Chapter 38 Chapter 8 Women in Labor Camps

Even during the investigation stage, you will not fail to think of them, after all, their cells are only separated from you by a wall!They—the weak are in the same prison, under the same management system, how can they stand this unbearable interrogation? ! The corridor was silent, and their footsteps and the movement of their dresses could not be heard.But if the guards in Butyrka delay a little longer to open which lock, if the male prisoners in our cell are asked to stand at the window of the bright corridor upstairs for half a minute, and pass through the "cage mouth" outside the window, we will suddenly You can see a woman's ankle and leather shoes on the asphalt in the corner of the small green garden below.They also lined up in two columns, waiting for the door to open.Only ankles and leather shoes can be seen, and they are still high-heeled!It was really like the roar of the orchestra during Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.We couldn't see anything higher than them, and the watchman had already ushered us into the house.We frantically rubbed against the house, and our hearts seemed to be a little brighter, and it seemed to be covered with a layer of clouds.We make up the rest of the image in our minds, fantasizing them as angelic wretches who cannot live without being depressed.How are they?How are they? !

But it seems that instead of being heavier than us, they may be lighter than us.From the reminiscences written by women about the investigative phase, I have not yet found any material from which to conclude that they were more depressed and depressed than we are.Gynecologist Zubov spent ten years squatting in the labor camp, treating female prisoners and observing them.He said: Yes, statistically, women respond to arrest and its main consequence - loss of family - faster and more clearly than men.She is psychically damaged, which often manifests itself in the loss of the most vulnerable female faculties.

What amazes me most about the interrogation recollections written by women is this: in that place they can think of things that seem so "trivial" from the prisoner's (but by no means a woman's) point of view: Nadya • Surovtseva, a beautiful young woman, wore two different stockings in the fuss of her arraignment.In the investigator's office, the interrogator kept looking at her legs, much to her embarrassment.You'd expect her to say in her heart, "Fuck him, it's none of his business"?She didn't go to the theater with him, let alone she is almost a doctor of philosophy (according to Western standards) and an enthusiastic politician?Who would have thought she would care about such a thing?Alexandra Ostrezova, who was imprisoned in Velikiy Lubinka in 1943, later told me in the labor camp that she used to play tricks in her cell: sometimes she hid under the table , the guards were frightened to death because of the lack of prisoners, and they ran into the house to look for them; Evening dress.It is true that Ostrezova was at that time a pampered rascal and was imprisoned with a young girl, Mila Upolevich.

Later in the Red Presnya Prison compound I happened to be sitting with a group of released female prisoners, new convicts like us.I was amazed to see that they were not so thin, so weak and pale as we were.The same ration standard, the same torture in prison, the effect on women is less on average.They don't starve so quickly. But for all of us, especially for women, prisons are the flowering, labor camps the fruit.It is there that women are either destroyed, or succumbed and metamorphosed to fit the environment. In the labor camps the situation was reversed, and women's lives became more and more difficult than us men's.Let's start with the filth of the labor camp.They had suffered enough of being dirty at the deportation station and on the way to deportation, and they couldn't clean up when they arrived at the labor camp.In a normal women's work class in a labor camp, that is to say, in a collective shed, she was almost never able to feel really clean on her body, never had warm water (sometimes no water at all. In Krivo In Xiekovo No. 1 labor camp, you can’t even wash your face in winter. The water is as cold as ice, and there is no place to heat it up).She cannot obtain gauze and strips through any legal means.How can there be laundry!

Bath room?correct!Entering the labor camp starts from the shower room—if you don’t count the distance you jumped off the tank truck in the snow and carried your luggage and walked among the escort team and police dogs.The bathrooms of the labor camps are the places where stripped female prisoners are inspected like goods.Whether there is water in the bathroom or not, the two tasks of checking for lice and shaving armpit and pubic hair will always give the barbers, who are not of the same rank in the camp, the opportunity to inspect the new ladies.Immediately afterwards, other handymen also came to inspect Z one by one. This is the old tradition of Solovitz, but there is still a non-indigenous restraint in the early days of the archipelago-they inspected through their clothes when they were doing auxiliary labor.But the archipelago hardened gradually, and the procedure became unscrupulous.Fedot C. and his wife (they were married in such a situation) now recall with a smile that the men's servants lined up on both sides of a narrow corridor, and the new female prisoners were allowed to strip naked and pass through the corridor, not all together. Instead, pass them one by one.Then the handymen discuss and decide who wants which. (According to statistics in the 1920s, the ratio of female prisoners to male prisoners in our country is one to six or seven. After a series of "Decrees" were issued in the 1930s and 1940s, the ratio was evened out a little bit. But it still has not reached Does not value women, especially beautiful ones.) In some labor camps, this procedure maintains a formal form: after the female prisoners are brought into the work shed, they are well-maintained wearing brand-new cotton vests (in the labor camp The battalion wears a dress without rips and oil stains, and immediately looks like a great playboy) The confident and unrestrained orderly followed in at this time.They walked unhurriedly between the "cars" and made their selections.They sat on the edge of the bed, gossiped, and invited them to be "guests".What they live in is not a large steerage-style shed, but a "small room" for several people.They have an electric stove and a frying pan.They still have the human dream - fried potatoes!The first visit was simply a good meal to compare and understand different aspects of camp life.The quick-tempered one immediately asked for "payment" after giving the woman potatoes, and the restrained one sent the woman out of the house and explained to her the future.While people come to invite you politely, you can find a place to live in the camp!It's clean, it's got laundry, it's neat to wear, it's not tiring—you can get it all!

In this sense, women could be considered "easier" in the camps.It is easier for women to simply save a life.Some dying people harbor a sort of "sexual hatred" for female prisoners who don't have to pick food from the swill pits.From this sentiment, it is natural to think that life in the labor camps is easier for women, "because they can get by on less food, because they have the means to avoid starvation and to survive. A man who is crazy about starvation, he His whole world was covered by the wings of the Hunger God, blind to all others. Yes, there are some flirtatious women, it is easier for them to get along with men outside, and they are not very picky.The easy doors of the labor camp were, of course, always open to such a woman.Although personal characteristics cannot be simply classified according to the provisions of the Criminal Code, I am generally correct in saying this: most of the fifty-eight female prisoners do not fall into this category.Some people think that taking this step is worse than dying.Others hesitate, waver, and self-conscious (the shame in front of their girlfriends also prevents them from taking this path), and when they finally make up their minds, finally intend to obey, it is too late, and there is no such thing in the camps. Buyer now.

Because not every woman is wanted. Many women obeyed during the first few days in the camp.The prospect is so grim, and there is no hope at all.Those who make this choice include married women, mothers of children, and underage girls.It was these little girls, overwhelmed by the rudeness and brutality of the labor camps, who became the most unscrupulous sluts. What, quit?Well, we'll see!Put on men's trousers and coats!Like an amorphous creature that is fat on the outside and weak on the inside, trudging into the forest to work!At that time, you will crawl to the door and kneel on the ground begging.

If you go into camp in good health and make smart decisions in the first few days, you'll end up in the sanitation department, the kitchen, the counting room, the sewing room, and the laundry room for a long time.The years will pass comfortably, just like the outside.Even if you encounter deportation, you will arrive at the new location like a blooming flower, and you will know what to do from the first day when you get there.The most suitable way is to serve as the chief's maid.She was newly sent to a labor camp. She was a tall, thin-skinned woman who had been pampered and pampered for many years by a high-ranking military official. The honorable job of cleaning the floor in the section chief's office.She began her sentence so softly, knowing full well that it was her luck.

As for who you loved outside, and who you wanted to be faithful to, it doesn't matter!What is the use of the loyalty of a living corpse?In the women's prison shed, you can always hear this sentence: "When you go out to urge you?" You will grow thicker and older, and you will spend the rest of your female years in misery and emptiness.Wouldn't it be wise to hurry up and get something out of this savage life? As a convenience, no one here gossips about such things. "That's how life is all about this place." There is no meaning left, no purpose left in life, so nothing binds you.

She didn't give in right away, or she would change her mind, or someone would force her to submit.Even those who are stubborn, if they are a bit attractive, will be cornered and have to submit. When we were in the labor camp at the Kaluga checkpoint (Moscow city), there was a proud girl M, a lieutenant, a special marksman.Like a princess in a fairy tale - bright red lips, swan-like figure, black and shiny hair.Warehousekeeper Isaac Bershader, an old, dirty, fat fellow, was determined to buy her.The appearance of this person is disgusting to anyone, let alone her who has a fit body and a heroic experience not long ago.He is a rotten lump of wood, and she is a well-proportioned poplar.But he surrounded her tightly from all sides, leaving no room for her to breathe.Not only did he keep her in general labor (all the servants acted in unison to help him round the siege), he kept her in constant trouble by the watchmen (who were also "hooked" to him), but he threatened She must be sent to the worst and farthest labor camp.As a result, one night after the lights were turned off in the labor camp, relying on the snow and the dim light of the sky, I saw with my own eyes that M slipped out of the work shed like a shadow, lowered his head, and knocked on the door of the storage room of the wolf-like Bershader .After that, she was spared no expense in the arrangement in the camp.

M?H? is already a middle-aged woman, a draftsman on the outside, mother of two, her husband died in prison.She was worn out in the women's class at the lumberyard, but she still refused to give in.Her physique is already on the verge of irreversibility.Her legs were swollen, and she was dragged at the end of the team when she was off work. The soldiers of the escort team drove her away with gun butts.Once I stayed in the camp for a day for unknown reasons.The kitchen master came to curry favor with her: Come to my hut, I will let you have a meal.she went.He put a pan of pork and fried potatoes in front of her, and she ate it all.But after paying her "reward," she vomited, and the potatoes were wasted.The master scolded her: "I thought I was a golden branch and jade leaf!" From then on, she gradually got used to it.She got a good deal.Every time a movie is shown in the camp, she chooses the man on the field who plans to spend the night with her. Whoever delays longer than her will one day have to walk slowly into the collective work shed of the male prisoners (there are no handymen anymore), and repeat monotonously while walking in the aisle between the "small carriages": " Half a kilo...half a kilo...": If the lifesaver came back with her with rations, he would cover three sides of his "carriage" with sheets, in this tent, shack (the word "small shack" is From this) earn a piece of bread in it, if it is not caught by the watchman beforehand. The "small compartment" covered with rags is a classic picture of the labor camp.But there is also something simpler than this, again we have to say 1947-1949 Krivosekovo No. 1 labor camp (we know this one, but how many of them are there?).In this labor camp, thieves, ordinary criminals, juvenile delinquents, disabled people, female prisoners, mothers of children...all mixed together.There is only one working shed for female prisoners, but it can accommodate 500 people.It was unspeakably filthy, incomparably filthy, a mess, and a strong smell. The "carriage" does not have any bedding.There was a ban on men, but no one obeyed it, and no one checked it.Not only men often go in, but even juvenile delinquents-boys aged twelve or thirteen, flock in groups to study.They were simply watching at first—there was no false shyness in that room.I don't know if it's because the cloth is not enough or the time is too late, but the "small carriage" is not covered or covered.Of course the lights are never turned off.Things were done so naturally, in public, and in several places at the same time.Only conspicuous oldness and conspicuous ugliness can be a talisman for a woman, and nothing else.A beautiful appearance must bring disaster, and such a woman will always have guests on her bed, will always be surrounded, begged, threatened with beatings and knives.Her hope was not in staying the course, but in surrendering skillfully, in choosing a man whose name and the power of his knife would henceforth protect her from others, from the next, from this covetous ranks. , These crazy juvenile delinquents who have been poisoned by the knowledge and air here are infested.Is it just to prevent the harassment of men?Is it just that young offenders are poisoned?What about those women who watch all this day in and day out but no one cares about it?The uncontrollable lust of these women will also explode, and they will pounce on and beat up the lucky female neighbor. Later, in the Krivosekovo labor camp, the willow disease quickly became popular again.It is said that almost half of the female prisoners are sick, but there is no way to do it, and it is still true, long-term occupiers and!Temporary suitors are still in an endless stream.Only some prudent people, such as K, the accordion player in the sanitation office, checked the secret list of sexually ill patients for themselves and their friends before each visit, so as not to make mistakes. What is the situation of the women of Kolyma?Know that a woman is a scarce commodity there, where she is looted and torn in eight.A woman must not fall into the hands of anyone on the construction site in that place, whether it is an escort, a free man, or a prisoner.In Kolyma the word "tram" appeared, meaning mass rape. K?O said that a driver played cards and lost a truckload of female prisoners who were being escorted to Alligan. He turned the truck into the alley and handed the women over to construction workers who were exempted from custody to sleep overnight. How is labor?In mixed homework classes, women can still take advantage of some light work.But if the entire homework class is full of women, there will be no empathy.You still have to hand over so many square meters of timber!There is also the entire reform-through-labor camp composed of women, where women are required to do all logging, digging, and stripping.Only copper and tungsten mines don't send women.Take Karl Lager's "29th Labor Camp" as an example, how many female prisoners are there?No more, no less, six thousand!What kinds of jobs do women do there?Yelinna works as a porter.She carries bags of eighty kilograms or even one hundred kilograms!Yes, there was help on the upper shoulders, and she was a gymnast in her youth (Elena Prokofievna Chebotarova was a porter during her ten-year sentence). Non-female brutal habits have formed in the women's labor camps: endless scolding, endless fights, and rampant riots.If you don't, you can't live. (However, according to the observation of Pustovel Prokhorov, an engineer exempted from detention, once a female prisoner is drawn from the women's labor brigade to work as a domestic servant or do a decent job, she immediately becomes quiet and diligent. He has seen the Béa main line in the 1930s [ The situation of the women's labor camp on the Second Trans-Siberian Railway.Please look at such a small scene: On a hot day, the female prisoners asked the escort team to allow them to take a bath in the ditch, but the escort team refused.The female prisoners are now unanimously stripped naked and lying on the ground basking in the sun - next to the main railway line, right under the eyes of the passing trains.It's no big deal to pass a domestic train, but an international express is coming soon, and there are foreigners in it.Female prisoners were asked to put on clothes, but they did not obey orders.So a firetruck was called and they were driven away with fire hoses. ) Look again at the labor of women in Krivosekovo.In the borrow yard of the brick factory, after a lot is opened, the roof is thrown there (the roof is laid flat on the ground before mining).Afterwards, these wet and heavy logs need to be pulled up from the big pit ten to twelve meters deep.How about Rafa?Readers will say: use machinery.That's natural.So a women's team used two cables (half the middle of the cable) to loop both ends of the log.Stand in two rows at each end, and pull out the log like pullers (the steps must be equal so that the log does not fall off, and everything has to be started from scratch) at one end of the cable.Then, in a group of twenty, they carried such a log on their shoulders, carried it to a new place and piled it there under the cursing orders of the perverted operation monitor.You may ask why not use a tractor?Oh, please forgive me!This is 1948, where can I find a tractor?You will say why not use a crane?But have you forgotten what Vyshinsky said about "the magician's labor that can transform people from emptiness and insignificance into heroes"?What would a magician do if a crane was used?If a crane is used, must not these people be forever empty and small! Such labor can wear out a man's body.There is no longer anything feminine about a woman, whether on a regular basis or once a month.If they can wait until the next experience, what is revealed after taking off their clothes in front of the doctor is no longer the body that the servants in the corridor of the bathroom are coveting: she has become a woman of indescribable age; The sharp edges and corners, the breasts are drooping, like two small dry pockets; the excess skin on the flat buttocks is a blessing.There is so little flesh above the knee that there is a gap between the legs through which a sheep's head or even a football can pass.His voice became thicker and hoarse, and dark spots of pellagra appeared on his face. (According to one gynecologist, after a few months of labor in a logging camp, a more vital organ can sag and prolapse.) Work like a magician! There are no ordinary things in life, let alone in a labor camp.Not everyone is in the same desperate situation in labor, and the younger you are, the better off you are.I have seen Napolinaya, a girl of nineteen, a stocky girl with red cheeks all over her country girl.She worked as a tower crane driver in a small labor camp at the Kaluga checkpoint.She climbed the crane like a monkey, and sometimes climbed unnecessarily onto the boom, and from there yelled at the whole construction site: "Oh... oh..." She had no phone, and she was free from the control room and the ground. The director and foreman of the artificial site also shouted at the top of their voices.She found everything interesting and happy, as if she could have joined the regiment if she hadn't been sent to a labor camp.She smiles at everyone with non-gail-camp kindness.She was forever receiving 140 percent rations—the highest standard in a labor camp.She doesn't have to be afraid of anyone (except "The Godfather" of course) - the site director won't let her be bullied.The only thing I can't figure out is how she got a chance to learn to drive a crane in the battalion.Did people agree that she didn't do this job for any benefit?But she was in jail for breaking an innocuous, non-political law.She glowed with exuberant energy, and the status she had earned allowed her to fall in love with others not according to material needs, but according to the desires of the heart. Sachkova, who was imprisoned at the age of nineteen, also described her situation in this way.She was sent to a reform-through-labour farm, where she was fed more, so her life was easier. "I ran from harvester to harvester singing, learning how to thresh wheat." If there is no youth but that of a labor camp, then it's time to be happy here, or where else?She was later transferred to the tundra near Norilsk.Even this place felt to her like "a mythical city in a childhood dream".After serving her sentence, she stayed in the camp to work as a free person. "I remember I was walking in a snowstorm, and suddenly there was an emotion in my heart that I wanted to go wild. I waved my arms while walking, and fought against the snowstorm. I sang a happy heart and danced with the song... Looking at the Northern Lights shining I threw myself on a snowdrift and looked up at the sky. I wanted to sing and let the whole of Norilsk hear: I didn’t defeat me for five years, but I defeated it. What barbed wire, planks, escorts The team is all over. I want to love someone! I want to do something for people! There will be no more evil on the earth." Yes, this is what many people desire. After all, Sachkova failed to free us all from evil forces: the labor camps still exist.But she herself was lucky: five weeks, let alone five years, was enough to kill her, as a woman and as a human being. In my hands, these are the only two examples that are opposed to thousands of miserable or shameless examples. If you're like Nina Belegude, an eighth grader, and you're incarcerated for fifteen years (on political terms), where else would you experience your first love except in a labor camp?How could you not fall in love with Vasily Kozmin, a beautiful jazz player who was praised by everyone in the city not long ago and was so popular, but you still thought it was unattainable?Nina had written "White Lilac," which he composed and sang to her across the camp (they had been separated, and he was "out of reach" again now). The girls in the Krivosekovo sheds also wore flowers—in their hair, a sign of a labor camp marriage, but perhaps also of true love. Laws outside (outside the Gulag) seemed to foster marriages inside the camp.The promulgation of the All-Soviet decree on the consolidation of marriage ties of July 8, 1944 was accompanied by an unpublished resolution of the People's Commissariat and a directive of the People's Commissariat of Justice of November 27, 1944.It stipulated that, at the request of a free Soviet citizen, the court must dissolve without hindrance the marriage between that citizen and his spouse in prison (or in an insane asylum).Even exempt from paying the handling fee for the divorce certificate as an encouragement. (In this case, no one has the legal responsibility to notify the other party of the fait accompli divorce!) This is tantamount to calling on male and female citizens to quickly abandon their husbands or wives in distress, and detainees should be more thorough. She forgot his (her) original marriage.It is not only stupid and unsocialist for an incarcerated wife to miss her husband who is outside, it is downright illegal.Zoya Yakusheva, who was implicated by her husband and imprisoned as an "anti-dependent" (counter-revolutionary family member), had the following result: her husband was an important expert and was released after three years. He did not make the release of his wife a necessary condition. come out.And she has endured for eight full years for her husband... Forget about the original marriage, all right.But promiscuous relations between men and women were also condemned by the Gulag's internal regulations as an act of sabotaging production plans.These shameless women who have forgotten their obligations to the country and the archipelago are running around the production site, and can lie on their backs at any time and place--on the mud floor, on the wood chips, on the gravel, on the cinders, on the metal shavings-- Therefore, the production plan will not be completed!The five-year plan will stand still!The bonus will not flow into the pocket of the head of the Gulag!Not only that, some female prisoners also secretly have the despicable idea of ​​conceiving a child, and want to use the humanitarianism of our country's law to shave off a few months of imprisonment in the name of pregnancy.They can not work for several months, and their sentences sometimes total as short as five or three years.That's why the Gulag's regulations require that anyone who discovers cohabitation must immediately separate the two, and transfer the less valuable party to another place. (Of course, this has nothing in common with the Sartekhas who send maidservants to remote Zhuangzi.) This kind of love affair under the prison clothes has added endless troubles to the guards.The guards could have snored peacefully in the duty room at night, but they had to search the night with lanterns to catch the skinny old ladies with bare thighs in the men's shed and the old men who sneaked into the women's shed.Not to mention that maybe he himself is lustful (after all, the watchman is not made of stone), but he still has to spend a lot of time to send the woman who has done bad things to the confinement room or do ideological education work on her all night , explain to her why her behavior is wrong, and then have to write a report (a person with no higher education is suffering to write this stuff). The things that make up a woman's life, and that of a man in general: family, motherhood, relations with friends, familiar and even interesting occupations, and for some, art and books - all stripped away, amidst fear, hunger, Under the pressure of being forgotten and the behavior of beasts, what sustenance does the female prisoner's heart have besides love?Love, blessed by God, has scarcely a sensual element.Because it's embarrassing in the bushes, and it can't be done in front of everyone in the shed, and men can't do it all the time.Besides, as soon as the guards in the labor camp saw two people "sneaking" (alone together), they would immediately pull them out and put them in confinement.But women now recall that because of the immaterial nature of labor camp love, its spiritual element became particularly deep.Just because there is no physical contact, it becomes stronger than love outside prison!An occasional smile, a momentary attention, are enough to keep young women awake at night.Against the backdrop of the squalor and gloom of life in the labor camps, the brilliance of love stands out. H. Storyalova sees "a conspiracy of happiness" in the faces of her girlfriend (Moscow actress) and her male partner (an illiterate Osman) who hauls hay with her.The actress confided in her that no one had ever loved her like this, neither her husband the film director nor all her former admirers.It was for this reason alone that she did not want to leave her hay-carrying work, "general labour." Then there was the risk—almost like a war, almost at the cost of one's life: a tryst was discovered, and the price of being kicked out of one's accustomed place was equal to the price of one's life.In a place where characters become stupid and dissolute, love on the knife bush is heroic love after all! (Aninian Lehtonian, an Ortau labor camp, and her lover were taken to a confinement cell by soldiers with guns. The lover humbly begged the soldiers to let him go. After twenty minutes, Anina lost her life forever. love for that person.) There are people who willingly serve as loveless concubines for their lives.Some people are willing to do ordinary labor and die for love.