Gulag

As time went on, however, Moscow lost patience. In a telegram sent on June 15, Kruglov lashed out at his deputy, Yegorov, for filling his reports with pointless statistics—such as how many pigeons had been released from the camp carrying leaflets—and informed him that an echelon of troops, accompanied by five T-34 tanks, was on their way.

The last ten days of the strike were very tense indeed. The MVD commission issued stern warnings via the camp loudspeaker system. In response, the prisoners broadcast messages from their makeshift radio station, telling the world that they were starving to death. Kuznetsov made a speech, in which he spoke of the fate of his family, which had been destroyed by his arrest. “Many of us had also lost relatives, and listening to him we strengthened our resolve, deciding to stick it out until the end,” one prisoner remembered.

Just before dawn, at half past three on the morning of June 26, the MVD struck. The previous evening, Kruglov had telegrammed Yegorov, advising him to use “all possible resources,” and he complied: no less than 1,700 soldiers, ninety-eight dogs, and the five T-34 tanks surrounded the camp. At first, the soldiers sent flares soaring into the sky above the barracks, and fired blanks. Urgent warnings began to sound over the camp loudspeakers: “Soldiers are entering the camps. Prisoners who want to cooperate are asked to leave the camp quietly. Prisoners who resist will be shot . . .”

As the disoriented prisoners rushed around the camp, the tanks entered the gates. Armed troops, dressed in full battle gear, followed behind them. By some accounts, both the soldiers driving the tanks and those on the ground were drunk. While this may be a legend which grew up in the wake of the raid, it is true that both the Red Army and the secret police traditionally gave vodka to soldiers who were being asked to do dirty work: empty bottles are almost always found inside mass graves.

Drunk or not, the tank drivers had no qualms about running straight over those prisoners who advanced to meet them. “I stood in the middle,” recalled Lyubov Bershadskaya, “and all around me tanks crushed living people.” They ran straight over a group of women, who had locked arms together and stood in their path, not believing that the tanks would dare kill them. They ran over one newlywed couple who, holding on to one another tightly, deliberately threw themselves in their path. They destroyed barracks, with people sleeping inside. They resisted the homemade grenades, the stones, the picks, and other metal objects that the prisoners threw at them. Surprisingly quickly—within an hour and a half, according to the report filed later—the soldiers had pacified the camp, removed those prisoners who had agreed to go quietly, and put the rest in handcuffs.

According to the official documents, thirty-seven prisoners died outright that day. Nine more died later of their wounds. Another 106 were wounded, along with forty soldiers. Again, all of these numbers are much lower than those recorded by the prisoners themselves. Bershadskaya, who helped the camp doctor, Julian Fuster, take care of the wounded, writes of 500 dead:

Fuster told me to put on a white cap and a surgeon’s gauze mask (which I keep to this day) and asked me to stand by the operating table and write down the names of those who could still give their names. Unfortunately, almost nobody could. Most of the wounded died on the table, and, looking at us with departing eyes, said, “Write to my mother . . . to my husband . . . to my children,” and so on.

When it became too hot and stuffy to bear, I took off the cap and looked at myself in the mirror. I had a completely white head. At first, I thought that there must have been powder inside the cap for some reason. I didn’t realize that while standing in the center of that unbelievable slaughter, observing all that took place, all of my hair had turned gray within fifteen minutes.