CHAPTER II
LAYING OUR PLANS
Cautious Reconnaissance Work — Bezsonoff's Arrival — Our Party Made Up — Elaborate Contrivance Necessary — A Critical Moment.
The thought of escape was always in my mind, even in the Caucasus, in the prisons of the Extraordinary Commissions of Batoum, Tiflis, Vladikavkaz and Grozny. On my arrival in the Solovky, I first began to sound the possibilities in this direction. In the concentration camps of the north, inquiries of this kind have to be made with extreme caution; the greatest delicacy must be employed in asking questions and reconnoitring the ground. You cannot tell which of the prisoners are secret agents of the Gpu and which are people who feel as you yourself do. There have been many cases in which educated prisoners, at first sight most charming fellows, have betrayed their companions.
In the winter of 1924-25 I became intimate with the medical student Nikolaeff. He told me that he was making preparations to escape. We did not agree, however, as to what should be done in the next stage. Nikolaeff insisted that we should escape into the interior of Russia, with correct papers, which he promised to forge. As described in the last chapter, he did this successfully on his own behalf. I, on the contrary, was for escaping abroad, for two reasons, viz.: (1) even if we succeeded in escaping, the Tchekists would probably find us very soon if we stayed in Russia; (2) my destination, the Caucasus, was too distant from the Solovky for me to be sure of getting there. So, while Nikolaeff succeeded in making his escape to Moscow via Kem and Petrograd, I stayed in the Solovky to wait for a more favourable opportunity.
One Saturday in February, 1925, a new convoy of "K.R.'s" arrived in the Solovky. Among the prisoners was a former captain in the Life Guards Dragoon Regiment named Bezsonoff. He had not been two days in the camp before he asked me:
"What do you think about escaping? I mean to clear off from here pretty soon."
As I had every reason to believe that I was dealing with a Gpu spy, I replied:
"I don't mean to try to escape. I'm all right here."
But soon I got to know Bezsonoff better. He had been transported to Tobolsk for "counter-revolution" and repeated attempts to escape from captivity. He managed to escape from Tobolsk and got to Petrograd, where he lived in freedom for six months. Then he again fell into the hands of the Gpu, which sentenced him to be shot, but his sentence was commuted to five years in the Solovky, to be followed by a period of exile in the Narym region. In the camp he bore himself with an independent air, openly abused the Tchekists, and did not obey the orders of the personnel.
We decided to escape into Finland. Each of us sought for companions in the adventure among our fellow-prisoners. Bezsonoff came to an understanding with two Poles named Malbrodsky and Sazonoff. Malbrodsky was a particularly valuable comrade because he had a compass. While in the Tcheka prison at Minsk, he had hidden his compass in a cake of soap, and had brought it, thus concealed, to the Solovky. Of course we had no maps of any kind. Our marching orders were simply — westward! Here the compass would play a decisive part.
Only prisoners engaged in outside labour had a chance of flight. Of late I had had the duty of making out the lists of prisoners detailed for various kinds of work outside the camp. I myself, however, was not allowed by the Tchekists to go outside the wire fence, as they had suspected me for a long time past of intending to make a bolt. I was faced with the difficult task of making out a list of workers consisting only of men useful to us, and getting my own name on to the list in addition.
As a rule, parties from five to twelve strong are detailed for work outside the camp. Too large a party was no use to us. It was indispensable that a party of five should be made up consisting of the four already mentioned — Bezsonoff, Malbrodsky, Sazonoff and myself — and a reliable "K.R." I managed to add a Kuban Cossack to the list. He was not warned in advance.
We had still one obstacle to overcome. Each party was, as a rule, composed of prisoners belonging to the same labour company. Bezsonoff belonged to the 5th company, but Sazonoff, for example, to the 7th. Although I was continually in danger of ruining the whole laboriously contrived scheme, I nevertheless managed to get all our men into one party.
Early in the morning of May 18th, 1925, two parties, among others, were taken to work outside the camp. A party from the 6th company was taken to cut wood on the shore near Kem, and another — ours — to clean out the Red soldiers' barracks, on Popoff Island itself. This threatened to ruin the whole plan — it was impossible to get away from Popoff Island.
All this time a Tchekist named Myasnikoff had been keeping a particularly watchful eye on me. He sometimes said he had been a hussar, sometimes a sailor, sometimes a colleague of Dzerzhinsky; in the camp he was deputy-commander of a labour regiment. I had, under his eyes, to invent some reason for sending our party to the woods, and not the other. After a minute's thought, I went up to the party from the 6th company and said:
"You fellows'll be simply frozen in the woods with such rags on, and only bast shoes. You'd better go to the barracks."
Our men had specially mended their clothes and boots for the occasion.
Luckily for us, just at this moment Myasnikoff was called away for some reason or other. I led our party up to the guards, and said:
"Now, comrades, take us off to work in the woods."
Never has my heart beaten as it did in that minute. They gave us an escort of two Red soldiers, and took us off to work.