In such instances there was no getting off with fifteen or twenty years. The political would have been a threat to the very lives of his friends and family. Someone would have had to conceal him, render him assistance. None of the politicals in 1938 tried to escape.
The few men who actually served out their sentences and returned home found that their own wives checked the correctness and legality of their release papers and raced their neighbors to the police station to announce their husbands’ arrival.
Reprisals taken upon innocent persons were quite simple. Instead of being reprimanded or issued a warning, they were tortured and then sentenced to ten or twenty years of prison or hard labor. All that was left to such persons was death. And they died with no thought of escape, displaying once more that national quality of passivity glorified by the poet Tiutchev and shamelessly exploited on later occasions by politicians of all levels.
The professional criminals made no attempts to escape because they did not believe they could succeed in returning to the mainland. Moreover, experienced employees of the camp police and the Criminal Investigation Service claim to have a sixth sense that enables them to recognize professional criminals. It is as if the criminal were stamped with the indelible mark of Cain. The most eloquent example of the existence of this sixth sense occurred during a month-long search for an armed robber and murderer. The search was being conducted along the roads of Kolyma, and an order was issued that he be shot on sight.
The detective, Sevastyanov, stopped a stranger in a sheepskin coat standing beside a tank at a filling-station. When the man turned around, Sevastyanov shot him in the forehead. Sevastyanov had never seen the bandit, who was fully dressed in winter clothing. It is impossible to examine tattoos on every passer-by, and the description given to Sevastyanov was very vague. The photograph was so inadequate that it too was of little assistance. In spite of all this, Sevastyanov’s intuition did not fail him.
A sawed-off shotgun fell from beneath the dead man’s coat, and a Browning pistol was found in his pocket. He had more than enough identification papers.
How should we regard this positive proof of a sixth sense? Another minute, and Sevastyanov himself would have been shot. But what if he had killed an innocent man?
The criminals had neither the strength nor the desire to return to the mainland. Having weighed all the pros and cons, they decided not to take any chances but to limit their activities to reorganizing their lives in this new environment. This was, of course, a rational decision. The thugs viewed escape attempts as bold adventures, but unnecessary risks.
Who would make a run for it? A peasant? A priest? I met only one priest who had attempted to escape – and that was before the famous meeting where Patriarch Sergei handed Bullitt, the first American ambassador, a list of all Orthodox priests serving sentences throughout the Soviet Union. Patriarch Sergei had had the opportunity to acquaint himself with the cells of Butyr Prison when he was Metropolitan. As a result of Roosevelt’s intervention, all members of the clergy were released in a body from imprisonment and exile. The intention was to arrange a certain ‘concordat’ with the church – an essential step in view of the approaching war.
Perhaps it would be a common criminal who would attempt to escape – a child-molester, an embezzler, a bribe-taker, a murderer? But there was no sense in these people’s attempting to escape, since their sentences (which were called ‘terms’ in Dostoevsky’s time) were short, and they were given easy service jobs. In general they had no difficulty in obtaining positions of privilege in the camp administration. Workdays were generously credited to them and – most important – they were well treated when they returned to their home towns and villages. This kindness could not be explained away as the Russian people’s capacity to pity the ‘unfortunate’. That attitude had long since become a thing of the past, a charming fairy tale. Times had changed, and the great discipline of the new society demanded that ‘the simple people’ copy the attitude of the authorities in such matters. This attitude was usually favorable, since common criminals did not trouble the government. Only ‘Trotskyites’ and ‘enemies of the people’ were to be hated.
There was another significant factor that might explain the indifference of the populace to those who had returned from the prisons. So many people had spent time in prison that there probably was not a family in the country in which some family member or friend had not been ‘repressed’. Once the saboteurs had been eliminated, it was the turn of the well-to-do peasants, who were called kulaks (the term meaning ‘fist’). After the kulaks came the ‘Trotskyites’, and the ‘Trotskyites’ were followed by persons with German surnames. Then a crusade against the Jews was on the point of being declared. All this reduced people to total indifference toward anyone who had been marked by any part of the criminal code.
Earlier, anyone who had returned from prison to his native village inspired in others guarded feelings (concealed or openly displayed) of animosity, contempt, or sympathy, while now no one paid any attention to such persons. The moral isolation of those marked as convicts had long since disappeared.
Former prisoners were met in the most hospitable fashion – provided their return had been sanctioned by the authorities. Any child-molester and rapist who had infected his young victim with syphilis could count on enjoying full freedom of action in those same circles where he had once ‘overstepped’ the bounds of the criminal code.
The fictionalized treatment of legal categories played a significant role in this regard. For some reason writers and dramatists wrote many works having to do with the theory of law. The law book of the prisons and camps, however, remained locked up under seven seals. No serious conclusions that might touch upon the heart of the matter were reached on the basis of service reports.
Why should the criminal element in camp have attempted to escape? The idea was remote from their minds, and they relinquished their fates totally to the camp administration. In view of all these circumstances, Paul Krivoshei’s escape was all the more remarkable.
Krivoshei’s name meant ‘crooked neck’ in Russian. He was a stocky, short-legged man with a thick red neck that was all apiece with the back of his head. His name was no accident.
A chemical engineer from a factory in Kharkov, he spoke several foreign languages perfectly, read a great deal, had a good knowledge of painting and sculpture, and a large collection of antiques.
A prominent Ukrainian engineer, he did not belong to the Party and deeply despised all politicians. He was a clever and passionate man, but greed was not one of his vices. That would have been too crude and banal for Krivoshei, whose passion was for enjoying life as he understood it – indulging in relaxation and lust. Intellectual pleasures did not appeal to him. His culture and vast knowledge combined with material possessions provided him with many opportunities to satisfy his baser instincts and desires.
Krivoshei had studied painting simply to be able to enjoy a higher status among those who loved and appreciated art and not appear ignorant before the objects of his passion – be they male or female. Painting had never interested him in the slightest, but he considered it his obligation to have an opinion even on the square hall in the Louvre.
The same was true of literature, which he read primarily in French or English and primarily for language practice. In and of itself, literature was of little interest to him, and he could spend a virtual eternity reading a novel – one page a night before falling asleep. There cannot be a single book in this world that could have kept Krivoshei awake till morning. He guarded his sleep carefully, and no detective novel could have upset his even schedule.