Gulag_ A History - Anne Applebaum [117]
The major walked along the line, quickly examining the bodies. He was choosing goods—to production, to the sewing factory! To the collective farm! To the zone! To the hospital! The production manager wrote down the surnames.
But when he heard her surname, the Major looked at her and asked,
—“What relation are you to Professor Gagen-Torn?”
—“Daughter.”
—“Put her in the hospital, she has scabies, she has red marks on her stomach.”
As she did not have red marks on her stomach, Gagen-Torn assumed, correctly as it turned out, that the man had once known and admired her father, and was saving her, at least temporarily, from hard work.92
Prisoners’ behavior in the first few days of their camp life, during and after this selection process, could have a profound effect on their fate. During his three-day period of rest upon arrival at Kargopollag, for example, the Polish novelist Gustav Herling took stock of his situation and “sold my high officer’s boots for 900 grams of bread to an urka [a criminal prisoner] from the railway porters’ brigade.” In recompense, the criminal prisoner used his connections in the camp administration to help Herling secure a job as a porter at the food supply center. This was hard work, Herling was told, but at least he would be able to steal extra rations—as proved to be the case. And right away he was granted a “privilege.” The camp commander told him to report at the camp store to draw out a bushlat [a long-sleeved jerkin lined with wadding], a cap with ear-flaps, wadded trousers, waterproof gloves made of sailcloth, and valenki [felt boots] of best quality, i.e., new or worn only a little—a full set of clothing such as is usually issued only to the best “Stakhanovite” brigades of prisoners. 93
Wheeling and dealing took other forms as well. Upon arriving at Ukhtizhemlag, Gliksman immediately realized that the “specialist” title he had been handed in the Kotlas transit camp—he was classified as a trained economist—had no meaning in the concentration camp itself. Meanwhile, he noticed that during the first few days in the camp, his savvier Russian acquaintances did not bother with official formalities:
Most of the “specialists” utilized the three free days to visit the offices and bureaus of the camp, seeking old acquaintances wherever they went and conducting suspicious negotiations with some of the camp officials. They were all excited and preoccupied. Every one of them had secrets of his own and was fearful lest another spoil his chances and grab the more comfortable work each coveted. In no time at all the majority of these people knew where to go, at whose door to knock, and what to say.
As a result, a genuinely qualified Polish doctor was sent to cut trees in the forest, while a former pimp was given an office job as an accountant, “although he had not the slightest notion of accounting and was altogether half illiterate.” 94
Those prisoners who thus managed to avoid physical labor had indeed concocted the beginnings of a survival strategy—but only the beginnings. Now, they had to learn the strange rules that governed daily life in the camps.
Chapter 10
LIFE IN THE CAMPS
The sound of a distant bell Enters the cell with the dawn I hear the bell calling out to me: “Where are you? Where are you?” “Here I am!” . . . Then tears of greeting, Mean tears of captivity . . . Not for God, But for you, Russia.”
—Simeon Vilensky, 19481
ACCORDING TO THE most accurate count to date, there were, between 1929 and 1953, 476 camp complexes in the realm of the Gulag.2 But this number is misleading. In practice, each one of these camp complexes contained dozens, or even hundreds, of smaller camp units. These smaller units—lagpunkts—have not yet been counted, and probably cannot be, since some were temporary, some were permanent, and some were technically parts of different camps at different times. Nor can very much be said about the customs and practices of the lagpunkts that is