Gulag

There is also evidence that Stalin’s interest in particular prisoners was not always purely political, and did not include only his personal enemies. As early as 1931, before he had consolidated his power, Stalin pushed a resolution through the Politburo which allowed him enormous influence over the arrests of certain kinds of technical specialists.⁵¹ And—not coincidentally—the pattern of arrests of engineers and specialists in this earlier era does suggest some higher level of planning. Perhaps it was not sheer accident that the very first group of prisoners sent to the new camps in the Kolyma gold fields included seven well-known mining experts, two labor-organization experts, and one experienced hydraulic engineer.⁵² Nor, perhaps, was it mere chance that the OGPU managed to arrest one of the Soviet Union’s top geologists on the eve of a planned expedition to build a camp near the oil reserves of the Komi Republic, as we shall see.⁵³ Such coincidences could not have been planned by regional Party bosses reacting to the stresses of the moment.

Finally, there is a completely circumstantial, but nevertheless interesting body of evidence suggesting that the mass arrests of the late 1930s and 1940s may also have been carried out, to some degree, in order to appease Stalin’s desire for slave labor, and not—as most have always assumed—in order to punish his perceived or potential enemies. The authors of the most authoritative Russian history of the camps to date point out the “positive connection between the successful economic activity of the camps and the number of prisoners sent to them.” Surely it is no accident, they argue, that sentences for petty criminal activity suddenly became much harsher just as the camps were expanding, just as more prison laborers were urgently needed.⁵⁴

A few scattered archival documents hint at the same story. In 1934, for example, Yagoda wrote a letter to his subordinates in Ukraine, demanding 15,000 to 20,000 prisoners, all “fit to work”: they were needed urgently in order to finish the Moscow–Volga Canal. The letter is dated March 17, and in it Yagoda also demanded that the local OGPU bosses “take extra measures” to ensure that the prisoners had arrived by April 1. Where these 15,000 to 20,000 prisoners were supposed to come from was not, however, clearly explained. Were they arrested in order to meet Yagoda’s requirements?⁵⁵ Or—as historian Terry Martin believes—was Yagoda simply struggling to ensure a nice, regular inflow of labor into his camp system, a goal which he never in fact achieved?

If the arrests were intended to populate the camps, then they did so with almost ludicrous inefficiency. Martin and others have also pointed out that every wave of mass arrests seems to have caught the camp commanders completely by surprise, making it difficult for them to achieve even a semblance of economic efficiency. Nor did the arresting officers ever choose their victims rationally: instead of limiting arrests to the healthy young men who would have made the best laborers in the far north, they also imprisoned women, children, and old people in large numbers.⁵⁶ The sheer illogic of the mass arrests seems to argue against the idea of a carefully planned slave-labor force—leading many to conclude that arrests were carried out primarily to eliminate Stalin’s perceived enemies, and only secondarily to fill Stalin’s camps.

Yet, in the end, none of these explanations for the growth of the camps is entirely mutually exclusive either. Stalin might well have intended his arrests both to eliminate enemies and to create slave laborers. He might have been motivated both by his own paranoia and by the labor needs of regional leaders. Perhaps the formula is best put simply: Stalin proposed the “Solovetsky model” of concentration camps to his secret police, Stalin selected the victims—and his subordinates leaped at the opportunity to obey him.

Chapter 4

THE WHITE SEA CANAL

Where mossy cliffs and waters slumbered

There, thanks to the strength of labor

Factories will be built

And towns will grow.

Smokestacks will rise up

Under the Northern skies,

Buildings will shine with the lights

Of libraries, theaters, and clubs.

—Medvedkov, a White Sea Canal prisoner, 1934¹

IN THE END, only one of the objections raised during the meetings of the Yanson commission caused any further concern. Although they were certain that the great Soviet nation would overcome the lack of roads, although they had few qualms about using prisoners as slave laborers, Stalin and his henchmen remained exceptionally touchy about the language foreigners used to describe their prison camps abroad.