With it, grows quickly inside you a bitter hatred of all those who are not suffering as you are. Not of the guards so much, as of the people you knew in Moscow or Omsk or Odessa, of the warmth and comfort of their lives. We, the zeks of Panaka, and of a hundred other camps, worse and better, are the price paid for your years of silence…
Anton realized that Saturday, December 7th, was not a day like any other.
I think it’s true to say that we had hardly marched through the gates of Panaka One that night when we sensed the electric air of excitement in the camp. Groups of zeks stood in the doorways of the huts waiting, it seemed to us, for our roll call to be completed. When we were dismissed they hurried across toward us. This hour after the return from labor was the most free of our camp life. Normally food would be collected from the kitchens and section leaders would be busy filing their day’s report. One hour later we would be back in our hutches, locked in for the night, but for the moment we could talk with zeks from other huts, exchange details seen or heard with the ever-present object of trying to fathom new plans or projects of the authorities.
On this night the news was of some massive event in Moscow. No one had real information. A woman prisoner who cleaned the office of the camp commander was said to have overheard him on the phone. Her version was that the leadership had been overthrown by an anti-Party group. Others said that a helicopter transport of new guards who had arrived that afternoon had brought news of an assassination at the highest possible level. The two stories were not mutually exclusive, of course, but they were the only two I can remember among ten or fifteen wild rumors, each of which implied, of course, an amnesty for all political zeks wrongfully imprisoned by the past regime.
Bubo, my Tatar friend of the last week or two, a tall, limping tailor from Bratsk, walked with me back to the hut. Like me, he believed none of the stories but agreed that perhaps somewhere a few grains of truth inspired them.
“You may have a chance to find out, Anton,” he said as we stepped into the dimly lit hut. “One of the guards who arrived from Krasibirsk by helicopter this evening came over here asking for you.”
“Me? What would he want with me?”
“He’s from Moscow. He says he’s got a message from your mother.”
I burst out laughing in love and admiration and sheer wonder. My mother is an ignorant peasant woman. Until she was thirty she couldn’t write her name. But she could bribe and bully a guard to bring me a letter. For a while the whole absurd idea lifted that sense of isolation we all suffered…
It was another hour before Anton was able to make contact with the new guard. The man had not been disposed to talk. He had reached into his pocket and taken out the gold ruble. Anton was stunned.
I looked at the ruble lying in the palm of my hand. This dull, glinting piece of metal with the heavy milled edge and the double eagle insignia of the old Russia, could, in this place, buy me a month’s good food, vodka for the whole hut, or even, a wild, ever-present idea, the basis of an escape. I thanked the man and he turned quickly away. Before he disappeared into the guard’s compound I ran to catch up with him.
“One more kindness. What exactly is happening in Moscow?”
“You mean the funeral?”
“There’s been a funeral?” I was deeply disappointed.
“Not a funeral,” the man said. “The Soviet President is dead. His State Funeral took place today.”
The President. My hopes lifted again.
“An assassination?” I asked cautiously.
“Of course not. Age mostly. Overwork I expect.”
A new leader with new ideas. Perhaps gentler ideas. Hope should never be allowed within a prison gate. That night we talked and dreamed.
At eight-thirty on the evening of the funeral the emergency meeting of the Politburo was convened in what had once been the anteroom to Stalin’s Kremlin offices. The old leather sofas had long since been removed, the walls repainted and the portraits changed. Only the big dark-red Turkish carpet remained from other days.
And now another leader was dead, and around the oval table the thirteen members of the Politburo were to chart the future’s course.
We have an account of this meeting from one of the best-placed witnesses to the atmosphere in the Politburo that evening. Peter Rinsky was an administrative secretary of the Politburo staff.
Of course we never knew anything at the time it happened. The doors would be closed before the December Chairman, I think it was Defense Minister Ustinov that month, would open the proceedings. Yet even so it is astonishing how much can penetrate a closed door. No sounds, no overheard voices. But the few lines left jotted on a scratch-pad, the few words spoken as they left. Somehow we administrative secretaries developed a sixth sense.
First there was no agenda. Thirteen sealed copies of the agenda were normally placed on the oval table immediately before the meeting. No agenda meant that they were discussing a single subject, and usually one of immediate and overriding concern. During the Polish crisis I remember we had meeting after meeting without agenda.
So it was the guess of all administrative secretaries to the members (my responsibility was to Natalya Roginova) that the issue that night was the outbreak of unrest, arson and looting in the suburbs. In fact I had been in Roginova’s office while she was taking a telephone call earlier in the evening and it was quite clear from the conversation that the disturbances had not been limited to Moscow alone. Kiev, Minsk and Tbilisi were mentioned. In the national capitals it seemed the local Central Committee headquarters was the invariable target.
But what struck me as strange was that at the end of that telephone call Natalya Roginova was looking definitely quite pleased. Of course in the light of later events one can see why. Her rival, Bureau Chairman Kuba, was in charge of internal security. There could be no better time from Roginova’s point of view for him to be seen to be losing his grip. He marched into the meeting, his face like a thundercloud, while Roginova walked in smiling to everyone like the uncrowned queen a lot of us thought she already was.
Naturally the meeting was a long one. And tense for us outside as well. The point was that we knew perfectly well that whatever the subject under discussion, the actual decision that was taking place was quite simply who was to rule over one-sixth of the earth’s surface in the years to come.
Now I should make it clear that none of us secretaries expected an announcement that evening. That is not the way things were done in the Soviet Union. Indeed, on the day President Romanovsky’s death was announced the principle of collective leadership had been emphasized in a special Tass statement. But at least we in the Kremlin knew exactly how that was to be taken. It meant the struggle was continuing; neither side had yet won. But every meeting, every issue discussed from now on, would be part of that struggle.
As far as that particular evening goes we can now see that it was decided to hold back the militia for a few hours. The forecast was for a particularly cold night, with blizzards reaching the Moscow area shortly after midnight The thinking was, I’ve no doubt, that the weather would drive the majority off the streets by the early hours. And at that point the militia would move in and order would be restored. I can see the hand of Natalya Roginova behind all this. It suited her perfectly to underline even a temporary breakdown in Bureau Chairman Kuba’s apparatus.