Gulag

Yet not all of the strike committee were people of doubtful committment. Kuznetsov himself would later claim that at least three committee members—“Gleb” Sluchenkov, Gersh Keller, and Yuri Knopmus—were in fact representatives of the secret Center. Camp authorities also later described one of them, Gersh Keller, as a representative of the secret Ukrainian conspiracy, and indeed his biography would seem to match this picture. Listed in the camp records as a Jew, Keller was in fact an ethnic Ukrainian—his real surname was Pendrak—who had managed to conceal his ethnicity from the MVD during his arrest. Keller put himself in charge of the strike’s “military” division, organizing the prisoners to fight back in case the guards attacked the camp. It was he who had begun the mass production of weapons—knives, staves, picks, clubs—in the camp workshops, and he who had set up a “laboratory” to build makeshift grenades, Molotov cocktails, and other “hot” weapons. Keller also supervised the building of barricades, and arranged for every barrack to keep a barrel of ground glass by its door—to be thrown in the eyes of the soldiers, if and when they should arrive.

If Keller represented the Ukrainians, Gleb Sluchenkov was linked, rather, to the camp’s criminals. Kuznetsov himself described him as a “representative of the criminal world,” and Ukrainian nationalist sources also describe Sluchenkov as the leader of the thieves. During the uprising, Sluchenkov ran the strike committee’s “counter-intelligence” operation. He had his own “police,” who patrolled the camp, kept the peace, and imprisoned potential turncoats and informers. Sluchenkov organized all the camps into divisions, and put a “commander” in charge of each one. Later, Kuznetsov would complain that the names of these commanders were kept secret, and were known only to Sluchenkov and Keller.

Kuznetsov was less vitriolic about Knopmus, an ethnic German born in St. Petersburg, who ran the uprising’s “propaganda” division. Yet in retrospect, Knopmus’s activities during the uprising were the most revolutionary, and the most anti-Soviet, of all. Knopmus’s “propaganda” included the production of leaflets—distributed to the local population outside the camp—the printing of a camp “wall newspaper” for the benefit of striking prisoners, and, most extraordinarily, the building of a makeshift radio station.

Given that the authorities had cut off the camp’s electricity in the first days of the strike, this radio station was not just a piece of bravado, but a great technical achievement. First, the zeks put together a “hydroelectric” power station—using a water tap. A motor was converted into a generator, and enough electricity was made to power the camp telephone system, as well as the radio. The radio, in turn, was put together using parts from the camp’s portable film projectors.

Within days, the camp had news announcers and regular news programs, designed for the prisoners as well as the local population outside the camp, including the guards and soldiers. Camp stenographers recorded the text of one of the radio addresses, made after the uprising had lasted a month, when food supplies were beginning to run out. Directed at the soldiers who now stood on guard outside the camp, the stenograph made its way into the MVD files:

Comrade Soldiers! We are not afraid of you and we ask you not to come into our zona. Don’t shoot at us, don’t buckle under the will of the Beriaites. We are not afraid of them, just as we are not afraid of death. We would rather die of hunger in this camp, than give up to the Beriaite band. Don’t soil your hands with the same dirty blood which your officers have on their hands . . .³⁶

Kuznetsov, meanwhile, organized the distribution of food, which was prepared and cooked by the camp women. Each prisoner received the same ration—there were no extra portions for pridurki—which slowly grew smaller, as the weeks went by and the stores decreased. Voluntary details also cleaned the barracks, washed clothes, and stood guard. One inmate remembered that “order and cleanliness” reigned in the dining hall, which had often been filthy and chaotic in the past. The camp baths worked as usual, as did the hospital, although the camp authorities refused to hand over necessary medicines and supplies.