Gulag_ A History - Anne Applebaum [143]
Moscow kept statistics on accidents, and these occasionally provoked irate exchanges between inspectors and camp commanders. One such compilation, for the year 1945, lists 7,124 accidents in the Vorkuta coal mines alone, including 482 that resulted in serious injury and 137 that resulted in death. The inspectors laid the blame on the shortage of miners’ lamps, on electrical failures, and on the inexperience of workers and their frequent rotation. Angrily, the inspectors calculated the number of workdays lost due to accidents: 61,492.44
Absurdly bad organization and slovenly management also hampered work. Although it is important to note that ordinary Soviet workplaces were badly run too, the situation was worse within the Gulag, where the lives and health of workers was not held to be important, and where the regular arrival of spare parts was disrupted by weather and huge distances. Chaos had been the reigning spirit of the Gulag since the days of the White Sea Canal, and it continued into the 1950s, even after far more workplaces in the Soviet Union were mechanized. For those doing forestry work, “there were no chainsaws, no timber-haulage tractors, and no mechanical loaders.” 45 Those working in textile factories were given “working tools either too few or else inappropriate.” This meant, according to one prisoner, that “all the seams had to be pressed with a huge iron weighing two kilograms. One had to iron 426 pairs of trousers during one session, one’s hands got numb with lifting the weight and one’s legs swollen and painful.” 46
Machinery also broke down constantly, a factor not necessarily taken into account when norms were calculated. In the same textile factory, “mechanics were constantly being summoned. These were mostly female convicts. The repairs went on for hours, for the women were not skilled. It became impossible to do the compulsory amount of work, and consequently we received no bread.” 47
The theme of broken machinery and unskilled machine technicians comes up in the annals of the Gulag administration again and again. Regional camp administrators attending the Far Eastern Party Conference in Khabarovsk in 1934 complained that constant breakdowns in equipment supply and the poor qualifications of technicians meant they could not meet norms for gold production. 48 A 1938 letter addressed to the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs in charge of the Gulag states that “40 to 50 percent of tractors are broken.” But even more primitive working methods often failed to work too. A letter of a year earlier notes that of the 36,491 horses employed by the Gulag, 25 percent were not fit to work.49
The Gulag’s enterprises also felt very keenly the lack of engineers and administrators. Few skilled technicians voluntarily worked on Gulag projects, and those who did volunteer did not necessarily have the appropriate skills. Over the years, many efforts were made to attract free workers to the camps, and enormous incentives were offered. As early as the mid-1930s, recruiters from Dalstroi were agitating across the country, offering special privileges for anyone who signed a two-year labor contract. These included a wage 20 percent higher than the Soviet average for the first two years, and 10 percent higher for the following years, as well as paid vacations, access to special food products and supplies, and a generous pension .50
The camps of the far north were also portrayed with great fanfare and enthusiasm in the Soviet press. An example of this sort of propaganda appeared in English in a publication called Sovietland, written for the benefit of foreigners. In an April 1939 article devoted to Magadan, a classic of the genre, the magazine gushed about the city’s magical appeal: