Gulag полностью

But for the really big bosses, servants were only the beginning. Ivan Nikishov, who became the boss of Dalstroi in 1939, in the wake of the purges, and held the post until 1948, became infamous for accumulating riches in the middle of desperate poverty. Nikishov was a different generation from his predecessor, Berzin—a generation far removed from the lean and more fervent years of the Revolution and the civil war. Perhaps as a result, Nikishov had no compunction about using his position to live well. He equipped himself with a “large personal security force, luxury automobiles, sweeping offices and a magnificent dacha overlooking the Pacific Ocean.” ⁵² The latter, according to prisoner accounts, was said to be equipped with oriental carpets, bearskins, and crystal chandeliers. In the luxurious dining room, he and his second wife—a young, ambitious camp commander named Gridasova—were said to dine on roast bear, wine from the Caucasus, fruits and berries flown in from the south, as well as fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from private greenhouses.⁵³

Nikishov was not alone in enjoying a life of luxury either. Lev Razgon, in his unforgettable description of Colonel Tarasyuk, the wartime commander of Ustvymlag, records similar excesses:

He lived like a Roman who has been appointed governor of some barbarous newly conquered province. Vegetables and fruit, and flowers quite alien to the North, were grown for him in special hot-houses and orangeries. The best cabinet-makers were found to make his furniture. The most famous couturiers of the recent past dressed his capricious and willful wife. When he felt unwell he was not examined by some freely hired little doctor who had sold himself to the Gulag as a medical student. No, Tarasyuk was treated by professors who had headed the biggest Moscow clinics and were now serving their long sentences in the medical barracks of remote forest camps.⁵⁴

Often, prisoners were required to help indulge these whims. Isaac Vogelfanger, a camp doctor, found himself constantly short of medicinal alcohol because his pharmacist used it to make brandy. The camp boss then used the brandy to entertain visiting dignitaries: “The more alcohol they consume, the better their opinion of work in Sevurallag.” Vogelfanger also witnessed a camp cook prepare a “banquet” for visitors, using things he had saved up for the occasion: “caviar, smoked eel, hot rolls made from french dough with mushrooms, Arctic char in lemon aspic, baked goose and baked piglet.”⁵⁵

It was also in this period, the 1940s, that bosses like Nikishov began to see themselves as more than mere jailers. Some even began to compete with one another, in a fantastic version of keeping up with the Jones’s. They vied to produce the best prisoner theatrical groups, the best prisoner orchestras, the best prisoner artists. Lev Kopelev was in Unzhlag in 1946, at a time when its commander would select, straight from prison, “the best performers, musicians and artists, to whom he gave the best trusty jobs, working as cleaners and caretakers in the hospital.” The camp became known as an “asylum for artists.”⁵⁶ Dalstroi also boasted an inmate troupe called the Sevvostlag Club, which performed in Magadan and in some of the outlying camps of the mining zone, benefiting from the many well-known singers and dancers incarcerated in Kolyma.⁵⁷ Lev Razgon describes too the commander of Ukhtizhemlag, who “maintained a real opera troupe in Ukhta,” directed by a famous Soviet actor. He also “employed” a famous Bolshoi ballerina, as well as well-known singers and musicians: