Gulag_ A History - Anne Applebaum [266]
Later, Wallace did encounter real prisoners, although he did not know it: these were the singers and musicians, many of them arrested opera performers from Moscow and Leningrad, who performed for him in the Magadan theater. Told they were members of a “nonprofessional Red Army choir” stationed in the city, he marveled that amateurs could achieve such artistic heights. In fact, each one had been warned that “one word or sign that we were prisoners would be considered an act of treason.”86
Wallace also saw some prisoner handiwork, although again he did not know that either. Nikishov took him to an exhibition of embroidery, and told him the works on display had been made by a group of “local women who gathered regularly during the severe winter to study needlework.” Prisoners, of course, had done the work, in preparation for Wallace’s visit. When Wallace stopped before one of the works, in clear admiration, Nikishov took it off the wall and handed it to him. Much to his (pleasurable) surprise, Nikishov’s wife, the much-feared Gridasova, modestly let it be known that she herself was the artist. Later, a prisoner, Vera Ustieva, learned that her picture was one of two which had been given to the Vice President as a memento of his trip. “Our boss received a letter from the wife of the Vice President, thanking her for the present and saying that the pictures hung in her hall,” she wrote later.87 In his memoirs Wallace also described the gifts: “These two wall paintings now convey to my visitors at my home in Washington rich impressions of the beauty of Russia’s rural landscape.”88
Wallace’s visit coincided, approximately, with the arrival of the “American gifts” in Kolyma. The American Lend-Lease program, which was meant to send weapons and military equipment to assist U.S. allies in their defense against Germany, brought American tractors, trucks, steam shovels, and tools to Kolyma, which was not quite the American government’s intention. It also brought a breath of air from the outside world. Machine parts arrived wrapped in old newspapers, and from them, Thomas Sgovio learned of the existence of the war in the Pacific. Until then, he, like most prisoners, had thought that the Soviet army was doing all of the fighting, with America providing nothing but supplies.89 Wallace himself had noticed that Kolyma miners (or the Kolyma Komsomol members pretending to be miners) were wearing American boots, also the fruits of Lend-Lease. When he asked about this—Lend-Lease gifts were not meant to be used in the operation of gold mines—his hosts claimed to have purchased the boots with cash. 90
The vast majority of the clothing sent by the United States wound up on the backs of the camp administration and their wives, although some of the clothing did end up being used by camp theatrical productions, and some of the canned pork did make its way to the prisoners. They ate it with relish: many had never seen canned meat before. Better still, they used the empty cans to make drinking cups, oil lamps, pots, pans, stovepipes, and even buttons—hardly imagining the surprise such ingenuity would have occasioned in the country where the cans had originated.91
Before Wallace left, Nikishov gave an elaborate banquet in his honor. Extravagant dishes, their ingredients carved out of prisoners’ rations, were served; toasts were made to Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Wallace himself made a speech, which included the following memorable words:
Both the Russians and the Americans, in their different ways, are groping for a way of life that will enable the common man everywhere in the world to get the most good out of modern technology. There is nothing irreconcilable in our aims and purposes. Those who so proclaim are