Gulag: a history of the camp system. Life of prisoners of the gulag

Tyumin Alexander Vasilievich. Born in 1928. Arrested on March 19, 1953 on charges of committing a crime under Art. 58-10 hours 1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (anti-Soviet agitation). Sentenced to 8 years in prison. He served his sentence in Pevek, where he still lives.

In December 1948 he was called up by the city military commissariat of Rybinsk for a real military service. I passed it in a military unit located in Chukotka.

"On February 23, 1953, our entire team, as usual, celebrated the anniversary of the Red Army. As expected, they drank alcohol, it was then included in the soldier's rations, for her, dear and invincible. We talked about life - being a civilian. Alcohol untied the tongues "We also touched on the peasant theme. I knew something, and expressed my thoughts, they say, they pull wool from the peasants like sheep, take away almost all products. I even sang a ditty: "Grandma, where are you going, what are you carrying under your apron? They ask for wool for tax, I bring the last tuft. "It seems that everyone laughed. But that laughter for me turned out like this.

In our company turned out to be a snitch, Senka-kok. He ran to the commander, laid out everything, and did not forget about the ditty. In the morning the commander lined us up, sternly read out the order by which he announced to me for slandering Soviet power 20 days of guardhouse. They took me to the lip. He stayed there until March 5, when rumors reached that Joseph the Terrible threw back his tail. Everyone who sat on the lip began to expect an amnesty. They came for me, took me to the unit. Well, I think it's gone, it's all over.

But it was not there. Approximately on March 12, during a snowstorm, it was very windy, a sled arrived from Ureliki to our unit, and on it a senior lieutenant. It turned out, behind me, the command of the unit, as it was supposed to, reported about my slander on the authorities to a special department. I collected my things and they took me. They arrived in counterintelligence, placed alone. At night, interrogations of who you are and what you are, who are your parents, where you were born, where you were baptized, who else carries, like me, anti-Sovietism, and so on, and in the same spirit. This is how it went for a month. I won’t lie - no one allowed rudeness, scuffle. They treated me like an ordinary soldier. Feeding was from the soldiers' kitchen, you can live, they took you out for a walk regularly, at dawn, while everyone was still sleeping. But in such a frost in a spikelet without buttons and a belt you will not stand for long. You take a sip of air like a fish and dive into the chamber.

A month later, a meeting of the "troika" was held. Such a decrepit Colonel Petrov dominated, a little shibzdik, like Yezhov, no bigger. He must have been in his seventies at the time. No matter how much he spoke, he never once looked at me, the defendant. It's probably a habit he's developed. The meeting lasted 12-15 minutes, no more. The questions were about the same as before, who are you, and so on. After that, they sang me and the corridor - the "troika" had to confer. I didn't have time to smoke my cigarette before they took me back.

After the trial, they were sent to the garrison prison. Before my arrival there was such an incident. Some of the prisoners dug under the wall and robbed the polar trading stall. The next morning everyone left the cells and went to the dining room for gruel, like intellectuals, in brand new, brand new suits, chrome boots and caps. Of course, everyone was driven back - undress, return everything stolen! But the prisoners, having entered the prison, barricaded themselves, not letting the guards in. Then the Vokhrovites climbed onto the roof, threw a smoke bomb into the chimney, and closed the chimney. The smoke poured inside, the prisoners realized that it was no longer possible to joke, they opened the door. A green lieutenant rushed into it with a pistol in his hands, he decided to catch up with fear on everyone. But it turned out the other way around, they took away his gun and threw it behind a bulk wall so that they didn’t find it later ...

The prison has calmed down. They took out the instigators, and then we were soon sent to the bullpen of Providence. There is one cellmate, a young boy died. It is not clear why - he seemed to be healthy, and his term was only a year and a half. Maybe he died from the fact that he internally tortured himself? Don't know. We buried him, we were all allowed to go to the cemetery. And then at the end of July we were sent to Anadyr by plane. There was a prison on the bank of the Cossack. We sit for a week. We are sitting two. Boring! Time seems to have stood still. Once, when a senior sergeant by last name, as I remember now, Izmestiev, a good uncle, came into the cell, we asked him - how long will we sit idle? And he asks: "What can you do?" I tell him about myself, I can carpentry, carpentry, paint, fitter, lay stoves. "Stoves?" - asks again. Yes, you will have so many orders that you won’t dismiss it. The sergeant promised to find me a job the next day, he only advised me to take an assistant. I chose Volodya Shichkov, a former fish inspector from Anadyr.

Since then, we have a different life with him. In the early days, a policeman walked with us, but after half a month we became without escort, the guards realized that we were not even thinking about escaping. And where in Chukotka will you run away, especially at that time? We really had enough work orders, the sergeant turned out to be right. The hostesses remained satisfied and did not offend us - they fed us and watered us, and even gave us to prison with them. You come back, it happened, your tongue is on one side from drunk alcohol - then, after all, the beginning, and the middle, and the end of the work were poured. This is how we lived.

After November they began to touch our people. The first stage was sent to Iultin. And then, on December 30, eight of us, accompanied by a policeman, were put on a plane and taken to Apapelgino. We landed, the airfield was then on this side of the Apapelhin River. They put us in a room, and there was no bench or shit in it. Placed on the floor, you want to eat, but there is nothing. We heard that there is a bakery in the village, maybe we should go there and dig up something? We also heard that a day before us, in the same room, six people who had been released had been massacred. So the situation was not pleasant for us. But hunger is not an aunt. Who will go to the bakery? Nobody decides. It seems to be paw ready to suck. Then I took one guy, and went with him. There were two bakers in the bakery. They seated us at the table. They gave me bread, cut up a piece of lard, put a bottle of alcohol. We ate, we were numb in the smoke, the bakers loaded us with a bag of bread - feed your own! And it's all free, not a penny. So I don’t know who they were - freed or free.

We fed ours. We spent the night. And in the morning there is no transport to Pevek - the road the day before was heavily skidded. Wait until they clean it up. I persuaded the policeman and the others to go on foot. Let's go, we went through the warehouses of the district GRU, at the Luch motor depot (the Pevek motor depot is located there now. - I.M.), they caught a car. The driver took us to the police station. It was then located in a larch barrack, standing on the spot where the Chukotka cinema was later built. We had to stay in the regional department for quite a bit. The neighbors in the cell were very furious: "Throw us a couple of fresh ones, we will make Marusek out of them!" The chief did not dare to leave us for the night, he decided to remove us from sin - he sent us to the central camp, which was located in Morgorodok. Jumped over there. They arrived, and it was on December 31, just before the new year of 1954. There was nowhere to place us except for the BUR (high-security barrack. - I.M.). They sent it there. We went into the cell, and there the window was broken, there was a slope of snow on the bunk, the frost was 30 degrees, no less. We were given a couple of blankets each night to keep us warm. As soon as they brought us there, they started knocking from behind the wall, asking: "Who are you and where are you from?". They tell you to go up to the wall. I approached, answered that from Anadyr. "Are there bitches among you?", - asks new question. “Where did the bitches come from,” I answer, “just men,” I still didn’t know either the nicknames, or the fact that the struggle between thieves in law and the bitches was in full swing ...

In the morning they took us to the camp. At the checkpoint, the sergeant began to frighten, they say, to be torn to pieces by criminals, I’ll throw it away. They brought me to a barracks for a settlement - this barracks, by the way, is still standing. I got a place not far from the corner, below, and above me the thief in law was sleeping. It was warmer there, so they occupied the second tiers. A few days later, on January 4, I was sent to work at the Chek, because I was familiar with various equipment even before serving in the Army, I sailed along the Volga on rack and pinion ships, and I had 9 classes of education. At the time, that was a lot. The power plant was like this. It was divided into a diesel station, in which there were 10-12 diesel engines with a capacity of 400 to 800 kilowatts (among them domestic, American and German cars) and a steam station with five Swedish and American-made turbines. They sent me to courses - technology. Two months later I was already an assistant driver on the "Laval" - a Swedish turbine. Then they changed it to American...

What can I say about Pevek? In the central camp, it seems to me, there were at least a thousand prisoners, probably the same number when I was released. They worked mainly at the Chek, TsRMM, P-4 - these were objects located next to the current thermal power plant. Of course, they also worked in the seaport. Pevek then seemed to consist of watchtowers, everywhere you look, towers and towers everywhere! Everything around is fenced. In winter, a fresh lake was surrounded with a thorn, towers were placed on the shore so that no one would mess up - then the fresh lake was the only source of drinking water. In the same summer, 1954, a geodetic expedition appeared in Pevek, which began to recruit workers. The conditions on the expedition seemed tempting, and the most important thing was access to a free settlement, that is, there was an opportunity to get some freedom. We fell for these conditions with my friend Vovka, who was imprisoned for murder and had 10 years in prison. He was a literate guy, he graduated from a technical school, so he campaigned for me. They went on an expedition. They were engaged in laying out the bypass road in Pevek and the tracks, walked from the village to the turn to Gyrgychan, hammered wooden pegs into the ground. But this life is over for us. Somehow, the geologists of the Chaun district GRU RECEIVED a salary, but could not immediately give it out in full and left it in a backpack in one of the rooms. The orderly noticed this, adapted himself, hooked up the backpack with a wire, piled up as much money as he could hide without leaving the post. The rest of the backpack threw in place. After this incident, all those who were escorted into the zone were herded. And then we were transferred in 1955 to the Kuiviveem mine. Knowing what is there sea ​​port, I asked to go there, to unload the lighter with cargo. I quickly got used to it, but I knew a lot from a citizen. And then a misfortune happened that winter, during the Yuzhak, two people in our barrack burned down. And then we were sitting in another barracks, where we ran lightly dressed. Through the window they saw how the hut was on fire, but the south was such that it was impossible to approach, and with what to put out? Shovel and snow? We went along the ravine to the mine, which was 12 kilometers away. They came and told us about the fire, but they didn't seem to believe us. They took it back and investigated. One person, a stump without arms and legs, was found, the second's back burned clean. After making sure that we really had nothing to do with the fire, they left us at the mine for the winter. We built instruments, and when they began to spin and the sea opened up from ice, we, taking into account experience, were again sent to the seaport. I became there both for the foreman and for the boss - work, in general, not difficult. Yes, and not a burden. It was reported that it happened that a lighter from Pevek was coming, we called a couple of bulldozers from the mine in order to prepare a "pier" - a heap of soil in such a way that cars could approach the side of the lighter before the ship arrived. That's how they worked. The food was not only tolerable, I would even say good. To be honest, the men managed to steal food, sweets, and alcohol during unloading. Complain to someone, and even more so to prohibit or shame, God forbid, it’s impossible, they’ll kill you right away. Life is more precious. One day I’m going to the mine by car (by that time I had learned to drive cars, work on tractors), and they stopped me at the zone - let’s go, they say, quickly to the accounting department, get paid - you are os-in-God-yes! And I'm neither a dream, nor a spirit, about it. I don't believe it's a prank? I haven't expired yet. But everything turned out to be true. I ran, as ordered, for the calculation. They gave me new tarpaulin boots, a draped sackcloth suit, a quilted jacket, and a cap. We arrived at the Pevek transit, from where I had to start my dissey. Called to the commission. Some woman read out the decision of the Presidium Supreme Council about liberation. She advised me not to talk anymore. Yes, I already knew without her that it was better to keep your mouth shut. For ignorance of this simplest truth, I served 3 years and 4 months - that's what the ditty cost me ...

And then somehow at the Chek it took me to go out of need. I called the shift, the turbine could not be left unattended. Passing by the firebox, I noticed a group of people who, in the mattress, are shoving something long and thick into the firebox. It dawned on me - they are going to burn a person! Like the wind blew me back to the turbine, I forgot why and left. But I will say that no one touched me personally. Maybe because I immediately learned - if you want to stay alive, you need to know, see, and hear less. But maybe it was also saved by the fact that I was friends with Vovka, and such people in the camp enjoyed great authority, so he was a kind of cover for me.

But once all the same, I got it. In the spring it was already melting. Somehow they passed us, a group of prisoners standing not far from the watch, the head of the regime with his young wife. One of our fools rolled up a snowball with pebbles inside, and threw it at the young man. Got under her eye. She, of course, screams. And I loudly said to the fool that it would be necessary not for her, but for him - I point to the head of the regime. As soon as he said this, he felt a strong blow to the head. And then I don't remember anything. I came to my senses and found out that three ribs were broken, my knee was broken, and my face was so decorated that my eyes could not see anything. Even more firmly I learned the rule, not to hear, not to know, not to see ...

In the camp, I heard that a few years before my arrival, approximately in 1950-1952. the prisoners in the camp rebelled so much that they laid down a lot of them, guards with machine guns came from the land, and a boat with a machine gun came in from the sea. This is how it was cut from both sides. But for what, I don't know. When I saw this, I mean on such a scale, it was not. Although, of course, I had to see how, at the turn to the current water station, the guards shot two prisoners. I saw corpses washed ashore by the sea. And once they threw out a barrel in which a corpse was brewed. I have not heard of any escapes taking place in my presence. But they said that even earlier, one team from the Valkumey mine completely left, so much so that they were not found. They also said that they tried to hijack the Catalina plane twice, but failed both times. I know and have seen more than once how prisoners were buried, ammonite would tear up the frozen ground, a bulldozer would drag 40-50 corpses from the camp morgue on a drag. The corpses will be dumped into a hole, a tag will be attached to the leg of one or the other, and a bulldozer will rake in the hole. At that place, a sign was erected with the names of only those who were listed on the tags. The rest disappeared without a name. I didn’t see them burying one by one - there wouldn’t be enough ammonite ...

Such was camp life, which, as it seemed to me, did not surprise anyone, did not revolt, it was taken for granted. Even death was treated with indifference - it's not my turn yet."

That's the whole story. I would like to ask Alexander Vasilyevich and other innocent and injured people for forgiveness. Although personally I have not done anything bad to any of them. But still...

I would like to tell him, to all the innocent victims - forgive us, practically the same as you, destitute, but with the only slight difference that we were not thrown around camps and prisons and we were not interrogated by investigators.

Sorry if you can!

Forgive me for the humiliation that you had to experience in the days of your ruined youth, unsettled adulthood and the impending joyless old age.

Forgive us for sometimes believing that you, not the System, broke the law.

The museum collection began to take shape in 1988 during the documentary exhibitions of the Memorial Society in Moscow. Together with the documents, the relatives of the repressed brought memorabilia, drawings, photographs, which were transferred to the "Memorial" for storage. In 1990, the Museum was organized, the first director of which was the art critic V. A. Tikhanova. From the same time, targeted acquisition of funds began. The main source of recruitment was the families of the repressed, which preserved material relics, paintings and graphic works; part of the exhibits came as a result of expeditions to the places of former camps; The fund of photographs was replenished largely due to copying in state archives.

At the beginning of 2015, the museum collection contains more than 2,400 authentic items of camp art and life (period 1920-1960). The main part of the collection (about 1500 items) is graphic and paintings imprisoned artists - genre sketches, portraits, interiors, landscapes, sketches of scenery and costumes for performances of the camp theater. Among the authors are both recognized masters (for example, Vasily Shukhaev, Mikhail Sokolov, Mikhail Rudakov, Boris Sveshnikov, Lev Kropivnitsky, Yulo Sooster) and obscure amateurs who have been in camps and exiles.

The museum collection also has a significant complex of handicrafts and household items of camp origin - clothing, tools, dishes, souvenirs, etc. (about 700 items). The auxiliary funds also contain camp propaganda materials, printed matter, and personal documents of repressed artists.

For some of the exhibits there is a fund of negatives, slides, scanned images. In addition to internal accounting documents (receipt book, inventory book), the Museum has scientific reference apparatus: electronic catalog of the main collection, card file of repressed artists, etc. As of 1998, a printed illustrated catalog has been published (1039 items):

• Creativity and Life of the GULAG: Catalog of the Museum Collection of the Memorial Society/ Comp. and intro. Art.: V. A. Tikhanova; foreword: S. A. Kovalev; artist: B. V. Trofimov; resp. Ed.: N. G. Okhotin. — M.: Links, 1998. — 208 p.
• Full-text version of the catalog in Russian and English

The materials of the Photoarchive adjoin the museum collection itself - about 13,000 items of storage. These are original and copy documentary photographs reflecting the history political repression in the USSR in the 1920s-1980s, the life and work of Gulag prisoners, the everyday life of the USSR, Soviet propaganda, the activities of the Memorial Society, etc. The photo archive has a fund of negatives, copy prints and electronic copies. A systematic card file, a database with control images is maintained.

Publishing, educational and search work of the Museum is carried out within the framework of various programs Society "Memorial" (in particular, the Museum participates in the program "Virtual Museum of the Gulag"). The Museum's materials are used in Memorial's publications and are often provided for publication in books and the media, including on TV. Museum staff advise historians, journalists, teachers, museum workers. From specialized publications, in addition to the catalog and materials of specific exhibitions, books have been published:

Boris Sveshnikov. Camp drawings. Album/ Comp.: I. Golomshtok, I. Osipova; artist: B. Trofimov. — M.: Links, 2000. — 160 p.: ill. - In Russian. and English. lang.

• Karlag: Creativity in captivity: Artists, museums, documents, monuments/ Comp. Zhumadilova N.T.; [Selection of illustrations, annotations and biographical references of Fadeev S.Ya.]; Karaganda University "Bolashak", International Society "Memorial". - Karaganda, 2009. - 248 p., ill. - in Kazakh, Russian. and English. lang. [table of contents]
  

The funds of the Museum and the exhibition hall are located in the new building of "Memorial" at the address: st. Karetny Ryad, 5/10. The exhibition hall is open for free visiting during exhibitions from 11.00 to 19.00, except Sunday and Monday. In addition, the curators conduct sightseeing tours of the museum funds by appointment.

The exhibition activity of the Museum is also carried out at external venues, in cooperation with many partners. Between 1989 and 2015, the Museum organized over 60 art and documentary exhibitions (selected list). In addition, the materials of the Museum are annually exhibited at several exhibitions arranged by various museums and galleries in Moscow, other cities of Russia and European countries. Since 1990, the exhibits of the Museum have participated in more than 120 exhibition projects. The materials of the Museum are also widely used in various virtual expositions, for the most extensive collections see, for example: “Gulag: Days and Lives” (Rosenzweig Center, USA), “Gulag” (Association “Memorial-Italy”), “Gulag Virtual Museum” ( Research Center "Memorial", St. Petersburg), "Gulag" (OSA, Budapest), in the biographical section of the site "Map of the Gulag" (Memorial Germany), etc.

IN different time the Museum has worked: V. V. Ashkenazy, N. V. Kostenko, E. O. Kudlenok, S. A. Larkov, N. A. Malykhina, N. G. Mordvintseva, N. G. Okhotin, Yu. B. Polyakova, V. A. Tikhanova, S. Ya. Fadeeva, A. P. Sheveleva. Photo works were carried out by: N. A. Bogdanov, I. M. Klyatov, V. V. Nefedov, A. A. Ulyanin, A. A. Urvantsev. The following people constantly took part in exhibition projects: L. K. Alekseeva, M. B. Gnedovsky, E. A. Golosovskaya, V. Yu. Dukelsky, A. A. Litvin, I. I. Osipova, A. F. Sargsyan, M V. Sokolova and others.

Museum Director - Irina Gennadievna Galkova

Curators of the Museum Fund - Svetlana Yakovlevna Fadeeva, Maria Pavlovna Novoselova

Photo archive curator - Natalia Alekseevna Malyihina

camp life

After November 1937, an order was received from the NKVD: all "enemies of the people", that is, those convicted under Article 58 and convicted by Troikas, - SOE (socially hazardous element), KRA (counter-revolutionary agitation), KRD (counter-revolutionary activity), KRTD (counter-revolutionary-Trotskyist activity), etc. - use only on heavy physical work. These works were divided among us into escort and non-escort. Convoy - this is when a group of people was taken to work, usually earthwork, under the protection of an escort.

People chiselled with crowbars and picks the frozen earth or clay, which was completely unaffected by blows, only tiny pieces bounced off.

There was no place to warm up, and the frost forced us to move all the time. The guards also froze, although they were dressed incomparably warmer than us, and out of anger and boredom they clicked shutters, yelled or beat with butts of the weak or those whom for some reason they especially disliked.

It was especially bad if the escort turned out to be a crest serviceman, Mordvin or Chuvash. These tried to curry favor: a reward was due for the shot "when trying to escape".

Fortunately, I had to be a little in the escort teams. Soon we, who worked in the Directorate, put together several unconvoyed teams. We were taken to the place of work, and there we worked under the responsibility of a foreman-prisoner.

One of these teams, in which I worked, was engaged in uprooting stumps and preparing sand in the floodplain of the Myakit River, half a kilometer from the village. This brigade included: A. V. Makovsky, former secretary Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, forty-forty-five years old. It was very soft musical man, poetically in love with his Ukraine. He was widely educated and was persecuted by the authorities for this. He sat for "connection with the Vatican."

This "connection" consisted in the fact that the library of the Academy, like all major libraries, had an established exchange of books with many academies of the world, including the famous Vatican Library. It was a tradition, but it was precisely for receiving foreign books for the Makovsky Academy that they were imprisoned.

The second was Rabinovich - from the French Jews. He worked as an interpreter and guide at Intourist, was a journalist, he himself looked like a Frenchman - he was very cheerful and sociable. He was sitting because of the famous French writer Andre Gide. André Gide was in Africa and published a book about the Congo, in which he talked about the inhuman exploitation of blacks, colonialism, lawlessness, the slave trade in the colonies, etc. Therefore, he was enrolled in our progressive writers, and in 1936 he was invited to Moscow. Rabinovich was assigned to him as a guide and translator. A. Gide was supposed to inspect our country and get acquainted with the changes that have taken place here during the Soviet era.

However, he refused the program of inspections of factories and construction sites offered to him, stating that, as a writer, he was primarily interested in people. He had once been in the Caucasus before the revolution and expressed a desire to go to Svaneti - as he knew, the most remote corner of the Caucasus.

Rabinovich accompanied him on this trip. When they climbed far into the mountains, on the road to one of the villages where they were supposed to spend the night, suddenly a delegation of mountaineer peasants appeared to meet them, who, on a velvet red cloth, carried ... quotes from the last book of A. Gide in excellent French. By arranging this “event”, ours obviously overdid it, and the writer, painfully sensitive to any falsehood and window dressing, stopped the car, said goodbye to those who met him and said: “I understand everything, there’s nothing more to see here,” after which he turned back. On the way back, he already behaved quite differently, and all his attention was focused on observing how the words about a “happy and joyful life” diverge from this very life.

Nevertheless, apparently wanting to safely get out of the USSR, he sent thanks to the government and even burned incense to Comrade. Stalin.

And as soon as he was in France, he immediately published a book about his impressions and observations, in which he exposed and ridiculed the falsity of our newspapers and, in general, poured whole tubs of dirt on us. In this he already had experience, since in approximately the same way he managed to safely carry his feet out of Africa. While there, he managed to get along with corrupt leaders and colonial executioners, and when he got out of there, he showed the whole world their true face and cruelty.

Stalin, of course, could not forgive such deceit. However, Andre Gide was beyond the reach of the NKVD, so Rabinovich was sacrificed as a scapegoat.

The third was Eduard Eduardovich Pukk-Pukkovsky, an Estonian, military sailor. He graduated from the institute. Lesgaft and supervised physical education classes on military courts. He was five or seven years older than me, well developed physically, very well-read and in general was a man of high culture. On the "mainland" he left a young wife with a young son, whom he loved very much. After his arrest, she was evicted from Kronstadt, and she ended up somewhere in Kustanai. They put him in jail because he had relatives in Estonia. (Estonia was then an independent state.)

At first we also had military doctor Mark Glantz with us - a young cheerful Jew, very witty and resourceful, although far from being as educated as the others. He served in Mongolia and the Far East, and was imprisoned for expressing surprise and doubt about the guilt of a very popular commander who was arrested by the NKVD.

The brigadier and non-staff accountant for us and for another brigade was A. Vinglinsky from Odessa - either a Pole, or a Jew, or maybe a mixture of both. It was a rather pathetic and vile person.

Before his arrest, he worked as some kind of official in the port, apparently related to warehouses and loading, although he pretended to be an engineer. Of course, he did not have any engineering knowledge, and although he considered himself an intellectual, he had a confusion in his head from scraps of something he had heard, port terms, medical words, etc. He was terribly afraid physical labor, frost and, of course, fights. Therefore, he was almost never with us, and if he took up a shovel or a crowbar, then only in front of the eyes of his superiors, or in case of emergency, and at the first opportunity, he disappeared into the office "to draw up outfits."

He was tolerated in the office, because under this sauce he did various clerical work and for freemen - he prepared time sheets, statements, lists, requirements, etc. Before the order to withdraw, he worked as an estimator in the Motor Transport Administration.

I organically could not stand all kinds of servility and servility, therefore, at every opportunity, I showed my contempt for Vinglinsky for his humiliating lack of self-esteem. We lived in the same barracks, and I could not help harassing him. I remember, for example, such a case: Vinglinsky somehow found out that freemen in the village needed shoe cream - there was nowhere to buy it, and the authorities wanted to walk in polished boots and boots. So he ran to the Office and began to offer his services in the manufacture of this cream. It all ended with the fact that for some reason his services were not accepted, but I drew on a piece of paper for him a diploma of "boot licker and wax inventor."

In the center of the diploma was a shiny boot placed on a shoe brush, and Vinglinsky was licking the toe of the boot.

We nailed this diploma to the wall above his place on the bunk in the barracks.

I don’t remember which of the great writers said: “If a slave who is beaten deserves pity, then a slave who kisses the hand that beats him is a despicable creature.”

Winglinsky was a slave kissing the hand of the striker.

Soon our "scientific" brigade was disbanded, and I ended up on firewood. There was no real forest nearby for a long time, there were remnants of clearings, light forests.

The work was very complicated by deep loose snow. Due to the absence of thaws and winds, the snow in Kolyma was somehow special: it almost did not cake, but lay in an air mass, most of all similar to fluff. It was impossible to walk on this snow, even falling through - you had to either crawl, or swim waist-deep or even deeper. And so from tree to tree - and they rarely stood.

It is unprofitable to cut down thin trees - “cubic meters” were not obtained from them, and there is a lot of work. It was necessary to approach each tree in deep snow, trample the snow around it, cut it down, divide it into two-meter logs, chop off the branches, then drag all these logs on their shoulders to one place and fold them for measurement.

This work was very hard, by the end of the day I felt as if the bones in the pelvis were coming out of the joints. It's good if there was a shag. For all this work, half a kilo of bread a day was supposed, in the morning herring, in the afternoon fish soup with frozen potatoes and porridge without butter. In the evening they again gave a gruel or a herring.

We worked without lunch - around the world - and therefore received what was left of dinner.

There was no question of fulfilling the norm. And those who did not comply were punished: the ration was reduced to 400 grams of bread, they were not given tobacco and sent to penal escort work.

Fortunately, the urks (blatari, thieves) helped us here.

Here you need to lay the bullshit! one partner taught me.

Here's how to do it. - And we began to “lay bullshit”: in the middle of the future stack, several wide-legged stumps or snags were laid, from the sides and top, the void was laid with two-meter logs, so that a kind of stack was obtained, which was then measured and taken from us by external measurement. So it was possible to pass one cubic meter for two, and even for three.

Firewood for the village required an incredibly large amount. The power plant, boiler rooms worked on wood, and iron stoves burned in the barracks day and night. Winter here began in October and lasted until May, and frosts ranged from 30 to 55 degrees.

They didn’t particularly find fault with this bullshit, unless some especially zealous new accountant or foreman came across. But these were quickly dismissed. Bullshit was beneficial to everyone: the prisoners fulfilled the norm, the camp authorities and the administration of the village showed in their reports a large output and were set as an example to others as "who managed to achieve the fulfillment of the norms." However, this bullshit, eyewash and window dressing was one of the most common methods of work in the country in literally all areas of life - political, military, economic, cultural, etc. - and literally corroded the whole society, although it was not always called by its name, as it was in the camp. Still, firewood, of course, was not enough. First of all, freestyles, administration, a hospital, a canteen, a power plant, a boiler room, and garages were provided. The camp got leftovers or what it can prepare by driving people out after work on the hills.

Each of us, returning to the camp, tried to take with him some kind of stick, log or wood chips for the stove of his barracks. However, at the entrance to the camp, at the gate, most of this firewood was taken away by a gang of camp idiots and the administration - for the checkpoint, the dining room, for the thieves, and in our stoves there was often nothing to keep the fire going even in the evening; By morning everything was frozen.

The clothes we put under our heads often froze to the wall and had to be torn off in the morning. It was especially difficult on those days when the frosts were set below 45 degrees.

The main logging sites were thirty kilometers away from us. It was very difficult to ensure the normal operation of trucks and the removal of timber. It was getting cold in the garages, the cars would not start, the batteries and tires were freezing, and the delivery of firewood, which was already in short supply, was reduced. Old tires, autol and everything that could burn were used.

Rubber from SC at frosts below 45 degrees became so brittle that if the inflated rubber chamber was taken out into the air and thrown, it would break into small pieces, as if made of clay. The oil in the rear axle of the car froze so that if the car stood up, there was no way to move it - it was necessary to build a fire under the body.

All this at times created a downright terrible prospect - to freeze the whole village.

Drivers and mechanics-motorists, almost all of them - prisoners, nevertheless showed real miracles of heroism and resourcefulness and ensured that the cars, albeit with difficulty, walked.

By January-February, during the most severe frosts, another misfortune was added: in some barracks, water began to appear on the floor and the barracks began to flood. The river by this time was frozen to the bottom; froze, obviously, and groundwater. However, the underground keys found a way out to the surface, forming ever-increasing ice, especially in low places. Under the barracks, the soil was thawed, and groundwater, finding no way out, rushed here.

We fought this trouble different ways: temporarily evicted and froze the entire barracks - but this did not save for long; they arranged walkways on the floor from planks and boards torn from the planks; ditched the barracks. The last method was the best, but for this it was necessary to dig a ditch no less than a man’s height deep, and this is tired and exhausted people it was beyond the power: the ground - pebbles with clay.

Verifications and shmons were a special torment for us. Verification was appointed on a signal at 10 pm. By this time, everyone should have been in their places, and a commission walked around the barracks - the head of the convoy, sometimes the head of the camp, the elders, the accountant.

The check-in took about an hour. All those who were not in place or who ended up in another barrack were punished. They found fault with the filling of beds, with their appearance, etc. Sometimes some were called to be sent to the condo or dog lover - for arguing with the administration or some other offenses that the punished sometimes did not even know about.

The dog keeper was an unheated punishment cell on the territory of the camp, and the condo was something like a camp prison; he was in the village, and they were sent there for a period of three to ten days. It was a wooden shed, like a threshing floor or a bath, surrounded by barbed wire, with watchtowers in the corners. Instead of a roof, there is a roll of thin logs covered with earth from above. The walls were not caulked, only some gaps between the logs were filled with moss. The room was divided into two unequal parts: the smaller one was occupied by a corridor and a closet in which the “head. kondeem "- a crook or a bandit. There was also a firebox from the stove; one wall of the stove led out into the other half, where there were bare bunk beds for prisoners - about eight people.

I don’t remember for what fault - either for not showing up for verification, or for arguing with the camp administration - in one of the winters I ended up in this condo for ten days.

Bread was given out 400 grams and once a cold gruel, and even then not always. The stove, of course, did not give any heat, but it smoked terribly when it was heated. Since three-quarters of the stove went into the closet "head. kondeem”, he was probably quite warm, especially since he could plug his cracks.

In the prisoner's room, it was hellishly cold, the sky shone through the cracks, it was impossible to sleep at night - you had to dance.

In addition to everything, they took away our belt, scarf, etc. (so as not to hang ourselves), and the pants did not hold, it blew everywhere.

I did not finally “reach” only because during the day, thanks to the demands of the drivers, I was called to work; there I warmed up and fed a little. I did not finish my term for three days - apparently, they were tired of bringing me and taking me away from work. The scarf was not returned to me, of course.

In addition to this, for especially delinquent camps, the administration of the camps also had a RUR (high-security company) and a ShIZO (special-purpose punishment cell). The RUR was a separate camp where prisoners from several camps in the area were sent.

The work here was carried out under escort and was, as a rule, especially difficult - stone harvesting, mines, logging, etc. They slept on bare planks, they gave 400 grams of bread, they didn’t give boiling water, they gave gruel once, tobacco was not supposed; the guards were exceptionally brutal, and they were allowed to do whatever they wanted to the prisoners.

A favorite punishment in the summer was "setting on mosquitoes." A half-dressed man was forced to stand near a tower or tied to a tree in the forest. Here mosquitoes attacked him. It was not allowed to wave one's hands ("attempt on a sentry").

What is it - Kolyma mosquitoes, it is difficult to describe, it must be experienced. Even cattle cannot withstand their onslaught. Deer flee in the water, stop eating. There are cases when mosquitoes seized people to death in the taiga.

Such torture could only be endured for a few minutes; after that the people went mad and were ready for anything. Here they were usually shot either "for trying to escape" or "for attacking guards." In both cases, the guard was rewarded, and the prisoner - death.

In winter, at 40-45 degrees below zero, they were forced to run barefoot from the watch to the barracks, etc.

If a person in the RUR did not "correct" or immediately seemed especially dangerous to the NKVD, he was sent to a punishment cell.

I did not see the people who were returning from there; according to rumors, it was a real hell. People there were killed by hunger, cold and torture. They said that in winter they were doused with water until they were frozen, etc. In addition to everything in these camps, and partly in ours, recidivists raged - urkagans and bandits, who took away everything they wanted from the rest, beat and mocked them with impunity: the administration did not interfere.

I remember one crest escort bluntly told us: “You, enemies of the people, were brought here not for work, but to be destroyed.” So, apparently, they were brought up by the Stalinist leadership. One of the well-known martyrs and victims of the kondeya and the RUR, who constantly did not come out of them, was a young guy in Myakite - a criminal Kolya Ladonin. tall, thin as a skeleton, and half-mad. He somehow drove past our group, accompanied by an escort, into another condo.

Kolya, where?

On the hunt!

Where is the gun?

Ass back carries!

Farewell, Kolya!

Rot Front guys!

Stops for a moment, raises his hand in greeting clenched fist: "Rot Front!"

For what and how long he was in prison, I do not know. He was from the homeless and was an amazing example of how much a person can endure. However, his psyche was already abnormal, although he always joked. He hated his superiors.

Mandatory verifications I dreamed for a long time many years after my release from the camp - around 10 pm there was always a wary feeling of expecting some kind of trouble, nit-picking and bullying.

Searches were called shmon in the thieves' language. Sometimes they arranged themselves in a column before entering the camp - here they take away everything that the prisoners could get in the wild - food, books, home-made knives, etc.

In the barracks and tents shmons were arranged at night, after 12 at night, when the deepest sleep. The search, as a rule, was carried out by NKVD guards, sometimes with the participation of their superiors.

We were awakened one by one with a push, forced to get up without noise - in our underwear and barefoot, we, several people, stood by the stove; at this time, the guards were rummaging through the mattress under their heads, and if anyone had something, then in bedside tables or drawers-chests. “Free” food, books, newspapers, notes, “free” clothes, knives were confiscated, sometimes even letters that had already passed censorship were taken away:

Why are you collecting them?

It was dangerous to get caught with a newspaper - I have already said that they quickly became counter-revolutionary. However, we kept them not because of articles, but as paper for cigarettes (after all, we got shag).

Somehow they found a quarter of Pravda in my possession, for which I was dragged several times to the punishment cell. What was there (and was it?) - I still don’t know. It was forbidden to leave the barracks during the search. All this was painful: interrupted sleep, cold, fear, as if something had not been found. Once, under my bed, they found a “poem” about Vinglinsky written on notebook sheets. Such types came across in other camps, so this “poem” was dragged around, rewritten to take with them, and after rewriting, they put it under my pillow. I was afraid that they would pick on me, but then I found out that the authorities only laughed and left the “poem” with them, they did not touch me.

Our regime was stricter than that of bytoviki - that is, criminals. If they could use books, sometimes watch movies, in some places there were even radio stations, then all this was forbidden to us. However, the blatari were mostly illiterate and did not read books.

The books taken from the intelligentsia eventually ended up with the blatars and were used to make maps. The cards were made quite skillfully in the following way: the paper was cut to size and glued with glue from soaked bread. Then a stencil of suits was cut out, and red and blue cards were printed through this stencil using an indelible pencil and breadcrumbs. Darwin, Shakespeare, Pushkin went to the cards - all the best that the intelligentsia managed to bring with them to Kolyma. However, from the end of 1937, books were no longer carried - it was not allowed. Card game although it was persecuted, it was very common among recidivists - thieves in law. They played first on their own, then on someone else's. Any of your things could be lost without your knowledge. However, this was nonsense.

In the most terrible camps, isolation wards, transfers, some (any) person could lose: the loser had to kill him, otherwise they would kill him. There were even more senseless bets: “lose the office”, “lose the barracks”, or the like meant that this barracks should be burned by the loser. There was no mercy here: death threatened for non-compliance.

In our barracks they played "goat", and sometimes chess, if they were not taken away. Tajiks, Uzbeks, Caucasians played their favorite backgammon.

This was usually done after work - before checking there was an hour and a half of free time. The crooks played cards, if only there was an opportunity to hide somewhere.

Once I saw an extraordinary chess tournament. We worked to repair the road; the work was not hard, as there was no norm. The escorts were located at the end and the beginning of the section and usually took turns sleeping, warming themselves in the sun. No one was following us - there was nowhere to run anyway.

My attention was drawn to two people who stood motionless for hours on the road, leaning on shovels, but did not speak. I went up and stared at them, thinking - are they sick?

What do you need?

Yes so...

Come on, don't interfere! We have a tournament.

It turns out that they played in their minds, without a board, a game of chess "for fun." The winner received an evening portion of the loser's gruel. One of them was a fifth-year student at the Vladivostok Institute, Sergei Tretiak, the other I don't know.

In the camp, behind our tents, another area with one tent was marked with barbed wire, in which six women lived. Entrance there for campers was, of course, strictly forbidden - the gate was near the guard's tower. Also, women were not allowed into the general camp without an escort.

They worked in the village in the canteen and hospital. Most of of them were thieves - thieves, embezzlers, no longer young. There was only one young girl - a Baptist who was imprisoned for her religious beliefs.

Surprisingly and incomprehensibly, but in this situation she managed to behave decently, and all the surrounding dirt did not seem to stick to her. All sorts of courtship, harassment and threats from the camp idiots had no effect on her. In the end, one guy seriously fell in love with her, began to protect her from the attempts of other lovers in the village and generally showed concern for her.

He worked as an electrician at a power plant. She was released a year before him, he helped her build a house out of boxes, and when he was released, they got married, completed the house, started a household, they had a child, and they lived, in my opinion, happily.

The rest were, as they say, "tear off and drop it." They were served by an old Kuban Cossack, from the former "fists". At one time he also worked in our tent (stoked the stove, brought water, etc.). So, this old man somehow blurted out some gossip about these girls, and they found out. In the evening, when we came home from work, he was shaking with fear in the corner of our tent, and outside the cries of one of the inhabitants of the women's tent were heard:

Oh you old bastard! Just show yourself, we'll tear off all the eggs! Thinking of trembling? Yes, not a single b ... piece of f ... from the ninth floor will show you at will! Kurkul cursed! - etc.

Since then, grandfather did not show up there and was transferred to another job.

Letters were allowed to be sent only via EHF, in unsealed form. The arrival of mail was a whole event: the first ships arrived in Magadan at the end of May, the last - in November. For six months there was no mail at all.

When the first steamships arrived, an emergency call was announced to sort out the mail in Magadan: all literate freemen, Komsomol members, and students were mobilized. The camp mail was sorted, censored, and only after that it was delivered to the villages and camps.

From Moscow to Magadan, if there were no delays, the letter went about a month and a half, but it reached us by the end of the second month (in summer). So it was possible to write a letter and get an answer to it once or twice a season.

Receiving a letter was always a huge event. However, far from everyone was written - for any "connection with the enemy of the people" the NKVD was terribly persecuted, and therefore only the closest relatives dared to write, and those who did not have them did not receive anything. Do not receive letters and criminals from the homeless or orphanage.

Gradually, we learned to write in Aesopian, and our relatives understood us perfectly, but the censorship did not notice anything. For example, they wrote: “I heard that Sasha Smirnov moved in with dad,” that is, he died, since dad died a long time ago; or “Moskovsky Filippov, how I broke up, I don’t see, I don’t know what he looks like”, that is, “we don’t see white bread", since Filippov is a bakery in Moscow; or “Our place is cozy, clean and warm, like in a grandmother's bathhouse” - grandmother's bathhouse was abandoned a long time ago, dilapidated, and there was always a terrible cold.

In general, with some ingenuity, one could write anything. Sometimes they wrote to us from the “mainland” in the same spirit: “Vitya Kamkin has already become big, he turned 10 on September 2, he received many gifts, especially from his godfather, M. Rozhdestvensky.” This meant: “On September 2, Vitya Kamkin was sentenced to 10 years, he was beaten a lot, Rozhdestvensky M. denounced him.”

The prisoners began to receive letters about the betrayal of their wives, the breakup of the family. At the beginning of the winter of 1938/39, I received a letter from my mother in which were the words “Your ex-wife... ". I expected this without blaming Zhenya. There was no hope for my return, and she was not even thirty years old. I knew about my daughter, my relatives, mother, would take care of it. I understood that Zhenya was persecuted and humiliated as the wife of an "enemy of the people."

I also remembered how, after she left me and Lidochka to meet the New Year, 1937, in Kashira, I told her that something would happen this year and we would not be together.

CAMP UNION OF NATIONALITIES Representatives of twenty-four to twenty-six nationalities, including the peoples of the USSR, languished in the camp. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Mordvins, Kirghiz, etc. were considered Russians in the camp. In quantitative terms, superiority in the camp