Gulag

They suddenly got hold of “cold weapons” [knives], just as one would expect in that sort of situation . . . we learned that they had stolen the money and possessions of an older man. We asked them to give the things back, but they weren’t accustomed to giving things back. So at about two o’clock in the morning, just as it was turning light, we surrounded their barrack from all sides, and began attacking it. We started to beat them, and we beat them until they couldn’t get up. One jumped through the window . . . ran to the vakhta, and collapsed on the threshold. But by the time the guards arrived, no one was there . . . They took the thieves out of the zone.²⁶

A similar incident took place in Norilsk, as one prisoner recalled:

A party of thieves arrived at one lagpunkt, where all of the prisoners were politicals, and set about trying to set up their own system. The prisoners, all former Red Army officers, took them to pieces, even though they had no weapons. With wild screams the remaining thieves ran to the guards and the officers, begging for help.²⁷

Even women had changed. Tired of being intimidated, a woman political told a group of female thieves that if they did not return some money they had stolen, “we will throw all of you and your rags outside and you can sleep outdoors tonight.” The criminal women returned the money. ²⁸

The thieves did not always lose, of course. In one incident in Vyatlag, a struggle between the criminal and political prisoners ended with the death of nine politicals. The thieves had demanded a 25-ruble bribe from every prisoner, and had simply murdered those who refused to pay.²⁹

But the authorities took note. If political prisoners could band together to fight thieves, they could also band together to fight the camp administration. In 1948, anticipating rebellion, the Gulag’s Moscow bosses ordered all of the “most dangerous” politicals into a new group of “special camps” (osobyelagerya). Specifically designed for “spies, diversionists, terrorists, Trotskyites, right-wingers, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, white emigrants and participants in other anti-Soviet organizations” the special camps were really an extension of the katorga regime, and contained many of the same features: the striped uniforms; the numbers on their foreheads, backs, and chests; the barred windows; and the locking of the barracks at night. Prisoners were permitted only minimal contact with the outside world, in some cases one or two letters a year. Correspondence with anyone other than family members was strictly forbidden. The working day was set at ten hours, and prisoners were forbidden to work at anything except manual labor. Medical facilities were kept to a minimum: no “invalid camps” were set up within the special camp complexes.³⁰

Like the katorga lagpunkts, with whom they soon overlapped, the special camps were also set up exclusively in the harshest regions of the country, in Inta, Vorkuta, Norilsk, and Kolyma—all mining camps near or above the Arctic Circle—as well as in the Kazakh desert, and the bleak forests of Mordovia. In effect, they were camps within camps, as most were placed within existing forced-labor complexes. Only one thing distinguished them. With a surprisingly poetic touch, the Gulag authorities gave them all names derived from the landscape: Mineral, Mountain, Oak, Steppe, Seashore, River, Lake, Sand, and Meadow, among others. The point was presumably conspiratorial—to hide the nature of the camps—since there were no oak trees at Oak camp, and certainly no seashore at Seashore camp. Very soon, of course, the names were shortened, as was the Soviet custom, to Minlag, Gorlag, Dubravlag, Steplag, and so on. By the beginning of 1953, the ten special camps contained 210,000 people.³¹