For administration was even harsher than elsewhere, and more capricious too. One prisoner in Kolyma finished his sentence at the end of 1937 and was given a paper to sign stating that he had been notified of his liberation. However, he was not given any document to identify him as a free citizen, and could not leave the camp without one. He continued to work as a convict with the ambiguous status of “free prisoner.” He did not protest, as even so he was doing better than most people, who simply got a fresh sentence. At the end of 1939, he was finally given his certificate of liberation and allowed to choose a place of residence in European Russia apart from his home area.142
By a circumstance unique in the history of the labor-camp zones, Magadan was visited in 1944 by the Vice President of the United States, Henry Wallace. With him, representing the Office of War Information, was Professor Owen Lattimore. They both wrote accounts of what they saw, which differ in various respects from the information we have from ex-prisoners.
Wallace found Magadan idyllic.143 The horrible Nikishov, he noted approvingly, “gambolled about, enjoying the wonderful air.” He noted Gridassova’s maternal solicitude, and much admired the needlework which she showed him. The true story of the needlework144” is that women prisoners capable of producing this were able to sell it for extra rations to the NKVD aristocracy’s wives to decorate their apartments. It was normally produced, that is, after a ten- or twelve-hour working day in conditions comparable with those adversely commented on by Thomas Hood in
Lattimore condemned the hardness of the Tsarist system in Siberia.146 But this had now, fortunately, passed. The Soviet opening up of the north was “ordeny,” being controlled by “a remarkable concern, the Dalstroy … which can be roughly compared to a combination of the Hudson Bay Company and the T.V.A.”
He was equally impressed with “Mr.” Nikishov and his wife. “Mr. Nikishov, the head of Dalstroy, had just been decorated with the Order of Hero of the Soviet Union for his extraordinary achievement. Both he and his wife have a trained and sensitive interest in art and music and a deep sense of civic responsibility.”
Lattimore approvingly quotes another member of his party on a local ballet troupe which provided “high-grade entertainment,” which, he adds, “just naturally seems to go with gold and so does high-powered executive ability.” Lattimore notes, too, that unlike the old gold rushes, with their “sin, gin and brawling,” Dalstroy concentrated on greenhouses where tomatoes, cucumbers, and even melons were grown to make sure that the hardy miners got enough vitamins. The tomatoes that Lattimore was so lyrical about were indeed grown in the area. A prisoner describes some under the charge of a bullying but efficient woman doctor at a prisoners’ hospital in the northern region of Kolyma. Most of the tomatoes went to officials and staff, but at least some reached the patients, which is remarked on as an extraordinary thing.147
Nikishov had indeed shown some of the executive ability Lattimore attributes to him. For the reception had been very well organized. All prisoners in the area were kept in their huts. Watchtowers were demolished. Various other deceptions were undertaken. For example, Wallace was shown a farm, the best in the area; fake girl swineherds, who were in fact NKVD office staff, replaced the prisoners for the occasion. All the goods that could be scraped up in the neighborhood were put in the shop windows, and so on.148
The party was actually taken to a gold mine in the Kolyma Valley. Lattimore prints a photograph of a group of husky men bearing little resemblance to accounts of the prisoners from current Soviet or other sources. It is captioned “They have to be strong to withstand winter’s rigors.”149 The comment is a sound one, but when it came to real prisoners it worked out the other way: since they were not expected to withstand the winter’s rigors, it was unnecessary to keep them strong.
PECHORA
No other camp area had quite the reputation of Kolyma for isolation, cold, and death. But there were others which ran it close—in particular, the vast prison region at the northeastern corner of European Russia in the basin of the Pechora River. Even its name, though there is no river of Europe outside Russia larger than it, except only the Danube, is practically unknown in the West. Its basin is larger than the British Isles, or than New England, New York, and New Jersey. Here, between Kotlas, the gateway to the area, and the Vorkuta coal-mining district, lay the largest single concentration of forced labor in Russia, holding more than 1 million prisoners.
