Gulag

Fuster stood for thirteen hours on his feet, saving whoever he could. Finally, that resilient, talented surgeon couldn’t take it anymore himself. He lost consciousness, fell into a faint, and the operations finished ...³⁸

In the wake of the battle, all of the living who were not in hospital were marched out of the camp, and led out into the taiga. Soldiers with machine guns made them lie facedown, arms spread to the side—as if crucified—for many hours. Working from the photographs they had taken at the public meetings and from what few informers’ reports they had, the camp authorities picked through the prisoners and arrested 436 people, including all of the members of the strike commission. Six of them would be executed, including Keller, Sluchenkov, and Knopmus. Kuznetsov, who presented the authorities with a long, elaborate, written confession within forty-eight hours of his arrest, was sentenced to death—and then spared. He was moved to Karlag, and released in 1960. Another thousand prisoners—500 men and 500 women—were accused of supporting the rebellion, and were shipped off to other camps, to Ozerlag and Kolyma. They, too, it seems, were mostly released by the end of the decade.

During the uprising, the authorities appear to have had no idea that there was any organizing force within the camp other than the official strike committee. Afterward, they began to piece together the whole story, probably thanks to Kuznetsov’s elaborate account. They identified five representatives of the Center—the Lithuanian Kondratas; the Ukrainians Keller, Sunichuk, and Vakhaev; and the thief known by the underworld pseudonym “Mustache.” They even made a chart, showing the lines of command flowing out from the Center, through the strike committee, toward the departments of propaganda, defense, and counter-intelligence. They knew about the brigades that had been organized to defend each barrack, about the radio station and the makeshift generator.

But they never did identify all of the members of the Center, the real organizers of the uprising. According to one account, many of the “true activists” remained in the camp, quietly serving out their sentences, awaiting amnesty. Their names are unknown—and will probably remain so.

Chapter 25

THAW—AND RELEASE

Let’s not beat around the bush,

No more nonsense.

We are the children of the cult.

We are its flesh and blood

We have been raised in the fog

Ambiguous indeed,

Inside gigantomania

And scarcity of mind . . .

—Andrei Voznesensky, “Children of the Cult,” 1967 ¹

ALTHOUGH THEY LOST their battle, the Kengir strikers won the war. In the aftermath of the Steplag rebellion, the leadership of the Soviet Union really did lose its appetite for forced-labor camps —and with striking speed.

By the summer of 1954, the unprofitability of the camps was widely recognized. Another survey of the Gulag’s finances, carried out in June 1954, had again shown that they were heavily subsidized, and that the costs of guards in particular made them unprofitable.² At a meeting of camp commanders and top Gulag personnel held soon after Kengir, many administrators complained openly about the poor organization of food supplies for camps, about the out-of-control bureaucracy—by this time there were seventeen separate food norms—and about the poor organization of camps. Some camps were still open, but with very few prisoners. Strikes and unrest continued. In 1955, prisoners organized another general strike in Vorkuta.³ The incentive to change was now overwhelming—and change came.

On July 10, 1954, the Central Committee issued a resolution, bringing back the eight-hour workday, simplifying the camp regimes, and making it easier for prisoners to earn early release through hard work. The special camps were dissolved. Prisoners were allowed to write letters and receive packages, often without restriction. In some camps, prisoners were allowed to get married, even to live with their spouses. The barking dogs and convoy guards became things of the past. New items became available for the prisoners to purchase: clothing, which had been unavailable before, and oranges. ⁴ The inmates of Ozerlag were even allowed to plant flowers.⁵