Chapter 39 2

Even women who were not at all young were sometimes involved in such affairs, and the guards were helpless: no one outside the prison would have thought that such women could do such tricks!These women are no longer looking for lust, but to satisfy such needs: caring for someone, warming someone, saving food for someone to make up for; washing and mending for him.The bowl she shared with him was their sacred promise ring.A prisoner explained to Dr. Zuboff: "I don't want to sleep with him. All the days of us beasts, in our sheds, where we quarreled over rations and rags, I was always thinking: today We should mend his clothes, and we have to cook a potato to eat." But men sometimes ask for other things, so we have to agree with him.And the guards are just waiting to catch it... In Ungerage there is Aunt Polia, the hospital laundress, who was widowed early, remained celibate, and once worked as a church servant.Her sentence has come to the end, and suddenly one night she is found with a man.The doctors sighed and said, "Aunt Polia, what's the matter with you! We still have high hopes for you! Now they must transfer you to general labor." The old woman nodded sadly: "Yes, yes My fault. Whore according to the Gospels, according to the camp..."

The punishment for caught couples was as disinterested as the entire Gulag system.If one of the lovers is a handyman who has a close relationship with the chief or needs it for work, he can pretend not to see his affair for several years. (An electrician who was exempted from detention was transferred to work at the Independence Point of Wengzilage Women's Hospital. All free people can ask for him. The chief doctor of the free people called the nurse in charge of general affairs-a female prisoner and said: " Create some conditions for Muxia Butenko!" Muxia is a female nurse, and the electrician came here for her.) If it is an insignificant prisoner or a person who has fallen out of favor, he will be punished quickly and cruelly.

In the labor camps of the Gulzhedes (Railway Reform Bureau) system in Mongolia (where Chinese prisoners built railways in 1947150), two girls who were released from custody ran to the male prison brigade to meet friends got caught.A member of the guard tied her to his horse with a rope, mounted her, and dragged her across the grass, which Saltage had never done.But Solovitz did it. Aboriginal couples who are pursued, seized, and separated at any time seem impossible to be firm.However, there is such a thing, after being separated, lovers still keep in touch with each other, and finally reunite after being released.We know such a thing: the doctor, an associate professor of a certain provincial medical college, he himself can’t remember how many women he had sex with in the labor camp, he didn’t even spare a female nurse, and there were more than just nurses.But since 3 joined the ranks, that's where the lineup ends. 3 The pregnancy was not terminated and the child was born.He was released shortly thereafter, and his place of residence was not restricted. He could have returned to his original city of residence, but in order to stay with his mother and three children, he decided to stay in the camp for employment.His wife couldn't wait, so she came here to find her husband.He hid in the isolation area and didn't meet her! (His wife cannot go in and arrest him).He lived with 3 there and told his wife in various ways that he had divorced her and advised her to leave here.

But it wasn't just the wardens and officers who could separate the labor camp couples.The archipelago is a country where everything is turned upside down, and the birth of a baby is supposed to bring a man and a woman closer together.Here it separates them.Pregnant woman!One month before the birth of the brain, she was sent to another labor camp, where there was a labor camp hospital with a maternity ward.The little lives are crying there: they don't want to be prisoners of their parents' sins.After the child was born, the mother was sent to a reform-through-labour camp not far away that specially accommodated "Mumka" (children's mothers).

A word needs to be inserted here!I can't help but insert a sentence here! How much self-mockery is contained in the word "Mumka"! "We're not really..." The convict's language has a penchant for adding a condescending suffix to every word, and it does so stubbornly.Instead of (mother), say "MaMka"; instead of (hospital), say... --- the same irony, just not in the suffix.Even the word meaning "twenty-five years in prison" has been downgraded to .That is, from "twenty-five rubles" to "twenty-five kopecks". This fixed preference of the prisoner's language was an attempt to show that everything in the archipelago was not real, that it was all counterfeit, that it was all second-rate, and that they did not value what the common man valued.They are well aware that the treatment offered to them is completely bogus; the so-called pardon application they are forced to write is completely bogus as well.The prisoner lowered the "twenty-five rubles" to "twenty-five kopecks" in order to show his detachment from this almost life sentence:

"Mumka" live and work in special labor camps, from where they are taken to nurse indigenous newborns.The baby was no longer in the hospital, but was sent to a "children's village" (or "nursery". The name varies from place to place. After the nursing period was over, the mother and child were not allowed to see each other unless "there was a model in labor and discipline." (The advantage of this method is that you don't have to leave the "Mumka" in a nearby labor camp for this matter, and you can send them wherever you need to give birth.) But on the other hand, these women also Eighty percent of them will not be able to return to their original labor camps to meet their labor camp "husbands". As long as fathers do not leave the labor camp, they will not see their children. After weaning, the children will continue to be raised in the children's village for a year (they The standard of food is the same as that of free people’s children, so the food of the medical and general affairs personnel in the labor camp takes advantage of them). Some children died young after weaning because they were not used to feeding. The children who survived were sent to the In this way, the children born to the indigenous men and women left the archipelago temporarily, but they did not lose hope of returning to their homeland as juvenile delinquents.

According to observers, it is not common for mothers to take their children back from the nursery after their release (the women thieves never do).Thus many of these children, who from the first breath of their young lungs had inhaled the poisonous air of the archipelago, were cursed as soon as they landed.Other children were taken.Some mothers entrust some ignorant (perhaps religious) old women to fetch their children out before they are released from prison.The Gulag let these children go, even though it was bad for the government's educational efforts, and each child was less money for maternity wards, maternity allowances, and nurseries.

Before the war and during the war, as long as they conceived a child, the labor reform couple had to separate. They were hard-won, desperately concealed, faced with enemies from all sides, and the originally not-so-secure union would be destroyed. Therefore, during this period, women tried their best to avoid having children. .This is another difference between the archipelago and the outside world: abortion is banned outside the country and must be prosecuted by the courts. It is not easy for women to do this kind of thing.And in the camps, the officers never turned a blind eye to the routine abortions performed in the hospitals: it was only good for the camps.

Will the child be born?How to take it after birth?This is a difficult problem for any woman, and it is even more distressing for female reform-through-labour prisoners.How can you decide to have an abortion if the unpredictable fate of the labor camp allows you to conceive from a man you love?live? --It must be separated immediately.After you leave, won't he get along with other women in this labor camp?What will the child be like? (Children often develop abnormally due to malnourished parents.) After weaning, they will send you elsewhere (you still have many years in prison), will they take care of the children, will they not spoil the children?Will they be able to take their children home in the future (some people are not allowed to take their children)?If you are not allowed to receive it, you will be sad for a lifetime (some people don't know it at all).

Those who planned to marry the child's father after release did not hesitate to take the path of becoming a mother. (Sometimes this kind of plan can be realized. This is the photo of A. Glebov and his wife in the labor camp twenty years later: a daughter beside him was born in Ungerage, and she is nineteen years old now. How cute Girl, the other was born outside ten years later, when both parents had already served their sentences.) Those who followed this path also had those who were eager to experience the feeling of motherhood—since they had no other life, they were in reform through labor. Experience in the camp is worth mentioning.Isn't this real little thing that squirts on your tits fake or second-rate after all? (Lilia from Harbin gave birth to her second child just so that she could go back to the Children’s Village to see her first child! Later, she gave birth to a third child so that she could go back to see her first two. After serving five years in prison , she was able to save all three and take them out.) Female reform-through-labour prisoners themselves were irrevocably inferior, but they reestablished their dignity through motherhood, and for a short period of time they seemed to be reconciled with free women. equal status.They also said: "Although I am a prisoner, my child is a free man!" They would not let him ask for the same support and care as a true free man.The third type of women, usually the veterans and female thieves in the labor camps, see being a mother as an opportunity to be free for a year, and sometimes as a way to get released early.They don't regard their children as their own flesh and blood at all, and they don't even want to look at them, and they never ask whether they are alive or dead.

Women from Western Ukraine, and sometimes Russian women of lower origin, must find ways to baptize their children once they become mothers (this is already after the war).Small crosses were brought in from outside, cleverly concealed in parcels (a counter-revolutionary act that the guards never let go easily), or ordered at the expense of bread from the skilled craftsmen of the camp.There was also a way of getting crucifix straps, and a way of making a little smock and a little hat for a child.Save the sugar from the ration, bake a small cookie with some grain, and invite your closest girlfriends.There are always women who can say a prayer (any one will do).After dipping the baby in warm water, the baptism is completed, and the happy mother invites the guests to dinner. Sometimes partial pardons or early release orders are issued exclusively for female prisoners with breastfeeding babies (except of course "Article 58").The beneficiaries of these directives are mainly female criminals and hooligans in minor cases.To a certain extent, these people have already made this idea.This kind of "Mumka" often leaves the useless baby on the bench at the train station and throws it on the steps of the first house, as long as they get an ID card and a train ticket in the nearby district center. (Think about it for her, though. Not all of them can get housing, good looks at the police station, household registration, and jobs. She won’t be able to eat the ready-made rations in the labor camp tomorrow morning. It will be easier to start life again without children.) In 1954, in the waiting hall of the Tashkent railway station, I spent a night next to a group of prisoners who had been released from the labor camps by special order.About thirty people occupied a corner of the hall.Their demeanor was haughty and half-thiefish.These are some true sons and daughters of the Gulag, who know that life is worth a few bucks, and don't think much of the free people around them.The men were playing cards, and the women with the babies were arguing at the top of their voices.Suddenly a "Mumka" let out an overwhelming scream, jumped up, grabbed the child's feet and swung it, hitting the child's head on the concrete floor with a "bang".All the free men in the hall exclaimed: "Mother! How could a mother do such a thing?"... They did not understand that the woman was not the mother, but "Mumka". As mentioned above, they all belonged to the mixed labor camps, that is, from the first few years after the revolution to the end of the Second World War.In those days, there seemed to be only one Norvinsk Detention Center (reformed from the former Moscow Prison for Women) in the Russian Federation where all female prisoners were detained.The experience was not promoted, nor did it last long in itself. But at last the great teacher and builder rose unharmed from the ruins of the war in which he had nearly lost it, and he began to think of the welfare of his subjects.His brain is now free to arrange the lives of the people.At that time, he invented a lot of things that were beneficial to people's livelihood and improved morality!One of them is to separate men and women, starting with schools and labor camps (the next step he may want to extend to the entire society outside prisons. He has also done more extensive experiments in China). The general segregation of men and women in the archipelago began in 1946 and was completed in 1948.Male and female prisoners are sent to separate islands.If staying on the same island, stretch a tried and true friend between the men's and women's camps - barbed wire. Like many other actions that have been scientifically predicted and scientifically conceived, this measure has had unintended or even completely opposite consequences. After women were separated, their position in childbirth deteriorated sharply.In former mixed-gender labor camps, many women worked as laundresses, sanitation workers, cooks, boiler workers, custodians, and accountants.Now they have to leave all these positions.On the other hand, there were far fewer such positions in women's labor camps.The women were driven out to do ordinary labor and into the purely women's homework classes, which were especially unbearable to them.The ability to break free, even temporarily, from "ordinary" labor became a matter of life and death.So women set about trying to get pregnant, trying to keep a child from any brief encounter, any contact.Now there is no need to fear the separation of husband and wife due to pregnancy as before, because a wise decree has rewarded separation to them. As a result, the number of children sent to nursery schools doubled within a year! (Wengzhilage, 1945: increased from 150 to 300.) Although the number of female detainees did not increase during the same period. "What's the name for the little girl?"--"Let's call it Olympiada (competition). She was conceived during the amateur cultural competition." Amateur cultural competition, the male prisoner's cultural and artistic team performed at the women's labor camp Cultural activities such as joint gatherings of male and female assault workers are still customarily preserved, and hospitals shared by men and women are also preserved, and now these places have also become places for trysts.It is said that in the Solikamsk labor camp in 1946, the barbed wire separating men and women was stretched on a single row of pillars, and the mesh was very thin (of course, there was no firepower warning).In this way, the cat-like natives gathered on both sides of the barbed wire, the women took the posture of bending over to wipe the floor, and the men could occupy them without crossing the dividing line. The immortal Eros still has some power after all!It's not just a rational calculation to get rid of "general labor"!The prisoners felt that the dividing lines had been drawn forever and would only grow deadlier and stricter, like all aspects of the Gulag. If we say that before the separation of men and women, there was harmonious cohabitation, marriage in labor camps, and even love, but now there is only open fornication. Needless to say, the chiefs did not sleep too much. They revised their scientific predictions as they were implemented.Obstacle areas have been added on both sides of the single-row barbed wire fence.Later, it was found that such a partition was not enough, so it was replaced by a two-meter-high partition wall, and there were still no obstacle areas in the two cases. Even such partitions do not work in Kengil, and infatuated men and women pass over them.At this time, every Sunday (because production time cannot be wasted! Besides, it is logical to deal with internal affairs on public holidays) the weekly voluntary labor is carried out on both sides of the big wall, and he (she) is forced to add the big wall to a height of four meters.It's funny to say; people are very happy to participate in this kind of voluntary labor.Before breaking up, you can at least make friends with the person on the other side of the wall, say a few words, and make an appointment on how to communicate in the future! Later, in Kengil, the partition wall was raised to five meters high.Another barbed wire fence was pulled over five meters, and a high-voltage power grid was connected to the back (damn Cupid is so powerful-so much so).Finally, watchtowers for the guard were set up at both ends.Throughout the history of the archipelago, this great wall of Kengil has had a special fate (see Part V, Chapter 12).Similar walls were built in other special labor camps such as Spassk. Employers believed it was natural and human to separate male and female slaves with barbed wire.People cannot help admiring the soundness and propriety of the series of methods they have adopted for this purpose, but they would be dumbfounded if anyone suggested that they should practice the same in their own homes. The wall is getting higher and higher, and Eros is in a dilemma.It finds no other way out, and sometimes flies too high—into platonic correspondence, sometimes drills too low—into gay love. Love letters were flung from one camp to another, or left at agreed places in the factory.The letter was addressed in coded language: even if it was intercepted by the guards, it would not be clear who wrote it to whom (according to current regulations, if a note is found, it will be sent to the prison in the labor camp). Galia Venediktova recalled that sometimes they didn't even know each other face to face. The two wrote letters without meeting each other, and broke up without meeting each other. (Those who have made such a correspondence know the sweetness of its despair, its hopelessness and its blindness.) In the above-mentioned Kengil labor camp, Lithuanian women married across the wall to whom they had never A fellow countryman I met: a Catholic priest (of course, a prisoner wearing a prison coat) wrote in writing that a certain woman and a certain man were forever married before heaven.In this union with the unknown prisoner across the wall (for Catholics this union is immutable and sacred), I seem to hear the chorus of angels.It is as disinterested as the sun and the moon, and it is too sublime for the century of penny-pinching and frivolous jazz. Kenjill's marriage also had unusual results.Heaven heard people's prayers and intervened (Part V, Chapter 12). The women (and the doctors who had treated them in the segregated camps) now testified for themselves that this separation was more unbearable for them than for the men.They are particularly impulsive and neurotic.Lesbian love quickly became popular.The delicate young woman's face became sallow, and dark circles appeared on her eyelids.The thicker one plays the role of "husband".No matter how the guards disperse such couples, they still sleep in pairs on the same bed.When the authorities deported some of these "couples" from the camp, intense drama erupted in which they threw themselves into barbed wire fences under gunfire from sentries. The female prisoners concentrated in the Karaganda sub-camp in Sjjprag were all "fifty-eight".According to H?B, many of them tensed up when they heard that the operatives were called in for an interview, not out of fear or resentment of a dastardly political interrogation, but because the man was going to take her and himself. Locked in a room alone. The women's battalion was equally burdened with "general labor" tasks.It is true that women's logging camps have been formally banned since 1951 (not necessarily for the sake of starting in the second half of the twentieth century).But there are still such situations. For example, the men’s labor camp in Onjrag is always unable to complete the plan. At this time, I came up with an idea to strengthen them-to force the aboriginals to use their own labor to pay for all living things on the earth. The thing to enjoy.For this reason, the women were also driven to work in the lumber field, and the men were in the same security circle of the escort team, separated only by a track made by skis.The timber harvested on site is all counted in the account of the male labor camp, but there are quota requirements for both male and female prisoners.The officer with two stripes on his shoulders said directly to the "timberman" Liuba Berezina: "If you complete the quota with the women under your command, we will let Belinsky meet you once in the hut !" However, any men who work in good health, especially the production handymen with money on their bodies, only need to give a few dollars to the soldiers of the escort team at this time (you must know that the wages of these people are not enough for them to spend) , you can break into the circle of female prisoners and stay for an hour or so (until the bribed sentry is dismissed). Within a few hours, in the icy and snowy forest, they will: choose a partner, introduce each other (if there is no letter in advance), find a place, and handle errands. But why remember all this?Why touch the wounds of those who lived safely in the city and dachas of Moscow, published masterpieces in newspapers, gave speeches from pulpits, went to sanatoriums, and went abroad? Why recall these, if it is still the same today.Isn't it only allowed to write about things that "will not be repeated in the future"? ...