Gulag полностью

Other sorts of chronic “refusers” found their way into punishment cells as well. Indeed, the very existence of the cells presented prisoners with a choice. They could either work—or they could sit for a few days in the cells, getting by on short rations, suffering from the cold and the discomfort, but not exhausting themselves in the forests. Lev Razgon recounts the story of Count Tyszkiewicz, a Polish aristocrat who, finding himself in a Siberian logging camp, worked out that he would not survive on the rations supplied and simply refused to work. He reckoned he would thereby save his strength, even if he received only the punishment ration.

Every morning before the prisoners were marched out of the camp to work and the columns of zeks were lined up in the yard, two warders would fetch Tyszkiewicz from the punishment cell. Grey stubble covered his face and shaven head, and he was dressed in the remnants of an old overcoat and puttees. The camp security officer would begin his daily educational exercise, “Well you f——g Count, you stupid f——g f—k, are you going to work or not?”

“No, sir, I cannot work,” the count would reply in an iron-firm voice.

“Oh so you can’t, you f—k!” The security officer would publicly explain to the count what he thought of him and of his close and distant relations, and what he would do to him in the very near future. This daily spectacle was a source of general satisfaction to the camp’s other inmates.⁶

But although Razgon tells the story with humor, there were high risks to such a strategy, for the punishment regime was not designed to be pleasant. Officially, the daily punishment rations for prisoners who had failed to fulfill the norm consisted of 300 grams of “black rye bread,” 5 grams of flour, 25 grams of buckwheat or macaroni, 27 grams of meat, and 170 grams of potato. Although these are tiny amounts of food, those resident in punishment cells received even less: 300 grams of “black rye bread” a day, with hot water, and “hot liquid food”—soup, that is—only once every three days.⁷

For most prisoners, though, the greatest unpleasantness of the punishment regime lay not in its physical hardship—the isolated building, the poor food—but in the extra torments added at the whim of the local camp command. The communal bunks might, for example, be replaced by a simple bench. Or the bread might be baked using unprocessed wheat. Or the “hot liquid food” might be very thin indeed. Janusz Bardach was put in a punishment cell whose floor was covered with water, and whose walls were wet and moldy:

My underwear and undershirt were already damp, and I was shivering. My neck and shoulders got stiff and cramped. The soggy raw wood was decaying, especially on the edges of the bench . . . the bench was so narrow I could not lie on my back, and when I lay on my side, my legs hung over the edge; I had to keep them bent all the time. It was difficult to decide which side to lie on—on one side my face was pressed up against the slimy wall; on the other, my back became damp.⁸

Damp was common, as was cold. Although the rules stated that the temperature in punishment cells should not be lower than 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the heating was often neglected. Gustav Herling remembered that in his punishment isolator “the windows in the small cells had neither glass nor even a board over them, so that the temperature was never higher than outside.” He describes other ways in which the cells were designed for discomfort: