"A Place in the Lamp-light" — "Outside" and "Inside" Work — No Exemption for Illness — Horrors of Wood-cutting — How We were Fed — Prisoners Starved and Government Cheated.
The huts in Popoff Island camp are about forty yards long and ten yards in breadth. The politicals' hut is twice as large as the others. From two hundred to three hundred persons are as a rule quartered in each hut; in Nos. 5 and 6, occupied mainly by shpana, there are over seven hundred persons.
One cannot breathe as night approaches; the stench is awful. In the evening, when the prisoners return from work, the huts, full of cracks, holes in the roofs, and draughts from all quarters, are so cold that the inmates shiver like men with fever. It is impossible to sleep at night for the stuffiness and human exhalations. We used to strip naked and pile all our clothes on top of us.
The board-beds are arranged along the walls in two tiers. Everyone tries to get an "upper berth," for if you lie below a continual shower of lice, remains of food and spittle descends on you. Sanguinary fights take place for beds in the upper tier.
The electric power station was not constructed till the end of 1924. Until then an apology for a lamp — a tin containing a wick slightly damped with paraffin — flickered in the middle of each hut. This gave light to the three or four beds nearest to it; all the rest of the hut was in darkness. Now every hut is lighted with a small electric light globe (16 watts), but this is quite inadequate for such large huts. There is always a crowd under the one tiny lamp, trying to read, or write to their relations. The absence of light is particularly trying in winter. The headmen of the huts profit by the situation to take bribes, either in money or in kind, for "a place in the lamp-light"!
"Nep" — the New Economic Policy — affected even the Solovky. They were placed on a "self-supporting" basis, and the sum granted annually by the central Government for the upkeep of the camps was considerably reduced. Thus in the present year (1925) the Solovky received only 250,000 gold roubles as against two millions demanded by Boky and Nogteff.
There is no need to feed the prisoners, even on a semi-starvation diet. But it is quite indispensable that the administration should pocket large sums of money. Therefore the Natchuslon and his minions have crushed the last drops of energy out of the prisoners and turned them all into dumb slaves.
Work in the Solovky is divided into two categories — "outside" (outside the wire fence) and "inside" (inside the camp). For outside work the prisoners are generally taken from Solovetsky and Popoff Islands to the mainland. Among the tasks which come under the head of outside work are: fetching wood, draining the marshes, laying, clearing and keeping in order railway lines and roads (earth and wooden), cutting timber for the necessities of the camp and for export, and loading and unloading timber, stones and supplies. The names of the vessels used for transporting cargo are the steamers Gleb Boky and Neva and the barge Klara, so named in honour of the German woman Communist Clara Zetkin.
By inside work is meant clearing away snow, helping in the kitchen and workshops, removing refuse from the latrines and the huts occupied by ordinary criminals, and performing services for the Tchekists. The women scrub the floors of the huts and offices, cook food, do the Tchekists' and Red soldiers' washing, sewing, etc.
Work begins at 6 a.m. both summer and winter. According to the regulations work stops at 7 p.m., but in the Solovky there is a twelve hours' working day, with an interval for dinner at 1 p.m. Actually work goes on much longer than this, at the discretion of the supervising Tchekist. This is particularly the case in summer, when the prisoners literally have to work to fainting point; in that season work often goes on from 6 a.m. to 12 or 1 the following night.
There is no Sunday in the Solovky, nor is there any other day of rest in the week. Every day is a working day. On the great festivals, Easter, Christmas, etc., the hours of work are usually lengthened in order to insult the feelings of the religious prisoners.[33] Only one day in the year is set apart as a festival . . . the First of May.
Illness, physical weakness, old age and extreme youth are not taken into account in the slightest degree. A refusal to work on the ground of illness, even when the illness is obvious to the Tchekists themselves, involves, for a first offence, removal to the "Sekirka" (the place of punishment), and, for a second offence, shooting, although, according to law, the punishment for refusal to work — and even then only without adequate cause — is the extension of the term of imprisonment by one year.
The most exhausting labour is fetching wood in winter. This work is absolutely insupportable. You stand up to your knees in snow, so that it is difficult to move. Huge tree-trunks, cut away with axes, fall on the prisoners, sometimes killing them on the spot. Clad in rags, with no mittens, with only bast shoes on your feet, hardly able to stand for weakness caused by under-nourishment, your hands and whole body are frozen stiff in the bitter cold.
The minimum daily task is as follows: four men have to cut, split and pile four cubic sajenes (a sajene is about two yards), and till they have done this they are not allowed to return to the camp. An extra hardship attached to all outside work is that if the prisoners do not get through their minimum task up to time and return to camp punctually, the shpana take the kitchen by storm, and they get no dinner.
Once I was sent to the shore near Kem to cut wood with a party of other "K.R.'s." The wood was urgently needed, and we were chased out of our huts at 5 a.m. As a rule sentries are changed at 12 p.m. But this time, for some reason or other, no relief for our escort was sent to the wood where we were at work. The Red soldiers, not remarkable for discipline, took us back to the camp, demanding to be relieved. Toropoff cursed them and called up a fresh escort of Tchekists. Then we were driven straight back to our work in the same wood without any interval for dinner, and did not return till 4 a.m. In other words, we worked for nineteen hours in severe cold without food, and without interruption save for our two extra marches to and from the camp!
Everything in the Solovky that could be plundered was plundered long ago, and everything that could be sold was sold. To obtain new resources, the authorities made various big labour contracts in the territory of the "autonomous" Karelian Republic — for example, for the construction of a road from Kem to Ukhta. But seeing that unemployment menaces Karelia itself, the Karelian Vtsik continually complained to Moscow that the Slon was taking the bread out of the mouths of the Karelians. The agreements were cancelled, but the Solovetsky administration profited by them nevertheless. This is what happened. Nogteff submitted to Moscow more or less fantastic schemes for labour undertakings on Karelian territory, and asked the Gpu for a money subsidy and spirits, the latter for the workmen, toiling chin-deep in the marshes! The money and spirits, when they arrived, were divided among the Tchekists, those most intimate with Nogteff receiving the larger share.
As constructional and commercial schemes did not yield a large enough profit, the Solovetsky authorities saw the only way out in a reduction of the rations. This they proceeded to carry out.
Every prisoner, however hard the labour he was engaged on, was henceforward given 1 lb. of black bread daily. The bread is issued for ten days ahead, so that at the end of this time it is as hard as a stone. The bread is badly baked; the flour is stale and has a bitter taste.
Hot food is issued twice a day. Dinner is a plate of soup, made of mouldy codfish — evil-smelling water, without groats or butter; supper a tureen of millet or buckwheat gruel, again without butter. The "K.R.'s" often get no supper, because the shpana prisoners, who have lost their own portion at cards, go and rob the kitchen.
In the camp accounts every prisoner is entered as receiving 3 zolotniks of sugar a day, or (as this also is issued for ten days in advance) 30 zolotniks per issue. (A zolotnik is 1⁄96 of a Russian lb.) What each prisoner actually gets every ten days is a half-glass of half-frozen liquefied sugar containing 10 or 12 zolotniks. The Tchekists mix the sugar with water and thus steal 18 to 20 zolotniks on each ration, which, in a camp containing several thousand prisoners, means a profit of two or three score poods every day of issue.
It is also stated in the accounts that the prisoners receive one-eighth of a lb. of butter and one-eighth of a lb. of tobacco. In reality no butter or tobacco at all are issued in the camps. Casks of butter and hundreds of poods of tobacco are sold at Kem by the authorities, who pocket the money.
Lastly, according to the regulations, every prisoner engaged in hard bodily labour is supposed to receive, besides his food ration, 35 kopeks a day pocket money. The money for this purpose is sent by the central Government and is additional to the ordinary budget. No prisoner has ever received these 35 kopeks. Every penny of this "bonus" goes into the pockets of the Tchekists.
It is possible that before the "change of cabinet" the feeding in the Solovky was better than it is now. Then the prisoners got preserves, large quantities of which — enough for two years — were left behind by the British. The present ration amounts to nothing else than the murder of the prisoners by a slow death from starvation. I calculate, on the basis of the requirements of a man engaged in hard bodily labour, that this ration, issued for ten days, is barely sufficient for two or three days!
As I mentioned earlier in my narrative, the politicals receive the "improved ration," which is almost sufficient.
The Red soldiers get the "northern ration," with plenty of butter, fats, white bread, and even spirits.
[33] cf. p. 99.