people.

After leaving camp we at once turned to the left down a winding well-beaten path in the snow and without keeping formation began descending to the mines. Our brigade being Stakhanovite – workers who surpass the established normal output – it was accompanied only by a single guard. It is difficult to say why he was there, but the new Kolyma regime demanded his presence, and he trudged along at the tail end of a long file of men, his feet getting tangled in the folds of his long winter coat.

It was entirely dark. Only the stars shed some light on the landscape, and the searchlights at the mines glittered in the distance. Then the searchlights went out abruptly and we were told to halt.

The air was shaken by blasts. There were seven or eight concussions in close succession. We set off again. When we reached the working site, the searchlights were blazing again. They had been moved away during the blasting operation to keep the lamps from being smashed.

Close by there was a toolshop in which we got our crowbars, spades, and pickaxes. Our brigade’s tools were in perfect condition.

The excavation, where a considerable quanity of hard-frozen soil had been blown up just before we arrived, presented a sight of large and small rocks and hardened lumps of clay piled helter-skelter on top of one another. Separating into pairs, we went to our assigned spots and began breaking up the rocks.

Meantime, horses were brought up to cart away the broken soil. The procedure of work was as follows. A two-wheeled cart made up of a big box-like receptacle was placed horseless near every pair of workmen. As fast as we could, we filled the box with broken soil, after which a horse was harnessed to the cart to pull it off to the dumping ground. During the horse’s trip to the dump and back we had to fill another cart. This went on for the entire day.

The dumping spot was just outside the gold-bearing area, and only ‘empty’ soil which covered the gold-bearing sands was cast off there. This work of removing the upper empty layer of soil constituted the winter cycle of the mining operation. In summer, as soon as the warm rays of the sun began sending water to the Kolyma streams, work started on mining and panning the sands released during the winter.

Filling the carts one after another with heavy soil, I did not notice the coming of dawn, extinction of the searchlights and the rising of the cold winter sun over the surrounding mounds.

The steam whistle shrieked to signify a break for dinner. Without wasting a minute we all rushed to the camp. Our excavation was only a quarter of an hour’s walk from the dining-room, so during the one hour break, especially when one managed to be among the first to get to the dining-room, you had a chance to get a little rest. Those who worked farther away were worse off. Panting, they would reach the dining-room about the time we were finishing our simple and fairly unappetizing meal. They barely had time to gulp down their soup and porridge before being egged on by the guards to hurry back to work.

The short winter day came to an end – the searchlights went on again, but we were still hard at work. The horses showed signs of fatigue, so did the men. The air felt noticeably colder, and we had to don our discarded coats. A foreman came to our excavation and ordered us to wind up our work: it was ten hours since we had begun loading those cursed carts. The horses were led away. I thought we would now return to the camp to rest and warm ourselves. But no such luck. We had to pick up our tools and walk over to another nearby excavation where the same kind of work was done, except that instead of horses, dump cars on rails were used for removing broken-up soil.

Rails crossed the excavation in different directions leading to the spots where little black figures of men were seen working. Cars were rolled up to the men, loaded by them and rolled away to the main line, over which an endless cable was perpetually moving. The cars were hooked to the cable and pulled away into the darkness. Empty cars came back the same way.

We stayed working in the new place for an hour, until Kachanov ordered us to lay off. We gathered our tools and carried them to the toolshop. After that about half the men went to the camp, while the other half, picked out by Kachanov, went off carrying hatchets to the wood up the hill, some two or three miles from the excavation, to cut firewood for our tent. I was included in that second group. So tired that we could scarcely feel our legs, we trudged on up the hill. From behind came shouts of foremen on the rail-equipped excavation where men were still at work. Stumbling in the deep snow we finally reached a spot where a number of trees had survived the previous tree-cutting expeditions. Our hatchets went into action, and half an hour later we were trekking to the camp, each man carrying a heavy log on his shoulder. Dumping the logs outside our tent, where other men of our brigade immediately began sawing and chopping them, we dashed to the dining tent to gulp down the can of porridge and the can of soup which constituted the camp supper.

After a quick meal I returned to our tent, washed my gullet with a quantity of boiling water with sugar, and went to sleep.

The following day was a Sunday, supposedly a day of rest. Nevertheless, we had to get up at eight o’clock, were given wooden shovels, and were ordered to clear the snow within the camp. Several groups of prisoners were sent under escort to the woods to cut firewood for the kitchen and administration buildings. The Kachanov men were freed of this task, but others were compelled to go regardless of all considerations. All we were obliged to do that Sunday was to clear a section of the camp of snow, and about a dozen men were sent out to get ‘dry water’, ice from the stream. The ice was brought in sledges or in bags carried over the shoulders, and was used in the kitchen and bathhouse. Men were taken to the bath-house one Sunday a month, and since our turn did not come up that day, we were left undisturbed after midday.

Two dust-covered electric bulbs lit our tent. Some men were sleeping, some just lying on their plank-beds. Others warmed themselves near the red-hot stove or played dominoes which they had made themselves. Playing dominoes was the only amusement the prisoners had.

Days went by one after another in an unchanging row. My work took all my strength. I was not too strong, and it was difficult for me to keep up to the average working level of the brigade. I caught several sidelong glances from Kachanov and understood his uneasiness, since he could not possibly have dependents in his brigade: they themselves were able to live only by working like dogs, which brought them somewhat better rations, and occasional small favours from the administration. To keep physically weak men in the brigade would have meant lowering the average output. Nor would anyone have wanted to work for others. I was therefore obliged to strain my powers to the limit to avoid the alternative – being put out of the brigade and having to join the ranks of the dokhodyágas with all to which that inevitably led.

By the time spring set in, I secured the job of horse driving as a permanent assignment. I came to terms with Kachanov, renouncing all privileges such as extra handouts of food and tobacco, as well as waiving the monthly wages of 40 to 50 rubles which we were paid, provided he kept me in his brigade.

Days were growing longer and longer. On the high grounds dumped during the winter, gold-panning equipment was being hastily set up. On the side of the hill, work was being completed on a drainage channel running the length of the gold field. On the site where we worked in winter a stream called Tumanny flowed across in the summertime. During the winter months the ice was removed and the hard earth which covered the gold-bearing sands was also carted away. To prevent the mines from being flooded by the spring flow of water, a dam was constructed far above the gold field to carry the water into an artificial channel made of wood and raised in some places as high as sixty to seventy-five feet above the excavations. From this channel water was to be diverted into the gold-panning construction, there to wash the gold-bearing sands which had thawed off under the warm sun, and to separate the precious metal from stones, clay and sand.

Below, in the middle of the mines, a drainage ditch was being dug to carry away the water from the panning constructions and the section of gold-bearing area which was being mined. It is impossible to mine sands in water, since gold is washed off and sinks. As the sands are being mined, the drainage ditch is dug deeper and deeper.

With springtime I had to leave Kachanov’s brigade. I was no longer of equal value to his other men, and without waiting until he would tell me to go, I spoke to him myself. He nodded approvingly.

‘I’m glad you’ve realized it yourself,’ he said. ‘Your two friends are stronger, and they may stay. You look for something else, more suitable to your strength. Take your time – I’m not rushing you. When you do find something, tell me and I’ll report to the man who makes assignments.’

An accident helped me. One day at the excavation I saw a geologist from the Khattynakh with whom, at a time when I was in a better state, I had spent many pleasant hours. I hesitated to walk over to him and let him see the changes the last four months had brought about. But I overcame my reluctance.

‘How are you, Dimitry Alexeyevich?’ I said as I approached him, having chosen a moment when there was no one else near him.

He looked at me with a puzzled expression.

‘Who are you? And what do you want?’ he began, but suddenly recognizing me exclaimed: ‘Is it you? What are you doing here?’

I pointed to the shovel I was holding. He understood.

‘Yes, I heard you were sent to a gold field, but I didn’t expect you would have to work as a miner. Bad luck. Can I do anything for you?’

‘Are you going to be here long?’ I asked.

‘About two weeks. I’ve been sent here to check on the exact boundaries of the gold deposits.’

‘If you can do it, get me transferred to the brigade working on the central drainage ditch. The work there is somewhat easier. All you have to do is to say a few words to our checker who will be here toward the end of the day to see if all the men are at their jobs.’

‘I know. I’ll speak to him. What else can I do for you?’

‘Thank you. I’ll manage the rest somehow by myself. It wouldn’t be safe for you to make requests for me. So I won’t ask for anything else. When you return to Khattynakh give my regards to our friends.’ With this I walked away, for he was beginning to look around with a certain uneasiness to see if anybody was watching his private conversation with a criminal counter-revolutionary prisoner.

He did more for me than I had hoped. Two days later I was called to the office of the head of the section – he was the man who had killed my horse – and was told that I was appointed as head of the brigade which worked on the ditch. This was excellent. It is true a brigadier was not a foreman, and had to work with his men, but he worked less.

The brigade I got was a choice one – all picked men, dokhodyágas. There were about thirty of them, all of ‘the 1938 import’, which meant as workers they were less than third-rate. At morning musters I had to do quite a bit of running around to get them together. They crawled away like roaches. Some would not leave the dining-room until they got an extra dish of soup; some would be rooting in the pile of refuse outside the kitchen; some would be standing in the crowd always waiting outside the camp dispensary in the hope of getting released from work for a day or two.

This dispensary was a remarkable institution. A male-nurse, sentenced to five years for doing abortions, was in charge. He was a therapist, a surgeon, and a specialist in every kind of disease. The principal purpose of the dispensary was to release sick prisoners from work, and only the doctor’s notes were recognized for such purpose. If a man was too sick even to wait his turn at the dispensary, his condition was disregarded, and at the morning muster he was forced to go to work. The only ground for release was having a temperature of one hundred degrees or more. Exceptions were the cases of obvious physical injury, or when the male-nurse acted as surgeon: he loved amputating frostbitten toes, and in such cases granted the patient a couple of days’ rest. He even attempted to remove the blind gut in cases of appendicitis, but after three or four deaths he was forbidden to try again.

Even in cases of patent sickness, it was not always possible to get release from work. Patients were admitted to the dispensary only after 8 p.m. when men were beginning to return to the camp, and examinations took place for only two hours although sometimes there were over a hundred waiting. In addition, the camp commander limited release notes to from twenty to twenty-five a day, and if this number had been reached, a man was driven to work even if he had pneumonia and a temperature of 105°. The only drugs the dispensary possessed were soda and iodine.

My brigade was made up of regular dispensary visitors, and presented an appearance which made the more cheerful camp officials burst out laughing when they saw it. Gathered together the members of my brigade resembled a flock of plucked and famished crows. In their tattered black coats, in caps that looked like monks’ cowls, with sores covering their faces (the result of frost-bite) they were a weird and fantastic spectacle.

Fortunately for me, their physical helplessness was obvious to everyone, as I would have got into a great deal of trouble, including solitary confinement, for the poor work of the brigade.

I was allowed to continue living in Kachanov’s tent and to receive the Kachanov bread ration of two pounds. Members of my brigade received only one pound.

One day, in a fit of hilarity, the camp commander christened my brigade ‘the brigade of wet hens’. After that, at every muster the headman of the camp, a notorious Moscow bandit, would shout, bursting with laughter:

‘Brigade of wet hens! Step forward!’

To this I had to answer:

‘Here! Twenty men in formation, eight released on account of illness, three hiding somewhere and cannot be found.’

The headman yelled:

‘Checker! Find the missing men at once. They are rooting in the refuse pile at the kitchen. Lock them up in the detention house!’

Then we marched off to work, to dig our ditch.

My brigade was made up exclusively of former members of the intelligentsia. One of them was Isaac Brevda, a former professor at the Military Medical Academy and an expert in plastic surgery. He was a little, weak, and hounded man who had been accused of terrorism, although he started with fright at the very mention of the word. Another man, Vladimir Steklov, was the son of the well-known Bolshevik Yury Steklov-Nakhamkes, one of the veterans of the revolution and former editor of Jzvestia, who too was jailed in an isolator, either in Syzran or Yaroshavl, for joining the forces of the anti-Stalin opposition. Still another, Nekrasov, a professor of meteorology and an old man, had been sentenced for espionage, although he could not understand what it was he had done to make him a spy. Then there was a former member of the Communist party and a director of some trust, by the name of Ginzburg. There were also engineers, teachers, doctors, and artists. All of them had been seized during the wave of political reprisals launched by the head of the N.K.V.D., Yezhov, and all reached the Kolyma in a condition unfit not only for work, but for living. Brevda, usually uncommunicative, once told me of the tortures he had undergone during his investigation. This tiny man who had given his whole life to science, was forced to stand by the wall without budging from his spot for two days on end. The investigators repeated this treatment several times, until the veins in Brevda’s feet began to burst. He was also tortured by light, forced to gaze at a 2,000 watt lamp for several hours, and beaten up every time he tried to close his eyes. He was ‘played ball with’, when the investigators, taking advantage of his small size and light weight, had tossed him from one end of the room to the other and occasionally dropped him on the way. At the interrogations his glasses were taken away from him, and being extremely nearsighted he could not read the records of interrogation which he had to sign. His wife was also held in some camp, but in which he did not know. The same was true of his daughter who before she was sent to a camp had been brutally raped by an investigator. I believe the reason for his jailing was some contact he maintained with foreign scientists. He had been tried in absentia and sentenced to ten years in a concentration camp.

A different type of man was Vladimir Steklov. Still in his early twenties, he had belonged to the Soviet aristocracy. Despite what had happened to his father and himself, his mother continued to be a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, lived in the fine Hotel Metropole in Moscow, and led an easy life, from time to time sending her son magnificent parcels. Steklov told many stories of his life in Moscow, and of all the adventures of the upper set of the Soviet’s gilded youth – he had mixed with the company which included Stalin’s own son. If only a quarter of what he told was true, one could only wonder why it was necessary to have the revolution at all. During the time his case was being investigated, he, too, tasted the pleasures of N.K.V.D. procedure and had a couple of his ribs broken. But he was still a wonderfully strong and healthy fellow, and was put in my brigade simply because he refused to work any more than he could help, believing that in camp life one had to save his strength. Steklov was sentenced to only five years because, as he explained, he was guilty of no crime except being the son of a man who opposed Stalin.

Nearly every member of my brigade must have had a personality of some interest at one time. But oh Lord, how incredibly alike they were when I met them! They were all equally dirty, famished, tattered, broken down and reduced to the lowest level of humanity. It was hard for me to perform my hideous duties of brigadier, but I think it was better for them that I was their brigadier than somebody else.

With the first rays of spring sunshine the population of the gold field began to increase at a rapid rate. Three big contingents totalling about a thousand men came one after another from Magadan, and in smaller parties arrived the usual reinforcements from among the Kolyma oldtimers, transferred to the gold field from other departments of Dalstroy. By the middle of May there were over two thousand men working as miners in our gold field, and this was one of the smallest in the Kolyma region.

Activities at the excavations were now carried on in two full shifts that worked day and night. The only breaks, half an hour long, were between shifts when the necessary blasting was done. Another electric station, with power derived from a mobile engine, was set up on a separate section, a score of boilers were brought over, and finally, ‘Marion’, a brand-new American excavator, arrived.

During this period of my stay at the Tumanny gold field, the practice of ‘conserving one’s strength’ became a mass characteristic of the prisoners. When there was no official near by the man at work moved slowly with minimum exertion, halted as frequently as he could to have a smoke, took time to roll his thin cigarette, walked around to look for a match, and so forth. But with an increased number of supervisors, the method of ‘conserving strength’ underwent a change. Men pretended they were working with great energy, whereas in crushing rocks they put no force in their pickaxes, and in loading wheelbarrows lifted with their spades only half or less of what they were supposed to lift. They moved the wheelbarrows slowly, and often upset them. As you looked from the side, you saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow and apparently straining every effort so that even the veins on his forehead looked swollen. But one glance at the barrow and you saw it less than half filled, light enough for a boy to push. During the time it took the man to wheel his barrow to the panning structure, with a couple of upsets on the way, his two team-mates, who were filling the next barrow, were able to snatch a good rest. This practice had a special name: dimming. You asked a worker, ‘Well, how goes it?’ He would wink at you and answer, ‘All right. Just dimming a little.’

However, the authorities soon began to see through all this, and woe to him who was caught with a half-empty barrow. A resounding cuff on the head sent him, along with his wheelbarrow, flying for several yards off the runway. But this didn’t improve matters much. The men realized too clearly that any overexertion at their exhausting work would soon land them in the brigade for the unfit, with its reduced ration of bread from which it was a straight road to the common grave.

Even in the early weeks of the brief Kolyma summer, the men revealed a tendency to die at a rate never before known in the region. Frequently this happened all of a sudden, sometimes even while the man was at work. A man pushing a wheelbarrow up the high runway to the panning apparatus would suddenly halt, sway for a moment, and fall down from a height of twenty-four to thirty feet. And that was the end. Or a man loading a barrow, prodded by the shouts of a foreman or a guard, unexpectedly would sink to the ground, blood would gush from his mouth – and everything was over.

The death rate was particularly high among men brought to the Kolyma during the last six months. Their body resistance had been undermined in jail before they were shipped to the gold fields, and they simply succumbed under the violent pace of work.

The section head ranted more and more desperately, the foreman and brigadiers grew more and more vicious, but the gold field stubbornly refused to fulfil the plan, and it was reported the head of the gold field, Svirin, who under Berzin had been awarded the Order of the Labour Red Banner, had many unpleasant moments when talking over the telephone or face to face with the head of the Dalstroy.

Reinforcements were sent over – some fifteen men of the Young Communist League picked for the jobs of section heads and foremen, trained to hate all prisoners as enemies of the people and saboteurs. More guards, too, appeared at the excavations. Swearing at the men grew louder and more obscene, blows and cuffs on the head became more commonplace, and the men spat out their knocked-out teeth more frequently.

I ran up and down the ditch all day trying to stir up my men who stood on small planks thrown across the ditch poking their long crowbars in the muddy water. I knew that if I failed to keep strict watch over them, the consequences would be bad for them as well as for me. Nevertheless, the little professor Brevda was sent toppling into the ditch several times. Steklov got his face battered, and many others received punishment which sometimes was, and sometimes was not, deserved.

I repeatedly asked section head Kuznetzov to make me an ordinary worker in the brigade, but he only berated me, threatening me with solitary confinement, and ordered me to stay where I was.

The last snow had long since melted away, the panning units numbered five instead of the original two, and there were three thousand men working in the mines in two shifts, but the prescribed quotas of gold output were never reached. Rumour had it that at other gold fields things were even worse.

There was a standing order by the administration promising a premium for nuggets of 1oo grams and over at the rate of one gram of alcohol for every gram of gold. An earlier rule, under Berzin, had been different: the administration paid 1 ruble 20 kopecks per gram for nuggets of 50 grams and over, and gave the finder the right to use the money for purchasing any products in the camp store at established prices. When Berzin was replaced by Pavlov, the old offer was withdrawn. The result was that several cases were uncovered where prisoners who found big nuggets threw them away into the bushes rather than hand them over to the authorities. They were put to death, but it did not make the prisoners any more keen on looking for nuggets. It was then that Pavlov’s new order offering alcohol was issued.

One day, helping Brevda rake the broken-up earth out of the water-filled ditch, I raked up a nugget as big as a hand. I rushed with the nugget to the section office where I triumphantly laid it on the table in front of Kuznetzov. We took it to the cashier’s office where it was found to weigh over four pounds – the biggest nugget ever found at Tumanny. I became the hero of the day. The same evening, with all the solemnity possible, I was handed my premium for finding the nugget – two quarts of alcohol. Later I learned that Kuznetzov, too, was given a reward – 1,500 rubles.

In places the deposits were incredibly rich, and there were days when each of the five panning units took off up to 40 to 50 pounds of gold at each shift. As regards the quantity of gold mined, the gold field was now getting its assigned quotas. But the ‘volume indices’, the number of cubic metres of panned sand, were far from met. The daily measurements of the work done at each shift were woefully small even for the best brigades. Despite the heavy death rate there were more than enough workers, but the amount of goldbearing sand produced per man was three times less than in the preceding years.

The same situation prevailed at all the Kolyma gold fields: the productivity of labour kept constantly falling off. Taken as a whole, the operational plan of Dalstroy was not being fulfilled, not only in volume of sand mined, but in the weight of gold as well.

Those in authority were raging and getting more savage. Yet a limit was reached when new contingents of men which kept arriving failed to increase the output, for these men were utterly unfit for the work they were forced to perform. To increase manpower for the panning operation, all other work, including that in the administration offices, was either stopped or drastically cut down. The privileged ranks of prisoners who held various official jobs in the camp were reduced to a minimum, and the men were sent to the excavations. Even the hired volunteer office personnel, accountants, book-keepers, economists, secretaries and so forth were formed into a brigade and made to join in the work – a sight never before seen in the gold fields. To be sure, they worked only eight hours a day, and in the matter of efficiency were worse than the weakest brigades of prisoners, from whom they were kept some distance away, but we were delighted to see them work as they did. For their part, they were very nettled at the change in their position. But those were the orders of Pavlov, and he was the terror of the Kolyma, a dictator with absolute powers over life and death for everybody.

However, the ‘plan’ figures were still not met. A new order came from Pavlov – it was secret, but we learned about it in no time. By this order new brigadiers were to be appointed in the mining brigades of counter-revolutionists from the carefully sifted ranks of the socially privileged bandits and gunmen. The new brigadiers were given official permission to apply strongarm methods with saboteurs. I believe only Kachanov was left at his job. In all the other brigades there appeared the well-fed faces of the former bread-cutters, bath-house attendants, barbers and other functionaries of the camp administration. Bitterly resenting the change from a quiet life to that of working twelve to fourteen hours a day in the mines, these fellows found pleasant relief in working off their resentment on the men under them. Blood and knocked-out teeth became still more common, and the air was filled with the most obscene language. Even the well-practised foremen from among the members of the Young Communist League at first shied away from these bandits. But they got used to them soon and themselves adopted the new style of work.

However, the plan figures still were not met.

In the early part of July a new order by Pavlov was read to us at the morning muster. It announced the introduction of a 14-hour working day and authorized section heads to hold the brigades at work overtime until they fulfilled their daily quotas.

Although the summer days at the Kolyma are very long, lasting from eighteen to twenty hours, and although the muster was held at dawn, one could often see the figures of miners dragging themselves through the entrance gate of the camp in complete darkness.

Mortality reached unprecedented figures. In my own brigade, despite the comparative lightness of our work, there remained less than half the men I had received at the beginning of spring. The others were all written off and buried in the nameless common grave. Nevertheless, the number of my men now exceeded one hundred since more and more were found utterly unfit for work in the mines and were therefore transferred to my brigade. There was no special surveillance over my men since it would have been quite useless, but they were bawled out and beaten up in passing, so to speak, by everybody who felt like doing it. It was increasingly difficult, with the men I had, to keep incessantly deepening the ditch which was our task. Only when the head of the gold field, Svirin, agreed to let me have four extra good workers was I able to save the mines from imminent flooding. Now I constantly had to get into the water with a pickaxe and shovel myself. The five of us did more work than the whole hundred dokhodyágas put together.

My brigade had one immense advantage over the others. It worked only one shift and did not have to meet volume figures. We were therefore able, after fourteen hours of work, to return to the camp. Miners were in a much worse position. There were cases when men worked for two days on end without a rest.

Still the ‘plan’ was not being fulfilled.

In August one more order came from Pavlov. As read at the muster, it charged the prisoners with ‘adopting the tactics of counter-revolutionary sabotage’ and decreed that this be fought with all available means, including trying the offenders by an N.K.V.D. troyka (a three-man court) which was given the right to pass the death sentence on malicious saboteurs.

Late that night I had a conversation with my friends Badyin and Lebedev who were still working in Kachanov’s brigade. They had changed so much one could hardly recognize them: they had grown terribly thin, stooped, and looked dried up. At the age of twenty-two and twenty-five respectively these two boys looked like old men.

Mikhail Badyin said:

‘We are in a bad way, boys. The end is near. Our bosses will get us one way or another. What are we to do?’

‘What can we do? Only what we’re told. We have to work until we drop, and are thrown into a common grave with lime poured over the top,’ answered Sasha Lebedev with complete indifference. It sounded odd from this quiet and modest boy, a former student and poet of some talent who even that winter had been composing verses at night.

‘Look, boys. We have to make a break,’ Mikhail whispered.

‘Nonsense! Where can one go? Have you ever heard of anyone escaping from the Kolyma?’ I asked.

‘I’m not proposing an escape from the Kolyma. All we have to do is make our way to the state farm Eigen which is only fifty miles away. There is a camp there, too, but work is easier. We’ll be able to rest up.’

‘No, Misha, I’m not going. If they catch us, they’ll beat us up and clap on another five years.’

‘Do you still hope to live out your term?’ Mikhail asked me caustically. ‘Better pray to God to survive this year.’

‘I’m not going to try any breaks,’ Sasha declared.

‘Neither am I,’ I said.

‘Well, you can stay. I’m going away tomorrow. I’ll go right over the hills. But mark my words, Vladimir. They’ll soon be going after the brigadiers, and your number will be up, too.’

This ended our conversation. The following day Mikhail did not come back to the tent after work, and Kachanov handed in a report of the break.

Two days later Kachanov came over to me at the excavation and said that he had seen Mikhail, covered with blood, being dragged by two guards to the solitary confinement cells. He had been caught on one of the mountain passes near Eigen by a guard at a secret post.

And next day, at morning muster, the camp commander read a statement announcing execution, by a firing squad, of forty men from our gold field charged with counter-revolutionary sabotage and breaking of camp discipline. Among those named was Mikhail Badyin.

I could not even write to Mikhail’s mother about his death. We were not allowed to send letters, and I would not run the risk of sending one through some hired volunteer office worker from among those with whom I was friendly. I knew though where Mikhail was shot. It was in the small camp near Khattynakh, called Serpantinnaya, which was made the execution centre for all prisoners of the Northern Administration. I had been puzzled by the garage which was being built there. Later I learned it was used to house two tractors, the engines of which produced enough noise to deaden the sounds of shooting and cries of the men. However, after a short stay, the tractors were moved to some gold field, and the automobile drivers who passed the camp at night sometimes heard the proceedings there with the utmost clarity.

Wholesale arrests began in the camp. As a rule the charge was systematic underfulfillment of quotas. Since no man in the gold field could possibly fulfill them, the failure was ascribed as criminal when the worker completed less than fifty per cent of the quota.

It was absolutely impossible to measure accurately the exact performance of a worker, and the estimate made depended entirely upon the attitude of the foremen. The foremen made daily measurements in a rough and ready fashion with the help of a tapeline, and made their reports to the office where the volume of excavated sand was translated into percentages of the daily quota fulfilled by each brigade. In doing this a practice was systematically resorted to whereby a certain amount of work performed by the less efficient brigades was stolen from them and credited to the better brigades as a means of encouraging them. But the foremen were not altogether free in recording their measurements. Once a month a measurement of the mine’s entire output was made by surveyors with instruments of great accuracy. The engineers measured the depth the mine increased during the month, and compared this with the added up measurements of the foremen. When the figures disagreed – and they always did, and to a great extent – the foremen were merely reprimanded. Now, by Pavlov’s new order, foremen guilty of excessive measurements were to be put on trial. The same order stated the fact that six foremen had been executed for deceiving the state. It was natural that the foremen often went to the other extreme – charity begins at home – and deliberately gave lower figures.

The official figures for labour productivity immediately dropped heavily.

Then the firing squad set to work.

A representative of the N.K.V.D. three-man court – the troyka – appeared at the gold field. He held conferences with the section heads and demanded lists from them of malicious saboteurs who systematically failed to make their quotas. The section heads had no alternative but to prepare such lists and to include in them the least able workers who lowered the average labour productivity for that section.

At night guards entered the tents and with the assistance of the camp’s headman and the tent orderly picked out the sleeping men from their lists and dragged them away.

A day or two later, at the morning muster, we learned from the camp commander that various people had been sentenced to death for sabotage by the troyka and that the sentences had been carried out.

Failure to fulfil the quota was not the only crime punishable by death. A sick man who did not go to work and who stayed in the camp without obtaining permission to do so from the dispensary was sent to Serpantinnaya to be shot.

It was sufficient to show lack of due respect in one’s answer to a section head to be reported by the latter as a saboteur and disappear next day from the camp.

Early in September my friend Sasha Lebedev met his fate, too.

I was working in the ditch directly opposite the excavation where Kachanov’s brigade was working. A few days before this brigade had acquired a new foreman, a Young Communist League member who was anxious to win distinction and earn advancement by a show of energy. That day he appeared at the excavation, looked it over, and noticed that one of the workmen, taking advantage of a free moment after loading a barrow, lit a home-made cigarette. The foreman rushed across the excavation, and with a blow of his hand shoved the burning cigarette into the man’s mouth. The man crouched, covering his face with his hands, while blood showed through his fingers. With a stream of oaths the foreman continued beating the worker on the head, then hit him in the chest. The man fell to the ground. Then the foreman began kicking the man with his heavy iron-studded boots. At that moment Sasha Lebedev rushed up. Seizing the madly cursing young fellow by the throat with one hand, Sasha pommelled his face with the other. Taken by surprise the young foreman put up no defence, but broke away and took to his heels.

Everybody was silent for a moment; then work resumed. I walked to Sasha.

‘Whatever did you do? You know what you’ll get for this?’

‘I don’t care. Let them shoot me. What difference does it make whether I die a little sooner or a little later?’ he answered.

At that moment the foreman appeared at the entrance to the excavation. He was accompanied by three guards trailing arms.

‘Which one?’ one of the guards asked the foreman as he pointed at us.

‘That one, in a black shirt,’ the foreman replied, his finger pointing at Sasha.

The guards came over. One grabbed Sasha’s arm and began to twist it. The other two stood by, their rifles covering the workmen who held their heads down, afraid to lift them and look at what was going on. Sasha offered no resistance, uttered not a sound, although his twisted arm must have been very painful. The foreman, secure under the guard’s protection, now plucked up courage, and dashing over to Sasha hit him twice in the face. Then turning to me, he hit me, too, in the chest, toppling me over as I stumbled over a shovel that lay behind me. Blood rushed to my head. No one had done that to me since my first days in the Kolyma. But I checked my impulse, and stayed on the ground.

The guards led Sasha away, pushing him on with their rifle butts. The foreman followed them. A couple of hours later he came back, and started to bawl out Kachanov. The latter stood in silence, although this always reserved and calm man, I felt, was ready to crush this whipper-snapper to pieces. The foreman then walked over to the worker he had beaten up, and hit him twice in the face.

In the evening, when after work I called at the section office, I was told by the assigner that the foreman had turned in a report charging Sasha and me with an attempt to murder him. The section head, Kuznetzov, immediately forwarded the report to the N.K.V.D.

That same night I was awakened by Kachanov. I saw a guard standing by his side.

‘I’ve just come from the N.K.V.D. where I was taken for questioning,’ said Kachanov. ‘Put on your clothes quick, and he – ‘ he pointed to the guard ‘ — will take you there, too.’

I was ready in a minute. That evening, preparing for any eventuality, I had already given my mother’s address to some of my friends, asking them to try to let her know if anything happened to me. Escorted by the guard I walked out of the camp, and five minutes later I was in the little house in which the gold field N.K.V.D. had its office. I was taken into a room where sitting at the table I saw my old acquaintance from Khattynakh, Bazhenov, and our local representative of the N.K.V.D.

When he saw me, Bazhenov said to the other man:

‘Well, you can go now. I’ll finish the case.’

The man left, and Bazhenov and I were left alone.

‘So we meet again,’ Bazhenov said. ‘You’re in a bad way, Petrov. We’ll have to shoot you.’

‘If that’s what you’ve decided to do, there’s nothing I can say.’

‘How did you come to attack the foreman? Tell me all about it.’

I told him what had actually happened.

‘Kachanov gave the same story. But the foreman tells the opposite. Who am I to believe?’ asked Bazhenov.

‘You will believe those you want to.’

‘Yes, those I want to. I really don’t know what to do with you. The simplest thing would be to have you shot. There are more than enough grounds for that. How old are you?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Twenty-two,’ I answered.

‘H’mm. It’s not very interesting to die at twenty-two with a bullet in one’s neck. Well, all right. You can go now. You’ll be told later what to do.’

‘And what’s going to happen to Sasha?’ I asked, turning to him as I reached the door.

‘He’ll be shot, of course. What do you think he was going to get – a decoration?’

I turned around in silence and walked out. The guard who had brought me there was standing in the hall. He stopped me, and opening the door into Bazhenov’s room asked:

‘Is he to be taken to Serpantinnaya, Comrade Commander? The car is still waiting.’

Bazhenov paused. My heart began to beat violently.

‘Take him to the camp for the present. We’ll see later,’ Bazhenov said at last. I caught my breath.

A few minutes later I was back in my tent, and lay on my berth. Everybody, except Kachanov, was asleep. He walked over to me.

‘Did they let you off?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Lebedev?’

‘He’s to be shot. He must be on his way there now with the others.’

Kachanov was silent for a minute. Then he got up and said in a whisper which could hardly be heard:

‘When will we begin shooting them?’

With this he went to his place.

I did not sleep the whole night, thinking all the time. In the morning, at the muster, the announced list of men who had faced the firing squad contained the name: Lebedev, Sasha.

The foreman for the Kachanov brigade, a vicious member of the Young Communist League, was always walking about, constantly finding fault with the men, bawling out one, hitting another. He had a big black eye – Sasha’s souvenir – and this infuriated him since it made him the object of his pals’ jokes. Even the Young Communists, though, disliked him. He took out his resentment on every prisoner he met. Nobody ever dared offer resistance. This was unthinkable anyway since the mines were overrun with armed guards. In a section some distance away two workmen were killed on the spot for disrespect toward their superior officers.

Late one evening, after turning in my daily report on the brigade, I proceeded from the section office to the smithy to leave a pickaxe which had been left for fixing at the place of work by some worker. The smithy was beyond the dumping grounds, in a fairly isolated location. As I walked along I suddenly saw the hated foreman in front of me. Instinctively I felt something was going to happen. The place around was wild and deserted. I mended my pace to catch up with him. He looked back, but did not recognize me in the dark, and strode on. When I caught up with him, before I fully realized what I was doing, I raised the pickaxe and with one swing hit him on the head. He dropped without making a sound. All I heard was the cracking of his skull.

I looked around, then turned and ran back to the mine. As I reached the ditch I threw the pickaxe into it. That done I went straight to the camp, stopped in the dining-room, had my supper, talked to a brigadier who happened to sit next to me, walked to my tent, and, as usual, went to bed at once. Strange as it my seem, I fell asleep instantly.

The foreman was picked up next morning. He was alive, but unconscious. There was a great commotion at the gold field. The foreman was sent to a hospital in Khattynakh. Some time later a report came from there that the man’s life had been saved, but that the injury had turned him into a complete idiot. The fear that he might recover consciousness and, if he had recognized me, mention my name, was now gone.

Both the gold field authorities and the N.K.V.D. were greatly disturbed by the incident. Their investigation brought no results – there were no clues of any kind. The direct consequence of the case was a certain restraint among the officials. They lashed with their tongues as before, but no longer let loose their hands.

Although the uniforms and characteristic blue-topped peaked caps of the N.K.V.D. agents were conspicuous everywhere in the mines, the number of men sent out for execution not only did not increase after the incident with the foreman, but, if anything, decreased.

One afternoon I was checking the work of my brigade and walked to the farthest lower end of the gold field where the main ditch ran through. I sat down on a stone to roll a cigarette.

I heard footsteps. I glanced around and instantly jumped to my feet. Before me stood Bazhenov.

I noticed right away that he was quite drunk although fairly steady on his legs. His collar was open, and he had his belt with the dangling revolver slung over his shoulder.

‘Well, how goes it, Petrov?’ he asked, gazing straight in my eyes.

‘Pretty fair, Citizen Chief,’ I answered. ‘My ditch is in order, my men are working, and we are not delaying the main work.’

‘How many men left your brigade during the past month?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘What percentage does that make?’

‘About twenty.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘Three were sent out on penalty duties, five were charged to the dispensary, one died at the excavation, two were transferred to a mining brigade . . .’

‘That adds up to eleven. Where are the rest?’

‘The rest have been sent to Serpantinnaya,’ I said with difficulty.

‘Are those charged to the dispensary still alive?’

‘No.’

‘Did you try to kill the foreman?’ Bazenov asked all of a sudden.

I had a feeling of calmness, and fully realized the importance of my words as I answered:

‘I did.’

Bazhenov nodded, as if he expected this answer.

‘Just as I thought when I was told of the incident. Tell me, are you sorry?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t know. At all events, I’m not bothered with pricks of conscience, and I sleep well.’

‘And how would you behave if you found yourself in the same situation today, two weeks after that event?’

I answered after a pause. ‘It’s difficult to say. In all probability I’d do the same thing. On the other hand, I might not.’

Bazhenov paused and looked away from me. I waited.

‘Tell me, Petrov, do you hate us very much?’

‘I can speak only for myself. I have no feeling of hatred for you personally, if only because after the incident with Lebedev you had every opportunity to send me to Serpantinnaya, but didn’t. As for the general question,’-here I paused to think-’I can make no generalizations. As far as the prisoners are concerned, there is a complete reciprocity of sentiments. We return what we get, with the difference that you are able to express your attitude freely, and we are not.’

Without saying a word Bazhenov turned around and walked up along the ditch. Having taken a dozen steps he shouted:

‘Petrov!’

I walked up.

‘You can sleep peacefully. I’m not going to send you to be shot. At least not now. But watch your step – it’s very easy to stumble.’ And Bazhenov disappeared behind the bend of the ditch.

Only after he was out of sight did I feel a slight shiver throughout my body. I lit a cigarette and turned my steps toward the place where my men were working.

In September a rainy season began. An unpleasant drizzle kept falling from the dull sky, ceaselessly, for hours and days. The Kolyma soil, frozen almost to the surface, absorbed no rain water at all. The water level at the upper drainage ditch reached a menacing height. Our lower ditch was also near overflowing, and we had to do more and more work.

Approximately at that time a wave of suicide swept the gold field. The first to end his life was Professor Nekrasov, a member of my brigade and a former meteorologist, who hanged himself on the high struts of the main ditch. I was the first to learn of this from my men, and I sent one of them to inform the section head while I went to the place of the accident. There, the old professor, always close-mouthed and now forever silent, was swinging slowly on a rope. He gazed at me with bulging, unseeing eyes, and his mouth with knocked-out teeth was hanging wide open. A slip of paper stuck out from his blouse pocket. I took it and read:

‘I die because my death is inevitable. A little sooner, or a little later, I’m sure to lose my life. I have no strength to go on suffering the present torture. I ask comrades who know the address of my children to inform them of my death.’

I shoved the note back into the pocket. The section head and a few other men came up. I waited until the guards took down the body, then returned to my work.

A few days later one of Kachanov’s men hanged himself at night in the latrine behind our tent.

Then in another couple of days one of the Trotskyites opened up the veins in his arm.

One of my men drowned himself in our ditch in broad daylight, and nobody made any effort to rescue him, although several men saw him drown. When I came over to the dead body as it was dragged out, and asked one of the workers who witnessed the suicide why he had not tried to rescue the man, he answered:

‘That is none of my business. When a man drowns himself, it means he doesn’t want to live. What right have I to interfere with him if he thinks death is better for him than life?’

It was difficult to contradict this, and silently I began to write a report on the incident.

Except for this period, suicides were extremely rare. Men desperately clung to life. Almost all of them lost any ability to react to their surroundings. Nothing aroused a feeling of indignation, a desire to avenge oneself. Men were seized with complete apathy hand in hand with the purely animal instinct of self-preservation. I saw men beat up a man who stole a chunk of bread from another prisoner. The beating was unbelievably savage, but the victim did not seem to care – he only said something and, covering his head with his hands, with his mouth bleeding, tried to swallow the last bit of the stolen bread.

A man lying next to you dies, a friend. What of it? He dies today, I will tomorrow. Why feel sorry about him? And the one who stays alive – the first to discover the death of his friend – without saying a word about his death to anybody hurriedly searches through the wretched belongings of the dead man in the hope of finding a piece of bread or something which can be exchanged for bread in the kitchen.

Those who were more impressionable and sensitive were the first to die, for their strength was undermined not only by the conditions of their life, but also by their inner suffering. It was dangerous and almost impossible to think of one’s family and friends, one’s past and future. You had to think only of how to survive in this life – how to get an extra amount of calories, to avoid the slightest conflict with the powers that be, which led to an instant dispatch to Serpantinnaya.

Human nature there was laid bare with particular clarity. It is easy to be honest and decent under normal conditions – with a home, a family, and friends, doing normal work, respected by others, and with respect for oneself.

But in conditions where the struggle for life is carried on in the most primitive form, where the question ‘to be or not to be’ has to be decided at every moment, where there is no future and no hope of any improvement – in these conditions a man reveals his true nature in a surprisingly short time. The first sign of the man’s regression is external – he stops washing himself and taking care of his appearance. If a man is utterly dirty, overgrown with hair, wearing tattered clothes, showing frost-sores on his skin, one can be sure he is capable of any abominable act. He will steal anything available, be it bread, a handkerchief, or some valuable tool. If he has done anything wrong he will try to shift the blame on someone else. He will tell lies at all times, whether or not it is necessary. He has sunk to the bottom. He does not feel blows and has lost sensitivity to everything. I saw one such fellow, formerly a book-keeper, eat his own excrement when promised three pounds of bread by a drunken company of higher officials if he would do so. What would this man have done three years earlier, if at that time he could have seen himself? Probably he would have hanged himself. But once in a concentration camp, where life is the only thing a man still has, he begins to cling to it with every ounce of energy. He turns into an animal in the lowest sense of the word.

Very few men, not much more than one or two per cent, manage to preserve themselves. These are the strongest, the ‘real’ men. A more numerous group are those in whom the fierce struggle for existence has developed an ability, in a varying degree, to compromise with their consciences – with what is called decency, moral principles.

The greatest number, of course, are those who have lost the human image, who had forfeited the right to call themselves men. These always existed in concentration camps, but became particularly numerous in the Kolyma from the summer of 1938.

The Kolyma summer was fast drawing to an end. Night frosts grew stronger, and in the morning, when my men came out for work, they began the day by breaking up the ice which had covered the ditch during the night. It became increasingly more difficult to make men go into the icy water in leaky rubber boots.

The time was near when in previous years gold panning ended and things grew more quiet in the gold fields. But not that year: Dalstroy was still far from fulfilling the plan of gold output for 1938 approved by Stalin. Although certain gold fields such as ours, which delivered over five tons of gold during the panning season, achieved their quotas, the majority of Dalstroy gold fields delivered hardly one-half of what was required.

The first snow came about the middle of September, but panning continued, although shortage of water made it necessary to stop work on three panning constructions. There were too many men for these operations, and half of the miners were therefore transferred to winter work – to removing the upper layer of empty soil and so prepare the gold-bearing layers for the next year. A new section was marked off about a mile below the mine area of 1938, and it was there that the mining in the next season would have its centre.

An order by Pavlov informed us that after the fifteenth of September the workers not engaged in panning would be allowed to rest every second Sunday. My brigade was permitted to take rests one Sunday for one-half of its members, and the next Sunday for the other half. In this way every man got one free day a month, and I took advantage of my first holiday to sleep the whole day – the first time in four months that I really got a decent sleep.