Bukin glanced again at Kuba, but the general kept his eyes upon me, puffing clouds of smoke which almost obscured his face.
“Semyon Trofimovich, it is a matter of fact that in the last three years the Soviet Army has experienced its own disciplinary problems. We know and understand the causes. Conscripted soldiers from the southern republics are often less technically educated and always less familiar with the Russian language than Baltic or Ukrainian or Belorussian recruits. The strain therefore falls on them. It is a widespread subject of anti-Soviet rumor mongering that raw recruits have been disciplined for failing to understand orders given in the Russian language.”
Bukin leaned forward. “I am unable to see in what way this affects the issue we were discussing,” he said. “As chairman of the conference…”
“Let Comrade Mikoyan speak,” Kuba growled.
“Thank you, Semyon Trofimovich,” I said. “The issue here, Comrade Chairman,” I turned to Bukin, “is precisely the issue you analyzed: the need for strength and unity in the Party structure. I have heard of Komsomol leaders taking dissident and anti-Party attitudes after release from military service.”
I strove to address the hanging heads around me. “Comrades, we know that for every Armenian or Georgian or Uzbek who serves in a Penal Brigade, a whole Armenian or Georgian or Uzbek family becomes disaffected.
“And how many are now serving in Penal Brigades? Is it a hundred thousand? Or two hundred thousand? I know in some of the other republics the situation is worse than in my own. But unless we grant nothing less than a General Amnesty the all-Union Party unity which we seek is a chimera.”
The hanging heads jerked upward. Bukin scowled. Kuba twisted his heavy lips round the stem of his pipe. I had made my point. The price of our support should be a General Amnesty to the Penal Brigades.
Why did I do it? I’m an Armenian first and foremost and I don’t see the sense or justice of imprisoning Armenians because they don’t speak Russian. But we Armenians are a practical race. I had read the KGB reports, I had spoken to the peasants in the hills. Whatever ignited the nationalist feelings of these few years remains a mystery. But there was no mystery about the fact that the Penal Brigades were fanning the flames. And where would I be if the house caught fire? I, the chief Soviet representative in Armenia?
Bashmani spoke next in, as it happens, heavily accented Russian:
“Comrade Chairman, I endorse the words of yourself and Comrade Mikoyan. Party unity in the autonomous republics is threatened by the existence of the Penal Brigades. I will not mince words. In Tashkent people speak openly of slave labor. Returnees claim that in this Penal Brigade there was hardly a Slav to be seen. Conditions are such that men will do anything for food. In these conditions longer and longer sentences are being handed out. Even worse than men returning with their stories of the penal camps are those who do not return.
“You know that in Uzbekistan we are conducting a campaign against religion. We have agitprop units regularly visiting the villages. But the enemy has chosen his ground cleverly. He tells the peasants that the penal camps are against the word of Allah. Are you surprised if the ignorant peasants believe him?”
In the end only the Georgian First Secretary hesitated to commit himself. Bukin, carefully watching Kuba’s reaction, said it was, in the interests of Party unity, an issue which should receive serious consideration. But Bashmani showed more courage than any of us.
“It cannot receive further consideration, Comrade Chairman. It is the subject of Party Decision. It is agreed that the unity we all seek, under the guiding hand of Semyon Trofimovich, cannot be achieved while this issue stands in our way.”
There, it was out in the open: a General Amnesty now and Kuba would get the endorsement he needed to defeat the waverers in the Politburo — as soon as the Roginova trial was successfully concluded.
Semyon Trofimovich prodded at the tobacco in his pipe bowl. “The present figure for all Penal Brigades,” he said, “is four hundred thirty-four thousand men.”
Even the Georgian gasped.
Kuba nodded to himself. “Obviously we cannot declare a General Amnesty and send them home overnight. The first step would be to improve conditions in the penal camps. The second, to issue a general order that military personnel must no longer be sent to outside punishment camps.
“As for the timing and implementation of the Amnesty, the November 7th celebration of the Revolutionary Anniversary would be the ideal moment. It would serve to link Party history with an act of mercy. But this timetable imposes harsh burdens on our camp administrations. Preparations for release and transport would have to be seen by the prisoners to be far advanced. I myself would prefer May Day next as the date for the announcement.”
He glanced round the room. The others stared ahead, stonily. “Perhaps not,” he said ruminatively. “Perhaps this is something we must put behind us. There will be no amnesty for politicals, of course.” He paused. “November 7th, then, I will issue instructions.”
So we eight men around a table in the former Royal American Hotel, Odessa, all unwittingly set in train the stupendous events of that winter.
But whether Semyon Kuba was to receive from us the Party and Presidential authority which would enable him to ride the tiger, depended on the will of one man — Igor Alexandrovich Bukansky, Patient of State Psychiatric Hospital 36, Moscow.
THE SWANS FLY WEST
Chapter Thirty-Two
I was right about the little colonel [Zoya continues her story]. After the second or third visit, he came up to the truck just as we were about to leave for Krasibirsk. Very casually he handed me a key. “That’s to the apartment,” he said. “My wife’s away this afternoon. Let yourself in and tackle the washing. I want no slacking,” he added with what he hoped was a twinkle in his eye.
Krasibirsk no longer depressed me. I hated the stares at my camp uniform, but I would sometimes meet the old man as I took my ten minute walk around the little town and he would buy me a few slices of sausage if there was any in the shops or a half loaf to chew on. From him I learned for the first time that bread was now rationed.
I also learned that he, too, had been a zek, sentenced to ten years under Stalin and then to ten years exile in Krasibirsk. By the time he was free, he said, he had no longer any wish, even to leave Krasibirsk, where he had worked as a carrier, carting goods by horse wagon often over vast distances to townships even further east.
He said that Siberia, this land of death and chains as the writer Gorky had called it, had a strange hold over him.
I was grateful to him because he succeeded, in those few minutes on two or three occasions, to make of Siberia something more than just a place of dread. He talked about the great virgin swamp and woodland, the taiga, a thousand miles deep, four and a half thousand miles long. He talked about the birch and larch and willow and cherry trees with the love of a man who had walked freely among them, his feet flattening the spring crystal flowers that grew among the moss.
He told me, too, about the native-born Sibiriaks, not the Gulag spawn as he contemptuously referred to the people of Krasibirsk, but the people who came from Russia by force or choice over the last 200 years and are now so completely Siberian that their folklore is from the Tatars and their songs are convict songs.
To him this was the true meaning of Siberia, the land of the raskolniks, the dissenters, the free spirits.