Gulag

Ultimately, this same group of prisoners was moved from Kholmogory to another camp at Petrominsk, another monastery. According to a petition they later sent to the authorities, they were greeted there with “rude shouts and threats,” locked six at a time into a tiny former-monks’ cell, given bunks “alive with parasites,” forbidden any exercise, books, or writing paper.⁴⁹ The commander of Petrominsk, Comrade Bachulis, tried to break the prisoners by depriving them of light and heat—and from time to time by shooting at their windows.⁵⁰ In response, they launched another endless round of hunger strikes and protest letters. Ultimately, they demanded to be moved from the camp itself, which they claimed was malarial.⁵¹

Other camp bosses complained about such prisoners too. In a letter to Dzerzhinsky, one wrote that in his camp “White Guards who feel themselves to be political prisoners” had organized themselves into a “spirited team,” making it impossible for the guards to work: “they defame the administration, blacken its name . . . they despise the honest and good name of the Soviet worker.”⁵² Some guards took matters into their own hands. In April 1921, one group of prisoners in Petrominsk refused to work and demanded more food rations. Fed up with this insubordination, the Arkhangelsk regional authorities ordered all 540 of them sentenced to death. They were duly shot.⁵³

Elsewhere, the authorities tried to keep the peace by taking the opposite tack, granting the socialists all of their demands. Bertha Babina, a member of the Social Revolutionaries, remembered her arrival at the “socialist wing” of Butyrka prison in Moscow as a joyous reunion with friends, people “from the St. Petersburg underground, from my student years, and from the many different towns and cities where we had lived during our wanderings.” The prisoners were allowed free run of the prison. They organized morning gymnastic sessions, founded an orchestra and a chorus, created a “club” supplied with foreign journals and a good library. According to tradition— dating back to pre-revolutionary days—every prisoner left behind his books after he was freed. A prisoners’ council assigned everyone cells, some of which were beautifully supplied with carpets, on the floors and the walls. Another prisoner remembered that “we strolled along the corridors as if they were boulevards.”⁵⁴ To Babina, prison life seemed unreal: “Can’t they even lock us up seriously?” ⁵⁵

The Cheka leadership wondered the same. In a report to Dzerzhinsky dated January 1921, a prison inspector complained angrily that in Butyrka prison “men and women walk about together, anarchist and counter-revolutionary slogans hang from the walls of cells.”⁵⁶ Dzerzhinsky recommended a stricter regime—but when a stricter regime was brought in, the prisoners protested again.

The Butyrka idyll ended soon after. In April 1921, according to a letter which a group of Social Revolutionaries wrote to the authorities, “between 3 and 4 a.m., an armed group of men entered the cells and began to attack . . . women were dragged out of their cells by their arms and legs and hair, others were beaten up.” In their own later reports, the Cheka described this “incident” as a rebellion which had got out of hand—and resolved never again to allow so many political prisoners to accumulate in Moscow.⁵⁷ By February 1922, the “socialist wing” of the Butyrka prison had been dissolved.

Repression had not worked. Concessions had not worked. Even in its special camps, the Cheka could not control its special prisoners. Nor could it prevent news about them from reaching the outside world. Clearly, another solution was needed, both for them and for all the other unruly counter-revolutionaries gathered in the special prison system. By the spring of 1923, a solution had been found: Solovetsky.

Chapter 2

“THE FIRST CAMP OF THE GULAG”

There are monks and priests,Prostitutes and thieves.There are princes here, and barons—But their crowns have been taken away . . .On this island, the rich have no home No castles, no palaces . . .

—Anonymous prisoner’s poem written on the Solovetsky Islands, 1926¹