Gulag

These “privileges” appear to have caused some resentment, and there were occasional tensions between the clergy and the ordinary prisoners. One female prisoner, removed to a special maternal colony on the island of Anzer after giving birth, remembered that the nuns on the island “held themselves away from us unbelievers . . . they were angry, they didn’t like the children, and they hated us.” Other clergy, as many memoirs repeat, took quite the opposite attitude, devoting themselves to active evangelism and social work, among criminals as well as other politicals.³⁶

For those who had it, money could also buy relief from work in the forests, and insurance against torture and death. Solovetsky had a restaurant which could (illegally) serve prisoners. Those who could afford the necessary bribes could import their own food as well.³⁷ The camp administration at one point even set up “shops” on the island, where prisoners could purchase items of clothing, at prices twice as high as in normal Soviet shops.³⁸ One person who allegedly bought his way out of suffering was “Count Violaro,” a swashbuckling figure whose name appears (with a wide variety of spellings) in several memoirs. The Count, usually described as the “Mexican ambassador to Egypt,” had made the mistake of going to visit his wife’s family in Soviet Georgia just after the Revolution. Both he and his wife were arrested, and deported to the far north. Although they were at first imprisoned—and the Countess was put to work doing laundry—camp legend recalls that for the sum of 5,000 rubles, the Count bought the right for both of them to live in a separate house, with a horse and a servant.³⁹ Others recall the presence of a rich Indian merchant from Bombay, who later left with the help of the British consulate in Moscow. His memoirs were later published in the émigré press.⁴⁰

So striking were these and other examples of wealthy prisoners living well—and leaving early—that in 1926 a group of less privileged prisoners wrote a letter to the Presidium of the Communist Party Central Committee, denouncing the “chaos and violence which rule the Solovetsky concentration camp.” Using phrases designed to appeal to the communist leadership, they complained that “those with money can fix themselves up with the money, thereby placing all of the hardship upon the shoulders of the workers and peasants who have no money.” While the rich bought themselves easier jobs, they wrote, “the poor work 14–16 hours a day.”⁴¹ As it turned out, they were not the only ones feeling dissatisfied with the haphazard practices of the Solovetsky camp commanders.

If random violence and unfair treatment bothered the prisoners, those higher up the Soviet hierarchy were disturbed by somewhat different issues. By the middle of the decade, it had become clear that the camps of SLON, like the rest of the “ordinary” prison system, had failed to meet the most important of their stated goals: to become self-supporting. ⁴² In fact, not only were Soviet concentration camps, both “special” and “ordinary,” failing to make a profit, their commanders were also constantly demanding more money.

In this, Solovetsky resembled the other Soviet prisons of the time. On the island, the extremes of cruelty and comfort were probably starker than elsewhere, due to the special nature of the prisoners and the guards, but the same irregularities would have characterized other camps and prisons across the Soviet Union at this time as well. In theory, the ordinary prison system also consisted of work “colonies” linked to farms, workshops, and factories, and their economic activity too was badly organized and unprofitable. ⁴³ A 1928 inspector’s report on one such camp, in rural Karelia—fifty-nine prisoners, plus seven horses, two pigs, and twenty-one cows—complained that only half the prisoners had blankets; that horses were in poor condition (and one had been sold to a Gypsy, without authorization); that other horses were regularly used to run errands for the camp guards; that when the camp’s prisoner blacksmith was freed, he walked away with all of his tools; that none of the camp’s buildings had heating or even insulation, with the exception of the chief administrator’s residence. Worse, that same chief administrator spent three or four days a week outside the camp; frequently released prisoners early without permission; “stubbornly refused” to teach agronomy to the prisoners; and openly stated his belief in the “uselessness” of prisoner re-education. Some of the prisoners’ wives lived at the camp; other wives came for long visits and disappeared into the woods with their husbands. The guards indulged in “petty quarrels and drunkenness.”⁴⁴ No wonder higher authorities took the local Karelian government to task in 1929 for “failing to understand the importance of forced labor as a measure of social defense and its advantageousness to the state and society.”⁴⁵