Or the man arrested without money might be the head of a family. Immediately after the arrest they would force his wife, children, and relatives to denounce him. By tormenting him with constant interrogations from the moment of arrest, the investigator would attempt to force a ‘confession’ of an act that the man had never committed. As an additional means of intimidation, aside from threats and beatings, the prisoner might be denied money.
Relatives and acquaintances were justifiably afraid to go to the prison with packages. Anyone who insisted on having his package accepted or on a search for the missing person would raise suspicion. Undesirable consequences at work or even arrest could result. Such things happened.
There was yet another type of convict without money. Lyonka was in cell 68. He was seventeen years old and came from the Tumsk region of the Moscow Oblast – in the thirties a very rural area. Lyonka was chubby, had a white face and unhealthy skin that had not known fresh air for a long time. Lyonka felt great in prison. He was fed there as he had never been fed in his entire life. Almost everyone treated him to something from the prison store. Instead of home-grown tobacco, he learned to smoke papirosy – cigarettes attached to a short cardboard mouthpiece. He was delighted by everything – at how interesting it was here and how nice the people were! This illiterate teenager from the Tumsk Region had discovered an entire world. He considered his case to be some sort of game, a kind of craziness, and he couldn’t have cared less about it. His only worry was how to extend for ever his investigation and his life in this prison where there was so much food and everything was so clean and warm.
His case was an amazing one. It was an exact repetition of a Chekhov story titled ‘Evil-Doers’. Lyonka had been unscrewing nuts from railroad ties, had been caught on the spot, and was arrested as a spy under Point 7 of Article 58. Lyonka had never heard of Chekhov’s story but tried to prove to the investigator, just as Chekhov’s protagonist had done, that he didn’t unscrew two nuts in a row, that he ‘understood…’
The investigator was using the Tumsk lad’s testimony to build a case involving some unusual ‘concepts’, the most innocent of which carried the death penalty. But the investigator hadn’t managed to link Lyonka with anyone else, and Lyonka was now spending a second year waiting for the investigator to establish such a link.
Persons who had no money in their personal account at the prison were supposed to be limited to the official ration without any supplementary nourishment. Prison rations are far from stimulating. Even a small amount of variety in the food brightens the prisoner’s life and somehow raises his spirits.
In all probability the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates of the prison ration (as opposed to the ration in camp) were arrived at on the basis of certain theoretical calculations and experimental data. These calculations were probably derived from some ‘scientific’ studies; scientists like to be involved in that sort of work. It is just as probable that in the Moscow Investigatory Prison the quality of food preparation guarantees the living consumer a sufficient number of calories. It is also quite likely that the official sampling of the food by a doctor is not a complete mockery or a formality as it is in the camps. Some old prison doctor might even ask the cook for a second helping of lentils, the dish highest in calories, before searching out the line in the official form where he is to place his signature to approve the menu. The doctor might even joke that the prisoners have no reason to complain about the food – on the grounds that he himself had just finished a bowl with relish. But then, the doctors are given plates of today’s lentils.
No one ever complained about the food in Butyr Prison. It wasn’t that it was particularly good, but that the prisoners had other things to worry about. The most disliked prison dish was boiled beans. Somehow it was prepared in such a singularly unappetizing fashion that it was termed ‘a dish to choke on’. Nevertheless, no one complained even about the beans.
Sausage, butter, sugar, cheese, and fresh rolls from the commissary were sheer delight. Everyone enjoyed eating them with tea – not the raspberry-flavored boiling water issued by the prison, but real tea steeped in a mug and poured from an enormous bucket-sized teapot of red copper, a teapot left over from czarist days, a teapot from which Russian revolutionaries of the nineteenth century might have drunk.
Naturally, ‘shop day’ was a joyous event in the life of the cell. Denial of ‘shop privileges’ was a severe punishment that always led to quarrels; prisoners feel such deprivations very keenly. Any accidental noise heard by the guard in the corridor or a disagreement with the commandant on duty was looked on as an act of insubordination, the punishment for which was denial of shop privileges. The dreams of eighty persons quartered in twenty different places went up in smoke. It was a severe punishment.
One might think that those prisoners who had no money would be indifferent to the withdrawal of shop privileges, but that was not the case.
Once the food was brought in, evening tea would commence. Everyone bought whatever it was he wanted. Those who had no money felt out of place at the general holiday. They were the only ones not to experience the nervous energy characteristic of ‘shop day’.
Of course, everyone would treat them. A prisoner could drink a mug of tea with someone else’s sugar and eat a white roll; he could smoke someone else’s cigarette – even two – but he didn’t feel comfortable, and it was not the same as if he had bought it with his own money. The prisoner who had no money was so sensitive that he was afraid to eat an extra piece.
The adroit collective brain of the prison found a way out, a way of ending the discomfiture of those who had no money, a way of protecting their self-respect and providing even the most impoverished prisoners with the official right to make use of the commissary. They could spend their own money independently and buy whatever they chose.
Where did this money come from?
A famous phrase from the days of military communism, from the first years of the revolution, was reborn: ‘Committees for the Poor’. Some unknown person mentioned it in one of the prison cells, and the phrase caught on in an uncanny fashion and migrated from cell to cell – by tapping on the walls, by notes hidden under a bench in the bathhouse, and, easiest of all, by transfers from one prison to another.
Butyr Prison is famed for its smooth functioning. The twelve thousand convicts in this enormous prison are in constant round-the-clock movement; every day, regularly scheduled buses take prisoners to Lubyanka Prison, bring prisoners from Lubyanka Prison for interrogation, for meetings with witnesses, for trial. Other buses transfer prisoners to other prisons…
In instances of cell-rule violations, the internal prison administration transfers prisoners under investigation to the Police Tower, Pugachov’s Tower, North Tower, or South Tower, all of which have special ‘punishment’ cells. There is even a wing with cells so small that one cannot lie down but must sleep sitting up.
One-fifth of the population of the cells is moved every day – either to ‘photography’, where profile and full-face pictures are taken and a number is attached to a curtain next to which the prisoner sits, or to ‘piano lessons’ – that is, fingerprinting (a process that for some reason was never considered offensive). Or they might be taken along the endless corridors of the gigantic prison to the interrogation wing. As they walk down the corridor, the guard taps the key against his own brass belt buckle to warn of the approach of a ‘secret prisoner’. And until the guard hears hands clap in response, he will not let the prisoner proceed. (At the Lubyanka Prison the snapping of fingers is used instead of the jingling of keys. As in Butyr, the response is a hand clap.)