An Initial Success — Covering our Tracks — Bezsonoff as Dictator — Traces of our Pursuers — A Trap.
We cut wood till 8 a.m. At that hour a goods train came from Popoff Island to Kem; it would have been dangerous to try to escape before then. When the train had disappeared, Bezsonoff gave the signal arranged long before — he turned up his collar. We flung ourselves on the soldiers from behind. We succeeded in disarming one of them immediately. The other pushed away Malbrodsky and Sazonoff, whose business it was to disarm him, and began to yell. Luckily we were nearly three miles from the camp. I gave the Red soldier a blow in the side, and he fell.
I was for shooting the two soldiers; they were both Communists and belonged to the Gpu troops. But Bezsonoff persuaded me not to do so, arguing that an act of vengeance at such a moment was useless, and that no one would gain anything by it.
At that moment the Kuban Cossack, who had flung himself on the ground in surprise, stretched out his hands to us, and cried:
"Little brothers, don't kill me!"
We calmed him.
"What are you making all this noise about, you fool? Nobody's going to kill you. The freedom you had in the Solovky Kalinin gave you, we give you the freedom you have now. Do as you like. If you go back to the camp you'll be shot. If you come with us, there's a risk there too. Or, if you like, go south on your own, to the Kuban. We can do without you. Do as you like."
The Cossack came with us. His name, by the way, was Pribludin.
We had decided long before to cover our tracks in every possible way. Our real objective being the frontier between Russia and Finland, which lay to westward, we went due north for twenty miles along the railway embankment, taking the two Red soldiers with us. After covering nine miles, we sent one of the soldiers off in a westerly direction, and the second when we had gone eleven miles, first taking off their boots. We reckoned that even if they found the way back they would not reach the camp before the following morning.
We came to a railwayman's hut. We asked the pointsman to sell us bread (we had six tchervontsy, which we had saved while we were preparing to escape), but the man, apparently a Communist, refused. We had to take the food by force. We loaded up Pribludin, Sazonoff and Malbrodsky with the provisions and went on for three miles in a northerly direction, then turned east, then south, and came back almost to the same place from which we had started northward two days before. We crossed the railway embankment and steered due west.
During these first days we walked without a break, either by day or by, night. The "rests" mentioned in Bezsonoff's diary, which he kept on the inside of the cover of his Bible, were halts of a few minutes only for food. Our weariness soon began to make itself felt. There were no roads; our route lay over damp ground, covered with thick undergrowth, and endless marshes. Bezsonoff, who had constituted himself an inexorable dictator to the rest of us, brandished a rifle under the nose of anyone who stopped even for a minute, and threatened to kill him on the spot. At the time we thought him cruel, but I know now that the merciless insistence of our "dictator" contributed in a high degree to the success of our flight.
We changed direction sharply once again and marched southward, towards the river Kem. A snowstorm overtook us. The violence of the tempest blew us off our legs. My boots got burnt through at a fire; luckily I had an old pair of goloshes with me, and put them on, winding strips of rag round my legs. It is possible that the fearful blizzard, which caused us such hardships, benefited us at the same time, for the snow covered our tracks.
Our bread was all finished. We had thirty bits of sugar left. We had introduced a "starvation ration," and were sharing out every crumb, when we came to the hamlet Poddiujnoe.
Near the hamlet we found the footmarks of Tchekists. As Bezsonoff had on a pair of Government boots, taken from one of the Red soldiers, we were able to compare the tracks and ascertain that the footmarks were those of soldiers belonging to the Gpu troops. We also found the footmarks of police dogs. So we knew that we were being hunted with dogs.
We decided to go on westward along the bank of the river Kem, without making any detour. My feet were so badly frost-bitten that the pain sometimes brought tears into my eyes, but there was nothing for it but to go on and on. About ten miles from Poddiujnoe we met two Karelians. On seeing us they were filled with horror at our convict-like appearance, and at our situation. They told us that all Karelia had been informed by telephone that five men had escaped from the Solovky, and ten poods of flour promised for each fugitive handed over. They had seen ten Tchekists with dogs. Moreover, a motor launch from Kem, with six men on board, was patrolling the river.
We asked the Karelians for bread and tobacco. They gave us two loaves and a packet of makhorka (coarse tobacco), for which we paid three roubles — they had no change. They advised us to make for a dairy farm twenty miles from Poddiujnoe. We found, in due course, that a regular trap had been laid for us at this dairy farm. But I do not think the two Karelians sent us into it intentionally.
As a rule, when we came near a human habitation, we lay on the ground for two hours, watching to see who went into and came out of the house. We did so this time, and saw nothing suspicious. Sazonoff, Malbrodsky and Pribludin remained behind, while Bezsonoff and I went forward. The house stood apart from the farm buildings. Bezsonoff opened the door. In the very act of entering he gave a wild yell of "Red soldiers!" On opening the door, he saw right in front of him three rifles aimed at him. Being an exceptionally cool-headed man, he did not lose his head, but instantly slammed the door to and fired through it.
I leapt to the door. The Red soldiers kept quite still. It would have been stupid to fight them. We decided to retreat to the woods. But we had to pass the window of the house, and the Tchekists would have shot us down from the window like partridges. Bezsonoff took up a position close to the stables, in a place from which he could fire at the window at any moment if one of the soldiers showed himself at it; I stood on the other side, also holding my rifle at the ready.
Then, abandoning our posts, we gave ourselves the order, "Quick — bolt!" and were about to make for the woods when a motor launch, with six soldiers on board, came up to the bank from the direction of the mouth of the Shomba, a tributary of the Kem. The Red soldiers in the house leapt out of the windows on the opposite side, facing the river. I did not see any use in firing. Bezsonoff, however, fired at the launch. The Tchekists leapt ashore and flung themselves into the woods. Weeping and wailing arose from another boat, loaded with women and children, the families of Karelian fishermen. We retired hastily into the woods.