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They surrendered their bronze skin to tattooing and in this way gradually satisfied their artistic, their erotic, and even their moral needs: on one another’s chests, stomachs, and backs they could admire powerful eagles perched on cliffs or flying through the sky. Or the big hammer, the sun, with its rays shooting out in every direction; or women and men copulating; or the individual organs of their sexual enjoyment; and all of a sudden, next to their hearts were Lenin or Stalin or perhaps both . . . Sometimes they would laugh at a droll stoker hurling coal into their rear orifice, or a monkey engaged in masturbation. And they would read slogans on each other which, even if they were already familiar, they none the less dearly loved to repeat! “—all the girls in the mouth!” . . . . Or else on a girl thief’s stomach there might be “I will die for a hot—!”³²

As a professional artist, Thomas Sgovio was quickly sucked into the tattooing trade. Once, he was asked to draw Lenin’s face on someone’s chest: it was a common belief among thieves that no firing squad would ever shoot at a portrait of Lenin or Stalin.³³

The thieves also distinguished themselves from other prisoners in their manner of entertainment. Elaborate rituals surrounded their card games, which involved huge risks, both from the games themselves, which had high stakes, and from the authorities, who punished anyone caught playing. ³⁴ But the risks were probably part of their attraction for people accustomed to danger: Dmitri Likhachev, the literary critic imprisoned on Solovetsky, noted that many thieves “compare their emotions during card games to the emotions they feel while carrying out a crime.”³⁵

Indeed, the criminals outwitted all NKVD attempts to stop the games. Searches and confiscations were of no use. “Experts” among the thieves specialized in the production of playing cards, a process which had become, by the 1940s, highly sophisticated. First, the “expert” would cut squares of paper with a razor blade. To ensure the cards were sturdy enough, he then pasted five or six squares together using “glue” made by rubbing a piece of damp bread against a handkerchief. After that, he put the cards under one of the bunks overnight to harden. When they were ready, he stamped the suits onto the card, using a stamp carved out of the bottom of a mug. He used black ash for the black cards. If the medicine streptomycin was available—if the camp or prison doctor had it, and could be threatened or bribed to give some away—he would make red cards as well.³⁶

The card-playing rituals were another part of the terror that the thieves exerted over the political prisoners. When playing with one another, the thieves bet money, bread, and clothes. When they had lost their own they bet the money, bread, and clothes of other prisoners. Gustav Herling first witnessed such an incident on a Stolypin wagon bound for Siberia. He was traveling with a fellow Pole, Shklovski. In the same car, three urki, among them a “gorilla with a flat Mongolian face,” were playing cards.

. . . the gorilla suddenly threw down his cards, jumped down from the bench and came up to Shklovski.

“Give me the coat,” he yelled. “I’ve lost it at cards.”

Shklovski opened his eyes and, without moving from his seat, shrugged his shoulders.

“Give it to me,” the gorilla roared, enraged, “give it, or—glaza vykolu—I’ll poke your eyes out!” The colonel slowly got up and handed over the coat.