“Troop carriers surrounded the zone and a helicopter circled overhead. A voice shouted over loudspeakers: ‘Citizen prisoners! Cease this mass disorder immediately!’ We began to wonder why the soldiers didn’t storm the place to restore order. It seems they were waiting for orders from Moscow.
“When the day ended we realised we had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. We threw stones at anyone who tried to enter the zone, but the night was cold and by the next morning we’d lost our enthusiasm. They came for us in Black Marias and we no longer had the energy to defend ourselves.
“We were sent to different jails. They took me to Syzran, where I opened my big mouth. Some bastard of an SVP overheard me and here I am, looking at another five years. I didn’t even kill anyone or beat the guards. What a mess. If I hadn’t got mixed up in that business I’d have been out next year.”
This man’s story depresses me, for I too am looking at a longer sentence, and this time it will be in a camp rather than a ‘treatment centre.’
Fortunately for us, Medvedev can’t produce a witness at our trial. When we threw him out of the barrack there was only one other man present and he was in a state of Antabuse-induced psychosis, cowering in a corner pointing a piece of plywood at Medvedev and shouting: “Bang! Bang!” Our charge is reduced to hooliganism. Even so, we get four years each.
Four years! I torment myself imagining this endless length of time. But my cellmates congratulate me. Well done! That’s nothing! It’s true that many people get longer sentences for lesser crimes but I fear I’ll go out of my mind.
Then the impossible happens. Our sentences are overturned thanks to VV’s mother. As director of a Syzran department store, she is an important person and able to hire a good lawyer who wins our case at the court of appeal. The judge simply orders us to serve out the rest of our original sentences — a year in my case — in a different prison. VV and I are moved to Barkovka near Toliatti.
The camp at Barkovka is strict regime, full of SVPs and headed by a bastard called Dubov. It lies near an industrial dump which burns continually, shrouding the area in black smog.
The industrial zone is a brick-making plant separated from the living area by a high fence with gates and watch-towers. The factory works around the clock, one brigade taking the heavy wet bricks from wagons and loading them into the kilns, the other pulling the scorching bricks out. They give us gloves once a week, which wear out before a single shift is over. Zeks wind old cloths around their hands but these do not prevent serious burns. Barely a week passes without a zek inflicting an injury on himself to get out of work.
My crippled leg saves me from the kilns. I am sent instead to make fluorescent lamps in a separate workshop. There I make friends with a man who deliberately broke his arm to get away from the kilns. Sanka Mirzaev is a Tatar from Chapaevsk. My wife attended his mother during her numerous pregnancies.
Sanka has had a series of different ‘fathers’ and eventually ended up in a children’s prison where he became very fastidious. He never picks up bread or dog ends from the ground, he will not share a table with a loud or messy eater, and he makes his bed as neatly as a soldier. When his arm starts to heal they threaten to send him back to work in the kilns. Workers who break their arms usually only get a couple of months off. Sanka has plenty of peasant cunning and manages to outwit them by writing a letter to a friend, detailing escape plans. He tries to pass it out via a zek suspected of being a stoolie. The plan works like magic and the letter falls into the Godfather’s hands. Sanka is categorised as a potential escapee and banned from the work zone.
Another lad who works with us is so stunted he could pass for a twelve-year-old child. His prison jacket reaches to his toes. “That’s our Pakhan,”[26] says Sanka. “Poor little sod. I knew him back in children’s camp. His mother was a prostitute. He’s never known home-cooking or sweet pies, but he’s been sucking on vodka since he was a toddler. His mother used to send him out in the mornings to pick up dog-ends from the streets. Then he had to fend for himself while she entertained her clients. He survived by snatching bread from people’s hands, running off and eating it in entranceways. After his mother died of TB, Pakhan took to the streets. He was soon arrested for theft and sent to a children’s prison. I got to know him there. I felt sorry for him as he was always being beaten up. Once they stuffed him in a locker and threw him out of a first floor window. Now he’s blind in one eye and he can’t hear much. One day he stabbed one of his bullies to death. He got six years.”
Instead of becoming feral and cruel as a result of his treatment, Pakhan is withdrawn. He reacts to simple acts of kindness with suspicion. Once I have met my quota I help him finish his and then we get down to the important business of preparing ‘Boris Fyodorovich’ from industrial ‘BF’ glue. Pakhan sticks close by my side; unlike the others I don’t tease him.
“Pakhan, over here,” I call, adding water to the glue and pouring it through a filter. On some days I collect as much as two litres of spirits. It’s risky to store the alcohol so we drink it straight away. There are more than enough volunteers. When he has drunk his fill of BF, Pakhan hides under the workbench and goes to sleep wrapped in his jacket.
When Pakhan nears his release date a Toliatti factory sends someone to offer him a job. The emissary is a young Komsomol girl who brings some clothes — several sizes too large for him. He stands sullenly before her looking like a mediaeval courtier in his enormous jacket, the lining bulging through rips. Politely the girl asks: “Are you thinking of taking a correspondence course when you get out of here?”
Too deaf to hear her question, Pakhan cowers in a corner: “It wasn’t me! I didn’t fucking do it!”
Pakhan is reluctant to leave our company. On the day he is due for release he runs off and hides. We eventually find him huddled under a workshop bench, his thin childish hand gripping a jar of BF. Pakhan looks up at me and smiles his toothless grin: “Ivan, wouldn’t it be fucking wonderful if we could feel like this all the time?”
8
On the road
The 1970s
Everyone leaving camp plans to find a good job, marry, get ahead, and of course, never end up inside again. I don’t suffer from these illusions, but nevertheless I worry about what I’ll do after my release. I have nowhere to live in Chapaevsk and my former plant is refusing to take me back. To apply anywhere else with a passport like mine[27] is not a cheerful prospect. Some of the lads who are up for release ask me to come and live with them, but it’s clear how that will end up. I dream of a life as a lighthouse-keeper or a watchman at an observatory. I want to go somewhere far away from so-called civilization, deep in the taiga where there are no Party organizations or vodka shops. Remembering how peaceful I felt in the forest looking after Yura’s bees I decide to seek out a similar kind of existence, far away from Chapaevsk.
“I’m never going back to work,” I announce to Sanka and VV. “I’ve inhaled enough chlorine and buried too many workmates. It’s a pointless life. Everyone says they’ll do their ten years[28] and then get out, but by then another kid has arrived or they need money to buy a TV set. I’m not going down that road. I’m sick of being told how to live.”
“And how exactly are you going to make your protest? As soon as you open your mouth you’ll go straight back inside,” VV points out.
26
In criminal jargon a Pakhan is a leader of a gang of thieves. Usually he is a retired thief who sends younger lads out to work for him, a sort of Fagin character.
27
Prison records were written in internal passports which had to be shown when applying for a job or a place to live.